blagophilia » internet

Things I Read Via RSS

larry — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:39:22 +0000

I’ve seen this in some other places, it’s a list of the various things you read via RSS feeds. I decided to post a cross section of my own RSS feed reading ways. So here is a quick list of the things I read. I have not linked directly to all the feeds since I figure if you are interested you’ll want to see the site first before subscribing. In some cases though it did not make sense to, if it is just a feed link I will note it.

Tech Stuff

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) – A great blog if you use apple products. They have news, products and all sorts of stuff here. It is a great way to find new stuff.

Mac OSX Hints – The name says it all. I use it to find out stuff I did not know about OS X or to help me figure out how to do something.

SlashDot – News For Nerds as they say. I like it for the leads it gives on news. The comments, well they are amusing.

Apple Hot News – More of my fanboy nature I guess. A good source of Apple info from the source. (Feed Link)

SCIAM Technology – Scientific American Tech feed. (Feed Link)

News Sites

BBC News – It’s the BBC.

The Huffington Post – I guess I like my news a little left leaning. It’s a nice source for political news mostly.

CBC News – Canadian BBC!

CNN.com – I still like CNN, it gives a good general overview

NY Times – Even though I get this in the dead tree version I also like to read bits online.

Random Stuff

digg – The ultimate aggregator I think. It’s a way to find stuff I’d miss.

Simply Recipes – A good food recipe site. I’ve tried quite a few things from here.

Overheard in NY – I love this site since I live in the area. It’s funny what you do hear at random on the train.

Daily Kos – Yes I am a democrat, I recommend you read this site if you are one too.

Firedoglake – Another liberal/democrat blog.

Webcomics

QC RSS – Questionable Content, it’s a mini soap opera slacker style.

Scary Go Round – I think this might be one of the oldest out there. It is very english, and rather amusing.

xkcd.com – If you like the internet then you know what this one is already.

Diesel Sweeties – DS is just awesome. Think raunchy people, robots and 8-bit pixelation goodness.

Lucid TV – Doctors and offensive web comics.

Penny Arcade – One of the oldies, gamer comics and blog.

Games

IGN Complete – Only good source online I think for gaming news.

WOW Insider – For the WoW Addict like me. It’s a good source of information on World of Warcraft.

Blogs

Making Light – It’s a great blog of stuff. Some politics, some “human interest”, lots of interesting articles.

F*cking c*nts – A friend’s blog, it will offend and amuse. She talks about all sorts of stuff regarding politics and society.

Ironic Sans – Good blog about ideas regarding design, media, and technology.

Neil Gaiman’s Journal – The author’s blog. It’s just great and I want him to adopt me.

Technorati Tags: blogs, internet, rss

On Color and User Interfaces – My Personal Do’s and Don’ts

larry — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:42:00 +0000

I was recently reminded of the importance of color, contrast, and placement in a user interface from some things I have seen at work. That is the importance of of using correct color combinations. I mean really it is not that hard to figure out what colors go together. When I lived in San Diego I was involved with UI design from mostly a web perspective but was also a part of studies to figure out what worked.

Based on the stellar examples from work and elsewhere I wrote down my own personal list of do’s and don’ts regarding color and UI elements in general.

Don’t use colors that are similar in tone or brightness.
This one seems pretty straightforward you’d think. But please. Yellow text on a white background? That’s pretty damn obvious you would think? At work in their awesome wisdom they decided to output the search results in that lovely combination. It’s the revenge of Colonel Mustard on Mrs. White. Lighthouse.org has a great article about color.
Don’t rely on color for visual cues.
This one is harder to pin down. I admit the only reason I am so sensitive to it is because I worked with someone who was color blind. I also saw a great example of this the other day when someone printed the page out in black and white and misread the intentions. Folks it is simple, color can be used to help cue but give other ways as well. Be it a symbol, a key, or say text style on top of color.
Do use zebra strips for tables of information.
Zebra striping, the use of alternating colors on a table of information is very important. The human eye uses color changes to help sort information. Taking this into account can allow for the display of lots of information in a readable format.
Do use icons that make sense.
This is one that many overlook. If you want say a print icon, use a printer not some fancy paper thing. We all love a pretty interface but make it one that can be figured out.
Do give people an alternative with icons.
This really ties into the above do. Things like a mouse over or some text with the icon help people learn the interface quickly. There is nothing more annoying than playing “guess the icon.”
Do recall Fitt’s Law
To quote the wiki entry: “Fitts’s law (often cited as Fitts’ law) is a model of human movement which predicts the time required to rapidly move to a target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.”
This is often overlooked. Size does matter as does screen real estate. Make things easy to get to and easy to click on. Small can look nice but too small is just a frustration.
Do take into account navigation conventions.
This is fairly straightforward. While I like innovate use of an interface I also know that I like to know what to expect. Norms develop over time because they work. Don’t ignore these lightly. While your whizzbang new interface might be awesome to look at if I can’t figure out how to find where I should save then it has failed me. Things like top and right/left side navigation work because of how we, as humans, organize and interact with things. Don’t take the human side out of the equation when designing your interface.
Do minimize the clickyness.
We all like organization, we all like knowing where to get to a menu option. We don’t like having to click four times for a common function. Think hard about what you users will do and organize the layout according to that. i should not have to dig for something that you expect me to be doing. I should not need to backtrack either.
Don’t crowd the screen.
Pretty simple this one, but often overlooked. Too much of a good thing is worse than too little. Don’t go nuts with information.
Do make your user feedback clear, concise, and have it make sense.
The infamous Windows “Abort, Retry, Fail” is a great example. Have your feedback use natural language and be concise. When asking someone to do something or not it’s better to say “Do this” versus “OK”.
Edit: As pointed out by Lenna the commonality of “OK” and “Cancel” on dialog boxes. People please. Not everything in this world can be answered by OK/Cancel or Yes/No. If something fails an “OK/CANCEL” dialog is nonsensical. Is it ok that it failed? Do I want to cancel the failure?

Technorati Tags: color, design, internet, list, user interface

I Blag, Therefore I am.

larry — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:15:11 +0000

I was thinking today about the whole idea of an online presence and what impact it has had on not only my own life but others as well. It is really something new and very much unprecedented in human history. We have, for the first time, the ability to present ourselves as we want to million, or perhaps billions of ppl with little effort. Everyone is a potential celebrity, and nothing is private.

I myself have been online in some form or another for at least 20 years. It began when I was around fourteen with Compuserve. It grew from that to BBS’, then to usenet, website, and now to all sorts of social networking and personal projects. But this is not so much about my progression as is the progression of people as a whole.

For myself I now have a flickr account, this blag, and a good reads account. I am on multiply, and facebook, but not myspace. I twitter (though not locations I am going to be), and I have just started using last.fm.

It really is no surprise that the largest single usage of the internet revolves around social activities. Humans are, after all, social creatures. But the main question I have here is how much is too much? It’s become expected that a person will have an email address at the least now. But I see people, young and old, putting up information that is rather scary in the implications. I have to wonder if the reality of being online the fact that it is just as real and affects their lives is understood.

We have the worst case – the teenager who killed themself after a myspace prank went bad. But we also have the good stuff, various amazing and interesting blogs. The catharsis of revelation that is postsecret. The ability to connect to people, to find the ones we may have never found otherwise. But, what does it say about us? Our need to publish our lives, to forsake our privacy for some kind of validation? For some attention, or to just say “here I am. I exist.”

As an exercise, try googling yourself. You can find some interesting results. Some of them surprising perhaps. Where is this leading? Will we one day surrender all of our privacy for some online validation to show something off? We have as a whole surrendered a lot of our privacy. Where will is lead? Will we one day become required to publish information? Will our very existence be proven only by being found on google? If we don’t have a blog will we be looked down on?

It is not all doom and gloom though. There are groups like the EFF trying to fight to make sure our rights are not trampled on in regards to privacy, and digital rights.

Technorati Tags: eff, facebook, flickr, internet, privacy, rights, twitter