Archive for January, 2009

  • The Danger of Time- and Place-Shifting

    Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

    Today was an historic day, and I’ve got the screenshots to prove it!

    Walking into Chicago Public Library after work to pick up a book (I had no idea that you could get these things anywhere other than Amazon!), I saw a sign which said something to the effect of “The library auditorium will be open [...]

  • Is the Obama brand Organic?

    Friday, January 16th, 2009

    Maybe this is old news by now. Is it just me, or does the Obama ‘08 campaign logo look a whole lot like the USDA Organic logo?

     
    I guess that the shapes in the Obama logo are generic enough that it could be interpreted in any number of ways  - an american flag? sunrise over a [...]

  • DIYCity Chicago

    Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

    I saw a post on BoingBoing tonight that referenced a (fairly new?) community called DIYCity
    From their site:

    Intro: How do you want to reinvent your city?
    Twitter bots, aggregators, social software, mobile apps – we use these things more and more in our daily routines to make our lives better. But can we also use them to [...]

  • Netflix Streaming Hack – Force a Bit Rate

    Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

    I recently wrote  about the usability of user interfaces for streaming video, and concluded hands down that Netflix had the nicest. My only gripe was the fact that it was so smart, and left such little control to the user, that I’d often find myself in the situation where it had done a check to [...]

  • Usability of Streaming Video Interfaces

    Monday, January 12th, 2009

    It’s all about Feedback
    Feedback is important. Whether in the context of personal relationships, professional careers, or user interface design, it’s important for people to know how they’re doing and what’s going on in some one else’s head (or on some server). In fact, I can think of very few situations where more feedback would be [...]

  • This American Life Podcast

    Friday, January 9th, 2009

    In an effort to be a non-wasteful, environmentally-conscious individual, I recently decided that I would not buy a new iPod touch if my old iPod — my very old iPod — was still working. Unfortunately, it is It doesn’t have touch (well, barely, if you count the touch wheel), and it doesn’t have [...]

  • Android – a Futureproof Mobile Operating System

    Thursday, January 8th, 2009

    I came across this page when browsing through the Google Android API reference:

    Maybe the super-smart people at Google know something that the rest of us don’t ….
    … or more likely, they’re just a bunch of huuuuuuge dorks