Misconceptions about usability’s expense, the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design…. Market research methods such as focus groups and customer satisfaction surveys are great at researching your positioning or which messages…
Who Cares About Andy Roddick — So today I read a quick story about Andy Roddick. He just won the U.S. Open. I did a search for him on Google to learn more, and I found his official web site. Fine. No problem. Then I clicked on a link to read about his U.S. Open…
I’ve been fretting and procrastinating over another definition I’m writing for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, you see, this one’s on cyberpunk (the genre) and I’ve never published a thing on cyberpunk. — Jill Walker —Definition: Cyberpunk (jill/txt) Jill is taking comments on the draft of her definition of cyberpunk. Neal Stephenson says that cyberpunk…
Controversial film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, who made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, has died aged 101. | Riefenstahl became a favourite of German dictator Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, making films for his fascist regime. | Her most famous work was Triumph of the Will, a propaganda film showing a Nazi rally in…
Three short steps into the New Millennium, written SF is paradoxically in sharp decline. …. And the reason is depressingly clear: Those few readers who haven’t defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises. | Incredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting. They no…
“If people can confess on Oprah, Phil and Geraldo, I don’t see why they can’t confess right here on Eighth Avenue.” So said Father Anthony Joseph, a Dominican priest from San Bernadino who peddled a confessional booth mounted on the back of a tricycle to the site of the Democratic National Convention in New York…
In December, 1990, Galileo began its “Earth-1” maneuver: the first Earth flyby. This happened to coincide with the buildup to the first Gulf War. nasa had to inform the North American Aerospace Defense Command that the blip that would appear on its radar screens on December 8th—an incredibly fast-moving object that might well seem to…
If you’re a freelancer, your online portfolio is your life. If you work for the man, it’s a great resource for that next job promotion, working with the design firm across the street. In either case, it is imperative that you create a website of value and visual interest. The part that most visual designers…
But just think of how much talent and intelligence we waste, simply because our educational system isn’t particularly interested in motivating and challenging our most gifted students. | Most of Michael’s classmates from the alternative high school, even the highly gifted ones, did not go on to earn college degrees. In fact, most of them…
The automated essay scoring engine behind Criterion, called e-rater, has been used to score more than 1.5 million essays on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, in tandem with human readers. The machine score and the human score are in agreement 97 percent to 98 percent of the time. —For Student Essayists, an Automated…
I had been describing my reaction to the men who’d kill my daughter for the glory of Allah: give me the gun, show me the cave. The author of the piece suggested I would be perfect for the role of the WW2 black-out warden who scolds people for half-closed windowshades. Why, it’s almost as if…
Headless Heroes, Car-crash Residue and Styrofoam Peanuts As part of Seton Hill University’s “Labor of Love” (a day of community action and volunteerism), about 150 people showed up on campus for breakfast, a pep rally and the send-off. Some went to a food back, a mom’s shelter, and various other sites (some of them on…
Recall is a search engine at the Internet Archive that indexes the text of over 11 Billion pages. The archive has pages dating way back to 1996 through the present day. —‘Recall’ Search Engine (Internet Archive) The engine is in beta. I tried typing in a quoted two-word query, but the results came back as if…
Naked and empty-handed, I ran back to the forest in search of my body. As I approached my corpse, I was attacked by a half-dozen zombies. An hour later, after being continually slaughtered, I decided to call it a night. — Aaron Delwiche —Warning: Do not follow strangers into Kithicor forest at night. (Aaron Delwiche’s…
Shopping for Digital Cameras A communications faculty member suggested that the humanities division purchase a bunch of inexpensive digital cameras for students to check out. We’re thinking of buying 5 or 6 cameras in the 2 megapixel range. Obviously we want the students to be able to use the cameras with a minimum of fuss,…
Writing flash regularly — sometimes several a day — has taught me how to edit myself more closely than I’ve ever been able to — and it’s really got me in a new habit of getting the most juice out of verbs. I also am learning to really appreciate the art of indirect suggestion. I’m…
…an interactive tutorial on evaluating the quality of Internet resources. —Welcome to Internet Detective (Social Science Information Gateway) Thanks for the suggestion, Mike. The Social Science Information Gateway uses “SOSIG” as its logo. That’s not quite an acronym… what does the “O” stand for?
Java and .NET take vastly different approaches to development, said John Rymer, a vice president with Forrester Research. Java’s philosophy of development is to expose low-level system interfaces to give developers greater control. Microsoft simplifies the development process; the developer has less control — but the tools are easier to use. — Vincent Ryan —Is…
just finished a draft of an encyclopedia entry about “artificial intelligence.” It’s for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory and so, of course, it deals with how AI relates to narrative. Following Jill’s example, I have posted this draft in case anyone has comments on who I might have slighted, how I might have misrepresented…
For those with time to notice, blogs are also a great cheap farm system for talent. You’ve got tens of thousands of potential columnists writing for free, fueled by passion, operating in a free market where the cream rises quickly. | Best of all, perhaps, the phenomenon is simply entertaining. When do you last recall…