I don’t get many opportunities to start a post with the letter x.
On my way after a morning appointment in Glebe. Across from the Glebe Town Hall someone left their runners on a bench but kept the laces.
It feels a bit spy thriller, like a “drop” location. I was hoping for a cryptic note, or USB drive with secret plans on it.
Maybe I’ve been watching too much “Homelands” and “The Americans”. There was just an abandoned sock and, as usual, usable shoes.
On the way to work this morning I encountered the following scene. Ten or so students sharing their morning journey with and through their smartphones. Received wisdom says we are alone with our smartphones, due to our intimate relationship with them. However, recent observations show mobile experiences can also be shared experiences.
Of special note is that they weren’t involved in isolated activity, the majority were involved in at least two other friends’ activity.
I hate complaining.
Wait, that’s a lie; in fact I actually like complaining. I like looking at a problem or some sort of sub-optimal condition and say, if you just changed that bit, if you just dropped that thingummy, it would be so much easier for the people who come into contact with it. I make a living from telling people what is’t optimal in their product, service, website and then offer suggestions based on research, information from users, and solutions other people have come up with. I’m a bit like an iron, smoothing out the wrinkles of experience. *groan*
So, you might say, complaining is my job. Yes, I like complaining. I spent 15 minutes on the phone with Apple yesterday whinging about how even though it let me type spaces in my password, didn’t flag it was an issue in the error checking, and accepted my entry; it still failed my login attempts because my pass had spaces which they didn’t record. I’ve never met a coder who hadn’t read the XKCD Password Strength comic so there’s no excuse for not testing predictable use cases. Really.
But this post isn’t about Apple, it’s about a different music service.
I’ve been told my presentation at last July’s WordCamp Sydney 2012 has finally made it to WordPress TV. Even though I don’t really like the sound of my voice or my annoying ticks and gestures, I thought it would be a good companion to the page of Inclusive Design resources I posted at the time.
A friend told me that it is now listed as a “Popular Video” on the front page of WP TV, so I thought I’d take advantage of the SEO love while I can. I apologise for the video being Flash and not HTML5, but if you visit the site you can also download the H264 version from the site.
I usually don’t share in this way but this video is so beautiful, passionate and inspiring I felt the need to share it here:
Please take 7 and a half minutes out of your day to fill your heart with this passionate film.
Thank you Shane Koyczan for this breathtaking film.
It’s only been a month and people are already ringing the death knell for Windows 8.
From pieces like this one claiming Windows 8 is an opportunity for Apple, to reviews panning the Microsoft Surface with RT, the tide has turned, from excitement and enthusiasm for Microsoft taking such a bold step, to opprobrium and ridicule for getting some things wrong with the latest release of their operating system.
As an Apple user and advocate for nearly two decades, I was always comfortable gloating that Apple seemed to get the User Interface right more often than not, even when the underlying operating system was a little flaky at times, to say the least. The interface always improved, even when the OS continued to fail.
Remember System 7.5? ’nuff said.
©Neil Guanlao http://www.neiguanlao.com/
Last week I had the pleasure of attending WordCamp Sydney 2012 and presented for the first time in a while. It was on a subject near to my heart, inclusive design. The biggest thrill for me was being able to present early and against someone I though would claim the entire crowd, Kimanzi T Constable who was following the keynote in the larger lecture hall. I still had a decent and enthusiastic crowd who posed some good questions. It was great to get the preso over at the start of the conference so I could relax and enjoy the rest of the conference, which I did, thoroughly.
The entire event is archived at Eventifier, which is well worth investigating in itself, as it collects public traces of your event through the content shared on twitter via hashtags, and there are better writers than I who chose to write about the presentations they saw there.