Friday, September 1, 2006

I thought it stood for "fine" More lucid and provocative thinking from Kathy on user manuals, relevant to help/user-assistance as well: How to get users to RTFM. The "F" in RTFM is the biggest clue that most of us blame the user for not reading the manual. But if "reducing guilt is the killer app", companies should take more responsibility for whether readers use their manuals. . . [Creating Passionate Users] Seriously, I have an "RTFM" coffee mug from Think Geek, and I tell folks that it stands for "Read The Fine Manual," because, after all, that's the only kind of manual we write, isn't it? 9:02:36 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

It's not you, Steve New Web 2.0 features are not automatically wonderful or useful: I guess I must be dumb.. flickr now lets you add location information ([per thou]geotagging[per thou]) to your pictures. This raged through the blogosphere over the past few days (e.g. here ) with all the usual fawing over how great it is and how easy to use it is. . .It[base ']s not easy to use. . . [Portigal Consulting] Here's my favorite tagging story: I heard a couple of years ago from someone who was trying to organize flickr photos according to where the photos were taken by deriving location information from the tags and descriptions. They were astounded at the number of photos taken in Maine. . . all tagged "me." 7:42:02 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Arnold might be right Silly politicians: Talk and drive without headset, get a fine. Here's a story that seems important to Silicon Valley: the Assembly is about to pass a bill making it illegal to drive and talk on a cellphone without a headset. . . The governor seems unlikely to sign it anyway. He said: [Schwarzenegger] said that he wasn't sure if legislation was needed to solve the problem. The governor's office said Tuesday that he has not yet taken a position on Simitian's bill. [Silicon Valley Watcher--reporting on the business and culture of innovation] Of course it won't solve the problem. Everyone but the politicians knows that it's not holding the cell phone that's the distraction, it's the talking and listening. Requiring hands-free phone use  won't change a thing, except enrich the Bluetooth headset vendors. Besides, the legislation won't go into effect until summer of 2008. 5:15:31 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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