Gruber:

It’s a demo of a concept. I’d wager money that we’ll never see an actual product from Microsoft that works like this.

I think the Courier demo is really, really neat. Watching that video makes me want one, now. Unfortunately it will never be as cool as what we’re seeing in these videos.

That’s a big difference between Apple and other tech companies. They demo a product a few months before it ships, in it’s near final form. Microsoft announces products years beforehand and by the time it arrives it’s behind the curve.

Mousepaths (now called IOGraph) tracks your mouse movement in the background. When your mouse is inactive it builds a black dot, that grows as more time passes. Clicks appear as white dots.

click to embiggen

It’s interesting to see after 7 hours of work where my mouse spends most of it’s time. Apparently I rarely use my secondary monitor, mainly to move something back and forth. I also would like to state that the two big black dots are lunch and a meeting. Most definitely not me slacking off.

You can download IOGraph from Anatoly Zenkov’s site. It’s cross-platform and a fun passive activity while you toil away.

You can have a copy of my shiny registration button here.

“You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.”

No mention of online advertising or even television? What is Palm doing in the advertising channels potential customers might actually see?

I really would like to see Palm succeed, they have a nice product and a great history.

Old in internet time, but hilarious.

I had the entire thing stuck in my head today…all day.

What I’ve learned from interacting with most computer users, though, is that they do not give a rat’s ass about how computers work. They want to accomplish certain tasks, and will do this in the way that is most sensible and direct for them. And the way they end up accomplishing these tasks within the multitasking window motif is typically not the way I would do it.

The question being asked is ‘Who’s fault is this?’

Some would argue that it’s users fault, people don’t care enough or aren’t interested in learning more about how technology works. Others say that developers are to blame for making technology far too complicated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently myself, we just finished a re-design of our website at work and I’ll soon be launching a mobile application as well. Both of these projects have very specific UI requirements and both projects have generated numerous hours of discussion and deliberation on how to most appropriately display our content.

So when we flip the switch and share our creations with the masses, who’s to blame when people are confused or upset?

My friend Tim and I have been busting each others chops over Apple vs Microsoft in regard to their differentiating paradigms of window management. As he told me once, “I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down at a public use Mac in a lab somewhere with all windows closed but 15 apps running.”

And he’s right, this is very confusing. And it’s coming from Apple, a company lauded for their slick user experiences. Who’s to blame?

Anecdotal Side Story

I know a professional who uses a computer for a large portion of her job. She sits in front of her computer the entire day. She’s not a power user, but the tasks she has on her plate all revolve around the daily use of various programs. Info management systems, email, browsing the web, web content creation, to name a few.

What’s interesting is how he interfaces with the computer. She uses her mouse rotated 180 degrees so that the buttons are at the bottom. Somehow, at some point in the past she sat down and started using a computer this way. She uses her fingers to grip the bottom edge of the mouse and clicks the ‘right’ button for  a left-click.

Is she doing it wrong? Why does she do this? Who, if anyone, taught her? Who’s ‘fault’ is it that she does this?

There’s no harm in how she’s doing it. There’s no advantage to teach her how to do it differently. There’s nothing gained professionally if she learns a new way.

As I’ve grown older and entered the world of professionals I have realized that all those dry cut things we were taught growing up are much more fuzzy.

Politics, bureaucracy, limitation of resources, available time  - all contribute to the mired relationship of technology and people. Everyone is to blame/no one is to blame.

It’s a series of large and small events that cascade to to the present situation. How we deal with it moving forward is the interesting part.

Four months later and it appears we kinda have working Smart Playlists on the ol’ iPhone. No more workaround!

After updating to iPhone firmware 3.1.3 and iTunes 9.0.3 it appears that changes to the status of smart playlists on the iPhone sync back to iTunes. No need to add ‘Playlist is Music’ to get the playlists to update!

*Note: According to new discussion on Apple’s support site changes on the iPhone aren’t reflected on the iPhone. Which means it’s not totally kosher.

I hope this is true for other folks as well.

I’ve got this great idea. Or so I thought.

A game, where everything is truly interactive. You can pick up anything, move anything with enough force. Now, a game with such open endedness will have a huge problem. How will the player know how to forward the game?

Just imaging that you awoke one day in the very room you sit in now, but you have no memory of where you’re at. you’d start to look around for clues, but where would you start?

That’s where actor controlled NPC’s (non-playable characters) come into play. These actors would be hired by the game company to ‘posess’ NPC’s to help move the story along. Each time would be different, each reacting to your actions/responses to thier input. Since they are hired by the company, they have a vested interest in seeing the continuity of the story progress.

(I’ve had this in my draft folder for far too long. Post or get off the pot – as they say.)

Photo by B Tal – Licensed under Creative Commons

It’s been a crazy past few weeks. I meant to write about this sooner, but haven’t found the time.

The site not only looks a thousand times better (Bryce!) but the slick new navigation (Mark and Robert!) and the awesome content (Amy!) make this something I’m really proud to have worked on.

Here’s some of my personal favorite things we’ve added:

Consistent Left-hand Navigation – We now have highlighting of the current page you’re on (the little red arrow) and a nestled view of sub-pages. This looks much cleaner and is also a lot easier to navigate.

On the content creation side our users now have a clear understanding of how their site is organized and how to manage their content.

More space (wider layout)

We increased the width of the site by 25% giving us more space for content. Video can now be embedded at full SD resolution and pictures can now be much larger to boot. Along with a consistent placement of our navigation we no longer have to munge content around the right-hand navigation found in the previous design.

Flexible framework – We can now develop new interactive elements

We’re already starting to add new ‘widgets’ to the content of our page. Things like what you see in the screenshot above. News tickers, embedded video carousels, instant response polls, you name it. All due to the new framework we’re using to display our content.

We’re not done adding additional features; like a new search engine, custom departmental banners and a mobile stylesheet!

Thanks again to everyone involved and for those who let me be a part of it. It feels good to be proud of one’s work.