November 1999

I think I first read a Walt Whitman poem in high school, and that wasn’t one of Walt’s really passionate ones, it was the one about the spider. It wasn’t until I was in college that a friend turned me on to the whole of Leaves of Grass. There are a few authors I don’t…

Interface design sage Don Norman gets knocked off his high horse. It’s becoming an occasional but regular event on the CHI-WEB list.

Interesting story in Wired this month on Oakley. Corresponding with lane, a transplant from Austin, makes me realize this in-your-face technology culture doesn’t really exist much on the east coast, at least not in the private sector. There’s some fantastic design and media companies here with alternative styles, but nothing I know of approaching that…

As an east coast, US native I naturally assumed that anyplace with a winter climate is overcast more often than not. It wasn’t until visiting Chicago with a friend who had lived there that I learned all those clouds in the winter is an east coast thing. I remembered this as I walked to work…

I finally fixed my search engine, so all of you querying on “max”, “Swedish”, and “Google” can just stop worrying your pretty little selves.

I had the feeling I was ranting a bit too much on the bitter and angry side of life recently, especially considering I’m normally an upbeat guy. Then I saw Anil Dash’s site. Wow, his “Peeve of the Moment” blows me away. I wonder if peeves (shorter and more trivial than rants I think) encourage…

It’s amazing that arguments for sound in the web browser are now presented in mainstream press like this before it’s actually happening. The prejudice against sound is so strong people will not even consider it as a serious idea for branding on the web; I’ve recently had designers and developers who bend over backwards every…

Prediction: the weblog trend of early year 2000 will be to deliver posts not via RSS but via WAP or other mobile device protocols. I now I’m thinking about doin’ it.

It’s only 13k !! That’s because it’s only a bunch of colored lines flashing on the screen! It’s funny that we never cease to be amazed at what Alan Cooper calls “dancing bears” – technology that isn’t useful or new or interesting but we’re fascinated that someone has managed to accomplish this within the dumbed…

An exciting series of comments about Mozilla. As an open source project it’s fascinating because it’s both the most popular project (perhaps fewer developers but a greater total audience than Linux) and a project in it’s second generation, rebuilding the program from scratch based on years of learning and experience.

I just saw “Being John Malkovich” and agree with lanebecker: I am unprepared to explain why this movie is so terribly, terribly brilliant, but you must rush out and see it regardless because movies this impressive only come along once in a blue moon. Also, it has puppets. I’ll add that the puppets are stunning.

A work log (as opposed to a weblog). A comforting concept; imagine if all college professors collaborated within their dept to test new ideas, record notes, and use the resulting record to improve courses and research.

I just went looking to buy a pair of eyeglasses online and was depressed not to find anyone doing a decent job of e-commerce in this market.

I just created an epinion of Blogger then blogged it using Blogger. :-)

Perhaps the stupidist interface mistake I’ve seen recently involved the escalators at the Port Authority bus station in New York City. At one end of the station there are two escalators side-by-side that lead to the top level of gates. The left escalator ran down and the right escalator ran up (can you see where…