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April 2008

The Archives

04.27.08

Newsworthy Writing | (0)
The National Post thought it fitting to quote my ever-insightful contribution to the discussion about the TTC strike tonight: On the TTC “fan page” on Facebook, posts to the wall were being made late into the night, both in anger and in defence of some transit union members. ... Adam Schwabe put it a little more simply: “NOBODY LIKES YOU.” Glad I could contribute to the intelligent discussions.

Tagged: News, Web
04.26.08

Dear Toronto #11 - Metronauts Video | (0)
Freshly released mere hours before the TTC suddenly announced that they're striking is Dear Toronto #11 - Metronauts. This one took quite a bit of time to put together, and the raw footage will be available soon at the Metronauts.ca (Creative Commons NC-SA licensed).

Tagged: Dear Toronto, Web
04.25.08

BuzzFeed Re-design Writing | (0)
BuzzFeed, the social aggregator that takes Internet/News themes and memes and aggregates them into easily browsable categories, has just unveiled a beautiful new design. The new design sports sharp, vibrant colours with very attractive typography and an easily navigable interface. What's most amazing to me is that the site is ad-free and that they aren't compromising the design for the strategic placement of Google Adwords. Well done!

Tagged: Web
04.25.08

Fierce Writing | (0)
I think I'd be remiss not to mention the out-of-control meme that is this Project Runway's Christian Siriano uttering the word "FIERCE" every other sentence. I've been reading up a lot of brand development and marketing lately and this is just another example in a long line of society's obsessions over pop-culture catch phrases. Remember Coca-Cola's "Catch the Wave!", Nike's "Just Do It.", or even Austin Powers' "Yeah baby!" Now that we're well into the era of personal brand development, people are establishing their own catch phrases, voluntarily or not. The producers of Project Runway obviously knew they had a ...

Tagged: Marketing
04.22.08

Void Your Firefox Warranty Writing | (0)
Advanced users of Firefox sometimes tinker with the about:config command to change behaviour and functionality of the application. I got a little chuckle when I tried it in the most recent Firefox 3 beta only to encounter this cute warning: So it's one thing to be cute, but the main purpose of this warning is to make sure people who don't know what they're doing are aware that they might screw something up in the process. This is a good way of steering potentially novice users away from unintentionally tinkering by using the very familiar real-world analogy of a warranty.

Tagged: about:config, Firefox, UI, Usability, User Experience, warranty
04.22.08

Happy Spring! Photography | (0)
Taken with my 50mm 1.8 lens that I'm in love with on a sunny, happy day near Lake Ontario.

Tagged: Life
04.21.08

Amazon.ca and the Broken Search Box Uncategorized | (2)
What you see above is the main search box on the landing page at Amazon.ca. What you don't see is that I've actually typed into that box in Firefox, "this is broken" since it is impossible to see what I've typed because of a browser incompatibility. Here's the same search box, this time with Internet Explorer: While I can see why it would make sense to someone upstairs at Amazon why they would design for the majority of the market, it's really inexcusable at this point to have such a prominent feature of your site looking so embarrassingly bad in Firefox. Now let's ...

Tagged: Usability, User Experience, Web
04.17.08

Posted by someone Uncategorized | (0)
Oh no you didn't. It's bad enough when dialog messages are completely unhelpful, offering no insight as to what you did wrong and what you can now do rectify the problem. Employing the word someone is taking it a little too far. Essentially this message isn't giving you any helpful information, and it's also creating doubt and apprehension about using the application - who modified MY view? Has my PC been hacked? I'm not quite sure how to respond to this, but OK seems reasonable enough.

Tagged: UI, Usability, User Experience
04.14.08

End of the Universe is “Very Unlikely” Uncategorized | (0)
A couple of dudes in Hawaii are worried that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator near Geneva is going to destroy the universe, which the scientists are pretty mostly sure that this is "very unlikely." In true American spirit, they're filing a lawsuit to stop the LHC from operating, contending that micro black holes could be formed at the collider that would eventually swallow the Earth. Fair enough. Even better is how flippant and dismissive the scientists are when asked to comment on the possibility: Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist whose work helped fuel the speculation about black holes at the ...

Tagged: News, Science
04.14.08

Podshow: How do I subscribe? Uncategorized | (2)
I was listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code today (which, as an aside, was the first podcast I heard way back in 2004. How's that for nostalgia?). Adam talked about a new show he had started with John C. Dvorak called No Agenda, and I checked out the site as soon as he blurted our the URL. Imagine my surprise when I visited the show page for No Agenda, which is part of the Podshow network, started by Curry himself (the co-creator of Podcasting) and I can't even find out how to subscribe to show. Go ahead, take a look ...

Tagged: Podshow, Usability, Web

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