Poynter.org ‘exists to help journalists do their jobs better and to serve their communities’ – recommended.
I’ve been trying to learn more about established design language rather than reinvent everything. This article discusses page elements like folio lines and bylines that we could seamlessly migrate to our online design dialog.
I’ve seen a few projects now, mostly big ones, where we’re trying to create generic metadata behind a website, the idea being you can then use that information for other applications (an example of an application being a portal that uses a person’s customized preferences to filter a set of documents using metadata associated with the documents). But there always comes a point when we have to put a stake in the sand and accommodate the application at hand. Eventually the metadata ends up being customized to work for specific applications and not just any old application. So my current thinking is that we should ignore all but the applications at hand. Metadata can be massaged and schemes can be morphed later to accommodate other applications, or at least that’s the assumption I’m going on for now (please tell me if you know better).
So, rather than start with a metadata scheme, it makes more sense to work backwards starting from the user interface…
From a report on Ben Shneiderman’s visual interface work: ‘when you tell your computer to “page down” or “italicize that word” by speaking aloud, you’re gobbling up precious chunks of memory — leaving you with little brainpower to focus on the task at hand. It’s easier to type or click a mouse while thinking about something else because hand-eye coordination uses a different part of the brain, the researchers concluded.’
Link via Peter.
Katie Raygun, a 15-year old with attitude, is one of those bloggers that make me feel like a voyeur. I’m 32 and pretending I still understand teenagers, and of course I don’t.
Some of it might be contrived, but who cares? She’s got voice, and that’s something I love in a weblog. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with me if you saw me on the street. So suck it.’
Link via Maggie.
Bill is re-thinking our relationship with the media: ‘When referring to a document published by a non-personal news source (e.g. newspaper, or even group weblog), credit the human being who wrote the article….This might….(a) improve the feedback loop by tracking quality of work by individuals, and (b) disintermediate publishers.’
Dear Mr. Lombardi,
I will forward your comments to our E-commerce department to see if this information can be added to the error screen. Please let me know if I may be of any further assistance.
Thank you,
Member Service Officer
An email from my bank, this is the same problem as when I was designing a bank site…the poor saps handling the customer support are not the same poor saps designing the system, so there’s no direct connection in the feedback loop between designers and the public. Of course the designers need some time to design, but they sure as hell would make the site more friendly if it meant cutting down the amount of support they had to field.
It gets even worse when you factor in the rest of the experience. Tonight I was lulled in by the wonderfully egalitarian ads for The Neighorhood thinking this was the revolutionary phone service that was finally customer-driven (turns out it’s MCI’s local phone service, but that’s irrelevant). By listening to their radio ads, I thought it was mobile service, not landline. What are the chances that my feedback on their advertising will go through MCI’s centralized customer support down to The Neighborhood department and back to their ad agency? Maybe like, never.
It seems like a problem of scale, that after a certain size the communication just doesn’t happen. But it’s improbably a small company could offer phone or banking services and compete with the big companies. Where’s the sweet spot between the two, and is it possible to stay there without getting too big or too small?
She’s lovely, but this city is no place for her. She wants to run and jump and play. Won’t you adopt her? Details.
‘If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.’ – Charlie Parker
I’m working on a project where I can influence the platform used, a rare opportunity. So I’ve been researching some of the current mobile platforms I didn’t know much about…
Ultra-personal computers: OQO is working on a full-powered PC – including Wi-Fi – that will fit in your pocket. Also see IBM’s Meta Pad. Nice when you need all that power and portability, but is that power usable with the small screen? I think we’re seeing computers whose raw performance has outpaced the input/output potential. We need goggles and 3D force-feedback haptic devices to replace our screens and mice.
Tablet PC: a Microsoft-backed platform, basically a laptop with a screen that will fold down and become a touch-sensitive tablet. Considering how low laptop prices could go, this could easily replace the mythical web tablet. But as a PC, will the pen-based computing (itself a moniker of failure) be useful with something other than simplified PDA-like apps?
Mira: Even more likely to become your web tablet, imagine taking your flat screen monitor off its dock and bringing it to another room while it wirelessly communicates with the desktop setup.
And of course there’s Pocket PCs and Palms, which don’t seem as attractive for custom apps due to the limited compatibility with other platforms.
All of the above are non-Apple platforms. Let’s hope the folks in Cupertino have something up their sleeve to follow up the G4 Laptop, they usually do.
Watson, half of the team that discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, interviewed in a recent issue of the New York Times magazine:
…I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin you can’t be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food. So I was just saying that happiness comes only when you are doing things that are good for you….
…The molecule that you make when you are getting sunburned or when you eat a lot of food is part of the same molecule that contains an endorphine or an opiate. No one has ever had a hypothesis about why the two are together. So I came up with one.
And your hypothesis is that sun and food make you happy?
Yes, and running and exercise.
More on his theories, link courtesy of Bill.