October 1999

ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I’ve heard of Nathan before, he did this “Unified Field Theory of Design” that, despite its grandiose name, has some great ideas in it.

The Throwing Sponge technique below helped me find Nathan, who will actually be at the same Living Surfaces conferences as myself this month!

Yehaaa…a beautiful new way to find cool new stuff on the web. Take a work that’s rare and specific to your domain of interest – for me today it was “taxonomy” (a scheme for categorizing stuff) and offer it to the Search Engine Gods. Neat results. Like taking a sponge soaked in your favorite color…

Another ridiculously one-sided and shallow story about Google. I’ve ranted about their dangerous equating of importance with popularity, and will continue to harass these authors until they think about the implications of this stuff. On a related note, “Whose Web Is It, Anyway?” points out that Yahoo!’s editors are getting too picky for the mortal…

Dave Seigal, author of the questionable Creating Killer Web Sites book, is now thinking big concept: “Futurize Your Enterprise”. That little rhyming title sets the hokey tone for the whole presentation, which seems to use the same template as the Ginsu knives commercials. And why should we trust this guy who could be perceived as…

Meg’s site led me to Dinah’s, who wrote this truism: “There is something really satisfying about clearing out the piles of stuff in your email box to give you a sensation of lightening your load. Illusory perhaps, but it is as if each of those undeleted messages is a string going to your head and…

PB’s site led me to meg’s site. Another pleasantly witty character. I usually despise hyperlinks that aren’t underlined, but by using day-glo yellow on a black background they stand out enough to be perceived as links (and that’s the difference I guess, that the highlighting mechanism has to say more that simply highlighting, it has…

This site is updated using Blogger, a cool system (content management application or CMA in the lingo) based on Pyra that lets you post HTML updates onto a web page to create these wonderful interstitial thought publishings referred to as weblogs. Anyway, I went back to Blogger’s discussion forum to figure out how I could…

Apparently the Blogger people are still working on the archiving feature, so this page will grow and grow until they role that out.

I wonder if anyone has done a usability study of webrings. They seem a contradiction in terms – web implies hyper-navigation (originating with hypertext) and ring implies linear navigation – you go around from one site to the next in order. Thanks, but I’ll see you at a nicely categorized site like Yahoo!.

More on the Strida. Everyone keeps commenting on the bar that rises up from between your legs that curves into the handlebars. The fear is that, in an accident, your crotch would be pressed into the bar. While I see the possibility I don’t think most accidents force the body into such a simplistic straight-forward…

Another note on sizing and the Strida : on the tall end it’s not a question of whether the bike is adjusted well or not, it’s a question of whether your knees will hit the handlebars or not.

Day three with the Strida … I figure out that the Strida bag is assymetical and the bike will only fit in one way. The other way it’s like trying to get a futon cover around a futon mattress, only impossible. Carrying this thing on the subway is weird. In the case it’s a drag…

If you read my report on the Strida and end up buying one please let me know! I’m providing this report as a good Internet citizen but would appreciate compensation in the form of their referral program.

Day two impressions of my Strida bike (see below for background): I should start by stating what the purpose of my purchase was. I commute by train between New York and New Jersey, USA which is about 15 miles. Although my house is very close to the train stations, the destination station in New York…