Category: Technology
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Flickr Usr
I’ve always loved Flickr, but I’ve never had the time to really use it as diligently as many of my friends apparently do. The Flickr Uploadr software always seemed a little wonky to me, and I didn’t savor the idea of sorting my photos locally in folders or in iPhoto and then having to repeat…
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Edward Tufte’s iPhone
The following is in response to an interesting and thoughtful video and essay by Edward Tufte, posted on his blog/site, in which he argues, among other things, that many of the applications on the Apple iPhone do not adequately take advantage of the iPhone’s screen resolution and its compelling and easy-to-use zoomable UI paradigm. In…
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Floppies
I disowned about 100 pounds of Windows/PC computer parts this weekend. I say “disowned†because I’ve not completely gotten rid of it all. I am vaguely aware that there are environmentally-right and -wrong ways of disposing of electronic equipment, but since I have (obviously) been hoarding/collecting them for so many years (hoarding the spare parts,…
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How Deep is your Internet News?
In today’s Times, I read a story that included a fallacy that I’m pretty fed up of hearing: The accusation that web-based news and journalism is overly brief and shallow, that it caters too much to the short attention spans of ADD-addled youths, and that the web is ushering in a new era of crappy…
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Challenge: If You Can’t Say Something Nice about OLPC…
The One Laptop Per Child is now appearing in people’s mailboxes. But I’m a little sour about all the unquestioning praise for the user interface design, which to me looks like a complete disaster. So I have a challenge for UX pundits and professionals who are also proud new owners of the XO: Say something…
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The 1/2-inch Headphone Cord (iPhone Ready!)
With winter’s cold coming, I wanted to figure out a way to use an extra pair of over-the-ear headphones with my iPhone without losing the ability to use the iPhone’s wonderful on-cord control doohickey (which allows you to pause, play, or skip tracks, as well as being a hands-free microphone and call controller). So I…
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Kindle Review in the Form of a Photo Collage
‘m not going to say much about Kindle — as an iPhone owner, I find both the device and the service colossally dumb. But the breathless excitement over the supposed “death of the book” is even more preposterous, especially to book lovers like my wife and me. For us, books, periodicals, and printed matter of…
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In Defense of Graphic Design on the Web
At the Speak Up graphic design blog, Armin Vit laments the lack of “landmark” or canonical web designs. After giving several examples of iconic designs that are truly landmarks in the history of graphic design, from Paul Rand’s IBM logo in the 1950s to Paula Scher’s Public Theater posters in the 1990s, he writes: Myself,…