I know that things are supposed to be bigger in the United States, but this is ridiculous!
Buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
This book is made up of aprtiles that Joel has published online over the past few years.
If you don't want to wait for six weeks for Amazon.co.uk to get hold of some copies then you can find links to almost all of the articles on UsabilityViews in the JOS Section, where you can see what date the articles were published, and which are the most popular ones.
As well as helping to organise off-line protests, broadband and the internet have fuelled a massive increase in the number of online protests taking place. We have South Park style animations from JibJab as well as dozens of interactive flash games.
One of my favourites is Tamatipoco (Your virtual flexworker) from Molleindustria.
Molleindustria is an italian team of artists, designers and programmers that aims at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of videogames. This will involve media activists, net-artists, habitual players and critics and detractors of videogames. We chose to start with online gaming in order to sidestep mainstream distribution channels and to overcome our lack of means. Using simple but sharp games we hope to give a starting point for a new generation of critical game developers and, above all, to experiment with practices that can be easily emulated and virally diffused.
You can watch an interview with some of the people involved at the BBC site at ClickOnline.
From Video games find their political voice (BBC 30 Aug 2004)
The producers of these games are developing a sort of gaming counter-culture, seeing themselves as the latest in a line of political satirists playfully poking fun at passers-by or at those in power.
One of the main targets of such games is the US because of the internationalisation of its culture and more recently the war against terrorism.
But Americans themselves, indeed none other than the Republican Party, are using video games to score political points.
The Republicans' version of space invaders is Tax Invaders. It depicts Republican President George W Bush as the only hope in the battle against high taxes.
Video games are normally a form of escape, a way to tune out from the troubles of the world.
However, the producers of this new breed of game have shown they can also act as an effective vehicle for political expression.
In the interests of balance the BBC have obviously tried to find a right-wing example of this on-line activisim. And what did they come up with?
Now, this is probably the worst example of a political game I have ever seen. The production values are abysmal and don't Republicans realise that in space invaders the player is taking on the role of a defender who fights valiantly against the evil horde of invaders, but is doomed to failure due to the overwhelming numbers on the other side.
Rupublicans could learn a few lessons from the Anti-Bush Game.
Looking for new talent?
I am as Anti-Bush (and Kerry) as the next lefty, but I think that Republicans should be able to find something better than Tax Invaders. Perhaps Tom Clancy could come up with a free flash game?
Saturday, 28th August 2004. That's the day that Google died for me.
These are four of the things that have ended my love affair with Google:
1) Gmail
Louise kindly gave me a Gmail invitation and I was excited about seeing the Google take on an e-mail interface. When the screen appeared in my browser my heart sank. It was OK, but the first feeling it raised in me was confusion, there were too many buttons and too many options. I realised that I had much higher expectations for a Google provided mail interface and they had let me down.
2) My Google Pen
It doesn't work for left-handed people. I am used to having my left-handedness ignored by most companies, but I expected Google to have thought about all the little details concerning the use of their google pens. I didn't even think about the possibility that they may be selling a product with their name on it that wouldn't be designed to the highest possible standards. Google used to think about the little details.
3) The Search Results
If you search google for "hydrogen bomb diagram" a page from my blog will appear as the number one result.
Hiroshima Peace Site : The Damage Done should be the number one result for "hydrogen bomb diagram". Yes I know it was an A-Bomb and not a H-Bomb, but if Google was as great as it used to be then it would be the number one result.
4) Google is getting fat
Google used to care about their page weight with a passion.
And it's why, most of the time, the Google home page contains exactly 37 words. "We count bytes," says Google Fellow Urs Holzle, who is on leave from the University of California at Santa Barbara. "We count them because our users have modems, so it costs them to download our pages."
How much is it costing their users to download their Olympic Logos? I don't mind seeing the occasional new logo, but how soon will it be before we are getting 50 new logos a year?
So far in 2004 we have had 25 special logos.
2003 - 18 special logos
2002 - 26 special logos
2001 - 18 special logos
2000 - 16 special logos
1999 - 7 special logos
Conclusion
Now don't get me wrong, Google is still really, really, really good, but it's just not as great as it was. What I am seeing is not the end of Google but it is the end of my love affair with Google.
Dylan Casey invited us to try out the new Googlestore on the Googleblog today.
So, I mosied on over and ordered a few pens and some flash storage. However, I am sad to say that Google have been very lax with their testing of the new store and haven't even bothered to check all the product pages for problems.
When I looked at the "shuttle pens" product page and clicked on the "Click to enlarge" link, I was presented with a product image that was actually smaller than the one on the product page.
Now, I wouldn't normally complain about something like this, but as Dylan has gone to so much trouble to promote the new improved shopping experience, I thought I should mention it.
We're telling you this because Google Store has had a makeover. We're not telling you to go there. But if you do, you'll have a better shopping experience (as they say) than previously, especially if you live outside the U.S. We're even open all night.
Also, the permanent link to this Blog item doesn't appear to work at the moment:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/08/browse-used-to-mean-this.html
I almost ordered this for Gabriel (due in 2 weeks time).
This week Gerry McGovern talked about blogs and had this to say:
Bloggers are people with attitude. They say there’s a book inside everybody. Well, the Web and blogs have let the book out! There has literally been an explosion of opinion. Traditionally, public relations was about honing a silvery message that communicated exactly what the organization wanted us to hear. Now, we can hear all sorts of voices on the subject. It’s true democracy at work.
Louise commented "Is this the worst analysis of blogging I've ever seen? I know it's August, but I've yet to see anything so downright lazy and ill-informed."
I don't know about it being the worst, but I do think that Gerry is expressing some fears that can be found in most large organisations that are considering using blogs, wikis or any other type of uncontrolled, unedited and uncensored publishing technology.
Gerry may tell us that he isn't a blogger, but he publishes small articles on a regular basis, on which other people comment. The comments may not be attached to the article, but if it looks like a blog and it acts like a blog then maybe Gerry is a blogger.
Gerry also says that:
Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.
Now, I mustn't be an average customer, because I love finding out about the people behind the products that I buy and use.
I love blogs, because they allow me to make a connection with the people behind the curtain without having to wait for them to write a book about their experiences.
Soon we will begin to see blogs changing the way that organisations work as they become more relaxed with their employees being 'off message' in their communications with the outside world.
Bruce Morgan was born in the same year as me (1965), in the city of Portland, has got 3 daughters and rides a push bike.
He is also the manager of the people who deal with the "User Experience" for Internet Explorer. I found out about Bruce from the IEBlog. This is an example of how blogs are changing organisations from the outside and the inside.
How long will it be before we start seeing more information about the people behind the curtain, rather than being spoon-fed sanitised product prose that is never designed to inform.
As an example of this new openness (or Blognost perhaps) I have designed this new "About IE Explorer" box for Microsoft to use.
Signing our work creates a connection between the developer and the user. The user can see who created the software and how to get in touch with that person. Software Craftmanship by Pete McBreen
"Everyone Is Here" the new album from the Finn Brothers was released today.
"All things considered, a bit of a classic." (The Guardian).
I've loved their songs ever since Split Enz, so I had been looking forward to this album ever since I heard about it.
I just got my weekly email from Napster telling me that the album was one of this weeks featured releases.
Was my confidence in Napster about to be upgraded? Would the legal download experience finally exceed my expectations?
No, it bleedin wouldn't! Chris and Brad have managed to let me down again. I pay my £9.99 a month to be able to listen to their vast music library, only to be informed that this particular album, the one I want to listen to as soon as it is released has been relegated to the "Buy Only" category. This means that I cannot listen to it, unless I pay another £9.99 to Chris and Brad. They will let me listen to the first 30 seconds of each track, but even the Geneva Convention would class that as torture.
So what am I to do now?
There is no way that I am going to pay the Fiddle Brothers (Chris and Brad, not Neil and Tim) any more of my hard earned cash.
So what are my options?
I could wait until Crapster take this album off the "Buy Only" list, but that could be weeks, months or never.
I could go to Tesco's and pay £11.24 for the album, which would take me about 45 minutes.
I could order it from Amazon for £8.99 (plus postage and packaging) and get it in a day or two.
Or I could look for a BitTorrent seed for the album, download it to my PC, burn an audio CD and listen to it while I do the washing up. This would take about 15 minutes (that's for the first part, it would take me a lot longer to do the washing up because I do it properly. Mechanical dish washers just steam the plates in a bacteria filled fug you know).
I remember when they told me that home taping was killing music.
These may have been the same people who came up with this great advice
Well, if the so called music industry don't pull their socks up and make sure that the experience of buying music legally is not vastly superior to the experience of p2p sharing, then they should consider adopting this logo for their next campaign.
Chris and Brad are trying to get people used to the idea of downloading music legally, but if they can't provide a good enough experience then they will be encouraging their customers to go to a download service that delivers the goods, and that maybe a p2p mechanism like BitTorrent rather than iTunes or Real.
Watched this film
Looked at the art and subversion of Ron English
Then ate some fruit and bought a can of spraypaint.
An exhibit at the Smithsonisan looks at the history of voting in the United States. To those of us who live in the UK and are used to voting for whoever our betters tell us to vote for, this exhibition with it's plethora of voting methods and processes is very enlightening.
We can see how the Voter Experience Redesign group in Chicago studied the local polling place from the voter's point of view.
Paste pot and paster ballot
Many state election laws allowed voters to modify party tickets. Voters could "split" their ticket by scratching out the name of one candidate and writing in another, or by gluing on a strip of paper (called a paster) printed with the name of yet another person.Is this optional candidate technology still available in the US?
Gear and Lever Voting
From 1898 through the early 1960s, the gear-and-lever voting machine was promoted as an ideal voting technology. Though its internal mechanism changed over the years, the machine's "three steps to vote" never changed:
1) Pull the handle to close the curtains of the booth. 2) Turn the voting levers over the names of your chosen candidates to expose the Xs. 3) Pull the handle back to register your vote and reopen the curtains.
A couple of questions: Was the vote invalid if you didn't close the curtains properly? Did you have to provide your own white gloves?
If you want to find out more about the voting experience then I recommend you visit the extensive resource collection that Louise Ferguson has produced.
Sometimes I use the Typepad "Publish On" option to spread my posts out, instead of having them appear in one big blob of posts. I was using this feature with a SWUG post...
and I got this error, which threw me as I had definitetely entered an hour between 1 and 12.
The error was caused because I had typed "08" instead of "8".
The entry box for the hours was definitely big enough to take three characters without any trouble so I entered [space][space]8 into the box to see it that worked. When I clicked on the button I got this error mesage:
When I looked at the details on the post page I saw that Typepad displayed the hour as "08" but didn't allow me to use that format for my data entry. They also display the date in US format even though I set my country as United Kingdom in my Typepad user profile.
After playing around with the post ahead feature some more, I discovered that if you set a post ahead date and then changed the option to "Publivh Now" it would use the future date for the posting, which meant that I could post an entry that was dated August 2007.
It also created the archives for August 2007 which was really confusing.
I wish Typepad would test their software a bit more as there is no good reason why I shouldn't be allowed to enter "08" instead of "8", especially when they display their hours in the same format.
It would be nice if they could make the effort to display the dates in UK format as they know that I am a UK customer.
There is no excuse for allowing posts to be published with dates in the future as the Typepad system should deal with the fact that I may change my mind about setting a future publishing date.
These point may appear to be petty, but if US companies want to be successful in the rest of the world then they need to put more effort into their internationalisation efforts.
A display of Vietnam-War-era protest posters at the MIT Museum offers a colorful glimpse into a tumultuous time at the Institute. The exhibit, Telling It like It Is: Student Activism at MIT during the Vietnam War, was prompted by an unusual gift from Lawrence Linden, SM ’70, PhD ’76—a bedsheet decorated with the iconic fist symbol and the words “MIT Strike.” The banner hung on campus during the national campus strike in May 1970, a nationwide protest against the Vietnam War. Linden, who was a member of ROTC, was not a protestor. Nevertheless, he cut down the banner after the strike and held onto it until the end of 2002, when he paid for its restoration. Several months later, after conservators touched it up, Linden donated the banner to the museum.Technology Review
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