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| Stop the next war before it starts End the Occupation |
| last updated:02 Jul 2003 08: 57 Webword time, or 02 Jul 2003 13:57 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 29 Jun 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know | Sun 29 Jun |
| The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know. |
| Sun 29 Jun 10:26 | Anonymous | So why didn't they hyperlink the words in the on-line press release to an on-line dictionary? |
| Sun 29 Jun 21:09 | Anonymous | Because then there'd be no reason to buy the book. |
| Sun 29 Jun 23:35 | Anonymous | As it is easy to look up the words in an on-line dictionary, it might have been more effective not to give all the words in the press release. |
| Google Toolbar 2.0 | Wed 25 Jun |
| Whats new? Popup Blocker, AutoFill, and BlogThis. |
| Wed 25 Jun 22:12 | John S. Rhodes | Google 2.0 |
| Thu 26 Jun 08:01 | daniel szuc | Clicked the smiley icon for www.webword.com! Interesting how they have added the Blogger icon to the toolbar. Wonder how many people have the google toolbar installed? |
| Thu 26 Jun 08:09 | daniel szuc | Now heres an idea ... what if Google released a toolbar for Outlook that allowed you to search via the Outlook without having to ALT TAB to IE. But further to that, included a SPAM blocker. Yipee! |
| Thu 26 Jun 09:10 | Joshua Kaufman | Firebird already does popup blocking, Firebird already does autofill, I already have a bookmarklet for MT. Oh, and Firebird has Google search built in. Besides, who would want Google spying on them all the time? |
| Thu 26 Jun 11:41 | daniel szuc | http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html |
| Thu 26 Jun 15:34 | Francis Wu | I wish they had that Blogger bookmarklet for other blogging software!... as if that's gonna happen :(. |
| Sat 28 Jun 04:34 | Martina | Again, it doesn't work on Mac :-( |
| Sat 28 Jun 18:59 | Chris | I don't know, why you think such a toolbar is so useful. Some sites claim, that it's spyware and logging to which sites you are surfing. |
| Sat 28 Jun 23:32 | Anonymous | Don't worry. They have a sentence on one of their pages that says they aren't evil. We're so happy with the service, we don't care if we're being screwed. All corporations should use kiddy clown colors in their logos. |
| Sun 29 Jun 22:25 | Anonymous | On a slightly different topic... Google News sucks ass. I'm tired of finding myself reading an article Google highlighted for me, and I start thinking, 'hey, this story seems very one-sided.' Then I hack the URL to realize I'm not at a traditional news organization. Then I go back to Google and filter through the 'related' news links to see how many are only passingly related, and I wonder how many people Google is directing to biased news articles - people who won't do the research to realize the background of the organization speaking the 'news.' At least before Google people knew up front where their information was coming from because they made an overt conscious decision to visit a particular news site. If you read CNN or MSNBC or BBC you knew the background of the news source and their history of bias. These days the casual news browser is a helpless dupe thanks to services like Google News. |
| Apple Exposé | Tue 24 Jun |
| That’s exactly what Exposé does. Type the F9 key, and Exposé instantly tiles all of your open windows — scales them down and neatly arranges them, so you can see what’s in every single one. (Comments: Innovative? Breakthrough? Thanks Timo.) |
| Wed 25 Jun 01:49 | Yarone Goren | First reaction: Interesting! Second reaction: Fixes a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. That is, the GUI should be designed to avoid this type of problem... What you guys think!? |
| Wed 25 Jun 03:56 | Dan | Back in the early days of window systems, the battle raged between two competing windowing approaches: tiling vs. overlapping. Overlapping has clearly won that fight, at least in mainstream UIs. I find it very ironic though, that Expose brings back some form of tiling. |
| Fri 27 Jun 17:55 | Jason Fried | Overlapping won because it's more natural. |
| Sat 28 Jun 08:33 | Jack Baty | I think it's cute that they came up with a name for it. I can't imagine actually calling it by name in daily conversation, but it's still cute though. |
| Phones with cameras: Ridiculous? No! | Tue 10 Jun |
| (ZDNet) There I was just a few days ago, ready to write a column deriding the uselessness of those combo cell phone/digital cameras. Then something happened: I got one to play with. And while I still have reasons for disliking the devices, I have to admit the one I tried was fun to use, the pictures werent awful for what they were, and, yes, I can even imagine using one for business. (Comments: At least once per week I wish I had my camera. This is a good solution for me since I dont usually care about obtaining great images and I usually have my cell cell phone. Thanks Daniel Szuc.) |
| Fri 27 Jun 03:14 | Anonymous | Finally! A Real Work @ Home Opportunity has arrived! Now you can become an Independent Typist with Ad-Placer.com. We offer home workers the opportunity to earn extra money from the comfort of their own home http://www.ad-placer.net.com/63419ads.html |
| Fri 27 Jun 03:20 | Anonymous | Finally! A Real Work @ Home Opportunity has arrived! Now you can become an Independent Typist with Ad-Placer.com. We offer home workers the opportunity to earn extra money from the comfort of their own home http://www.ad-placer.net.com/63419ads.html |
| Apple Moving Away From Traditional Tabs? | Wed 25 Jun |
| (Signal vs. Noise) Screenshots ( 1 | 2) from OS X 10.3/Panther reveal that Apple appears to be moving away from traditional tabs and replacing them with centered buttons instead. Interesting move — especially considering that tabs are pretty familiar UI controls these days (including Apple.com’s nav). Thoughts anyone? |
| Thu 26 Jun 13:02 | Blogmin | I have to agree with one of the comments on SVN. The inactive tab looks more active then the active one. I guess I am not too fond of tabs to let them go... Well, I am looking at this page through a tab on Camino (tabs being the reason i use this browser and not Safari). |
| Driving Under the Influence | Tue 24 Jun |
| (Wired) While these devices can ease the tedium of a long ride in the back seat, car owners increasingly are choosing to outfit their dashboards and break the law in the process. Watching any kind of screen while driving is illegal in many states, and critics say these entertainment-rich wagons are careering toward disaster. (Comments: See my comments yesterday on cell phones. Thanks Gabriel White!) |
| Thu 26 Jun 09:13 | Francis Wu | Agreed. Listening to loud, bling bling music whilst driving is one thing, but watching a movie or playing video games is something else. I'm more or less intrigued by the content that would be playing on these mobile theatres though. Would you get a ticket for watching porno in your car? |
| WebWord Comment | Tue 24 Jun |
| I banned an IP address today. It felt good. |
| Wed 25 Jun 00:10 | Anonymous | Darn, it wasn't mine. |
| Wed 25 Jun 12:46 | JB | I hope it was the ad serving guys...dicks! |
| Wed 25 Jun 15:14 | John S. Rhodes | ...it was the ad serving wankers, yes. |
| Wed 25 Jun 21:45 | daniel szuc | Fantastic! |
| Thu 26 Jun 03:52 | Mac | I hope it was that bastard Mac |
| 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?) |
| Wed 25 Jun 19:40 | Anonymous | Jason Fried (from 37signals) just talked about this very concept at Reboot 6 in Copenhagen. |
| All-Natural Prank | Tue 24 Jun |
| While visiting my local health food store, I noticed how many non-food products are labeled All-Natural. Toothpaste. Dog biscuits. Deodorants. Some of them, like those Carrot-Honey-Ginger soaps, sound good enough to eat. Is it a soap, I found myself asking, or a salad? Recently, I decided to find out, by eating a wide variety of All-Natural products, and reporting on their delicate flavors and aromas. (Comments: How do you define research? Thanks John Hargrave.) |
| Wed 25 Jun 15:21 | Conrad Zulus | I got a few laughs out of this web site, the label all natural a misleading label for example there are poisons that are all natural but you will not see me testing those out :-) Conrad Zulus |
| Session 1 - focus on George the Robot | Wed 25 Jun |
| Class teacher Listen, the robot (George) do you think if you had longer you would work out more about it?Child 1 no, it would take agesChild 2 yes |
| Wed 25 Jun 08:26 | Anonymous | No. Children are less skilled in tools for seeking approval. They are less skilled in covering their feelings, and thinking one thing while doing another. They are more likely to forget the observer is there. That does not make them more honest, simply less able to be anything else. Of course, in any age group there can be the exception. It would be interesting if this precocious child then leads the group one way or another, skewing the results. Focus groups are very hard to get useful data from, and suffer from the bias that just the opposite is true. |
| Wed 25 Jun 09:54 | fajalar | Focus groups are very hard to get useful data from... And how. Especially with an 'interviewer' telling the kids things instead of asking. And it doesn't help that the teacher chimes in. ~~ Interviewer 1 Shall we put this one in (arranges tree toys in the middle of circle of children). Thank you, you have been very good. Interviewer 1 there are lots of buttons on it aren’t there? Interviewer 1 so that’s a problem with it , it’s got too many buttons hasn’t it Interviewer 1 but don’t you have to read the instructions for this Interviewer 2 I see so it says - that’s very sensible and straightforward Interviewer 1 but..but when you just buy a Furby it doesn’t speak any English does it? Child 4 Oh I got..I got.. there computer chips Interviewer 1 a circuit board. What’s this one got in it? James wakes up the Furby Child 4 Oh James Interviewer 1 James likes it awake I think, he likes to hear it Children 4, 7 and 1 stroke the Furby Class teacher and I’ll tell you something normally James can’t keep still he’s always on the move but that was the first time I saw you really concentrating Interviewer 1 Obviously it’s a secret classroom.... Interviewer 2 A good investment General chatter. Attention turns to the Lego and it’s tunes |
| Wed 25 Jun 15:05 | Francis Wu | Yeah, Fajalar... the interviewer seemed to be full of loaded questions. Personally, I was hopin' that a kid would be brutal about it... swearing at a fifth grade level :)! Kid: 'It just goes round and round!... I mean, who would play with this f*ckin' piece of sh*t!?' Inteviewer: !?!? Teacher: I did not teach him to say that. But seriously though. The first comment was straight on. Kids are simply uninhibited. They'll say whatever they want, they don't care. You can expect them to be honest about something. Even brutally honest sometimes. |
| Toys bridge tech divide for children | Wed 25 Jun |
| Children find it just as easy to use an interactive soft toy as a mouse researchers working on a project known as CACHET (Computers and Childrens Electronic Toys) have concluded. |
| Wed 25 Jun 07:43 | Philip Chalmers | The article doesn't give enough info, e.g.: * the age ranges of the children studied. * the educational software used - how good was it? * what the conclusions were and, if tentative, what follow-up studies are proposed. An article which I think I saw posted here describes how Indian slum children aged 6-12 took to computers like ducks to water. The most likely conclusion is that you need to use a variety of techiques with children, at least in the West - especially as all children are different. But in an education-impoverished environment like Indian slums IT has a lot to offer because ther's so little else. |
| Wed 25 Jun 08:18 | Anonymous | I think Mac probably has it right, everything is equally difficult. And children are used to making mistakes. Adults fall victim to past success (not involving the new technique or tool). They may try to apply experience they have had with the old to the new thing, and it may not apply. |
| 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? |
| Mon 23 Jun 14:50 | John Dowdell | Howdy, stats here are, as always, tricky... notes: -- The NPD/MediaMetrix studies that Macromedia commissions and publishes are based on NPD's regular consumer focus groups, which may or may not match a particular business audience, educational audience, or other audience. It's a good indicator of relative trends, but I'd hesitate to use it for any type of absolute predictions. -- Versioning is important. The NPD audits have specific tests for Flash and Shockwave versions, but running versioning tests on Acrobat and the rest of the major plugins would increase the risk of incomplete tests from audited consumers. We do know that the smaller Flash Player has a much faster adoption rate than the larger Shockwave Player, which ties in with the intuitive observation that more people update things more quickly if it's a small fast download, but I have no idea how many of the 76% of consumers who could view *some* Acrobat content were using a recent version of that plugin. -- Some numbers cited in the press are the number of copies of a plugin distributed, or the number of initial requests they get on their website. Such quotes need to be controlled for: aborted downloads; unsucessful installations; updates to existing installations; installation to multiple browsers on one machine; one owner with multiple machines; installers included with other software and never used on their own. (ie, the number of copies distributed does not directly indicate the percentage of web viewers who can immediately view such content.) For Adobe Acrobat, we know that most consumers can view at least some PDF files, but I don't know how many have updated their versions for newer files, sorry. Regards, John Dowdell Macromedia Support |
| Tue 24 Jun 06:52 | Anonymous | Finally! A Real Work @ Home Opportunity has arrived! Now you can become an Independent Typist with Ad-Placer.com. We offer home workers the opportunity to earn extra money from their home. http://ad-placer.net/32351ads.com |
| Tue 24 Jun 06:58 | Anonymous | Finally! A Real Work @ Home Opportunity has arrived! Now you can become an Independent Typist with Ad-Placer.com. We offer home workers the opportunity to earn extra money from their home. http://ad-placer.net/33733ads.html |
| Tue 24 Jun 07:00 | Anonymous | Finally! A Real Work @ Home Opportunity has arrived! Now you can become an Independent Typist with Ad-Placer.com. We offer home workers the opportunity to earn extra money from their home. http://ad-placer.net/40768ads.html |
| Tue 24 Jun 20:03 | John Dowdell | See? just because the spammer distributed three copies doesn't mean they'll get three times the results.... ;-) (Seriously, isn't such abusive behavior just cause for getting ad-placer.net shut down?) |
| Dumb Vendor Driving | Mon 23 Jun |
| There are plenty of examples where vendors spent so much time worrying about all the wrong stuff that they took wrong business turns. There was 3Coms obsession with Novell; Novells (or substitute any vendor name here) obsession with Microsoft; Microsofts obsession with market control; Oracles obsession with anything its not currently involved in. And the list goes on. Shouldnt user satisfaction be the No. 1 concern? |
| Mon 23 Jun 23:28 | Ron Zeno | 'Shouldn't user satisfaction be the No. 1 concern?' Not if you're a public company, maybe not when you're private. Even then, market and business conditions dictate much whether or not a business succeeds. Ignoring them is naive if not suicidal. And then there's the case where customers are not product users... |
| Tue 24 Jun 08:40 | Anonymous | Comparing what the tech industry does to competitive business practice is like saying The Little Rascals is fine Opera. The egos drive much more 'strategic planning', the reality distortion fields are set on 'high' and lunacy reigns. |
| Tue 24 Jun 18:39 | Ron Zeno | All the more reason for them to focus on just one or two things that will most likely insure success. Rarely is customer satisfaction so important. |
| Hands-Free Phone Not Safer for Drivers-Sweden Study | Mon 23 Jun |
| Talking on a mobile phone while driving your car is just as dangerous when using hands-free equipment as when holding the phone in your hand, according to a Swedish study published on Monday. (Comments: This is obvious. The problem is not whether you have something in your hand or not, the problem is that you are using cognitive resources for talking when those resources should be used for concentrating on the road. Too many people think that driving is easy, but it isnt, even with much practice. Now, if researchers could prove that driving and talking on the phone use different cognitive resources, then that would blow a hole in what I am saying. However, talking on the phone draws on the same pool of mental resources as driving does (significant overlap at least). Further, automaticity doesnt necessarily translate to continuously effective driving because there are many, many random events. Driving on the same road again and again is no excuse for thinking you can talk and drive at the same time. You cant. Not without putting yourself and others at risk. So, if you are driving stay off the damn phone, hands free or otherwise.) |
| Tue 24 Jun 14:16 | Anonymous | It amazes me how long it has taken for this 'news' to come out. It was very obvious to me the first time I talked on my cell phone while driving. When I hung up, while I found myself still going in the right direction, I noticed I had not paid any attention to my driving, and couldn't remember how I got to where I were. Scary. |
| Tue 24 Jun 17:10 | Bob | Couldnt have said it better myself, John. It's not about the physical aspect, it's about the mental aspect, and taking away resources from the primary task. What we need now in the U.S. is for a study to solidify these findings, and help abolish cell-phone leniency in our streets. |
| Diarist.com | Mon 23 Jun |
| Perhaps the only blog that provides RSS feeds with passwords. Is that a good thing? Does it make sense? Im confused. |
| Tue 24 Jun 09:06 | Joshua Kaufman | I'm not sure what you mean. I was able to open all RSS feeds without entering a password. Here's a page with a feed: http://favsongs.diarist.com/ Works fine for me. |
| Usability and Feature Creep | Mon 23 Jun |
| Each time a software vendor solves some little bullshit problem for one customer, they decide to throw it into the next version resulting is feature creep. This might be kind of cool for the geeks but it sucks for most users, especially the typical users of the software. (Comments: This was a little rant I threw on Slashdot. Could have been much better. Oh well.) |
| Mon 23 Jun 22:44 | Anonymous | Feature creep is a symptom. The cause is lack of a coherent focus for the product development effort, no design target. Everybody, even casual or nonusers can suggest features, as one feature is just like any other (the only variable is code considerations, not suitability to task or user goals). This happens when there is no mechanism in place to say 'no' to a feature request. Coupled with an inability to view feature sets with design integrity, and the project is always following around users instead of leading them. Quite a few companies will not add a feature unless the user asks for it. Since no user asks for coherent design, the company can't get behind this concept. This is not always a coder problem, but can just as easily come from any part of the company. |
| Tue 24 Jun 07:42 | daniel szuc | Unfortuntately, people buy features and the more features, the better value. I think Nokia has slipped into features land. What do other people think? |
| Tue 24 Jun 08:02 | Calybos | I think there's a lot of buck-passing going on whenever the subject of overcomplication and feature creep comes up. The coders always point to management and marketing, saying 'We didn't want to add 100 new features, but they insisted to make it more marketable!' And the bosses and marketers shrug and say, 'That's what customers want. They're not going to pay for a new release that just improves the interaction. Customers demand more features, so that's what we have to supply.' They're both conveniently ignoring the fact that this is a leftover tradition from an older industry with a different customer base. The early days of software focused squarely on hardcore programmers as customers, and those people DID want more features and more control in every upgrade. So 'new release' translated to 'new features' as a standard practice. The industry has changed now--coders and tech geeks aren't the primary customer base any more--but inertia is still driving software developers to do the same thing... except it isn't working any more. Customers are disgusted with overcomplicated, bloated software that's hard to figure out and has hundreds of options they don't want or need. Many people now buy upgrades only when they know tech support on the old version will expire, simply to avoid the hassle of wrestling with another layer of new and modified features they never asked for. |
| Tue 24 Jun 08:33 | Anonymous | Excellent points, Calybos. The impression is a feature, any feature. There are no good or bad features in feature land. Coherency in interaction design is too abstract a concept, not for users, but for development. (David Pogue has a nice article on cell phones where the criterion for evaluation was simplicity.) Again, evaluators don't lead the cause by explaining the value of simplicity, or even design integrity. Most apps, products and so on are pieces badly joined. You don't see, for example, a testing lab made up of office workers with a deadline to meet. Nobody tests apps by putting together a real project, or timing the most basic user task. It has always been about how fast, or obnoxiously distracting the report or presentation it can make. Not why anyone would want to use the technology to accomplish anything important. There is blame enough to go around. But one piece of the puzzle is the idea that all techology starts off as a toy, then becomes an important tool. They have the first part down perfectly. They haven't figured out the technology doesn't stay a toy forever. |
| Students Create Video Game Fun — for Urinals | Sun 22 Jun |
| (ABC News) We wanted to bring some of the fun back into peeing. (Comments: Thanks Thad Pasquale.) |
| Mon 23 Jun 15:53 | Ron Zeno | Already nominated for an Ignobel prize: http://dagwood.dgrc.crc.ca/~sylvie/weblog/archives/00000246.html http://dagwood.dgrc.crc.ca/~sylvie/weblog/archives/00000259.html There's some tough competition this year, but at least they got the nomination! |
| The Most Important User Experience Method | Sun 22 Jun |
| Next time youre at an event, check the agenda for sessions on how to measure business results; or how to get Marketing and IT to work together better; or how to present the results of a UX project to a senior VP; or how to build a customer experience team, with a VP of Customer Experience at the helm; how to change the organization. Those will serve you much better. |
| Mon 23 Jun 10:18 | Ron Zeno | Nope. Consultants do like to promote themselves, even if the information they give is complete nonsense. After all, they're in the self-promotion business... If you're an external consultant, then some of Hurst's recommendations are useful to influence your clients and potential clients into believing you: measuring results and presenting results are important and useful skills (but completely separate from doing the actual work). The cry of 'change the organization' is great propaganda for all. It's the second dictum of incompetent management, but is still a very persuasive argument. The only point that Hurst makes that has much substance behind it is the cry for team-building. Too bad it's just a cry. Yes, we need team-building skills. How do we get them? |