Eureka Man

from James Mc Parlane

There is a hypothesis pertaining to robotics and computer generated, human-like characters called the Uncanny Valley. It states that as robots become more and more human-like, the comfort of humans interacting with them takes a sharp dip before it rises again towards fully human interaction.

In Fernando Pereira’s latest take on Powerset, he eludes to [...]

I had never shopped at CD Baby before. I had a fun time. Now they get a blog mention and a link out of it. Site designers take note.

I think I’m in love with Jeff Han.

If, as it seems, the iPhone’s software will all come from Apple then all the development fun will happen in the browser, in particular in whatever version of Safari the shiny little device ships with. And it will be fun if Apple give us, as developers, access the right information. I’m talking here [...]

I like it.  Joel tackles a pet peeve of mine, the myriad of ways to end your Windows session, as an instance of the general principle of less options == better UI.

Just experienced: a reason that web sites hacking the right-click is bad. It’s the same as the usual problems with overriding browser behavior. In Writely, Firefox 2.0 is now very kindly underlining spelling mistakes for me. But when I go to right-click and change the spelling, Writely has very unkindly got rid [...]

I just realized what’s missing from the Google Reader interface….Search! Why can’t I search inside all my subscriptions just like I can do with emails in Gmail? Come on, I’ve seen all the BigTable magic you Googlers have access to. I know you can do this.

Right-click menus are problematic for novice (and also experienced) computer users for several reasons:

Discoverability
Novice users are surprised when you tell them you can right click things to get extra options.
Added complexity
After discovering that their interface to the computer has another variable, they can become confused as to which button they should use in which situation.
Too [...]

ChaCha is a new search engine that will connect you to a personal search assistant (a human!) to help you with your query. Matthias decided to test it out with a challenging query:

Status:
Looking for a guide …
Status:
Connected to guide: SomeGuide
SomeGuide:
Hi there. I will be helping with your search.
SomeGuide:
Hey, there. How are you today?
SomeGuide:
So [...]

It just doesn’t have enough workingness yet. Files that don’t show up, or won’t transfer.
Having said that, I did keep trying to use it. If it worked properly I would find it pretty useful. But don’t you feel this should and will be baked into the OS?

I’m lovin’ the new iTunes album flicking interface. I’ve been using CoverFlow for a while but it’s nice to have it integrated into the iTunes library. Apple actually bought CoverFlow for this, I’m assuming for patents and/or people.

On the downside, the iTunes version doesn’t seem as good at getting album art automatically, and incidently, ignored [...]

To my one blog subscriber,
If you’re wondering why I’m posting twice in the same month (how shocking!), it’s because things are changing around here. You are reading this via the RSS feed so you won’t be aware that I have redesigned the blog’s homepage. My intent was to make this medium more conducive [...]

I like nice clean interfaces. Firefox’s search box has always bothered me. It’s always there, cluttering up your view with your last entered search terms. It’s too small and fights with the url box for space. I always have it disabled.
So as practice for another XUL project I’ve been working on, [...]

At the end of January, James Corbett coined the term Feed Grazer with reference to my OPod widget. Well, he’s certainly captured some people’s imagination with that phrase. Via James, comes news of Grazr.com. Their main product is still under wraps but they have released the Grazer Mini, which bears a distinct resemblance to OPod, [...]

Microsoft’s Live Clipboard is great stuff. Plus it’s not dependant on Microsoft Live at all. Microsoft are just proposing the standard and providing a nice little desktop integration app for their Windows users.
Have a look at the screencasts. There will definately be UI issues to be worked out. This functionality should [...]