September 1999

Expanded bashing of WebCriteria (see original earlier in month): I feel compelled to offer the contrarian view because this product scares me! Our usability tests are done with demographically targeted individuals, but WebCriteria uses one agent (“Max”) that falls short of even a generic human. Max doesn’t understand content or is influenced by it, he…

It’s interesting that in most areas of knowledge we look to experts for authoritative information, yet when it comes to our most important and visible news we rely on general corespondents for the story. Why have a “White House Corespondent” that tries to cover everything from foreign debt to national health care? Why not a…

THIS SITE’S MUSIC! A neat little algorithm available here uses your IP address to generate random midi music. The personal aspect is a bit affected when you realize your IP address isn’t really that personal; I don’t know a single soul that has selected their own, as if that was readily available. It’s a cute…

Recently ordered a Strida and boy am I excited to get it. Definitely only a bike for short trips, but it looks like great fun to turn the walking part of my commute into a riding part.

I find the WebCriteria approach interesting but I’m still suspicious of it. The objective measures like load times are useful, but I’m not convinced an agent can replace usability testing, though those aren’t perfect either. It’ll be interesting to see if in the future they spawn other agents in addition to “Max”, each modeled after…

Last weekend I went on a bike ride with the bike club I belong to. Coming down this wonderful twisty downhill I hear yelling around the corner up ahead. I brake to slow down and, turning the corner, see one of our riders on the ground. He lies unconscious on his side, but his head…

Now reading “Now Zen” by Charlotte Joko Beck, a wonderful little pocket book, small enough to carry anywhere and even then only need a few pages to get you learning about new ways to experience life. It does seem a bit obtuse at times, but she makes several passes at each idea and one is…

While cleaning up the items in my Apple Menu I discovered this new item called “Favorites” and, not immediately knowing how it worked, I used the help feature to learn more. It basically acts as a folder to store aliases of commonly used items, whether they be servers, folders, documents, whatever. Not a groundshaking concept,…

Another note on yesterday’s search engine rant: the search sites probably got away with being so lame because they were “dancing bears” – we didn’t care they didn’t work so well ’cause the fact that we could even get to that information was amazing for the time.