Thursday, July 08, 2004
Matthew Yglesias : The fact that an uninformed viewer may leave Fahrenheit 9-11 thinking that Bush invaded Afghanistan to build a pipleine is regrettable. I hope that few people who did not already believes this have been caused to believe it by the film. The fact that an uninformed citizen may leave a Bush speech believing that Iraq was a major backer of al-Qaeda, that contemporary Afghanistan is a democracy, that lawsuits are the leading cause of health care inflation, that the current budget tragectory is sustainable, that the current job market is strong, and that the institution of marriage is threatened by gays and lesbians is an outrage. Given the opportunity to shift the conversation from Topic A to Topic B, I would be remiss not to do so.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Tribe voting has it's own tribe
This is very interesting because Paul T. has built an application which sits on top of Tribe. And it seems to be gaining traction.
This is very interesting because Paul T. has built an application which sits on top of Tribe. And it seems to be gaining traction.
Of course money is one of the media. Douglas Rushkoff sounds like he's getting AltMoney religion.
Douglas Rushkoff's Blog
Douglas Rushkoff's Blog
LZW patent expires.
Remember kids, patents are BAD. And just because someone, say Unisys (ie. who?), says they aren't charging for it, that doesn't mean you should use patented formats in your next, possibly world-conquering, project because all sorts of mayhem might ensue.
Remember kids, patents are BAD. And just because someone, say Unisys (ie. who?), says they aren't charging for it, that doesn't mean you should use patented formats in your next, possibly world-conquering, project because all sorts of mayhem might ensue.
Will mobile phones replace personal computers?
MSNBC - Your Next Computer
Sure. If they can provide one crucial element that personal computers have, but this article misses : freedom. Freedom for developers to hack their own applications. Freedom for anyone on the net to provide their own services without asking the phone company permission. Freedom to talk back and upload as much as you download.
And for me personally, I need a phone that's a portable software development environment. How would my handheld device work?
1) It would have a built in camera.
2) that camera could take a picture of anything I scrawled on a piece of paper and reliably OCR it, extract the text and diagrams. And it would transparently handle hand-shaking, poor light, weird angles etc.
3) It would have some kind of kinetic sensor that would let me trace symbols and arcs in the air with it, and interpret these glyphs into meaningful commands.
4) It would have headphones
5) And would do text-to-speech conversion from web-sites and RSS feeds to the quality of a Radio 4 documentary. Nice BBC English voices ...
6) It had wiki nature. Ie, not only did it have a wiki built in, but all the UI elements had a notional "edit this" button ...
7) It was scriptable in Python or something higher-level
8) It seemlessly managed and searched my mail / audio messages.
MSNBC - Your Next Computer
Sure. If they can provide one crucial element that personal computers have, but this article misses : freedom. Freedom for developers to hack their own applications. Freedom for anyone on the net to provide their own services without asking the phone company permission. Freedom to talk back and upload as much as you download.
And for me personally, I need a phone that's a portable software development environment. How would my handheld device work?
1) It would have a built in camera.
2) that camera could take a picture of anything I scrawled on a piece of paper and reliably OCR it, extract the text and diagrams. And it would transparently handle hand-shaking, poor light, weird angles etc.
3) It would have some kind of kinetic sensor that would let me trace symbols and arcs in the air with it, and interpret these glyphs into meaningful commands.
4) It would have headphones
5) And would do text-to-speech conversion from web-sites and RSS feeds to the quality of a Radio 4 documentary. Nice BBC English voices ...
6) It had wiki nature. Ie, not only did it have a wiki built in, but all the UI elements had a notional "edit this" button ...
7) It was scriptable in Python or something higher-level
8) It seemlessly managed and searched my mail / audio messages.
I think petfrog looks beautiful. I kind of want one.
And yet ... I suspect the whole thing would be crap - usability-wise.
Firstly, I can't find out how big it's meant to be. If it's a handheld, then the Internet Browser example is just bogus. Both the screen and the keyboard are implausibly small. And the "petfrog" logo wastes nearly as much space as either.
I like the fact that the navigation, select and undo buttons are big. But imagine this is something where the screen and keyboard are sensibly big. How big is this navigation window then?
The UI is designed in the same style as the physical unit - the user experience is therefore simple , seamless and most sophisticated for every single application.
Is similarity of "style" really what makes the experience simple, seamless and sophisticated? As far as I can tell, the similarity of style consists of the orange and blue colour schemes, but doesn't stop one bit of the UI being a keyboard, another bit of the UI being a picture of a joystick, and another some amazingly retro virtual reality thang to make finding your MP3s more challenging.
I wonder how they get pseudo-physical feedback on a touch pad? Does it go all bendy due to Piezzo-electric effects or something?
And yet ... I suspect the whole thing would be crap - usability-wise.
Firstly, I can't find out how big it's meant to be. If it's a handheld, then the Internet Browser example is just bogus. Both the screen and the keyboard are implausibly small. And the "petfrog" logo wastes nearly as much space as either.
I like the fact that the navigation, select and undo buttons are big. But imagine this is something where the screen and keyboard are sensibly big. How big is this navigation window then?
The UI is designed in the same style as the physical unit - the user experience is therefore simple , seamless and most sophisticated for every single application.
Is similarity of "style" really what makes the experience simple, seamless and sophisticated? As far as I can tell, the similarity of style consists of the orange and blue colour schemes, but doesn't stop one bit of the UI being a keyboard, another bit of the UI being a picture of a joystick, and another some amazingly retro virtual reality thang to make finding your MP3s more challenging.
I wonder how they get pseudo-physical feedback on a touch pad? Does it go all bendy due to Piezzo-electric effects or something?
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
The Asian central banks aren't buying U.S. government bonds for investment purposes; they're buying for mercantilist purposes. By buying dollars and dollar-denominated assets like Treasury bonds, they help keep their currencies relatively weaker and the dollar relatively stronger. And by providing a ready market for our government's chief product, they've helped keep U.S. interest rates low. That keeps politicians happy and enables American companies and consumers to do what they do best: borrow tons of money at favorable rates and spend it.
Wanna Buy a T-Bill, Sucker? - The foreign fools who are buying American bonds. By Daniel Gross
Wanna Buy a T-Bill, Sucker? - The foreign fools who are buying American bonds. By Daniel Gross
A good alt.money tribe discussion on Gold backed money.
Tribe Discussion: Alternative Money and Economics - Tribe.net
Tribe Discussion: Alternative Money and Economics - Tribe.net
Mark Bernstein has interesting piece on Test Driven Development and the return to a "craft" model for software.
Mark Bernstein: Test Driven
Mark Bernstein: Test Driven
Dave Pollard has a good essay on images and propaganda. Recommended.
(Although I don't, of course, agree with some of the flaky "nature abhores pain" stuff in the last paragraph. :-)
How to Save the World
(Although I don't, of course, agree with some of the flaky "nature abhores pain" stuff in the last paragraph. :-)
How to Save the World
Paul T has an idea which is just so crazy it might work.
He's working on a screen / feed scraper for Tribe discussion forums which lets you turn threads into polls. The poster who starts the first thread places a list of options, simply by wrapping them in double equals signs like this :
Which is your favourite exotic Brazilian fruit?
== Acai ==
== Cupuacu ==
== Pitanga ==
== Caja ==
etc.
Any later post can then vote for an option by pitting a single = in front of it. eg =Caja
That's it. It then totals the votes for each user.
Very nice. And very wiki :-)
Tribe Discussion: Social software intellectuals - Tribe.net
He's working on a screen / feed scraper for Tribe discussion forums which lets you turn threads into polls. The poster who starts the first thread places a list of options, simply by wrapping them in double equals signs like this :
Which is your favourite exotic Brazilian fruit?
== Acai ==
== Cupuacu ==
== Pitanga ==
== Caja ==
etc.
Any later post can then vote for an option by pitting a single = in front of it. eg =Caja
That's it. It then totals the votes for each user.
Very nice. And very wiki :-)
Tribe Discussion: Social software intellectuals - Tribe.net
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