Jinn of Quality and Risk

We need better support for orientation and navigation in computer tools, be it Web or file browsers, digital asset (music, pictures, etc.) managers, or even word processing. Let's also remember that there are vast differences in how various people orient themselves and navigate the world (just ask someone to find where they are on a map and determine how to get somewhere else, and get slowly frustrated by how they are not doing what you would do...).

The general problem with browser navigation is that you lose most of the spatial memory of where things are [~] everything being in the same place on the screen as it was when you last used it. (Spatial memory works poorly for collections which are very large and/or frequently changing.) A secondary problem is the dithering as people subconsciously try to decide whether to navigate between items using traditional navigation (e.g. the Windows taskbar for tasks, or Previous and Next for e-mail messages) or using Back and Forward. [Matthew Thomas] 

Here is an inventor who thinks long-term and has a history of unexpectedly solving very human problems. Dean Kamen is absolutely incredible. The depth and breadth of his knowledge is absolutely amazing. ... He wants to focus on the big things: water, transportation, health care, communication, energy, education. And he's doing it. His team is building tools that are going to make real changes, as he explains in some detail. People thought that all the hype behind the Segway was a bust, but there's a ton of amazing stuff if you look a little deeper. Here's what he said... [via Aaron Swartz] 

According to the Hadith, Mahomet said to women: I have not seen any one more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. His proof? the evidence of two women [is] equal to the witness of one man and a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses. But... where did these rules of "evidence" and "religious duty" come from? 

Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) demands that, in finalizing the design for a product, engineers produce and eliminate as many different concepts as possible. He calls this approach kissing frogs. [via Tesugen]