Author: Victor

Spent four days in Santa Monica, CA – one day of work and three days hanging out in a sumptuous hotel room in the Casa del Mar. Lots of sleep, room service, and hanging with Sarah. Never made it to Universal Studios or the Getty, and only a short drive up the PCH. Didn’t think at all about blogging anything either, which is a good thing. I’ve become more sensitive to the life/work balance lately after seeing friends get burned out, and being able to forget about my computer-centric hobbies is a positive sign for me.

Scientists have seen a pulse of light emerge from a cloud of gas before it even entered.

Lusting for the new Power Mac G4 Cube – pathetic really that I feel this way for a computer.

A leaner, meaner Noise Between Stations. Nothin’ fancy, not even tables. 1,615 characters of streamlined Blogger template goodness.

Tog’s latest column dispenses yet more design wisdom:

“I have come to the conclusion that all new revision efforts should apportion 20% of the design effort to correcting what is already there. Almost universally, people become so wrapped up in the exciting new features that they ignore the current problems.”

I’m making my first trip to Los Angeles this weekend, any suggestions on fun places to go? So far I’ve got Universal Studios, the Getty Museum, and a drive up the PCH on my list.

About a week and a half ago I went on a retreat to Sweden with about 30 other Razorfish employees. In preparation we were to think about our vision for ourselves and the company, among other things. My vision was a bit idealistic, or so I thought at the time. I think of all this “user experience” hubbub as just a euphemism for “improving people’s lives.” I think everything we do either makes the world a better place or a worse place, and I feel we have a moral imperative to try to make it a better place.

One day on the retreat a talk on broadband strategy led to a discussion about how new technologies will change lifestyles, and in turn led to how we influence people’s lives and therefore how we need to bring a sense of responsibility to our design. I was overjoyed that the words coming out of other people’s mouths were the same words I thought to myself when envisioning our future. It was encouraging that this group of incredibly talented people has a similar vision as myself, one that includes a moral dimension.

It’s with this in mind that I hear Jakob Nielson call us a “glamour design shop.” I spend a lot of effort evangelizing and working to improve usability, so the contrast between what I know as reality and his stupid perception is numbing. You know what Jakob, the IAM site was built for aspiring actors, musicians, and dancers, not for you, so your opinion isn’t valid here, you’re not the user (at this point I must take a deep breath and not sink to his level of petty criticism, even if the new SIGCHI Bulletin says about his new book, “save your money.” Ha!).

“It’s as if we’ve landed on Mars and we’re constructing a commercial and business setting.”

— THOMAS VARTANIAN

Chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on the Law of Cyberspace

That comment, from the article Net may need cyber-borders, really speaks to the megolomaniacal nature of attorneys these days. Listen folks, just because there’s no laywers running the Internet doesn’t mean it’s not an organized domain. It’s not like Mars at all, it’s like the Bar Association arrived in Columbus, Ohio, saw a lack of lawyers, and decide to take over. Fucking legal imperialism is what it is, and I’m not even one of those crazy Ayn Rand freaks.

Some amusing want ads. I especially like this part:

“…You will have at least three years experience of doing jobs for which you have no skill or aptitude, ideally in a Unix environment…”

IBM’s Pervasive Computing Glossary, and a whole issue of the Systems Journal dedicated to pervasive computing.

Surfing around IBM’s sites I actually noticed how easy they were to read and navigate. Although I design web sites for a living I’m rarely struck by this. Kudos to the Ease of Use team.

Upbeat article on Razorfish. I think the cult-culture is overdone a bit, you don’t have to “drink the Koolaid” to work here.

Nice photo of the CEO’s dog, Sophie, on the cover, though.

Bill Gaver has produced some fun work lately. I returned to his page as I’m researching auditory interfaces, and he has several papers available for download. I especially like his idea of everyday listening.

I think I’m averaging about a post/minute this weekend. Just shows how my life descends into utter geekiness when Sarah’s out of town.

Amazon.com is five years old. The original home page is funny in a quirky way, and the timeline is not only interesting, it’s downright hilarious.

Found the Mac version of a Gnutella client, Mactella, but I was unsuccessful after several attempts of trying to download files with it. It’s almost ready for prime time though.

This reminds me of something I wanted in the early days of FTP and the WWW: task based downloading. I want to tell the program, “Go get me foobar.mp3” and it does it. More explicitly, it finds it, determines the fasted connection, initiates the download, and if the download fails it tries again. That last part of trying again is a serious drawback of Napster and Gnutella. They’ve given us access but not ease. (damn I’m demanding).