November 1999

Compulsive Multitasking When one of my web-newbie friends begins to get the hang of surfing web sites, I start to give them more colloquial tips like, “Ya know, you can have more than one browser window open at a time and look at a second page while the first is loading.” Now I realize this…

Do DHTML layers compound the usual can’t-bookmark-it problem of frames? For example, this post was going to wonder what the atmosphere is like in the New Jersey office of Sapient, since being in the center of a metropolitan area (New York in this case) seems intrinsic to creating a new media company that attracts hard-to-find…

Why Web Desingers Hate Their Jobs is an interesting article. It actually focuses on visual designers; we information designers don’t have said gripes. I feel more justified in lobbying for version 3 browser support for certain mass market web sites.

It seems entirely possible for Americans to go through the rituals of Thanksgiving without actually giving thanks. What’s been bugging me lately is Christians celebrating Christmas without considering how Jesus would want it celebrated. Somehow I don’t think a man of compassion, poverty, and service to others would say, “Spend a great deal of time…

Fun word of the day: chin-wag \CHIN-wag\ (noun) slang : conversation, chat Example sentence: “Few things in life are better than a good chin-wag over a cup of tea,” my aunt often said, and I have fond memories of our many teatime chats. Courtesy of Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day

I continue the slide into yuppie scuminess with the purchase of a mobile phone. I was going to rationalize/justify the purchase by replacing my landline with the only marginally more expensive PCS service, but alas the quality of service is not there yet. Ironically, even though there’s a PCS relay right in my town, I…

Thanksgiving Day. I’m tempted to divide the world into two types of people: those who question authority and those who don’t.

More notes on A Pattern Language (also see November 19th below). Patterns make up a living language that should evolve with use. “The Timeless Way of Building” says that every society, and even every individual, will have its own pattern language, shared but distinct. So our effort should not be to find the best language…

New York as puree. An interview with Spalding Gray is one of the many treasures resulting from PBS’s documentary on New York City. The documentary inspires me to tears, the beauty of the effort of so many to build so much – museums, skyscrapers, bridges, jobs, lives. It also makes me wonder if, now that…

Someone at work brought one of the new Sega Dreamcast consoles into work last week. While the new games, like Soul Calibur and Power Stone certainly have graphics that are visually stunning for a home computer, these games lack a certain amount of direct manipulation that I consider vital to the gaming experience. I like…

I had a fanciful idea last night to think only good, Zenful thoughts and blog accordingly. Oh well…

The goodexperience folks think Yahoo should modify their search results to get in line with their marketing promotions, but I disagree. I think search results should be based on more objective, quantitative measures and not a tool for marketing types. The Yahoo search engine is valuable because it provides a service. We have a certain…

A team of Razorfish NYC Information Designers were chosen to be one of four groups to participate in a live, timed design challenge at CHI2000 at The Hague. Go team!

Looks like Amazon is learning from epinions. At the end of each of their reader-contributed product reviews is now a line that reads, “Was this review helpful to you? [Yes] [No]”. I guess they’re experimenting with ways to promote the helpful reviews and demote the sucky ones.

Falling into a rut? Try some neurobic excercises. (yes, I know that sounds silly, but it’s scientifically sound and fun too). The rest of the book is worth a read as well. The first few chapters summarize the fascinating recent neulogical research, and the rest of the book consists of neurobic excercises to leverage that…