Physically they had differences, odd limp appendages that dangled like half filled bags, the larger one had a tiny trunk between its legs next to some kind of external sacs. MorningLightMountain could see no practical use for either set.
From Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star.
During my erasmus programme, I am taking courses from the master on interaction design, something that I’ve wanted to learn for a while now. Right now I am taking “Graphical User Interfaces” where Usability is a main concern.
I’ve read about this but Russell Beattie makes an excellent suggestion on how to measure the usability and ease of use of an interface. This might be used as a guide line, but I don’t believe it should be followed blindly. Sometimes more “expensive” actions may have better results if you want more consistency across your application, or if the user can learn something with the process, or there are just too many ways of using your application that you can’t predict all of them.
As a tool for comparing different options, this is an good way of having an idea of which one is the best, even before running some usability tests.
The discussion about the workflow of installing a new application has been revived.
I agree with the problems raised with dmg’s, specially with the need to unmount them. But with a zipped app, there is no way of instructing the user to move it to the correct place. I like the idea of suggesting the user to move the application to the right place, but I disagree with Andy Kim in two points:
First I would like to choose the place where I want to install the application. I don’t really use /Applications but ~/Applications instead (so apps don’t have root access) and I organize my apps in folders (Dev, Creative, Utils, etc…). I don’t think everyone should do this, but they should have the possibility of having their own organization.
Second, the dialog should be brought up when a new app is downloaded (using FSEvents or something similar) instead on the first time it’s opened. This has the advantage of having applications always in the right place and it’s easier to catalog the application if I do it right after the download, and not after some time when I’m checking the contents of the download folder.
Anyway, Apple should suggest a standard (and correct) way of doing this, and maybe allowing the possibility of extending the process with some scripts (for serial keys, EULAs, some shell-fu, etc..).
In the beginning of the semester, I took time to upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6) since I had no project running, and I could use a refresh in my main (and for now only) computer. Since it didn’t asked anything, I actually updated the first time, but now I am doing a clean install and here are the steps I followed:
Git, pip and other tools will be installed as they are needed, but I’m thinking about trying HomeBrew instead of the bloated macports. I’m still not conviced, but I’m really into a 64bit only package manager.
John Resig just published a small app that guides you through the dark secrets of javascript. Even better than a book for me!
Randy Pausch’s talk about time management. A few tips on to manage your time and improve your GTD from someone who had very few time left.
I strongly recommend it for people who have too many things in their todo list.
Chama-se República 2.0 e a ideia é aproximar os jovens da vida política. O conceito República 2.0 faz parte das “20 propostas jovens para Portugal” que vão ser apresentadas hoje em Lisboa pelo Conselho Nacional de Juventude (CNJ).
Bonita ideia.
A proposta da CNJ é a de que todos os órgãos de soberania criem plataformas digitais, como as redes sociais do Facebook ou do Twitter, que permitam a participação de todos, “melhorando a relação entre cidadãos e instituições e promovendo uma verdadeira democracia participativa”, explicou.
Essa rede devia sugir por si própria, e não devia ser incentivada pelos próprios partidos, quer pela sua função de representação, quer pela angariação de novos membros/votos. Já andava a pensar nisto há uns tempos e acho que é uma coisa que devia surgir, mas na qual não tenho grande esperança.
How To Give A More Exciting Presentation – Yaili gives some good advice for your presentations at web conference.
Okay, I might just not agree with the emergency stunts, but I’m sure you won’t need them.
Waiting for the Bus – Cyanide and Happiness (I love this comic, and sometimes they have some pearls like this one)
I’ve given a couple of wedesign workshops, and one thing that makes it easy to explain is the div element. It just works as a box, and you have them nested. And that’s it.
Now with HTML5, there are a lot of new tags that somehow have the same function as div, but for special kinds of content. Article, aside, nav, etc…
While they help to organize the content in a semantic way (instead of using classes like in microformats), it raises the entry level on HTML a little bit. On the other hand it speeds javascript execution by using getElementByTagName, which might be really useful in full blown web applications.
Three years since I stopped doing gym (at the time with my basketball team, I am going back. I’m not really much of a fan of doing exercise inside a sweaty room, but since Göteborg has an unstable weather and the gym is right inside the building, we’re going for it.
And we’re only paying 100 SEK (about 10 euros) per semester, against the 30 euros/month they cost in Portugal.
Finalmente depois de umas viagens e alguns imprevistos técnicos, estão disponíveis os vídeos desta edição do Take Off. Como é normal gostaria de agradecer à equipa do Sapo Vídeos pelo apoio, ao Celso Martinho pela camera e ao André Ribeirinho por guardar os vídeos durante tanto tempo ;)
Espero que sirva para partilhar o conteúdo e as ideias a quem não pode estar presente, e que sirva de incentivo a participarem em futuras edições.
I have arrived at Göteburg – Sweden and I’ll be spending the next semester here at Chalmers. I’m not alone in this journey, the guys are here with me.
Right now I’m enjoying the last day of holidays and getting to know the city, so updates here might be scarce, since I am restricting personal stuff to our common erasmus-related tumblelog. I will give out the link per request.
For now, the weather is nice (already got in the pool) and we’re now adapting to the new timetable.
Underlying the layer of whimsy that permeated his work there was a more serious tone: expression, simplicity, and education. In all of his code, and writing, he was constantly trying to find ways to bring the art of hacking to more people – to younger people – to simplify the complexities that normally permeate development.
John Resign on _why’s disappearance stating Personally, I feel a mixture of joy and amazement.
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I actually believe this is a step in his life, so he might return again in more awesomeness!
This holidays were themed by scifi. After SG-1 and in the beginning of BSG, I watched Gattaca [Thanks Té for the suggestion].
The movie is somewhat dark and heavy, almost like Blade Runner. The plot doesn’t include robots, but focuses in genetic manipulation and its effects (subject that is also studied in the Peter F. Hamilton’s books I am reading).
In the future there are two kinds of people, the ones who are born naturally and those who are engineered. The former are discriminated by society for their genetic incapabilities and relinquished to do toilet cleaning for the rest of their days.
The story is about one of the natural born, that tries to fulfill his dream of going to space against all odds.
Checking up on my posts from 2007 I noticed how I would evangelize some technologies as being the next wave of the web, and those should already be mainstream in 2009. Here are my thoughts on the matter, very subjective to my opinion and experiences.
In 2009 I see large media websites and social networks to be adopting microformats, but corporate websites and such haven’t really though about it. Webdesigners and Webdevelopers that deserve such titles are already implementing microformats in their pages because it’s really simple to do so.
I believe traditional corporate developers don’t really care about this technologies. They are not a requirement for their projects and therefore not worth the time. A good way of correcting the problem would be to have Java and .NET promote these technologies.
The problem with microformats is not the server implementation. Wordpress alone transforms a lot of websites and blogs into a semantic repository. Long-tail websites like Upcoming and LastFM also provide microformats for their content. The major issue I find is the lack of uses, and browser integration for those.
It’s 2009 and none of the major browsers support the majority of microformats by default. It almost got into FF3 and it’s somehow in IE8, but not at the point people actually use it. Another opportunity would be using hCard information for the default data when you register an account in a new website.
At least uFs are out there just waiting to be used. The reverse would be much worse! We just have to give tools for people and machines to use them.
OpenID suffers from the same browser-support problems as microformats, but in this one I agree it’s not browser-ready. There are few mainstream websites that support OpenID, and those that do have faulty implementations (usually the 1 account – 1 openid problem, or the problems in maintaining an UI for both traditional and openid logins).
Websites that support this technology are aimed at geeks or alpha-users go into the trouble of implementing OpenID. Others don’t, and until a perfect UI is reached I wouldn’t do it for a general user target.
OpenID is acceptable in a technical view, but when it comes to implement it may not be that simple (Google itself said they were taking their time to do it) and when it comes to UX the gap may be too big for the mom and dad kind of user.
What I happen to see a lot is twitter/facebook/etc… login option. Since the majority of uber-geeks have accounts in those websites, it’s easier to ask them to login in those websites than rather ask for an URL. You are what?
OpenSearch hasn’t evolve at all. FF, IE and Opera all support it (safari doesn’t want to loose its simplicity, probably) and popular search engines also offer the description file (as well as this website). Users just don’t use it at all, since it’s easier to use google with one or two extra keywords.
Maybe when Google’s monopoly in online searches is at risk this might change.
Of all three, this is the one that is working the best. It’s aimed at tech people, so with a few libraries, it’s a nice way of dealing with authentication of web APIs. I actually think it limits the developer to include a way of accepting the token in a web view, but most developers don’t seem to complain.
Asking for user and password is not secure, and people are starting to know that. Developers know that as well, and therefore want to offer a secure alternative. OAuth is the answer, and it’s looking pretty good. Even in Twitter mashups!
Django for the Desktop is a great way of describing Camelot. It uses SQL-Alchemy for the SQL connection and PyQT for the interface.
I don’t really know why they didn’t go with Django ORM (probably because it’s not released in a standalone form) but the way your code looks is exactly like a django model, and the django admin customizations.
Too bad for the QT dependency for Windows, but it’s still a nice way of developing applications which are just an interface to a database.
Tom Morris write and excellent response (although a bit geeky) to Calanis’ post against the closeness of the iPhone.
I have to agree with Tom, those who buy an iPhone know what they are buying, they know how closed their iPhones (along with data-plans) are. Sure, all phones are closed, from being locked to a network, to block wifi/bluetooth/usb transfers to promote data-plans.
If you’re buying something (as awesome and eye candy as it can be), you must know if you can live with it’s closeness or not.
Each director, including Schmidt, also received a “commemorative gift” in fiscal 2008 valued at $7,580, as well as a cash payment to offset the tax liability of the gift.
Macrumours has a piece on the fact that Eric Schmidt has never received his payments for being a director at Apple. Although I find it interesting, I was amused by the cash payment to compensate the taxes of a gift.
I bet this could make wonders in Portuguese political and sport landscapes.
Richard Jones has posted about using Python’s with keyword for a GUI DSL The idea has already crossed my mind when thinking about Python Universal GUI (still stalled for lack of time, sorry).
This idea could be used for some other cute DSLs in python, since it appears to be the land of ruby only.
