September 2000

The other day in the car I thought I understood the appeal of Limp Bizkit (this had been alluding me for some time). They are to this generation what Metallica was/is to mine. Sure ‘nough today I came across a Limp Bizkit cover of Metallica’s Master of Puppets, I think there’s a progression there.

Whoa, I just went to go check My Yahoo! and was taken aback: a white background! And kinda slick (for Yahoo) looking layout, but still spartan and fast. Once I signed in I received the familiar grey drab page. Is the white the look of things to come??

So glad this week is over…dealing with a cold contracted from a 65+ mile bike ride through the rainy hills of New Jersey and way too much work at work. Taking off for North Carolina this weekend for some warmer weather, my cousin’s wedding, spending time with my nephews and niece, and a pig roast.…

…and a site exclusively devoted to Wireless Financial Services News. I bet you have no idea what I’m working on these days.

unstrung – yet another web site devoted to the mobile industry. Surprisingly enough, this one is done pretty well too.

uidesign.net leaves me wondering why I haven’t found this site earlier. Since I’m currently reading “The Humane Interface” I found this exchange interesting, and this application of user personas to mobile design looks helpful.

IBM can’t patent this, the Bible described this process a long time ago! Damn atheist engineers. Seriously, when IBM brags about having five kagillion patents, remember this one.

A little piece of brilliance at Sylloge. By mimicking the layout of Google, it (for me) draws attention to the pieces of text Google displays as summaries, and how seemingly random they are. The author here does a great job of playing on that theme with some beautiful little poetic snippets.

After a few ragingly negative Amazon customer reviews about Robert Fripp’s new album, there was this: way cool September 3, 2000 Reviewer: A 12-year old music fan from new york, new york This cd make me smile. I forget that sometimes it is hard being a kid. I also forget that sometimes it is hard…

Been listening to a lot of California Music Channel lately on RealPlayer. They’ve got an interesting rock/pop/urban mix to their playlist, and it’s the first Real stream I’ve heard that degrades elegantly when my bandwidth is near capacity, instead of simply stopping and re-buffering. I have to admit, except for K-Rock, California blows New York…

From the Society for Technical Communication: “…quicklists derived from five sets of heuristics on designing personas, Web navigation, designing comprehensible Web pages, displaying information on the Web, and collecting Web data to understand and interact with users. A summary of the introduction to the special issue is also included.”

Anthropomorphized Backpacks! The kid next to me (on his mother’s lap) on the bus this morning had one of these – very very cool.

Imagine you’re the CEO of a small company and you find out your stock price jumped up over 100% because of the actions of a teenager in his bedroom in N.J.

After many attempts at ordering a copy of Tog on Interface it finally arrived yesterday from Amazon. No backorders, no out-of-prints…amazing. I was about to break down and email Tog directly to get a copy. This first of Tog’s books is a pleasure to read, full of humor and good advice. The actual interface issues…

Y’know what? A GOMS model for mobile phones would be helpful, anyone know of one? GOMS is a analysis model for quantitatively testing an interface, and it seems that with the current small number of interface conventions on phones it’d be not-too-difficult to develop. Too bad I don’t have time.