A series of pictures describing how usability professionals would handle the “blinking 12:00” VCR problem. Quite amusing. —Usability Review of a VCRUsabilityMustDie.com) Similar:Real college classes have writing assignments and required reading.While I can imagine teaching a course th…AcademiaThe Satellite That Took This Incredible Photo Almost Didn’t Leave EarthThe camera’s first good image came back …AestheticsFacebook’s…
“[E]very word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ ” Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman is the inspiration for Nora Ephron’s play “Imaginary Friends.” Dick Cavett suggests that the wrath of Hellman eventually destroyed the health of both women. —Lillian, Mary and MeNew Yorker) Similar:We Are the Product Facebook SellsFacebook does…
“For the first hour, all the opening doors on the Enterprise are accompanied by a nice door-opening sound effect stolen from Star Trek. But by this point in the movie, the Turkish audio engineers have lost interest. Now whenever someone walks into a room, somebody off camera makes the sound ‘swwwsh!’ with their mouth two…
“We recognize the capacity of digital instruments to simulate so many of our elements and forms of living, and thinking, and imagining. But just because the book has been our simulation machine of choice for centuries, we need to study and understand it now more than ever — not as a place of retreat, but…
I admit it… once I started stumbling across my own name on the Internet, I began using Google to find out who has linked to me and how my visibility compares to that of other people whose names I come across. Now Userati automates all that pesky ego-surfing, and even quantifies the result. Userati uses…
“[M]any big-city journalists — especially those who set the agenda for what gets covered in the rest of the media — have moved away from much of the largely middle- and working-class audience they purport to serve. At best, they’re out of touch. At worst, they’ve become elitists.” David Shaw —Jouralists Losing Touch with the…
“Time was, when a writer said: ‘Kierkegaard observed that…,’ there was at least a fighting chance that he had actually read Kierkegaard. Nowadays it is much more likely he just used Google to flesh out some dimly-remembered quote he heard from a college lecturer or a TV talking head, or came on by chance while…
“What sort of recreation has the ability to absorb people to the extent that marriages break up, jobs are lost, and they lose friends? How does playing a game on a computer make someone lose functionality in the REAL world, because they want to spend too much time in some imaginary reality? For crying out…
“It was in August 1958 in Humboldt County, Calif., that Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator for Wallace Construction, saw prints of huge naked feet circling and walking away from his rig. The Humboldt Times in Eureka, Calif., ran a front-page story on the prints and coined the term ‘Bigfoot.’ According to family members, Mr. Wallace…
“I’m not so nerdy as to suggest that you read Harry Potter as an idea manual for next-generation product development. But the books are filled with examples of products that we’ll soon be able to build, and they do provide some idea of what it might mean to embody awareness in the physical world. ”…
“In fact 60 percent of Americans who use e-mail at work receive 10 or fewer messages on an average day, the study released Sunday found. Only 6 percent receive more than 50. And among those power users, only 11 percent say they feel overwhelmed by all the e-mail.” —Study Refutes E-Mail MythWired) It makes sense……
“Christmas lights are hanging from peoples’ porches, holiday music is twinkling over the radio, and the First Baptist Church in Athens has put out its annual nativity scene. This nativity scene is comprised of large, cheap plastic figures, and every year the wind blows them over again, and again, and again. Luckily for you, my…
Error 404. You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of this address. Do you wish to launch a bypass attack? Yes | No —Forbidden: You Do Not Have Permission to View the Contents of this Address. English 110) An engaging animated intro to an “alternate history” creative hypertext project, created by…
Why would anyone want to consult Allied Computing (“Due to our unique location in Kalispell Montana, Allied Computing is able to offer zero sales tax on all purchases. We also consider trade-ins and trade ups on most new and some used computer systems.”) while researching religious aspects of birth control? And if Allied Computing has…
“DigiPen Institute of Technology is the first school in the world dedicated to computer science instruction as it applies to real-time interactive simulation programming. DigiPen is also one of the oldest computer animation schools in the world. Successful graduates of our programs gain the skills required to pursue careers in the rapidly growing world of…
“The theater has been transformed into a multi-player gaming center in which patrons can challenge one another on some 80 computer games. Unlike a video arcade, players will compete against each other on such popular game systems as Microsoft’s XBox, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s GameCube. Where there used to be stadium-style theater seating, there…
“Writing software should be treated as a creative activity. Just think about it — the software that’s interesting to make is software that hasn’t been made before. Most other engineering disciplines are about building things that have been built before. People say, ‘Well, how come we can’t build software the way we build bridges?’ The…
It’s not ‘cat sat on the mat or ‘Peter and Jane’ writing. Almost anything – from leaflets and letters to legal documents – can be written in plain English without being patronising or over-simple. It doesn’t mean reducing the length or changing the meaning of your message…. It’s not about banning new words, killing off…
“[T]he best news sources have always felt like a rich, somewhat mysterious pageant. And in many ways, this is an exciting experiment. Lately I’ve been visiting Google News several times every day, to see how the media world looks through the emotionless eyes of an algorithm.” William Powers —The Play’s Not the ThingThe Atlantic) Similar:In…
“Consumers are often baffled at the price tag attached to what appears to be little more than a mass of paper, cardboard and ink. A whole host of factors, including the size of the book, the quality of paper, the quantity of books printed, whether it contains illustrations, what sort of deal the publisher can…