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 | Stop the next war before it starts End the Occupation |
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| Stop the next war before it starts End the Occupation |
| last updated:26 Jun 2003 05: 56 Webword time, or 26 Jun 2003 10:56 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 22 Jun 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 18 Jun |
| I lift weights several times per week. Im not a big guy although I suppose Im above average in terms of strength. I was talking with a friend today about this exercise and I was trying to make a point about the importance of perspective in relation to measurement. I told him that I was probably getting near the one million pound mark for lifting. He raised his eyebrow and asked me what I was talking about. I proceeded to explain that if you added up all the exercises and all the weight and all the repetitions I do on any given day, I lift about 40,000 lbs. of weight. If that wasnt interesting enough, I then said (after doing some quick mental calculations) that I only needed to lift about 25 times to reach one million pounds. Since I lift weights 4 times per week, that means that I lift about one million pounds of weight every 6 weeks. In one year, I can say that Ive lifted close to 9 million pounds! How cool is that? |
| Thu 19 Jun 00:09 | Frank Lynch | Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. On a similar note, I persuaded our ten year old to present Mom a bill for candy... When being toilet trained around age 2 or 3, the Kid Unit was rewarded with a piece of candy. We worked out how many trips to the bathroom since then, and came up with a figure of something like 16,235 pieces of candy. Mom was not amused, btw. |
| Thu 19 Jun 09:15 | Francis Wu | John, Enron's lookin' to hire someone for their 'fancy stats' department :)! |
| Thu 19 Jun 09:29 | Joe Clark | We're gonna need photos, John. |
| Thu 19 Jun 10:31 | Anonymous | How cool is that? It's not cool __at__all__... unless you're eyeing a career as a warehouse worker. Whoo-hoo! I lift heavy things! Look at me, I eat spinach! |
| Thu 19 Jun 15:41 | MadMan | I lift weights too and you might say I look like a truck. ;) But your statistic isn't of much value unless you're actually lifting all that at once. Can you imagine an analogy with your car? 'My car has driven over 100,000 kilometres!' - well you've been putting fuel in it constantly, haven't you? ;) BTW, John, I'm curious to know how much you can lift and whether I'm better or worse off. So let's hear it. Bench, squat, leg press, bicep curls, etc. :D |
| Fri 20 Jun 08:54 | Anonymous | I surf the web all day. The number of 'excercises' my index finger does with mouse buttons is mind-boggling. On Saturdays I take my index finger to 'strength training' -- it gets together with four of its peers (some are bigger than others) and they lift 12 ounce weights for hours on end. My index finger is so 'muscle-bound' that it bulges between the joints. I'm hoping to enter it in the 'Mr. Finger Universe' competition next fall. If you think that's cool, I should tell you about my heart, lungs, and eyelids... |
| Fri 20 Jun 10:47 | Anonymous | You call your most prized appendage a '12 ounce weight?' I hope you use lubricant when you 'strength train.' |
| Fri 20 Jun 23:54 | Jim | 9 million pounds is impressive? Now tell us the tonnage of waste product ejected from your body in one year and we will truly sit back in awe. Then we'll eat a lite salad with no dressing. |
| Sun 22 Jun 16:37 | mcw | Staying in shape is a good thing. Ignore the jerks. |
| Sun 22 Jun 20:12 | Anonymous | Show us your research. |
| So What Exactly is a Call to Action? | Sun 22 Jun |
| (GrokDotCom) The most obvious Calls to Action are ones that say “Add to Shopping Cart” or “Buy Now” or “Subscribe.” A straight-forward “do this.” At the most basic level, they tell the visitor what she can accomplish on that page, and encourage her forward in the conversion process. (Comments: Think about how many times you have visited a web site and wondered, what next?) |
| Sun 22 Jun 18:02 | steve saroff | good point |
| Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading | Tue 17 Jun |
| The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. |
| Wed 18 Jun 16:17 | Conrad Zulus | A real good example of why persons dislike or distrust their government, Hatch makes so many inane comments it's hard not to call him an uninformed Moron. Is he misled or is he that dumb? |
| Thu 19 Jun 06:44 | Alan Fisher | You often hear people saying that politicians don't take notice of the opinions of their constituents, and demanding referenda to make them fall in line. My usual response to this is that we vote for MPs, senators, congressmen and so on in order that they can be professional legislators, acting on our behlaf. Their job is to analyse and make the informed decisions which the ordinary public can't make (or haven't got the time to make). And then along comes an idiot like this, and my argument starts to seem very naive... What is also worrying here is that the discussions seem to be taking it as a given that downloading is a bad thing and needs to be stamped out. In fact, the evidence for copying and downloading having an adverse effect on sales is very weak. |
| Fri 20 Jun 04:08 | Philip Chalmers | Perhaps someone should ask Hatch if the same should be done to sites used by spammers. If he says 'no' he's in someone's pocket. If he says 'yes' ask if the same standards of proof apply in both cases and if anyone is free to take this kind of action. If 'no' he's guilty of double standards which favour big corporations. If 'yes' he's advocating cyber-vigilantism. |
| Fri 20 Jun 16:32 | Anonymous | Interesting Development: One of the millions of out-of-work SW programmers took a few minutes break from Kazaa, and instead checked out Hatch's own website. Lo and behold, he was using an illegal copy of copyrighted code on it! The story is available here: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,59305,00.html |
| Hi-tech’s next big wave: Body awareness | Mon 16 Jun |
| People are more likely to change their behavior, this idea has it, when they know someone is watching them. (Comments: Thanks David C. Dunkle) |
| Tue 17 Jun 06:47 | Anonymous | A reasonbly quick test -- and any marketer -- will tell you people do Not want to know. They will pay a little for prevention, and pay a lot for cure. The 'stress shirt' (mood ring) is pretty much useless. A testable proposition would be if people attribute stress to their response to situations, or to the situations and other people. In the land of 'McDonalds made me eat junk food' and 'Evil recording companies made me download free music' the stressors are imagined outside our control. Hollywood, Drug culture, you name it; the name of the game is not a lack of awareness but a refusal to be aware. |
| Tue 17 Jun 14:15 | Francis Wu | I would beg to differ. Yeah, the evils of health can be linked to the stresses of overwork and underpay, fueled by the escapist and consumption-driven society in which we live. For a large demographic, an average day consists of work and TV. By that rationale, it would be pretty easy to peddle the 'stress shirt', IMHO. Still this is the kind of stuff informercials are made of. |
| Tue 17 Jun 17:14 | Anonymous | I'm mostly concerned about why you chose to pee next to me when there are twelve other urinals available. |
| Fri 20 Jun 01:01 | Anonymous | Having suffered through several anxiety attacks as of late, nothing could be worse than having a shirt telling you that your heart rate is too damn high or your blood pressure a little off - guess what, that sends you into a worse spiral. These shirts would be great for the makers of Paxil and Zoloft - should come with a free package of either. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 18 Jun |
| How many web users have Acrobat Reader installed? I cant seem to find any penetration statistics. Macromedia has a page listing Flash and Shockwave penetration and it would be nice to have the same kind of data for Acrobat Reader. Any ideas? |
| Wed 18 Jun 22:59 | Anonymous | Also those with Java turned off or not installed. |
| Thu 19 Jun 08:35 | Boyink | US Numbers only are at: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/tech_breakdown.html |
| Fri 20 Jun 00:06 | Joel Spolsky | This month's Business 2.0 says 100,000,000 PCs in 2000. |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 18 Jun |
| I think it is bizarre that I cant reach the main Google home page from the Google AdWords home page. It reminds me of how Amazon traps users into the checkout process once they begin down that path. Next time you buy something from Amazon, in the middle of the process try to find a link to the Amazon home page. |
| Thu 19 Jun 09:16 | Joshua Kaufman | It's also bizarre how bad their 404 page is. As site that claims to be user-centered, I expect more than that. |
| Thu 19 Jun 15:44 | MadMan | Try to find the page to submit your URL for inclusion in their index. Go on, I dare you. No using search, only following links from home page. |
| Thu 19 Jun 16:02 | Frank Lynch | Found it in two clicks. |
| Short Summary of the MHTML Standard | Wed 18 Jun |
| The main idea of the MHTML standard is that you send a HTML document, together with in-line graphics, applets, etc., and also other linked documents if you so wish, in a MIME multipart/related body part. (Comments: I actually saw this being used in a Google Adwords Newsletter today.) |
| Wed 18 Jun 22:57 | Anonymous | There is a real possibility we might run out of letters X,D,M, where will it all end. |
| Bullfighter - Stripping The Bull Out Of Business | Tue 17 Jun |
| Bullfighter is software that runs in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, within Microsoft Office 2000 or XP. It works a lot like the spelling and grammar checker in those applications, but focuses on jargon and readability. Download it for free, or order a CD-ROM/book package. Then install it. |
| Wed 18 Jun 13:00 | Ralph | Very nice. I would have proceeded with acquisition and deployment of said application except for the ample heftitude of the delivery media employed, i.e. 4 MB is a little excessive for the limited entertainment value. Beautiful web demo, except that I got the same overall rating of 8.7 on the Dear Jane letter with and without the bull. Anyone ever play BS Bingo in meetings? |
| Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites | Tue 17 Jun |
| (useit.com) Small sites have two huge advantages over big sites: there are many more of them and they are more specialized and thus more targeted. Small sites speak directly to the specific needs and interests of a committed user community, and thus have much higher value per page view. (Comments: Holy shit, there are actually a few links to sites other than useit.com in this Jakob Nielsen article!) |
| Wed 18 Jun 06:43 | Jason Fried | This very concept is why eBay is successful. It's a million niche markets wrapped into one. |
| Wed 18 Jun 10:20 | Sally | Wait a minute, is this author saying specialized sites address user needs better than broad unfocused sites? Well, slap me with a badger and call me Sally! This article is worth linking to! |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 12 Jun |
| There is only one letter difference between refer and reefer. When you are tired, your eyes can play tricks on you! |
| Tue 17 Jun 08:34 | Bruce Lawson | John and Mac. Cheech and Chong. |
| Speed Up the Web Contest | Thu 12 Jun |
| Are you tired of waiting for slow, unresponsive sites? Do you think fast web sites are important? Help spread the word! (Comments: Not really a contest but I like the book and I like Andy so Im throwing a link on WebWord for him.) |
| Mon 16 Jun 09:06 | Andy King | Thanks for the feedback. I've added a link option and made the code XHTML. Let me know if you have any other suggestions. - Andy |
| Get us out of remote-control hell! | Sat 14 Jun |
| (ZDNet) But having three remotesonly threemakes me one of the lucky ones. By some accounts, the average U.S. household has between five and seven. (Comments: Thanks Daniel Szuc.) |
| Mon 16 Jun 08:45 | Frank Lynch | My Sony Clie has software intended to aggregate remotes, but I haven't tried it yet... What I would really like is for manufacturers to think about the usage situation when designing remotes. Typically, we turn the lights low/off when watching a movie, and it's a hassle to turn them on to pause the movie. It would be nice if there were a switch which would light the remote buttons, or if there were raised symbols on the buttons, not just paint. I'd also love it if DVD and VCR manufacturers' remotes could simply learn the volume control for the television. I don't ask for a completely integrated universal remote, but one which transferred a really important task like adjusting the volume would at least allow us to use one remote during a scenario. |
| Usability Bazaar | Thu 12 Jun |
| Over the past few days, Ive been doing some research for an easy-to-use web-based open-sourced content management system. (Comments: Good idea? Viable?) |
| Mon 16 Jun 04:15 | Geoff Deering | I think there are a few out there, but it’s a matter of exactly what criteria you want to evaluate them by, what criteria they meet, etc. Different ones may meet different needs according to different degrees, fulfilling some criteria, and not so much others. Also, I have seen nothing that is dead easy for users, more training and documentation are needed. Case in point. MoveableType is a great Blogging system, but just a quick look at it's message board tell you some people really have problems with it (understandably). That's why they are developing TypePad. You could use Drupel, Zope, Lenya, whatever, but I feel in making any such decision, while usability is a very important issue, there are just as many other technical issues and client needs to take into consideration for the whole evaluation process. |