Use It or Lose It - Latest Comments

Re: Killer runway design

Ma Atef — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:37:46 -0000

it's very nice article...it's first time to me understand how they build a runway.

Re: Dial M for Hamburger: a design tragedy

tashian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:51:09 -0000

Wow, this sounds like an amazing microwave. Let me know if you ever find the model, I might order one myself...

Carl

Re: Dial M for Hamburger: a design tragedy

Simon — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:31:28 -0000

Yes! I actually found this entry while looking for a particular microwave oven I want to buy but have been unable to find. (I did not get the brand name... and it was in New Zealand...)

It had one dial between Low/Medium/High
And one free-spinning dial for time with somewhat logrithmically-spaced timed and a ring of leds to show the current time.
It sounds overly complex but is very obvious and intuitive, and I think actually an improvement over the linear mechanical dial for multiple reasons without adding any UI complexity:
- the dial just felt great (smooth turning with a subtle minima at each tick)
- much simpler mechanics (just a free-spinning dial and probably an optical shaft-encoder), so much less to break
- leds visible from across the room (thermometer style readout, in a circle around the dial, so no need to squint and read numbers).
- tick up or down at any time by turning the dial a little. (Mechanical timers allow this too but it feels icky and often hysteresis is large which makes it hard to adjust properly.)
- logarithmic spacing means you can hit any time you're likely to care about in a single small twist of the wrist: 30s/1m/1:30/2m/3m/5m/10m/20m -- something like that, probably slightly finer grain on the low end.

This is in addition to all of the advantages of the much-neglected two-dial setup in the first place.

No start button. And just generally it was a clean, elegant little unit, no extra fluff. Can't find it for the life of me, but if I have to ship one from NZ and buy a 120->240 power converter I will. :)

Re: Incompetence

phredx — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:12:32 -0000

I am very good at incompetence.

Re: 7.1 megapixels

Carl — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:25:53 -0000

hey Andy,
I went with the aluminum and glass. I was also turned off by the glossy display, but I have really come around to it. If your workspace is relatively dark, this display gives true colors and some incredibly crisp, dark blacks. It may not be obvious in the Apple Store, but when I look at it side by side with my matte LCD, the difference in color rendition is stunning. I used to think that looking at photographic slides on a light box--through a nice loupe--was the best way to really see the colors of an image. But this new display totally beats the loupe. My photographs have never looked better. Of course, it doesn't hurt that iPhoto's new Events arrangement feels much more emotional to me, like I'm seeing my life flash before my eyes.
My only complaint about this display is that it's perhaps a little too bright sometimes! You don't always want the brightness of a 24" television glaring at you all day...
Carl

Re: 7.1 megapixels

Andy Reitz — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:27:01 -0000

Hey Carl,
Congrats on the new machine. Did you go for one of the new Aluminium 24" iMacs, or the older plastic model?
Personally, I also just bought a 24" iMac - but the glossy display on the new Aluminum ones bothers me, so I went with a refurb of the older model. I'd be curious to hear which way you went.
But I agree about the high-resolution display, it's awesome! I'm still not sold on dual-head, but lots of people swear by it, so maybe I'll give it another shot somewhere down the road.
-Andy.

Re: Free-Syncing Liberals

Carl — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:07:40 -0000

Sure. I think there are a few differences:
The biggest one is that syncing, in my view, should happen without any action on my part. I set my phone down next to my computer and they sync in the background. Most possible conflicts can be handled if the phone and computer had fine-grained detail about when I edited which fields in an entry. So if I change someone's phone number on my phone at t=1, and someone's address on my Mac at t=2, and I change their phone number again on some other device at t=3, the systems should know how to deal with that, with no effort on my part. This is what computers are for, isn't it? It's not even a hard problem, per se, but it does require more cooperation between these systems than vCards will allow, and that's the hard part.
Second, my contacts need to stay separate somehow. Highrise's benefit seems to come from letting a group of people manage shared contacts and interactions. If I upload some vCards, and then you upload some vCards, and then I export, do I get both of our vCards, or only the ones I've added? (I haven't used Highrise since it first came out.. maybe my model is wrong)
And third, imports need to merge. If I update one of my contacts on Mac OS X and then import it into Highrise, if Highrise's version always wins, that's not a merge. (again, maybe this isn't the case anymore?)
I hope this is helpful.

Re: Free-Syncing Liberals

RS — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:22:40 -0000

... about "how" real synching would be different, that is.

Re: Free-Syncing Liberals

RS — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:21:10 -0000

Highrise offers import/export options for vCards. To their credit, they do delete obvious duplicates when you re-import set of vCards. But that’s not syncing, it’s just dupe detection, and it still assumes that Highrise’s copy of the contacts is authoritative (their copy always “wins” on an import).

If this is not synching, can you say something about real synching would be different from this behavior in your view?

Re: Free-Syncing Liberals

random8r — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:29:25 -0000

Ummm... Apple *have* opened up sync services...

Re: 64 Excesses

Phoebe — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:28:40 -0000

I'm totally guilty of many of those...including doilies (I only have one, ok!). Also, supermarket rewards cards are so bad because, when you loose your keys, the supermarket mails them back to you.

Re: 8 phrases for what you do with RFID cards

mac cowell — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:25:10 -0000

The folks at SparkFunElectronics dissected a Nike+iPOD foot sensor and have some interesting remarks about using its unique 2.4GHZ band signal as an alternative or supplement to RFID tags; for instance, unlike RFID, the foot sensor is not a passive device and its signal has a range of 30-40+ feet. Interesting.

Re: Movement interfaces

Biotechnologist2020 — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:07:22 -0000

NiCE SITE

Re: Philips Sonicare: an unbatterying nightmare

Timo — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:37:17 -0000

I have the same problem with a Braun toothbrush.
I think better is a normal toothbrush
Timo

Re: 8 phrases for what you do with RFID cards

Lloyd — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:45:25 -0000

How about:
<ul>
<li>"(So)Mark my cow" (Somark Innovations - RFID Cattle Branding)
</li><li>"U Pay 4 Me" (Vulnerabilities in First-Generation
RFID-Enabled Credit Cards - RFID theft again)
</li></ul>
I would come up with something witty for e-passport data theft but I'm drawing a blank.

Re: doorknobs, light switches, ballots

Lloyd — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 06:43:18 -0000

Over at BoingBoing.net they've just published a post linking to Don Norman's website. It seems he has recently created a page entitled 'In Praise of Good Design' - it contains a few products with design worthy of special mention. The stapler, whisk and measuring jug are definitely worthy of this as is the section on Google's 'error messages'. There's also a Tyg with three handles; one more than the one you wrote of in September '06 – suggesting that the handles have a distinguishing feature is a great idea. It makes a good five minute read.

Re: What’ll it be?

Daniel — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 13:30:13 -0000

I have a feeling this sign was created as a dispute settler, and is intended to let patrons know that either is acceptable. I came to this conclusion based on the way the word "or" is underlined. I think, probably, someone complained and tried to gain control over which direction the door could be used. The business probably realized patrons were accustomed to using the door both ways (possibly due to its location relative to other businesses/thoroughfares?) and recognized that they needed to specify the acceptablity of both usages to not alienate one group of traffic over another. Is the business between other businesses, with traffic coming from both sides?
Just a hunch.

Re: “amazon sucks”

Paul Miller — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:03:30 -0000

Carl
I couldn't agree more that we need to find ways to make the valuable resources and services of the library available in ways that promote the library, the local area, and more. Open APIs? Yes, definitely. Appearing appropriately alongside data from Amazon et al? Too right. Data available for use and integration in all the ways you suggest, and so many more? Can't happen soon enough!
With an early research prototype we called Whisper (http://www.talis.com/tdn/wh..., we demonstrated some of what you're looking for. Click on the 'Discover' tab and have a search or two. You'll note data coming back from libraries that hold the book, Amazon, and other places.
Behind the scenes? APIs just like some of the ones you asked for. See http://www.talis.com/tdn/platform for details on the current set, and check back soon for even more.
And no, your local library may not be listed right now in the set that hold a copy of any book you search for. But it could be. A community-maintained Directory (http://directory.talis.com/) holds information about libraries and the services (human and machine-readable) that they offer. And the underlying data about bibliographic holdings comes from the Platform too; and it's free for any library to choose to share their holdings with the Platform, so that they may be reused in real-world applications evolved beyond Whisper, in Amazon (http://www.talis.com/tdn/gr..., in LibraryThing (http://www.talis.com/tdn/gr..., and in other places where a developer sees the value in leveraging the data, the Directory and the APIs to make real integration happen.

Re: usability

Daniel Hiester — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:15:11 -0000

I agree with you that KDE is a usability disaster. I'm utterly dismayed that KDE was voted the most popular desktop environment at linuxquestions.org's year-end "best of" survey.
However, you can't count out Linux without checking out Gnome. They are the reason why I use Linux in the first place. Their usability team has created a set of Human Interface Guidelines that all core Gnome applications must follow. You can tell they think along similar lines as Apple, but they do not blatantly carbon-copy; they do take ownership of these ideas themselves.
As far as browsing the web, checking email, listening to music and chatting in IMs are concerned, Gnome is more of a joy for me to use than Windows (the jury is still out on Panther; I wish Expose could be linked to an extra mouse button instead of F9, but I've yet to use that system with a 5-button mouse).
The problem with having too many choices for a single purpose (e.g. 5 mp3 players) lies in the hands of the distributors, not with Linux itself. The principle behind open-source software is that coding your own app is your freedom of speech. That said, I'm generally happy with the Dropline Gnome distro you can download if you're using Slackware. They uninstall reduntant applications and generally leave you with what you need.
The bottom line is, even my Mom, who does little more than browse the web, check email and play solitaire, can get onto my computer and do just about anything, like FTPing a file to my server, and feel like the Gnome environment is easier to use than Windows, and I think that's very telling.
Thanks for the post, though. I'm glad to know someone else out there is as nuts about usability as I am. :)

Re: usability

Thomas F. O'Connell — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 03:01:43 -0000

Part of the problem is that you would need to build at least partial consensus for your design goals. The openness of open source often makes consensus-building a fractious process precisely because so many developers want to be top dog or don't want to be told how to code.
Also, keep in mind that it's GNU/Linux. Linux is just the kernel. The part before the '/' is whatever other utilities are involved.
I've always preferred GNOME to KDE as far as a desktop environment. But it's funny. Even as GNOME kept focusing more and more on Nautilus, a file browser, I found myself opening 4 terminals, a web browser (Epiphany), and a mail client (Evolution).
Anyway, based on philosophy, I'm most sympathetic to perputating the work of GNU/GNOME and Debian in order to make progress toward a free software desktop for the 21st century.
Maybe GNU can become GNU's New Usability....