Confusability

Equal in the end

Listening To:

From Two Suns in the Sunset on  The Final Cut by Pink Floyd

and as the windshield melts
my tears evaporate
leaving only charcoal to defend
finally I understand
the feelings of the few
ashes and diamonds
foe and friend
we were all equal in the end

I have watched Made In England by Shane Meadows:

Set in England during the 80's 'This Is England' is the story of a 12 year old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) as told by director Shane Meadows whose previous film credits include 'Dead Man's Shoes', a story of victimisation, abuse of power and revenge, in rural England. Here in Shane Meadow's latest film, Shaun, an isolated lad growing up in a grim coastal town, whose father has died fighting in the Falklands war, finds friendship with the local skinheads. Shaun discovers a world of parties, first love and the joys of Dr Martin boots. Here he meets Combo (Stephen Graham), an older, racist skinhead who has recently got out of prison. As Combo's gang harass the local ethnic minorities, the course is set for a rite of passage that will hurl Shaun from innocence to experience.

Keywords="England, 1983, Skin heads, skinheads ,midlands, Shane Meadows, Myspace Shane Meadows Myspace, Director, Drama, outsider, 80’s little boy, dead father, Writer Shane Meadows, cult film, Lord Shane Meadows of Eldon / Shaun Fields, Filmaker, Empire Records, The Stairwell, Northern Soul, Dead Man’s Shoes, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, 26 December 1972,  Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England, Optimum Releasing, film company,Awards, nominations, Warp Films, Big Arty Productions, Ingenious film Partners, Film Four, UK Film Council, EM Media, Screen Yorkshire, This Is England, 18 Certificate, Downloads, Homepage, Cast, Images, Profiles, Video, Trailers, Interviews, Deleted Scenes, Shane Meadows Interview, Music, Soundtrack, Buy, Tracklisting, Digital Purchase, Quotes, Reviews, Headlines, Articles, NFT Retropsective, Special Screenings, Festivals, I’m Thomas, Character, Video Diary, video diaries, location, In Cinemas, Cinema listings, Click, Pre-order, Film soundtrack, Podcasts, Wallpapaers, T-shirt prints, Links, Music player, Combo, Woody, Shaun, Lol, Milky, racist, racism, black, BNP, Falklands war, National Front, Skinhead culture, neo-nazism, thuggery, violence, anti-social behavious, skins, mods, ska, working class, English identity, Margaret Thatcher, Mark Herbert, Producer, Cynth, Smell, Gadget, Pukey, Kelly, Pob, football, school, bullying, movie, writer, director, nazis, social, economic, politics, national, national party, Special Jury Prize (CINEMA Festa Internazionale di Roma), Best British Independent Film, Most Promising Newcomer Thomas, Turgoose (British Independent Film Awards), Nominated for 7 BIFA awards (British Independent Film Awards), best british film, best director, best screenplay, best newcomer, Bradford Film Festival"

I Am Reading :

Interview with Adam Curtis:

Implicit behind a lot of this stuff, like being asked to do blogging, is that we're getting a more representative view of the public.

That's a great paradox. It's a wider thing than the internet, but the internet sums it up. It's that on the surface it says that "the internet is a new form of democracy". So what you're seeing is a new pluralism, a new collage, a new mosaic of all sorts of different ideas that's genuinely representative.

But if you analyse what happens, it simplifies things.

First of all, the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it's quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they're like: they're deeply emotional, they're bullies, and they often don't get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information - they do little research of their own.

What then happens is this idea of the 'hive mind', instead of leading to a new plurality or a new richness, leads to a growing simplicity.

The bloggers from one side act to try to force mainstream media one way, the others try to force it the other way. So what the mainstream media ends up doing is it nervously tries to steer a course between these polarised extremes.

So you end up with a rigid, simplified view of the world, which is negotiated by mainstream media in response to the bullying extremities.

Far from being "the wisdom of crowds", it's the stupidity of crowds. Collectively what we are doing is creating a more simplified world.

More Adam Curtis:

The Stupidity Of Crowds

Adam Curtis is one of the jewels in the BBC's crown - as well as one of its fiercest critics.

His documentaries are rich, complex histories of ideas that have surprised BBC executives with their popularity amongst younger viewers: his montage technique and visual jokes reward repeated viewings.

The Century of the Self told the story of how Freud's nephew invented modern public relations [pt3]. The Power Of Nightmares [video] described how the myth of the al-Qaeda "network" had to be invented so a terror trial could be heard under America's RICO laws. The Trap [pts1&2] describes how reductionist and paranoid logic of game theory influenced psychology, biology and eventually social policy.

Adam Curtis : an audio special (The Register)

Chris Locke on Adam Curtis.

The Power Of Nightmares (part 1)

The Trap Part 1:

The Trap Part 2:

The Trap Part 3:

Rediscovering the past

A Classic WebWord regular Dennis G Jertz has published an article "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave" tracing the history of Colossal Cave Adventure which was the introduction to computer adventure games for many people of a certain generation.

It can now be experienced on a WristPDA.

I do wonder if the people who designed Sat Nav systems spend too much time playing this game.

Designing Usable and Accessible Games with Interaction Design Patterns

From Gamasutra by Eelke Folmer.

Traditionally best practices concerning interface/interaction design have been captured by means of guidelines or heuristics such as Nielsen’s heuristics or the W3C web content accessibility guidelines. The purpose of guidelines is to capture design knowledge into concise small rules, which can be used to inform interface and interaction design.

Attempts to capture design knowledge have been made with regard to game interaction design. Houser & Deloach present seven principles for effective game design. Melissa Federoff has looked at how existing usability heuristics such as proposed by Nielsen apply to games and a set of 42 game heuristics is proposed. These guidelines specifically focus on usability issues and are different from attempts to describe game play such as Noah Falsteins 400 project.

Problems with heuristics

Guidelines are useful for requirements specification but if we look at their usability as a design tool some shortcomings have been identified by Welie with regard to selection, validity and applicability:

• Guidelines often suggest a general absolute validity but in fact they can often only be applied in a specific context. For example Federoff specifies “The game should have an unexpected outcome” which makes sense and works for an adventure game but does not apply to arcade games such as pong.

• It is often unclear what the problem is the guideline actually tries to solve and why. Federoff specifies “Players should be able to save games in different states” but it does not explain what usability problem it addresses and why the proposed solution would work and how it can be implemented.

• Compacting design knowledge in small concise rules has the obvious problem that you end up with a lot of rules in order to describe everything. A large number of guidelines makes it hard for a game designer to select the right rules and worse the lack of context makes certain guidelines contradict with each other. For example, “The game should have an unexpected outcome” and “there should be a clear overriding goal of the game presented early” might possibly conflict.

Design tools should first and foremost be usable. We need to be able to tell the designer exactly when to apply the solution, how the solution works and why the solution works. A requirement specified as a feature such as “closed captions” is much easier understood and implemented by a developer than the abstract guideline “Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element” it embodies. The usability and accessibility problems that we have identified are contextual; I propose to use interaction design patterns for capturing design experience, as this offers a much richer description format and hence is more useful and usable as a design tool.

Social Networking on BBC Radio 4

There’s absolutely no point going  on a social networking site and not disclosing any information  because you might as well go to the pub, sit in the corner and not  say a word because you’re worried about your personal privacy.

This week's Analysis on Radio 4 has Ben Hammersley asking whether social networking sites have changed our notion of privacy and if so, what the consequences for society might be.

In 'With Friends Like These', Professor Robin Mansell of the London School of Economics discusses how different generations each see the concept of personal privacy, while Danah Boyd from the Berkman Centre for the Internet and Society at Harvard says that online identities are now a fundamental part of growing up.

Adam Joinson of the University of Bath explains the psychology behind online relationships while Will Reader from Sheffield Hallam University, has new research about the strength and nature of these relationships - just how much of a friend is an online friend?

And David Evans, from the Information Commissioner's Office says that the government's privacy watchdog is so concerned about the information people give away about themselves, that the Information Commissioner is about to issue guidelines for users of social networking sites.

Read full transcript.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/analysis/analysis_20071108-2030.mp3 (28 minutes | 13MB)

World Usability Day 2007 - On YouTube

So far I have only seen one 2007 WUD video on YouTube, but it's a good one.

Whitney Quesenbery explains why Usability is importany and how it can make the world a better place.

View more Usability World Day YouTube videos.

The Social Networks Totem Pole

Boyd and Ellison have published this usabilie definition of a Social Network Site.

Social Network Sites: A Definition

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

They have also published an interesting "Social Network Totem Pole" that illustrates the history of Social Networks.

It's interesting to note that the UK site Friends Reunited doesn't appear on the totem pole even though it launched in 2000 and has got ober 15 million members.

Simply Google - November Refresh

Just published my November Refresh for Simply Google.

I have added a YouTube search, a Facebook search and a link to the OpenSocial site.

Chris