Author: Victor

The brilliance of Tog is his ability to ask for the obvious software improvements that the rest of us overlook or gave up on long ago. He would be the fish that discovered water.

Here’s his latest ranting on email systems:

…Some email systems, such as AppleLink, were built with the ability to retrieve email. It worked well and saved a lot of
people a lot of embarrassment. It is about time such a feature became a standard part of Internet mail systems.

And while we’re on the subject, how about allowing people to set an expiration date? Why do I care that fresh
tomatoes were left in the lunch room on Tuesday when I return from my trip the following Monday morning?

I love it when other people’s rants parallel my own, and when something is published the same day it occurs to me in the shower.

I’ve ranted about Jakob Nielsen’s dumbing down of innovation in web design before, and now the torch is carried by Shirky in Shirky vs. Nielsen. I think making plenty of mistakes in order to find a better way mirrors the rest of society and is a more natural, organic growth pattern for design on the web.

It’s evolution, it the spreading of memes, it’s the river of out Eden.

We’re sorry, but our store is closed temporarily, says Amazon at the moment. I wonder how much money they lose per minute?

I have seen the future of industrial design modeling, and it’s the FreeForm modeling system. Basically a drawing program with a pen interface, but the pen moves in three dimensions and provides force feedback. I’m looking forward to the day when this moves beyond designers and everyone can replace their mice.

It’s so funny how alums and associates of MIT have this superstar mentality, and have taken to name dropping like people in Hollywood. I heard a lecturer recently who said, “When I did my graduate work at the Media Lab…” and just saw a product demonstration that began with, “This came out of our research at the Artificial Intelligence Lab.” It’s all understood that they were working at MIT. But of course.

StatMarket. The best web statistics I can find. I’m amazed and happy that Beatnik’s so-cool browser plug-in is more popular than RealPlayer. Browser manufacturers must be shipping it with installers.

Finally we’re re-thinking universities. The lack of competitive, student-centered curricula makes me sick. Universities so often have their own agendas that have nothing to do with teaching students. I realize I’m oversimplifying – that great professors want to do research and a balance must be sought.

But I’m encouraged by THE DISRESPECTED STUDENT – OR – THE NEED FOR THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY. Roger Shank says,

We know that Virtual U will serve up electronic courses, and therein lies the excitement. People are actually thinking about designing courses in a new way. They are not doing this because of the opportunity to redesign and rethink the concept of what a university can and should offer. They are designing courses in a new way because the new medium forces them to do so. Nevertheless, we suddenly have the opportunity to ask: What exactly should the offerings of a university be? What should a course be? Should there be courses at all? How can we make education better?

“Reach List.” A handy term I overhead from an architect at the train station this morning. It refers to the list of design features that aren’t must haves but will be incorporated if the timeline and budget allows.

Such a wonderfully jovial double-meaning URL from a friend of mine:

I’m a new hat-maker. I’ve set up a new site:

http://www.hathathat.com/

(That stands for hat hat hat . com. Although it DOES look like: Ha!
That
hat! .com. Ahem…)

It just gives me the warm fuzzies that a hat maker with moderate computer skills can hang up a shingle on the web.

Any cyclists reading this? If so, could you please tell me what would be the one most important factor in a bike if you were to run out and buy one today?

I’ve been thinking lately about how to create a mostly monochromatic look to a web site, even a metallic look if possible. Sean, a designer at work, brought it up – he’s inspired by the beautiful simplicity of PDAs and mobile phones.

Two sites that are mostly monochromatic: Banana Republic and Univega.

The Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation
has some generous information online, check out their Journal which includes an article titled The Invisible Computer by Don the-design-of-everyday-things Norman.

Whoa! I just found the page for ICAD, the International Community for Auditory Display. They’re probably doing the most advanced work in helping us communicate as effectively with sound as we do with graphics.

I’m currently thinking about putting Jennifer Tidwell’s HCI Design Patterns to the test by using them to design a web site at work. More patterns can be found at Tom Erickson’s Interaction Design Patterns Page.

NY Times story on the Living Surfaces conference I attended last week. It’s an interesting distillation of the ideas presented there. Everything sounds more interesting and important when the NY Times reports on it.