Usability: April 2006 Archive Page

The gathering was the monthly meeting of "Dorkbot," a loose forum for the exchange of creative technological ideas that is developing a cult following around the world.

[...]

Repetto has finished a project called "foal table." The idea originated in a request from a friend working on a theater production to design a table that transformed into a horse. Repetto watched videos of foals being born and carefully calibrated a mechanical table to make it walk in the awkward, stumbling manner of newborn horses.

"What it's supposed to do is ridiculous because it's a table and there is no reason for it to be walking," Repetto said.

The idea is therefore perfectly Dorkbot ? a name that Repetto says is meant to appeal to people who like to stand back and experience awe in technology and creativity. --'Dorkbot' Meetings Develop Cult Following

Reading this article made me go "Ahhh!" Now that's taking control of technology.

Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it.

And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it's chaotic, its silo'ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of "collaborating" and sharing information with others. --The Good In Email (or Why Email Is Still The Most Adopted Collaboration Tool) (Central Desktop Blog)

I was recently invited to join an IM discussion for a collaborative project, but I declined. I can see how it would be useful for brainstorming, but at that point in the project we had already shared ideas and were approaching a "getting things done" mode, and I didn't feel like that was the right time to switch to chat.

I'm not a total dinosaur. I think Wikis are great collaborative tools, because they keep a track of changes, which means I feel more comfortable making wild changes, since someone else can always moderate it if I've made too drastic a change.

Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today. People don't use things they don't understand. Writing for the Web is still undervalued, and most sites spend too few resources refining the information they offer to users. Jakob Nielsen --Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Alertbox)