Fubon said that the trader was unfamiliar with new computer systems and will be fired. —Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy (News.com) What kind of an interface lets a worker spend $251 million with a single keystroke? The real problem here isn’t the worker — it’s a whole inhuman mindset that expects human beings…
At the same time, usability is also an ideology — the belief in a certain specialized type of human rights: The right of people to be superior to technology. If there’s a conflict between technology and people, then technology must change. The right of empowerment. Users should understand what’s happening and be capable of controlling…
The students were deliciously amused as the blinds fell. . . but the screen rose — or else the video was out-of-focus, or the sound intermittent, or worse. How I hoped to orchestrate the class! Instead, the room orchestrated me, and the technology orchestrated the room. Are lecture halls more vulnerable to the lure of…
The world is full of devices associated with the word ergonomic. A scholar trying to learn the word by studying the way it’s used in today’s culture is likely conclude that it means “curvy” or possibly “funny-looking.” Nearly all mice, trackballs, and other devices are now described as ergonomic; this doesn’t mean they’re all good…
—Y! MIndset An interesting Yahoo! search engine that places “Shopping” and “Research” on opposite ends of a sliding scale, which you can adjust in order to change the weightings of of search results. Similar:This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule…
Rogers’ Predator is one of more than 1,200 UAVs in the US military arsenal; three years ago, there were fewer than 100 in the field. Today drones as small as a crow and as big as a Cessna are searching for roadside bombs, seeking out insurgents, and watching the backs of US troops. They’re cheap,…
Whether there is a subscription requirement or a Site Pass, there is still a wall around Salon’s content — and that means the blogosphere ignores it. Without this persistent cross-linking, relatively few read its words, and as history is being made — or Googled — every day, Salon’s footsteps in cyberspace become fainter and fainter.…
To assure its continued success, Gemini has further increased it’s [sic] exposure to retailers and consumers alike with innovative marketing and a successful brand[-]building strategy. The For Dummies brand was recently added to Gemini’s stable of product lines. With it’s [sic] recognizable brand name, For Dummies compliments [sic] the current Gemini brand profile that includes…
—Ergebnisse 1 – 10 von ungefähr 36.900 für dennis i would like to talk to you for a minute – offline (Google Deutschland) My server logs report that somebody came to my website after searching Google Deutschland for the terms “dennis i would like to talk to you for a minute – offline”. Why anyone would…
It’s that abrupt elbow in a graph of growth or decline when the new technology or paradigm truly kicks in, and suddenly there is no going back. From that moment, the new stuff takes off and the old stuff goes into rapid decline, whether it is a new standard of modem, a new video game,…
Instinct told me to start with the market of the 1970s – the time when electronics were getting small enough and cheap enough to allow for the definition to become true. Therefore the 1970s were also a time when the very concept of a PDA was something ordinary people could grasp. In some ways this…
Given the dominance of Hierarchical folders over the last 40 years, this is a major development in the history of information management. Implicit in Google’s product offerings is an declaration of war: Hierarchy is doomed, and Search is going to kill it. —John Hiler —Google’s War on Hierarchy, and the Death of Hierarchical Folders (Microcontent News)…
Like many developments in the history of computing, some of the ideas for a GUI computer were thought of long before the technology was even available to build such a machine. One of the first people to express these ideas was Vannevar Bush. In the early 1930s he first wrote of a device he called…
Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it‘seasy to forget what a recent innovation they are. Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips. Instead, they?re an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing…
Robert Pittman, who created MTV, attributed the station’s success to the ability of viewers in their late teens and early 20s to process multiple facets of information simultaneously. In television, success brings imitation…. “When Mary Lynn Ryan, who was CNN’s producer at the time, did this the news ratings skyrocketed,” Grimes said. “So it appeared…
Incredibles DVD Freezes in My Player (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) The other day, my wife picked up a copy of the widescreen, 2-disc DVD of The Incredibles. The movie disc loaded, played the FBI warning, then froze on the screen that threatens our little family with legal action if we ever offend The Mouse. I’m used to…
—The Perfect Prescription (New York Metro) New design for pill bottles, improving legibility and adding several other features. Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of…
In the early days of the telephone, the problem of speaking level was widely noted and discussed. The technological innovation was clever: a small amount of a person’s voice was fed back to the earpiece, and people then naturally adjusted the loudness of their spoken voice to produce a comfortable level of feedback in the…
The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers. Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached “startling” levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like…
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