- Isle of Wight model triceratops left in middle of high street – BBC News
"It takes about five blokes to move the dinosaur a couple of inches, so it was definitely a concerted effort and drink was probably involved".
- Amazon Alexa PHP Library
Useful for me, and for work. Not so useful for normal people.
- Alexa, Unlock the Internet
I use Siri a bit, but voice controlled computing feels like the web in 1996: weird to use now, and not properly joined up, but clearly going to be huge. But: always-on listening devices creep me out.
Tag: interface
Bookmarks for December 10, 2010
- Help: Twelve Tales of Healing
Your second stock-filler recommendation for the day! What are you waiting for? Go! Get shopping! Buy my friend's fine literary product and help make the world a better place!
- Invaders from Mars – Charlie's Diary
I know Stross is one of my regular linkees, and I'm sure a lot of you glide over him at this point, but I thought this was a particularly interesting read, and I commend it to anyone who is feeling frustrated by the apparently lack of ability for members of the public to influence anything in the wake of stuff like Wikileaks and the student fees protests. It won't tell you how to change things, but it provides an interesting perspective on the whys of the current situation, that lead to some interesting thoughts on how one might affect change in the medium-term future.
- The Fast Fiction Challenge – Volume 2 by Lee Barnett
Budgie's Fast Fiction Challenge, now in its second volume. I commend it to your attention as a perfect stocking filler.
- standpoint gallery
Reverting to Type: exhibition. Must go see.
- Havasu: a material exploration of conversational interfaces – Blog – BERG
Interested mostly into the insights into conversational interface, rather than the actual product here. For consideration: pair a more general use version of this with some voice recognition software, and it won't be long before all those SF voice-activated computers become a reality.
Bookmarks for September 6, 2010
- Latest leaked draft of secret copyright treaty: US trying to cram DRM rules down the world's throats – Boing Boing
This makes my blood boil. What kind of shitehawk can think that is is a fair or reasonable way to do business? The level of contempt that US business interests, and worse, politicians are showing for consumers around the world is staggering. Large chunks of the world are about to be shafted by people who they cannot hold accountable. US-resident chums, I would take it as a great kindness if you would write and call your representatives, on the issue of ACTA, and make their responses as public as possible.
- B.A.S.A.A.P. – Blog – BERG
Mr Jones is at the clever again. Good metaphor for designing better human computer interaction.
- Health Month
I've just signed up to beta-test this, turning better habits into a game, although I just missed the deadline for the September game. So, for the month of October, I must: go to the gym twice a week. Do productive work (outside of the dayjob) on three days each week. Drink only one alcohlic drink per week. If do this, I will buy myself an ipod shuffle. If not, I'll donate price of the same to charity. (And if I find it helpful, I'll up the requirements in November.)
Bookmarks for August 11, 2010
- Jugaad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Jugaad" is also a colloquial Hindi word that can mean an innovative fix, sometimes pejoratively used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such or a person who can solve a vexatious issue. It is used as much for enterprising street mechanics as for political fixers. In essence, it is a tribute to native genius, and lateral thinking.
- inessential.com: Flexibility and power
Excellent article on feature design. I think the art of building good apps is to have an underlying system engineered for maximum flexibility, with a user interface engineered for maximum power – that is: build systems that *can* do lots of things, as long as one can figure out a way to make accomplishing them trivially simple for the user. If you can't see how to do that, then it doesn't matter that that the system *could* do it, you shouldn't allow it to.
Bookmarks for January 21, 2010
- BumpTop Mac: Reinventing your Mac desktop.
Trying this out at work. Initial stuff seem positive.
- Ipredator – Surf the web anonymously and secure
This is very tempting. Certainly, if the DEB bill passes in it's present form, I'll be switching to this, or something very like it. (I tried TOR for basic web browsing, but it's sufficiently slow and fucked that I stopped again.)
Bookmarks for March 6, 2009
- Twitter = YouTube. – John Battelle's Searchblog
Clear analysis of why Google's might wish to acquire Twitter, and an interesting note about the likelihood of them being able to acquire the microblogging platform.
- Robots – The Big Picture – Boston.com
Stop whining about your lack of a fucking jetpack. Take a look at this lot, and tell me we're not living in the future.
- World Builder on Vimeo
Very pretty short film – a simple plot description will not do it justice, so just go watch. It's ten minutes out of your life, and will make your day better.
- Graphic Journey Blog: From Caveman to Spray Can
An address given in 2005 to the RSA about design and the world we live in. No earth shattering insights if you've read a lot of the design stuff I've linked to before, but some excellent commentary, interesting examples and nice turns of phrase.
Bookmarks for December 5, 2008
- Terminal Tips: Enable "path view" in Finder – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Than fuck. I hate not having a proper path in my finder windows.
- Johnny Chung Lee – Projects – Wii
It occurs to me that I own a Wiimote, but no Wii. Using it to turn my Mac screen into a multitouch surface might be fun. As long as, y'know, I use a pen and not my fingers. I'm not a client, after all. I don't need to do fingers-on-the-screen rubbish.
Bookmarks for September 7, 2008
- Welcome to The Shady Old Lady's Guide to London
Ugly as fuck, but this might be a useful site for reference/pocking around odd bits of Londonalia.
- MultiTouch – Modular MultiTouch LCD
Why yes, I do want this quite badly. Even just to use as a monitor/interface – I've gotten so used to slinging windows between virtual desktops that I would absolutely love to be able to do it by hand.
- Pulse Laser: OFF=ON, or, Whatever happened to Availabot?
This is one of those products that I simultaneously thing is quite a cool little representative thing, a genuinely nice idea in human computer interaction, and yet, I cannot see a practical use for. I either have multiple chat windows open, or I'm not using IM. And I just don't see how it'd work for multiple chat windows…
- List of London Gang names
OK, just two links on the subject, then.
- Category:Gangs in London – Wikipedia
Probably a few of these today
Bookmarks for Monday September 1st 2008 through Wednesday September 3rd 2008
- MultiTouch – Modular MultiTouch LCD
Why yes, I do want this quite badly. Even just to use as a monitor/interface – I've gotten so used to slinging windows between virtual desktops that I would absolutely love to be able to do it by hand.
- Pulse Laser: OFF=ON, or, Whatever happened to Availabot?
This is one of those products that I simultaneously thing is quite a cool little representative thing, a genuinely nice idea in human computer interaction, and yet, I cannot see a practical use for. I either have multiple chat windows open, or I'm not using IM. And I just don't see how it'd work for multiple chat windows…
- List of London Gang names
OK, just two links on the subject, then.
- Category:Gangs in London – Wikipedia
Probably a few of these today
Bookmarks for March 11, 2008
- Britannia, Borough, London, SE1 3RU- beerintheevening.com
Must pop down and check this pub out in the next week or so. My birthday is coming up (keep March the 22nd free if you can folks) and I hear this a rather nice whisky bar, so if it’s half decent, I’ll probably be drinking there.
- Noisy Decent Graphics: Your company’s app
So true. So painfully, painfully true.