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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 |
Asia Times:
Is Zarqawi the new Osama or a scarecrow set up to claim al Qaeda
involvement in every terrorist incident? The Iraqi Sunni Mujahideen:
...are adamant: "The truth is, al-Qaeda is not present in Iraq."
They claim that hundreds of Arabs entered the country a year ago to
fight the Americans, but now only a few dozen remain. "We had to help
hundreds of them leave for their own protection because they were only
a burden on the resistance. It was difficult to hide them." [John Robb's Weblog] 
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I've been having fun exploring realtor.com.
I've always wondered what it would cost to live in various places like
New Orleans, Vermont, the east coast of Florida, Santa Cruz. Now it's
really easy to find out. [Scripting News]
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How do you identify a .NET "Thought Leader?". Dare
Obasanjo: "When I think of thought leadership in the .NET world I'm
more likely to think of Sam Gentile or Clemens Vasters than I am to
think of some blue badge carrying employee at the Redmond campus."
I totally agree with that. But, I want to go deeper. What makes a
"thought leader?" Dare has some opinions, but they don't nail it for
me. And, I think this question goes to the deeper sense of reputation
and trust that certain bloggers build up.
Why are Clemens and Sam at the top of my, and Dare's, mind when we
think of "thought leaders?" Well, I know both of these guys from the
offline world. They are expert in their domains. I know that from
previous non-blog experience. So, when they say something on a topic, I
believe them.
Now, let's compare that to Ryan Dawson. He's doing, by far, the most interesting stuff
with the PDC Build of Longhorn. But, why don't we think of him as a
thought leader? Because he hasn't been around very long? Because he
hasn't spoken at a conference? Because he hasn't written a magazine
article? Because he hasn't written an app yet? Because he hasn't had
the cuts and bruises that this industry puts on people over time? (He's
one of the younger people who came to the PDC).
How about Carl Franklin? He does the .NET Rocks radio show. Is he a thought leader?
Really, what's more interesting to people who develop with a
technology? Something like the above or something like what Microsoft
Employee Chris Brumme does? (please note that Chris Brumme and Dare Obasanjo are the only Microsoft employees I'll link to in this post).
I don't know. As a blogger, I really love what Mike Gunderloy is doing. Or James Avery. Or Julia Lerman. Or Larry O'Brien.
Anyway, I am going to work on this theme for a little while and try
to build a directory of all the .NET bloggers who don't work at
Microsoft. And then I'm going to try to give you my ideas on who is a
"Thought Leader" in that community. No Microsoft employees will be
considered. I'm finding a lot more .NET bloggers than I expected. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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Fonts used in Disney parks. This is a wonderful list of faces employed in incidental typography in the Disney parks, including links to freeware versions of many of the fonts.
# Albertus - Animal Kingdom (entrance area signage), Norway
# Algerian - MK monorail station, Main Street, Haunted Mansion Fastpass, etc.
# Americana - Main Street, Liberty Square
# Anna - Tomorrowland logo/signage, Studios, etc.
# Antique Olive - Soarin'
Link
(Thanks, Mark!) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Warren Ellis's Mek and Reload omnibus edition. 
It's Wednesday, which means the new funnybooks are out. I'm using The Beguiling as my interim comix shop while working on the next novel in Toronto, and tonight, they had a very nice surprise for me: a perfect bound omnibus edition of two of Warren Ellis's short-series stories: Mek and Reload.
Reload's a great action story, a lot of fun, but it's Mek that's the
real standout here. Mek is like Asimov's Robots stories told by Hunter
S Thompson after overdosing on Ralph Ellison: a caustic and corrosive
story about body-modders who get the machinery the fetishize implanted
in their flesh, and the discrimination they face as a result. (Also
noteworthy: this is, as far as I know, the only comic to mention the
EFF in dialogue).
Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Linux-based managed access-point from Sputnik.
Sputnik has shipped the next generation of its Linux-based, open source
managed WiFi AP. At $185, it's the cheapest managed AP on the market,
with some of the coolest features (though in most contexts I think I'd
just advise shopping for el-cheapo no-name APs for $30 per and
connecting them to a $50 a month DSL and making your money back in
extra lattes, rather than paying for a managed solution).
The Sputnik AP 160 utilizes a customizeable captive portal that
requires end-users to authenticate with their username and password
before they can access the wireless network.
Additional wireless and wired devices connected through the AP
160’s built-in four-port router are also authenticated and managed by
Sputnik Control Center. Simply plug third-party APs into the back of
the Sputnik AP 160; end-users who associate with those APs are
authenticated and tracked. The same principle applies to end-users who
connect directly to the LAN ports.
Link
(via Sifry) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Video Codec Shootout.
Wondering which video codec to use at home? We put DivX 5.1.1, Windows
Media Video 9, QuickTime 6.5 with Sorenson 3, and QuickTime 6.5's
MPEG-4 codec through a battery of tests. The results might surprise
you. [Extremetech]
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Open Source UIs. Improving Open Source UI.
My response to Eric Raymond's rant on the poor quality of open source UI is: No Kidding, Sherlock.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that open source UI is crappy and I am
surprised that it took Eric this long to notice the problem. As to why,
it's because:
- open source developers have little interest nor incentive to do it right.
- most software developers lack the knowledge and experience to design good UIs.
- UI design is hard and insanely tedious, even for the professionals.
Frankly, I don't think it is realistic to expect open source
developers to build good UIs. Instead, open source software should be
designed to make it easier for others to change or replace the UI
without understanding the code underneath. Let a thousand UIs bloom and
may the best one win. In other words, leverage evolution in pursuit of
good UIs.
 [Don Park's Daily Habit]
In 1999 - when Dave Winer developed XML-RPC - we were the first
company to build a client side, browser based interface to it. We did a
'broadband' version of Dave's 'Mail to the Future' service.
That mini-project proved that it was possible to de-couple the front-end UI from the backend.
Here's a screen from that interface. We spent all of 1999, 2000,
2001, 2002 and 2003 - waiting for the world to catch up with us. Now it
looks like that time has come.
All I can say to Don Park is "you just wait - dude". Wait till you meet Jim Collins. [Marc's Voice]
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No-Touch Deployment vs ClickOnce.
Mark Levison, one of the developers I interviewed for the .NET story,
thinks that Microsoft has undersold the benefits of No-Touch Deployment
(NTD), the current solution for running rich .NET clients from the Web.
Having done the gruntwork required to understand and use NTD, Mark's
not so sure that developers ought to write off this technology and wait
for Whidbey's ClickOnce. ... [Jon's Radio]
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Understanding Games as Narrative Spaces. On his blog, Peter Berger has posted recently
on -- his words -- "what makes games fun." Actually, he's wrong about
that; what he's really talking about, and very cogently, is games as
narrative spaces. He does indeed offer some concrete suggestions for
why particular architectures or theme choices may make for more fun
games than others--but, of course, the "narrative space" lens is only
one way of looking at games, and, as Mahk LeBlanc says, there are many types of pleasure that people draw from games.
In
other words, the question of "what makes games fun" is a larger
one--but Berger has some interesting things to say on this more narrow
topic. [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Programmable credit-card to replace most of your wallet's contents.
The Chameleon Card is a programmable credit-card and the Pocket Vault
is a programming terminal for it. Feed it your credit-card magstripes
and your loyalty-card bar-codes, seal it with your fingerprint, then,
on demand, it can mimic any of the cards in your wallet. Oh, and it's
got an RFID-mimic built in to replace your swipeless gas-pump card.
This strikes me as simultaneously very cool and very creepy, and at
$200, it seems too pricey to fly.
First-time
users of the Pocket Vault will read their old credit cards with the
device, which stores their information internally and backs it up to an
online or local database in case the Pocket Vault is lost or stolen.
Each credit card stored on the Pocket Vault is then represented by an
icon on the device's touch-screen display.
The Pocket Vault also prompts its owners to place their fingerprints on the device's reader pad to create a biometric profile.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Radar on a Chip Means Radar on the Cheap. I wrote a piece for The Feature about the potential uses for a newly invented radar-on-a-chip.
Late last month, an associate professor by the name of Ali Hajimiri of
the California Institute of Technology announced that he had come up
with a radar system on a chip. This is significant for two reasons.
First, its tiny dimensions (one-fifteenth the diameter of a penny) will
make it possible to add radar-like functionality to almost any wireless
device no matter how small it is. Second, the price of anything that
can be manufactured in a silicon fabrication plant will plummet as the
number of units shipped increases. Will the next decade be known as the
"Radar Age"?
Maybe
so. Hajimiri's radar on a chip could replace a lot of existing dish
antennae, like the kind you have on your roof to watch satellite TV.
The frequency at which the chip runs - 24 Gigahertz - falls right into
the spectrum allocated by the FCC for vehicular radar systems. These
chips could be embedded into a car to give it 360-degree, all weather
vision, protecting the occupants from reckless drivers and other
highway hazards.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Spy On Your Food with this DNA Chip.
Roland sez: "Do you want to know if the chicken you just bought at the
supermarket contains bits of pork or beef? Or would you like to know if
the vegetarian meal you just ordered contains some fish or meat? If
your answer is yes, you might get some help from a DNA chip which can
recognize 32 different species of fishes, birds and mammals, including
humans(!!), in a single test. Both Small Times and New Scientist carry a story of this DNA chip, which will likely be used first by food regulators. The FoodExpert-ID
biochip is the first high-throughput gene chip for testing food and
animal feed. But it doesn't come cheap. The cost of all the equipment
needed to perform the tests is around $250,000, but each test would
cost only $350 to $550. This overview contains more details and references. It also includes illustrations showing how the technology works." Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Roundtable on design coverage in the media.
There's an interesting discussion taking place at Core 77 about
industrial design in the media. Participants include I.D.'s Julie
Lasky, New Yorker's John Seabrook, writer Kurt Anderson, designer Bruce
Mau, and Moma design curator Paola Antonelli.
John Seabrook: It is very tedious, both for the writer and the
reader, to describe in words the color, shape, texture, material, and
style of an object -- when a picture could communicate most of this
information in a fraction of a second. And yet, when you are writing
for an audience that knows nothing of the context within which
decisions about design take place, and has no feel for the culture out
of which design choices emerge, then one has little choice but to
scatter one's seed over such barren ground as mere description. Ergo,
most cultural critics choose to spend their time writing about
something else. Janet Jackson's breast, say.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Photoblogging Chernobyl. 
Elena
from Kiev recently toured the Chernobyl area on a motorcycle. She
photo-blogs the journey here, and it is a truly amazing personal
account. This is the sort of intimate, human stuff that makes you drop
your jaw and think, good God, the Internet is an incredible thing.
"I travel a lot and one of my favorite destination lead through poisoned with radiation, so called Chernobyl dead zone.
It is 130kms from my home. Why favourite? because one can ride there
for hours and not meet any single car and not to see any single soul.
People left and nature is blooming, there are beautiful places, woods,
lakes. There is no newly built roads, but those which left from 80th in
fairly good condition..."
Link (via Warren). Recommended Reading: Polidori's Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, a collection of photographs shot in the dead zone (thanks, Patricio) [Boing Boing Blog]
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REST microkernal and XML app server. This seems really cool. These new kinds of servers are gonna be a key part of our collective future.
The 1060 REST microkernel and XML app server. 1060 NetKernel Suhail Ahmed alerted me, via email, to a really interesting project called NetKernel, from 1060 Research. The docs describe it as "a commercial open-source realisation of the HP Dexter project." Here's the skinny:
Today's
Web-servers and Application Servers have a relatively flat interface
which creates a hard boundary between Web and non-Web. This boundary
defines the zone of URI addressable resources.
What if the REST interface (URI address space) didn't end at the edge of your external interface?
NetKernel
uses REST-like service interfaces for all software components. The
services are fully encapsulated in modules which export a public URI
address space. A module may import other module's address spaces, in
this way service libraries may be combined into applications. [NetKernel Essentials] What
if, indeed? I downloaded the 20MB NetKernel JAR file, installed the
system, and took it for a spin. Fascinating concept. As advertised, it
offers a suite of XML services -- including XSLT, and the Saxon
implementation of XQuery -- in a composable architecture based on URIs.
These include the familiar http: and file: plus NetKernel's own active:
which is a URI scheme for NetKernel processes scheduled by the "REST
microkernel." ... [Jon's Radio] [Ted Ritzer: BizBlog] [Marc's Voice]
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Michael Hawley - getting it done. MIT Professor Michael Hawley [Slashdot]
"Today's CBS This Morning ran an interesting profile on MIT Professor Michael Hawley. Aside from recently publishing a super-jumbo-sized book about the Kingdom of Bhutan, he has invented (among other things) an interactive kitchen counter, designed a heart monitor embedded in jewelry, contributed to the MIT Toys of Tomorrow
project and has written several classical compositions for piano. What
really struck me was Hawley's observation that 'today's computers
aren't musical enough.' For him, there is 'no difference between an
ivory keyboard and a QWERTY keyboard.' I think it's a good thing that
the mainstream media is starting to show how 'computer nerds' (as the
correspondent identified Hawley) can be rich individuals with much more
to their lives than hardware upgrades, programming languages and pocket
protectors."
Marc's bit......
I go way back with this dude - like 20 years. [Marc's Voice]
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The British are coming, the British are coming!.  Ecademy - USA has launched.
It's a mature, full featured networking environment originally based
in the U.K. I've often referred to these 'blokes' as British
Intellectuals - but they're really more or less just business folks -
out hussling, using technology - to make money and network.
The best part of Ecademy is the suite of technology that Julian Bond
has built up in there - including RSS feeds of almost everything
(listings, message boards, blog posts, etc.) - and they're the FIRST
major system to support FOAF!
Lee Wilkins and Thomas Power
have really built-up Ecademy into a promising environment - much more
than LinkedIn - and I'm excited as hell that they're landed on this
side of the pond. I just hope they don't burn down the White House
while they're at it (well actually, maybe that's a great idea!)
| connect > |
communicate > |
transact > |
Quite a suite of features! [Marc's Voice]
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AlstraSoft E-Friends. Start You Own Social Networking Company: For $280!.
Start Your Own Social Networking Company: For $280!
Why are the venture capitalists investing millions in social
networking startups when you can start your own SNA service for $280
(with 1 year updates, no less), courtesey of the nice folks at
AltraSoft: AlstraSoft
E-Friends - Run your own online social networking community just like
Friendster. Members create their own personal friends network, meet new
friends, dating and join groups
AlstraSoft E-Friends
Cost (single license): [was $600] $280 (with 1 year updates)
Language: PHP
Platform: Unix
Release: Feb 15, 2004
Current Version: v3.0
Last Update: Feb 15, 2004
Product Overview
AlstraSoft E-Friends is an online social networking software that
allows you to start your own site just like Friendster and Tribe.net.
The E-Friends software allows members to connect to people in their
personal networks and community, creating a new online interactive
resource that is based on a trusted network of friends and associates
on the internet.
Members can use this abundant network to make friends, find their
love ones, locate jobs, buy and sell stuff, locate a roommate, and
accomplish much more with the help of groups and individuals who they
know and share the same interests.
Start your own social networking community just like Friendster and Tribe.net in minutes with AlstraSoft E-Friends now!
How does E-Friends work?
Once members are registered with E-Friends, they will be able invite
people they know to join their personal or professional network. A
member's friends will come to E-Friends and invite their friends. As
the network grows, members will have more opportunities to interact
easily with people they know, make friends, and use the E-Friends
network to enrich their social life."
This is absolute proof that we have reached the bizarro stage of the social networking exponential buzz curve. [Get Real]
With Social Networking systems available for $280 - what's next - free, open source social networks?
Oh yah - that's what we're working on - it's called the PeopleAggregator.
I sure hope E-Friends supports FOAF! [Marc's Voice]
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Slate: How To Speed-Read the Net.
Slate launched their RSS feed today, and with it, published an
excellent introduction to RSS article by Paul Boutin. What I like about
the article (apart from the fact that it recommends SharpReader) is
that it's clearly geared towards people who are more likely to read the
New York Times or the Washington Post than diveintomark or scripting
news. Instead... (157 words) [Luke Hutteman's public virtual MemoryStream]
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Michael Gartenberg is enthusiastic about the OQO.
Will it ever ship?? I expect that a mature type of this device (IF it
eventually gains traction) will likely include a dual-mode option that
allows you to use it as a Linux-based (most likely on a low power chip
set) media player while on the move. It would also need video glasses,
which despite advances in technology, have not arrived yet. [John Robb's Weblog]
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An oldie but goodie in Wired: Corporate Mercenaries.
DynCorp represents nothing
less than the future of national security. While outfits like Raytheon
make their money developing weapons systems, DynCorp offers the
military an alternative to itself. In 2002, the company took in $2.3
billion doing what you probably thought was Pentagon work. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Aibo-style "guard-dragon".
A Japanese inventor has shipped an Aibo-like "guard-dragon" that costs
as much as a car and has a bunch of anti-burglar sensors and behaviors.
With more than 50 built-in sensors, Banryu is capable of picking up
changes in its surroundings and transmitting an alarm to its master's
cellphone.
A camera on its back can swivel 360 degrees and send images of the
room around it. It can also sense the smell of burning and detect
temperatures above 50 degrees.
Link
(Thanks, hary!) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Software-based PVR that's feature-complete.
SnapStream's "Beyond TV 3" is a software-based PVR that turns your PC
into a TiVo-plus-plus, capable of streaming stored programs to your
browser and auto-skipping commercials. Basically, it's as though they
made a TiVo whose only considerations were what you, the customer,
would likely want to see, and not what the Hollywood studios would
prefer.
The software streams to Web browsers, so
you don't have to buy another copy for remote viewing. It's fairly
simple to enable security so strangers don't have access to your
television signal or recordings.
Beyond TV handles all the personal video recorder basics well.
Users can pause live TV, rewind and set up recordings — all without
an advanced degree in VCR technology. And like TiVo's Home Media
Option, recording can be scheduled over the Internet.
But SnapStream also added commercial break recognition, which
vastly simplifies ad skipping. It also supports a variety of video
formats and lets you easily convert to a more tightly compressed file.
Link
(via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Jon Udell points to one of the major reasons US workers are vulnerable to offshoring: corporate health care expenses.
“When you move the work to India and China you get an immediate $6,000 savings right there,” he says. “It’s huge.” [John Robb's Weblog]
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Jabber time - again. Jabber Goes Mobile.
Jabber,
of course, has been mobile for a while now with applications such as
TipicME and AgileMessenger. But what I'm talking about is Jabber, Inc.
They released a press release yesterday which announced their focus on
mobile messaging and promoting the XMPP XML spec. Jabber, Inc., the leading commercial provider of
XMPP-based presence and messaging solutions, is adding a wireless
instant messaging (IM) client suite to its product portfolio, making
the company's product suite the pre-eminent offering to bridge mobile
and desktop instant messaging users. This month the company is
releasing clients for RIM, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian and J2ME
compatible devices. Jabber, Inc. currently has gateways available for
connectivity to WAP and SMS devices. According to Jabber, Inc., each of the available clients
connects wirelessly to the Jabber XCP server, making them technically
interoperable with other IM and presence networks. Additionally, the
company reports that due to the flexibility and extensibility of the
Jabber XCP platform, mobile users will ultimately have access to a wide
range of real-time enterprise messaging applications across an
extensive spectrum of devices and networks. Each wireless client
initially offers text-based IM and presence management features, while
the RIM client also offers group chat functionality, otherwise known as
text conferencing. ... The RIM, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian and J2ME clients
are currently available for evaluation, with general release scheduled
for April 1, 2004.
The push for mobile instant messaging has been going on for a while
now, but seems to be reaching critical mass now in terms of deals. This
is just one announcement among many. The OMA is trying to push
standardization, OpenWave announced the other day it was integrating
MSN Messenger into its suite of products, and Canada's OZ just landed a
big deal with T-Mobile USA. There's lots of players in the space
already, as I wrote a year ago in a post titled Forget Mobile Instant Messaging as a Business Plan.
But reading that post, I can't believe that a year has gone by
already! There just hasn't been as much progress as I would've
expected. One would think a year is a long time, but Europeans are
still sending billions of SMS messages and the Americans are still only
slowly starting to get a clue. (I still regularly get short 30 second
calls from people here. JUST SEND ME A MESSAGE DAMMIT.). I guess it just has to do with the network and the phones.
I've had a GPRS Symbian phone for over a year now, but most people are
stuck on basic black and white handsets. Maybe this will be the year
where Mobile Instant Messaging starts to compete against SMS? I'm sure Jabber is hoping so... It'll probably be another year though. Oof.
-Russ By russ@russellbeattie.com. [Russell Beattie]
Not only do I think XMPP and moble will take off for messaging -
but I have a sneaky feeling that within the NEXT year - we're gonna see
all sorts of other new uses of Jabber.
Here's a hint: "what humans do you know - who have static
emotions? Static set of friends? Just one set of opinions - which never
change?"
Wouldn't a system for dyanmically expressing friends, feelings
and ideas - be more appropriate for social networking? And wouldn't
Jabber be perfect for that system? [Marc's Voice]
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Tribe and Career Builder deal.
Tribe.net & CareerBuilder.com partnership…
Posted Mar 1, 2004, 12:53 PM ET by Judith Meskill
Partnerships, acquisitions, and new service launches continue to
heat up in the social networking space — Are all of these moves in the
“best” interest of the communities these YASNs serve? I hear echoes of
dana boyd speaking of “context” and “best” as being “in the eye of the
beholder.”
 SAN FRANCISCO, March 1 /PRNewswire/ — Tribe Networks, a company
pioneering a new approach to the online classifieds business through its popular Web site http://www.tribe.net,
today announced a partnership with CareerBuilder.com, a leading online
career site with over 16 million monthly unique visitors and more than
400,000 continuously updated jobs. Through this relationship,
Tribe.net’s users will be able to access CareerBuilder.com’s job
postings from over 25,000 top employers and leverage their own social
and
affinity networks to maximize job search efforts.
According to CareerBuilder.com’s “Plans for 2004” survey completed in
December
2003, 40 percent of workers said they plan to change jobs this year.
Workers also revealed that the top three methods they use for finding
new positions are newspaper classifieds, online career sites and
networking — making the relationship between Tribe.net and
CareerBuilder.com a natural fit.
...“Our mission is to give
people a better way to leverage their own networks to connect with
life-changing opportunities big and small,” said Mark Pincus, CEO of
Tribe Networks. “By partnering with CareerBuilder.com and joining its
network of partners, we can offer a critical mass of local job listings
that matter to our audience.”
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[The Social Software Weblog]
That's 3 today for Tribe. [Marc's Voice]
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A Taste of Linux, Part Two.
In our second helping, we serve up LindowsLive!, MandrakeMove, and
SUSE's Live Evaluation. Find out which is the blue-plate special and
which gets sent back to the kitchen. [Extremetech]
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SharpReader 0.9.4.1.
SharpReader 0.9.4.1 is now available at sharpreader.net. Changes since
the last version are: Fixed bug preventing SharpReader to startup for
some users. Fixed bug that was causing problems with long feed URLs
like amazon.com's feeds.... (37 words) [Luke Hutteman's public virtual MemoryStream]
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Wired: The
best minds in electricity R&D have a plan: Every node in the power
network of the future will be awake, responsive, adaptive, price-smart,
eco-sensitive, real-time, flexible, humming - and interconnected with
everything else. [John Robb's Weblog]
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The accident of geography.
When I was in kindergarten, my family lived in New Delhi. It was a
magical year in which I made permanent memories of the sights, sounds,
and smells of India. A decade ago I returned to India for a tour of its
software industrial parks. That visit changed me in another way. I met
programmers and tech journalists who were my equal or better in every
way, but whom you'll likely never hear of unless they're profiled in an
article such as this week's cover story. Their faces and their voices
became permanent memories, too. For me, the offshoring debate isn't
abstract. I know that it turns on a mere accident of geography. [Full
story at InfoWorld.com]
This week's column is more about China than India. I interviewed MAPICS
CEO Dick Cook, who's been on trade missions to China, knows the
situation better than anyone I've met, and has thought deeply about how
the US can and should deal with it. ... [Jon's Radio]
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So, you wanna be a pyro?. BoingBoing buddy Hutch (pyrotechnics guru who works on the Burning of the Man,
as well as Hollywood stuff) points us to a series of workshops in
Southern California where you can learn to operate fireworks and do
pyro stage effects.
The seminars cost only $15 each to attend (what is that in Starbusian currency, like, four venti cappucinos?),
and they're offered by a group called Fireworks America. This year,
they'll be held in three locations: March 13 - Los Angeles area, March
20 - San Diego area, March 27 - Stockton area. Hutch says, "This is a
great opportunity to learn more about fireworks and stage effects.
Courses are available for every level of experience. There will be
special 'get your license' training for those that want it (please
note: this is for Public Display and Theatrical licenses, it does not
include Special Effects licensing information). These seminars are
always informative and a lot of fun! I learn new stuff every time I
attend. If you're interested in doing more shows, this is the place to
meet other operators and get on their crews."
Attendees must be 18 years or older. And if you're coming with
no prior experience or pyro scene connections, don't expect to walk
away with an invitation to join someone's crew. For good reasons, that
tends to take time, say folks in the biz. To RSVP for one of the
seminars, FIRST visit this link for background info, then call Ashley or Dianna at 800-464-7976, and for more background visit the Fireworks America site. [Boing Boing Blog]
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Chernobyl Poems and photos of Lybov Sirota. 
Following up on last week's post about a woman's photoblogging-by-motorcycle in the Chernobyl dead zone, this somewhat older collection of poems by a Chernobyl survivor -- and an online collection of images documenting her journey back to the site.
Lybov Sirota once worked as director of a writing program for children
near the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station. Before April 25th, 1986,
she'd never written poetry. That night, she needed a breath of fresh
air; she walked out on her balcony in Pripyat and watched Chernobyl's
nuclear reactor explode. The radioactivity exposure caused Sirota and
her son, Sasha, to become very ill. She began writing poetry about the experience. In 2000, her son persuaded her make a pilgrimage to their their former home; that journey is documented here.
Link to poems, Link to photo series.
(Thanks, muonzoo.)
[Boing Boing Blog]
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New Korean Robot Wants to Guard Your Home. BoingBoing pal du Paris Roland Piquepaille says:
There's
a new robot in town who wants to guard your home. This new security
robot, which currently has no name, is designed by the Korean company
Mostitech and will be distributed starting in June by Korea's top
mobile carrier, SK Telecom. With its price tag of only $850, it will be
a serious competitor for Banryu,
which costs $18,000. The unnamed robot is 50 centimeters tall and
weighs only 12 kilograms. In case of emergency, such as a fire, its
cameras can take snapshots and send them to the owner's cell phone.
Likewise, if an unexpected visitor is entering your home, you'll
receive his picture on your phone. It also can entertain your kids by
reading them a book. The Korea Times tells us the story while this overview provides some pictures of the cute unnamed robot.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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How news travels through blogs. 
A
reader writes, "Stephen VanDyke analyzes how news travels on the
Internet. He uses a nifty graphic that resembles a kabbalah diagram.
(In the process of doing this, VanDyke's post becomes a textbook
example of how news travels."
Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Filthy origami. 
This
collection of dirty origami -- mostly explicit sexual stuff -- is
hilarious. The Kama Sutra pieces are nice, and folding a vulva out of a
dollar bill is a great dinner-table trick, but they're not a patch on
this pooping doggy origami.
Link
(via Flashbot)
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Undergroundfilm.org.
What is undergroundfilm.com? [Scripting News]
In answer to Dave's question - Undergroundfilm.org is a site for film and video makers to upload their work and interact between each other.
All I know is that someone named Alex Cohen (who's an old buddy of
Dave's) - got handed this server a while back and is now heading up the
effort.
More later............ [Marc's Voice]
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Big Screens. better UI for big screens.
Better UI for big screens
"Our user interface designs do not scale well to the available
screen real estate. Windows are hard to access on very large or
heterogeneous displays, like Tablets and non-touch-enabled devices.
Notifications come up where one is not attending, and windows open in
unexpected places or are improperly sized for their contents." -- Microsoft Research VIBE, Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment
The Microsoft team presents a number of ideas for dealing with complexity across large screens. I like the idea of Drag-and-Pop which might help navigate even not so big. yet cluttered desktops like mine.
via every breath death defying: more GUI Madness [Sarah Allen's Weblog]
Marc's bit....
Another direct effect of broadband on our world - big screens and UIs designed for big screens. [Marc's Voice]
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Timelines. Quote du jour.
From Jerry Michalski:
...why is the Microsoft Office suite so pathetic at timelines and
other structures involving time? Excel in particular just sucks at
charting timelines. (If you've found a way to do it, send me some
hints.) Do they think adding time smarts will kill sales of Project?
They can't actually believe that.
Ran across that while thinking about OSAF, Chandler and the need to break corporations free from the iron grip of Exchange.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
Marc's bit.....
Jerry's right - Timelines are a key form of interactive
information and browsing. This is another example of what should be
built into the OS. Certainly APIs and a standard for time based events,
etc. - would also be required. [Marc's Voice]
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N-Gage. Scott Miller has been talking about the problems with N-Gage,
mostly from a brand marketing point of view. I think he's right on some
things, and a bit off-base on some others... But before I talk about
it, I need to say: I am not an Nokia employee. I do not speak for Nokia
corporately, in any fashion whatsoever. Everything I say here is in my
role as an independent observer of the games industry, and as someone
pretty knowledgeable about the wireless industry as well. And indeed,
by the time I post this, I will have read it over three or four times
to ensure that there are no disclosures of any information unreported
by other media--except for the bits that must be taken as purely
personal opinion.
First, lets talk about the hardware issues,
which have been extensively dissected elsewhere. The N-Gage is
essentially a reskinned Nokia 3650, minus the camera and plus an FM
radio, with a different set of controls. Virtually all of the hardware
flaws result from this legacy. In the 3650, you need to remove the
battery pack to replace the memory card; this is not a problem, because
you basically only replace the memory card if you decide to upgrade to
one with more memory. You take photos, send them via MMS or sync them
to your PC, then you delete them. The card can stay in place basically
forever.
With the N-Gage, it 's a problem, because you have to
replace the memory card every time you want to play a different game.
Doing so is awkward; you turn off the device, you open the back, you
take out the battery pack, you take out the MMC, you slide in a new
MMC, you replace the battery pack, you close the back, you turn the
device on, and you wait for it to reboot... For anyone used to yanking
the cart out of a GBA, sticking a new one in, and starting to play,
this is intolerable.
The N-Gage screen is portrait format (that
is, taller than it is wide). In fact, it's the same screen used in the
3650 (and, I believe, all other Nokia Series 60 devices so far). Most
games are played on screens (monitors, TVs, or GBA screens) that are
landmark format--wider than tall. Most games are designed with this in
mind, and it causes some problems when porting to N-Gage, because in a
game that moves side-to-side, you have less time to react to something
appearing at a screen edge, since the screen edge is closer. Obviously,
it's not a problem for displaying photos, or SMS messages, or other
phone features. In other words: Works fine for the 3650, a problem for
N-Gage.
One of the reasons for Nokia's phenomenal success in the
mobile phone market is that it is among the most efficient
manufacturers of phones. One of the ways they keep their manufacturing
costs down is by sharing parts among different models. As a result,
some of these decisions are understandable.
From my perspective,
once the press started pointing out the problems with the device--in
particular, the memory card placement issue--Nokia should have pulled
back, said, hmm, if we want a strong launch, we'd better do something
about this. They should have delayed the launch of N-Gage by six months
or a year, if necessary, to correct the issues. You only get one chance
to launch a new console system--and never, in the history of the field,
has anyone recovered from a weak launch.
The mobile phone market
does not work in the same way. Nokia has over 60 devices on the market
at the moment. They launch a dozen or more new phones every year. Speed
to market is considered more important than getting every little aspect
right the first time around; there's always room for a new, improved
version in six months or a year. Typically, console manufacturers
announce a new machine years before product launch; Nokia
announced N-Gage in December 2003 and launched in Fall 2004. I'm not
sure it ever occurred to them to delay the launch; in the mobile phone
market, you can fix flaws later.
I'm going to tell a story now.
This story is not based on any kind of inside information. It's a guess
as to what was going through the N-Gage engineers' (and marketers')
heads. I have not personally talked with anyone on the engineering
side, and my acquaintance with people on the marketing side is
glancing, and any discussions I may or may not have had with them have
not centered on these issues.
When Nokia launched the 3650 (the
second Series 60 device), they looked at it and said, hmm, this is a
nifty little game machine. 104Mhz ARM chip, hugely faster than GBA;
nice full color screen; decent battery life; multiple megabytes of
storage on the MMC; Bluetooth and air network connectivity. You could
do some cool games for this thing. But it doesn't look like a game
machine.
Nokia is lauching a whole slew of special-purpose
phones: camera phones, PDA/phone hybrids (both pen-based and
keyboard-based varieties), phone/MP3 player hybrids, devices that play
video. Why not do a sort of game-phone, with controls optimized for
gameplay, based on our dear old Series 60 platform?
Thus N-Gage.
But when it was announced--what was, I think, from Nokia's original
perspective, just another new device combining phone functionality with
functionality for another purpose--the games industry went nuts. The
game industry said: Nokia is going toe-to-toe with Nintendo!!!!
To
which, I suspect, Nokia execs said: Holy fuck. We are? Well... Okay
then. Hey, there's a lot of money in them thar games. Let's see what
happens if we do go toe-to-toe with Nintendo.
One of the points
on which Miller is right is that Nokia execs didn't know much about the
game industry going in. At the press conference at the London Eye at
which N-Gage was announced, the presenting executives didn't seem to
know what the device's processor speed was. This is not normally a
concern for mobile phone buyers--but it's virtually the first question
a game journalist will ask at a new console unveiling. And there were
few people in Finland with game industry experience. (Nokia hired a
publishing team, operating out of Vancouver, who do have substantial
experience with the industry.)
Nokia is, however, a company that
is light on its feet, learns quickly, and does not allow its success to
become arrogance--virtually a Finnish national trait, by the way. I
don't think I've ever met an arrogant Finn. The problem, I think, is
that Nokia didn't learn fast enough--but if it tries something like
N-Gage again, it will have learned a lot from the N-Gage experience.
I
also think Scott is subtly wrong that Nokia was guilty of bad branding
by making it the "Nokia N-Gage" rather than setting up a subsidiary to
be "the N-Gage company". It is, after all, the Sony Playstation 2 and the Microsoft
XBox. Scott maintains that Nokia was diluting the value of the Nokia
brand by associating it with something other than a phone, and
sabotaging the potential success of N-Gage by associating it with a
company not known for games. In reality, the mobile phone market is
moving away from pure voice telephony devices to multipurpose devices.
High-end phones today run an operating system, and provide PDA like
functionality--datebook, address book, and so on. Even mid-range phones
can run games (and other J2ME/BREW apps). If you walk into a wireless
store today and ask for a bare-bones phone, one that can't run
J2ME and/or BREW, you're going to have a problem finding one. And three
years from now, if you walk into a store and ask for a phone that
doesn't run Symbian, Microsoft Smartphone, Palm OS, or Linux for small
devices, you're probably going to be shit out of luck.
My guess
is that Nokia has lost a chunk of change on N-Gage, so far--but that's
a drop in the bucket from a larger corporate perspective. At the same
time that N-Gage was acheiving, to be generous, limited success, Nokia
became the largest camera manufacturer in the world. That may sound odd
to you, but Nokia ships and sells more photo-taking devices than Kodak,
Nikon, Canon, or Olympus. No shit.
Scott views Nokia as "diluting its brand by moving away from phones," but in fact, phones
are moving away from phones. Nokia bills itself as a manufacturer of
mobile devices, not of phones alone--although every device they
manufacture has wireless voice telephony capabilities. Where the market
is growing is not, however, in barebones talking sticks, but in
multipurpose mobile "phones" that also do a lot of other things.
Scott
also deprecates the games on other Nokia phones as not fundamentally
important to Nokia; actually, that's not true. Mobile operators are
faced with rapid declines in revenues from voice telephony (in industry
argot, ARPU--average revenues per user--is in swift decline). This is
driven party by competition, and partly by Moore's Law; the switches
and routers on which operators depend on the backend are cheaper and
cheaper, so providing voice telephony is becoming cheaper. To sustain
ARPU, operators desperately need users to adopt wireless data services
other than voice--and they've succeeded in doing so (more so in Europe
and Asia than here). Today, the largest revenue generators for
operators on the data side are, in order: text messaging; screenery and
ring tones; and... games.
In other words, even if N-Gage had
never happened, games are central to Nokia's strategy moving forward.
They're among the few mobile data services for which users have proven
their willingness to pay. The game industry has fixed on N-Gage as the
most interesting piece of the story--but in terms of gross revenues
(pan-industry, not for Nokia per se), downloadable J2ME/BREW games
generate a lot more traffic, and a lot more dollars, than retail sales
of N-Gage titles. And as smartphones (I'm using the term generically--a
lot more Symbian phones out there than Microsoft ones) become more
widespread, games compiled to native machine code are going to become
increasingly important, too. In other words: N-Gage die or soar, Nokia
needs to have an interest in games, and a strategy for them.
Launching N-Gage as a Nokia device wasn't a bad idea; the flaws of the device were, however.
Nokia
made another mistake, which Scott does pick up on. In the games
industry, hardware doesn't sell itself; nobody but a few hardware nuts
buys a console because it's a cool machine. People buy hardware to play
games they want to play. Every console manufacturer tries to ensure
that in its slate of launch titles, there's at least one must-have
game--Halo for XBox, for example.
Ideally, you have a title that
says: This is so cool a machine, it can play games that could never be
played on any previous platform. And here is that game.
With
N-Gage, the potential was -absolutely- there. N-Gage is the first
connected hand-held console. (Pace those who cable-connect GBAs for
multiplayer play.) With both Bluetooth and air network connectivity, it
held open the possibility of cool multiplayer, even massively
multiplayer, gameplay on a mobile device. When N-Gage was announced, I
talked about it with my kids, suggesting that they could play with
their friends even while tooling around in their mom's car. (I'm a
NYer... I don't have a car. In fact, I bike almost everywhere.)
"Cool!" was their response.
When
N-Gage launched, it had (I might be wrong on this) precisely one title
that allowed multiplayer gameplay; the N-Gage version of Red Faction
(developed by ideaworks3D). Bluetooth fast-action gameplay, no use of
the air network.
What Nokia =should= have launched with was a
slate of multiplayer games--some Bluetooth, some hitting the air
network--that were NOT ports from other platforms, but really showed
off why a multiplayer, mobile, wide-area device could create really
cool games. They should have had TibiaME for N-Gage. Hell, they should have had EverQuest for N-Gage. They should have had Laser Squad Nemesis
for N-Gage. They should have had PoppaZoppa for N-Gage. And they should
have had N-Gage-only titles that were equally compelling--multiplayer,
mobile, networked games.
What Nokia had, instead, was
essentially tired, repurposed IP. Sonic N. Red Faction. Tony Hawk.
Yadayada. I'm not going to lay out $300 to play these games; I can play
them on other platforms.
Nokia went out to ensure that other
major publishers supported N-Gage. They enlisted Sega, THQ, and (later)
EA among others. That was a smart move; it allowed Nokia to say "It's
not just us, look, other major game companies are supporting N-Gage."
But it wasn't enough. Nokia should also have gone after the innovators
in multiplayer, online gameplay, because they were the ones likeliest
to product games that really showed off the N-Gage's capabilities. In
addition to the Segas and THQs of the world, they should have been
talking to the ids, the Turbines, and the Blizzards.
Nokia also
botched the message on pricing. When I can get a version of GBA for
$70, you have to persuade me that an alternative device is extremely
cool, if you want me to lay out $299--the announced price point. When
Nokia announced that price point, they failed to get across a highly
important secondary message: operators often subsidize the price of
phones, if you'll sign a year (or two year) contract. The game press
reported: price is $300, gosh that's high. This was not a good message
for consumers to hear.
The fact is that, in the UK, you can get
an N-Gage for one pound (and a year's contract). And even in the US,
you can now pick up an N-Gage for $199--with a game kicked in for free.
Just by stating the message a little differently, Nokia could have
gotten a very different reaction from the industry press.
People
(including commenters on Scott's blog) have speculated that Nokia may
release a new version of N-Gage that fixes some of the hardware flaws.
I have absolutely no inside knowledge on this subject (and if I did,
probably wouldn't even be talking about it), but I wouldn't be
surprised. That would be in keeping with Nokia's past history of fixing
the problems with one device in a new one.
But.... In the games
industry, you only get one chance to launch a console system... And no
system has ever recovered from a bad launch.
Not, incidentally,
that this is necessarily a "bad launch." The game industry has
concluded so--but then, the game industry considers XBox's sales a
"disappointment." As reported elsewhere, Nokia has shipped 600,000
N-Gages. Nokia considers a single phone model that sells multiple
millions of units a major hit; N-Gage probably hasn't done as well as
Nokia hoped, but it isn't necessarily a huge disappointment, by their
standards (though Jorma Olilla, Nokia's CEO, has said that sales
weren't up to expectations). I would fully expect Nokia, in a year or
so, to say that N-Gage has done reasonably well by their standards.
Their standards are not the game industry's standards.
And--it's
interesting that new games are being announced virtually every month,
by major game publishers, for N-Gage. By game industry standards, not a
lot of SKUs are being shipped for N-Gage--and it may be that, on a
per-title basis, the publishers are doing rather well. A relatively
small installed base can still be profitable, if the competition is
slim. This is, after all, why there's still a Mac games industry.
It's
true, though, that N-Gage hasn't become what I'd hoped it would: A
real, and dynamic, challenge to Nintendo's dominance of handheld games.
Not that I bear Nintendo any ill... Quite the contrary, really; however
annoying some of their business practices, they produce some pretty
keen games. But the GBA is, when you come down to it, a surprisingly
underpowered device, and we -need- good mobile multiplayer games, which
GBA can't supply, and it's amazing that Nintendo's dominance of
handheld games has gone unchallenged so long.
I personally would
not be surprised if, two or three years from now, Nokia decides to give
it another go, with a new device.... And given Nokia's ability to
learn, I suspect that the next time round, they'll do rather better.
[Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Pole Tricks. Step
aerobics? So 80s. Spinning? So boring. Yoga and pilates? Over by virtue
of having been included in lyrics to a Madonna song. If Angelina Jolie,
Daryl Hannah, and Oprah Herself say that pole dancing is the hottest
new fitness craze, who are we to argue?
Pole Tricks 101 [Fleshbot]
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Erotic Origami. An
oldie but a goodie: this site gives you dozens of ideas for doing
something with the money in your wallet besides spending it on porn.
We're especially fond of the "Bill & Monica" tableau.
Origami Underground (thanks Lynn) [Fleshbot]
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The Madonna That Was. Younger
readers of Fleshbot may not remember the time in the early 90s when you
couldn't open a magazine or turn on the television without hearing
about Madonna naked somewhere, with nude photos from her early days
appearing in Penthouse, the release of a really bad movie in which she
had sex with Willem Dafoe, and the publication of an infamous coffee
table book of pictures featuring her simulating sex with Vanilla Ice
and Naomi Campbell. Will Britney be following in her footsteps one day?
La Vida de Madonna (lasguias.com, via Linkydinky) [Fleshbot]
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Museum of Bad Art. 
The
Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) is the world's only museum dedicated to the
collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all
its forms. "We do not tire in our efforts to bring the worst of art to
the widest of audiences," reads the MOBA manifesto. At left, the piece
that started it all -- Lucy In the Field With Flowers, oil on
canvas by Unknown, acquired from the trash in Boston. "The motion, the
chair, the sway of her breast, the subtle hues of the sky, the
expression on her face -- every detail combines to create this
transcendent and compelling portrait, every detail cries out masterpiece."
Link to MOBA's online collection (via Buffoonery). BoingBoing's founder, the ever-prescient Mark Frauenfelder, covered this years ago in Wired Mag -- Link to article.
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Sick, surreal, dark QT short -- Beauty Kit. 
The nightmarish QuickTime short "Beauty Kit"
parodies toy ads for children, instructional health videos, and
modern-day body image psychosis by way of a do-it-yourself breast
augmentation kit for young girls. When you live in LA, this is not such
a far stretch of imagination: I've heard testimony from SoCal teens of
late-teenage daughters in wealthy families receiving plastic surgery as
gifts from adult family members. For real. While you're on this site,
check out the rest of pleix.net's short films, which are fantastic. For instance, e-baby -- utterly chilling.
Link (from Ticklefight, via El Fabuloso Mas Macho). [Boing Boing Blog]
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Beyond knowledge?.The February issue of Wired features an article on offshoring by Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation. Wired's story, entitled The New Face of the Silicon Age, might instead have been called Free Agent World. Here's a stunning exchange between Pink and New Jersey state senator Shirley Turner:
... [Jon's Radio]
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The Macintosh at 20: Interview with Jef Raskin. Nice interview with Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh project at Apple and bOING bOING contributor.
very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for
the Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was
only one button, there would never be any question on what you have to
press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse. I think this was
probably a mistake, in fact there is an appendix in my book which
discusses why I think this was a mistake and what I think I should have
done. One of the reasons I made the mistake is that there is a certain
school of industrial design dating back to the Bauhaus which says that
designs have to be simple, uncluttered, and clean. In particular, don't
put writing on it except for brand names or logos. If we had had a
multiple-button mouse with two keys, labeled something like "select"
and "activate," it would have been much easier to use, but the idea of
putting writing on keys did not occur to anybody, including me. So if I
was designing one today, it would have two buttons and they would be
labeled. The labeling also the other good effect of forcing software
designers to use them as labels otherwise it's clear that they are
being misused.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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We Are Porn. Actually, we thought we were porn, but we're happy to share the spotlight with the ten talented artists in this gallery. (Side note: We plan on using "porn" as an adjective as much as possible from now on, e.g. "That's so porn!" or "I'm feeling very porn today." Help spread the word.)
We Are Porn (via Body Collector) [Fleshbot]
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Fallows
provides a detailed account of how well researched pre-war plans for a
post-war Iraq were cast aside. One of the major drivers of this is
Rumsfeld's belief in uncertainty:
The limits of future
knowledge, Feith said, were of special importance to Rumsfeld, "who is
death to predictions." "His big strategic theme is uncertainty," Feith
said. "The need to deal strategically with uncertainty. The inability
to predict the future. The limits on our knowledge and the limits on
our intelligence."
Uncertainty is different from
risk in that there is no mathematical predication that can be made
based on historical behavior. However, in Rumsfeld's mind, it seems
that a belief in uncertainty only applies to negative outcomes and not
upside opportunities (ie. don't prepare because we don't know what the
outcome will be):
In the immediate run-up to
the war the Administration still insisted that the costs were
unforeseeable. "Fundamentally, we have no idea what is needed unless
and until we get there on the ground," Paul Wolfowitz told the House
Budget Committee on February 27, with combat less than three weeks away.
The way military planning
accounts for uncertainty is to build contingencies. While the precise
risk can't be calculated, broad categories of uncertainties can be
anticipated and contingencies can be built around them. That requires
lots more resources than the core plan requires. In business the logic
is exactly the opposite. If you fund every contingency based on
unquantifiable uncertainty, you will lose money. This, in combination
with the heavy emphasis on corporate mercenaries currently in place,
leads me to conclude that "business" logic is at the core of Rumsfeld's
transformational military. [John Robb's Weblog]
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I say call it RSS 3.0!. RSS/Atom merge.
RSS is raging and Dave has outlined a plan to merge RSS and Atom. I think it would be a good thing for the web, for RSS, for Atom and for syndication technology in general. As developers of an RSS-based product we are going to support such a merge whatever it will take to make it work. Let's start by creating a new topic: RSS/Atom ";->". [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]
Is there any conenction between this olive branch and the notion of RSS 3.0? I say - yes! Let's do it - think of the end-users FIRST! [Marc's Voice]
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Interview with Microsoft's typography master. What do you look at on a computer more than anything else, but rarely think about? Fonts!
Today I got to interview Bill Hill, the co-inventor of ClearType, and the head of the typography team here at Microsoft. Several hours later I'm still pinching myself.
Mike is an awesome storyteller. I can't wait to give you access to the video. Just a few snippets:
1) He has a 200 dpi IBM monitor in his office. Wow. You haven't
lived until you've read a weblog on such a high resolution screen. He
spent a good part of the time explaining how coming screen advancements
are going to really increase readability.
2) He says he designs software, not for Windows, but for
"Homosapiens 1.0." He spends a lot of time understanding how humans
perceive things. In fact, the idea thread that led to the development
of ClearType started when he was tracking a Coyote in a forest (he does
that for fun -- he belongs to a club of people who read animal tracks
to try to understand more about the animal world).
3) He spends a lot of time studying how humans perceive color and
how they read. And what causes them pain when reading on the screen.
His team is working on new fonts that'll increase readability and
productivity (he was the one who commissioned Georgia and Verdana).
4) He's studying how to use multiple screens. In his office he has a
second monitor -- a projector on the wall -- running full time. He uses
this second monitor differently from his main high-res monitor. In his
studies of human perception he learned that the periphery vision is
more attuned to movement. So, he puts his email and his alerts on this
second screen.
5) Why wasn't ClearType on by default? Because they weren't sure how
well it'd work on non-LCD monitors. And because some video cards had
troubles.
6) Why do some people hate ClearType? Because ClearType relies on
how we perceive color. Some people, he says, have a heightened
perception to some colors which makes ClearType less useful to them.
5) He answered for all time why you should never put two spaces
after punctuation: extra spacing slows down readability. He explained
to us why that convention was started for typewriter fonts, but he says
that there is no professional typographer in the world that'll put two
spaces after a period with a modern proportionally-spaced font.
I asked a good number of the questions that were left by you in my
comments area. Thanks! I'll try to get to those soon (and have sent
Bill them in email too).
Some tips from Bill?
1) Make sure your LCD is set to the native resolution. ClearType won't work if you don't have your resolution set properly.
2) Use the ClearType tuner. For many people this makes ClearType much better.
3) Small fonts (the 8 pt style that's the rage on many weblogs now)
are far less readable than, say, 11 pt fonts. He does say, though, that
readability starts going down at sizes bigger than 11 or 12 pt.
Anyway, thanks Bill for the interesting insights. I know I'll never
look at my fonts the same way again. When our Channel 9 project turns
on, I'll let you know more. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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Google's Orkut improves. Wow, Google's Orkut
yesterday turned on new "friends" functionality. You can now accept a
message from someone and tell Orkut "I haven't met" this person. Nice
and makes me much more willing to come back and spend some time
adjusting my list.
I wish I could use Google as a PhotoBlogRoll, though. It's amazing. Almost everyone has entered their photo in my Orkut. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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ITConversations fantastic, Jeremy says. Jeremy Wright: "I'm sure I'll never get invited, but hearing these real people talk in real ways is fantastic. Keep it up ITConversations!"
I agree. Doug Kaye is onto something here. He called me up and we
just started talking. I'm listening to the other interviews he's done
and I like the format. It's just like many of the conversations we have
at geek dinners. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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