Poor UI design as factor in the election
So the fate of a nation comes down to UI.
That's Dan Bricklin's basic premise in this article.
UI is something Bricklin knows about. He's the father of Visicalc (which one could argue led to the age of PCs) and the founder of Trellix, which sells software aimed at letting average people build complex Web sites.
And he's perturbed by those ballots down in Florida. Some simple pre-vote usability testing would have quickly uncovered the problems, he writes:
I can tell you, regular people get tripped up by the simplest things. It is sobering to observe a test where a user repeatedly asks "How do I go to the next step?" and you want to scream "Click the 'Next' button!" that they just somehow can't see. You thought the button was obvious, but, as anyone who's missed a highway exit learns, in the real world what's obvious to one person who knows the answer is not always obvious to a newcomer.
11/09/00
Bone transfers and other neo-tech words you need to know
Jargon Scout is an attempt to catalog new tech-related words ("preferably before Wired Magazine picks it up"). Latest entry:bone transfer
When you make a boneheaded error in your DNS master file(s), your secondaries are going to get a bone transfer.
- If you've done a bone transfer from cosmic.com today, please purge your cache before trying to send me mail.
See what other words you need to know.
WAP apps
Fierce Wireless offers an e-mail newsletter featuring a cool WAP app a day. See how others are using the new medium - and how you could do better, natch.Time to shake up an analyst somewhere
Dan Briody over at Red Herring is thrilled to pieces about the possibility of companies figuring out how to send ads across wireless networks.
Analysts are predicting that wireless advertising will become a $750 million market by 2005.
What boneheaded analysts made those predictions? Any analyst worth his salt knows that EVERY market will ALWAYS be worth at least $1 billion within five years, at least as long as reporters are columnists are listening. Did Briody mishear, or did he get some junior-grade intern analyst fresh out of school?
Hmm...
OK, OK, so this item has absolutely nothing to do with networking or computers or, well, pretty much anything. But it's just too good to pass up. Ananova reports:
A hospital in Transylvania has been told to treat patients from outside its area only if they bring their own supply of blood for transfusions.
11/8/00
Why not Bill Gates for president?
It's a not so rhetorical question raised by Robert Scheer, in a column on Gates's revelation that computers and high tech won't solve the problems of a world in which most people live in absolute poverty.In case you missed it, Gates has shifted the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from pushing digital technologies to dealing with far more basic issues - such as vaccination. Writes Scheer:
Now that we've gotten used to millionaires running for the presidency, why not a billionaire and a self-made one at that? At least Gates is aware that the biggest problem in the world is not how to make some Americans even wealthier but how to deal with the abysmal poverty that defines the condition of two-thirds of God's people.
Raisin' up the next generation
Think you have problems now hiring skilled IT workers (or is that redundant)? What can we do to ensure the young 'uns in school today have the skills they need to run tomorrow's networks?The "technology coordinator/network administrator at a high visibility public high school in the capital city of a southern state" raises the question in a discussion on Kuro5shin. He has to make suggestions to his state's governor and education officials. What would you recommend?
11/07/00
Netscape and standards: estranged couple?
Remember way back when when Mozilla was going to blow Internet Explorer out of the water by being more extensible and flexible and standards-compliant?Forget that, at least according to David Flanagan. The author of several O'Reilly books on Java writes that Mozilla developers seem to be ignoring a number of bugs and flaws related to various Web standards, from simple HTML formatting to JavaScript objects:
These standards-compliance bugs are of particular concern to Web developers because Netscape 6 is not just a Web browser; it is a development platform. Developers who have eagerly looked forward to "sixth-generation" browsers that are finally standards compliant may be disappointed by Netscape's offering.
Relief for boring meetings?
The BBC reports on an effort by BT to use animated "avatars" for virtual meetings. Once the exclusive preserve of online games and chat rooms, the avatars will be added to BT's teleconferencing offerings as early as next month.Ah, but what if you fire up Minesweeper while boss man is droning on? You can tell BT knows who's buttering its bread:
The avatar of anyone who looks at other windows on their PC while a meeting is going on will appear to pick up a sheaf of papers and read them.
But then, that's what Palms are for, right?
11/06/00
Cell phones as health tools
A study in the British Medical Journal says the teen-agers increasingly prefer handling cell phones over cigarettes as a way of seeming more adult. Says the director of a British anti-smoking group:With the pay-as-you-go mobile phones young people are even spending their money in the same way and in the same places as they would purchase cigarettes. Some wont be able to afford to do both, and others might get all they want from owning a mobile, and for them smoking might become irrelevant.
All together now: Awww
The Sunday San Jose Mercury News reports on how the dot-com slowdown is beginning to hurt some Silicon Valleyites:Maree Quintana has put off buying new bedroom furniture. Pankaj Gupta can't afford to fix his Acura. Mark Turrell hasn't bought clothes for four months and has cut back on his cell phone calls, although he still fills his BMW with premium.
Today's best unmentionable parody
This is a family column, so I can't repeat what's on this series of O'Reilly parodies, but if you know anything about Perl or programming in general, you may find it really funny (spotted on CamWorld).RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
