I want to find occurances of Hi! on the Internet, but the search engines’ syntax apparently don’t do that (they ignore the exclamation point, and you can’t force it like you can with plus signs on stop words). I’ll paypal you $1 if you can tell me within a day how to do this on Google or Yahoo!
Category: Unfiled
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My Architect
Wow, a wonderful film. I had trouble imagining how a film from the point of view of the architect’s son would be interesting, but he intertwines the personal life and work of Louis Kahn remarkably well. If you go, bring tissues.
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Reid on Neruda
Saw Alastair Reid last night at 192 Books (a wonderful bookstore in my neighborhood that feels like a friend’s apartment with an amazing bookshelf). He spoke about his friendship with Pablo Neruda and read from the Chilean poet’s works. One story:
Neruda: When I married Matilda I promised I would write her 100 love sonnets. I’m still working on them.
Reid: Couldn’t you have said “50”?
Neruda: I wish I had!
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Jakob Appleseed
Sippey pokes fun at Jakob for stating the obvious (mobile phones are annoying), with findings Peterme revealed a while ago.
Just as the popular rags are now popularizing ideas that bloggers covered months and years ago, it seems like a person with Jakob’s noteriety could do the same just by mining the blogosphere.
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The myth of navigation
Andrei Herasimchuk’s myth of navigation article nicely attacks the idea of navigation, and brings up some interesting points. I think he falls prey to the interaction-design-as-total-solution fallacy that Cooper has raised, but he’s essentially pointing out that navigation is more than just wayfinding, what Dillon has already shown.
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Dodgeball
Clay Shirky’s recent essay mentions my friend Alex’s project Dodgeball which just launched. Alex describes it as ‘Friendster for your mobile phone… It’s social software that you can use to meet up with friends while you’re out being social, not at your desk procrastinating.‘ The beta period is NYC only.
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Security and usability are inversely proportional
Started a new page on Security Vs. Usability on the IA Wiki since I’ve been thinking about this for years and finally decided to see what was out there already. I have a little continuum in my notebook that says what security to do when, I just need to clean it up.
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Use cases and interaction design
Use cases and interaction design by Henrik Olsen very nicely discusses the intersection of use cases and other work downstream. I think it does a great job summarizing how use cases can describe essential features while not making UI or technical assumptions, avoiding use case re-work when the wireframe, comps, and technical implementation change. It’s all especially important if there are different people collaborating, some on the use cases and some on the interface design.
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A complex stream containing numerous clusters of value satisfactions
The Whole Whole Product is essentially about customer experience: ‘The core focus has shifted from ³how good can we make our product?² to ³how happy can we make our customers?² Two very different questions, looking at the marketplace from two very different perspectives.’ But it’s from a marketing perspective, so you get different terminology: ‘A product is, to the potential buyer, a complex stream containing numerous clusters of value satisfactions.‘ The design and marketing fields may be on orthogonal paths, speaking about the same thing but rarely interacting. Some bridge material would be helpful.
Also, it’s interesting that Gerry McGovern is writing for the same publication.
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Tools for Women
I saw the Barbara K tools for women in Bed, Bath & Beyond this weekend and they’re very nice, the handles are all curvy and feel great. After owning hammers whose head would slide off the handle I now own a solid, heavy hammer I love, but my wife thinks it’s too heavy. In a world of big, burly tools these are so smart.
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The IA goods, en español
The AIfIA Translation Initiative translated several new pieces from me and several others into Spanish.
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Tyco Jury Sent Home to Calm Down
“This is not a hung jury based upon a lack of unanimity,” the note continued. “This is a jury that has ceased to be able to conduct respectful, open-minded, good-faith deliberations.”
I was on a criminal court jury last summer, deliberating a case that could have put someone in jail for a long time. I spent a week and a half sitting silently next to a randomly selected group of eleven other New Yorkers, and then moved into a room with them to discuss the defendent’s fate. I was singularly impressed with the seriousness and intelligence every person brought to the situation. Now, I ride the subway looking at strangers knowing what they are capable of, but also that I might have been lucky.