there are 17 posts from October 2006
jot to google
Congrats to Jot!Ā I had the pleasure of seeing Ken Norton last week where we did our second annual talk to the product management class at Haas; Iām really happy for him.Ā Heās had one hell of a year.
all hail the obvious
Havenāt seen the book, but I have to applaud the title:Ā Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design.
and there was much rejoicing
After a not-so-brief hiatus, Davenetics is back!Ā There are very few folks Iād let into my email inbox on a daily basis; Dave Pell is one of them.
will he or won't he
David Brooks, behind the paywall at the Times:Ā Run, Barack, Run.Ā āThe next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.āĀ
My latest Obama experience:Ā while Iām in the dentistās chair this morning with the (pseudo-relaxing) TV on to distract me from the drill, Obamaās on the Today show with Katie Meredith.Ā Theyāre talking about something completely impenetrable for someone whoās high on both nitrous and novocaine, but the dentistās assistant turns from the sight of me slobbering through the dam to the television and says āOhhhh, I looooove him!ā in a voice thatās just this shy of a squeal.
brilliantly obvious
Put a datacenter on your roof.Ā Or in a parking garage.Ā Or in your backyard.Ā Or on a battlefield.Ā Jonathan Schwartz on Project Blackbox:Ā āThe biggest thing we could build would ultimately be the biggest thing we could transport around the world - which turned out to be a standardized shipping container. Why? Because the worldās transportation infrastructure has been optimized for doing exactly this - moving packets containers on rails, roads and at sea.ā
maeda's simplicity
Currently reading: John Maedaās The Laws of Simplicity. I really like the āSHEā mnemonic:Ā shrink, hide, embody.Ā āHiding complexity through ingenious mechanical doors or tiny display screens is an overt form of deception.ā
user generated advertising
Yahoo + Jumpcut = user generated advertising.Ā From Y! Search blog:Ā āWeāre working with Frito-Lay to invite people to create their own Doritos commercials - and the winning ad will be aired during the next Super Bowl.āĀ Itās not entirely mob-ruled, though ā Frito-Lay and its agency will be picking the five finalists, which means that if youāre going to compete it might make sense to spend some time thinking about Doritosā current brand and what theyāre trying to get out of this contest other than buzz.
because it's the perfect how-to video
From Walt:Ā āDiet Coke and Mentos is the āHello, worldā of YouTube.ā
two stupid usability things
Two quick software usability things I have to get off my chest.Ā (I blog so I stop bothering the people who sit near me with my inane ramblings.)
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I use Windows at 1024x768, and run most of my apps fully maximized.Ā It drives me absolutely batty that I canāt move my mouse cursor all the way to the edge of the screen to grab the scrollbar in my browser, my email client, the document Iām working on.Ā Instead I have to target the scrollbar by going to the edge and then backing up a few pixels.Ā This seems very braindead ā when apps are maximized, app borders should shrink to 0 pixels to allow for appropriate Fittsā behavior.
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There must be a name for the behavior of moving your mouse pointer to the action youāll do next once the page loads.Ā If thereās not a name for it, someone needs to name it, and it needs to be something more clever than what I call it now, which is āthat thing you do with your mouse based on muscle memory while you wait for the page to load.ā
tom and shiny happy tv lady
Thereās something wonderful about Tom Coates and shiny happy Internet TV lady connecting the way they did.Ā Ahhh, big companies.
gawker media
I just was given a webcam, but I really donāt know what to do with it, other than have video chats with people that Iād rather just talk to on the phone, and post my lonelygirl15 video responses to gootube.Ā (I kid because I love.)Ā What I really want, though, is a Windows version of the Gawker app, the one that makes cool time lapse movies.Ā Now that would be engaging media.
customer hostile programming, again
Another fall Sunday, another afternoon spent shaking my fist at the geniuses at the NFL.Ā This time it was the Eagles / Cowboys game being shut out by the Niners / Raiders.Ā Customer hostile programming continues.
netflix visualization
Iām not that interested in downloading the 700mb dataset that is the source data for the Netflix Prize, so hereās a lazyweb request.Ā Iām not smart enough to figure out a better prediction algorithm, but I am very interested in visualizing aggregate āmovie moodā data over time from the Netflix community.Ā Are people āhappierā about the movies they rate on the weekends? What do Monday patterns look like? What about holidays ā do ratings go up from Thanksgiving to New Years?Ā Are there seasonal trends?Ā Does rating value correlate with major news stories?Ā (See also:Ā MoodViews.)
netflix data
Netflix is making its data set of 100 million movie ratings available (along with a $1mm prize), with the hope that someone will develop a better recommendation algorithm.Ā Hastings:Ā āIf we knew how to do it, weād have already done it.ā
file under holy shit
File under Holy Shit. Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living.Ā āWithout warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.ā
trans-sensing
Trans-sensing:Ā Seeing Music from CCA student Wen-Hua Hu won IDās best of category in the student design review.Ā āI started with an empirical method of translating the 88 notes of a piano into 88 graphic symbols, with the length of each graphicās line correlating to pitch and the symbol on top of the line relating to sharpness or softness.ā
hornik on hack day.
David Hornik has a wrap up of Yahoo Hack Day.Ā āThe fact that Yahoo embraced engineers from startups and design shops throughout the ecosystem is indicative of the sort of coopetition that is going on around the web these days.ā