Monday, February 28, 2005
Jef Raskin dies
The digital airwaves are buzzing with the news that Jef Raskin died at the weekend.
Jef's outstanding contribution to the world included his book The Humane Interface.
http://jefthemovie.com/
http://jef.raskincenter.org/home/index.html
1:52 PM|
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eBay
There's an interesting-looking conference planned for August on the subject of eBay, organised by Chimera (University of Essex).
Conference website:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/culturesofebay.html
1:30 PM|
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Copyfight Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop
We had a hugely enjoyable time yesterday at the second Copyfight event at Speakers' Corner. Buffet breakfast - accompanied by nitty-gritty discussion on Creative Commons, authors' moral rights and much more, and liberally lubricated with sparkling wine - was followed by a 1pm session in the freezing wind at Speakers' Corner, where Cory Doctorow was the first to ascend the Copyfight podium (a distinctly rickety wooden ladder).
Cory was closely followed by Tom Steinberg, Bill Thompson, Bill's children, Suw Charman and many more. Some speakers faced problems turning around when half-way of the ladder: we all laughed in the nicest possible way. The Speakers' Corner hecklers were highly responsive, and in general the show drew a good-sized crowd considering the nature of the competing attractions. Most people had their digital cameras, so there should be some pics posted here and there.
There's be another event on 3 April.
Bill Thompson on copyright and moral rights.
PS Suw's now posted her pics of the event on Flickr.
12:53 PM|
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Thursday, February 24, 2005
Subcribers
I'm a little stunned to have today achieved a grand total of 100 subscribers via Bloglines (it's one of a number of blogfeeds, but perhaps one of the better known). Perhaps I should bake a cake?
Anyway, the blog has been up for around two and a half years now, but the RSS feed etc. for much less time.
One thing that seems to hold true is that the more subscribers you get, the more anonymous they choose to be (subscribers have the option).
Exploring the public subscribers is really fun though, and in particular the different approaches to the categorisation of their Bloglines feeds.
I'm always slightly taken aback by first, people's categories, and second, which category they put my blog in. I've been meaning to say something about this for a few months...
It's actually very difficult to predict categories and labels because you are generally just not coming from the same place. I am not in PR, so I just don't know how a PR person views my world, I'm not in marketing, so likewise. Which is why the card sorting stuff is so important. See my comments in a recent post on William Hudson's recent talk at UK UPA about card sorting.
8:05 PM|
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Recommender systems
Recommender systems have a long way to go.
Take my current CD recommendations on Amazon.
I've recently bought a number of records on Amazon such as Johnny Cash's American IV: The Man Comes Around ('cos I love the second track); Jerry Springer the Opera (because I've been meaning to since I saw the show two years ago and there are just such fantastic lyrics in there, particularly about the lesbians and the chocolate); Wendy Carlos's Switched on Bach (having been reminded on the radio by Bill Bailey of all the old Moog and theremin stuff); Horace Silver's The Cape Verdean Blues ('cos I love his Song for my Father LP); Mercury Rev (Deserter's Songs) and some Salsoul Orchestra stuff which is great for cooking to...
I've also bought in a shop this week Jimmy Smith's Rockin' The Boat (because I love jazz organ, Shirley Scott who I love was a follower of his, and Smith recently died so he kinda rose to the surface of consciousness); and from a non-UK website, A Arte de Milton Nascimento (which I've had on tape from a friend's vinyl since 1992 and have been trying to track down ever since). Oh, and Elliott Smith's album 12, which I purchased directly from a fan website (saw Smith in Barcelona several years ago, was impressed, plus had various bits on tape over the years, including 12). And other stuff from Amazon associates (Rob Dougan...) too.
Yesterday, Nico Macdonald called me a muso. Well, maybe I am. I think I'm just interested in music. And interested in finding more stuff that I like.
But telling Amazon what I buy is pretty laborious, and what it recommends to me as a consequence is worse than pedestrian. This despite having been an Amazon buyer over several years. Bought some Cash? Here's some more. And more. Recommender systems based on 'machine intelligence' are the art of the obvious but with extra effort required on the part of the buyer. We really haven't got much beyond Microsoft's Clippy and his damned letter. They don't say 'Looks like you're into Johnny Cash', and wiggle another Cash record in front of your eyes, but they might as well.
Just because I buy one Johnny Cash record on a given buying expedition doesn't mean that's the best time to try and sell me another. I'd say the reverse is true: it's probably the worst time.
These systems have a way to go before they offer what the man at Ray's Jazz on Charing Cross Road does, off the top of his head. He can tell me which of twelve recordings for an artist will be the best introduction, he tells me when a particular recording lacks 'inspiration' in certain parts, comments on the recording quality...and also juggles what the client is willing to pay without making this sensitive subject explicit.
Yes, other buyers' opinions on any given site are great to have, but often they don't exist, and where they do the 'trust' system for reviewers' contributions is rudimentary: what does it really mean to be a 'top 500 reviewer' on Amazon?
The solution is often to consult other websites such as Allmusic, and search for some form of consensus where there is no well-informed, trustworthy and lateral-thinking human intelligence... Though for now my money's on sharing systems such as Last.fm and audioscrobbler (based on people, not on mechanistic decision systems) which rule the roost by plugging into other people.
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Friday, February 18, 2005
Better, more efficient card sorting
Last night's UPA event - William Hudson on card sorting - at Microsoft House was massively oversubscribed, with waiting lists to get onto the waiting list.
Little did we think that card sorting would be so popular, but William has come up with some new software that addresses a real issue in the practice of card sorting. Computer-based card sorting is unsatisfactory in many ways (for example, I believe the tactile experience of handling the cards is vital in the card sorting process), but manual processes are currently very inefficient when it comes to processing the data.
William's new system, which involves a piece of new - cheap - software he has written, combined with the use of a cheap hand-held scanner, retains the benefits of a manual sorting process - there are physical cards to sort - while allowing card data to be input to a computer and analysed rapidly.
You can find out more on William's card sorting page.
10:54 AM|
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Monday, February 14, 2005
Speaking update
Lest Tuesday's South-West Usability Group talk on ethnography, at Nesta Futurelab in Bristol, caused co-organiser Chris McEvoy to become 'ethnused', which can only be a good sign.
Speaking engagements I've currently got booked include:
- British Psychological Society annual conference, Manchester: symposium on psychology and politics (31 March-2 April)
- Re-design Your Intranet Conference, London: conference presentation and one-day workshop (13-15 April)
- People Inspired Innovation, Adastral Park, Suffolk (21-23 September)
2:30 PM|
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Too much information
London-bound train at Bristol Temple Meads station, due to leave 10.40pm, actually started heading for London some 45 minutes later:
"We apologise for the delay in the departure of this train. This is due to a computer that controls the movement of the train, which is defective. We are going to try resetting the computer. Once again, I do apologise for the delay in this departure...[...]
...Unfortunately we cannot fix the computer in the front cab..., so what we're going to try and do is..."
I think this is what is known as too much information.
12:40 PM|
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Sunday, February 13, 2005
Record labels and dinosaurs
Jason Kitcat has this week blogged the death of jazz organist Jimmy Smith, and today's Observer column by John Naughton pointed to the success of services such as iTunes in the face of profound indifference - nay, hostility - on the part of the record industry.
I'm a fan of both Jimmy Smith and his follower Shirley Scott. And many other artists. But I'm becoming increasingly frustrated by the non-availability of so much stuff that came out on vinyl at one time or another. Records that for some obscure reason were never reissued on CD. Tracks that have morphed into collectors' items, just because the record companies can't be arsed to reissue them.
Checking out websites for some records I've been chasing for years (in some cases, for more than ten years), I find that most are still not reissued, anywhere in the world, while some are on offer second-hand at between £58 and £125 on sites such as Amazon (associates). Don't get me wrong: I'm not after collectors' editions, just any old copy of the recordings concerned. And these are mid-list to top-list artists in their genre, who made quite a spash at the time, not hopeless cases. I won't mention the records concerned, just in case prices get driven up even higher.
How have we come to this? CDs were first issued in the 1980s; record companies have had 20 years to reissue their vinyl backlists. What is their problem? We've now got download music services (no thanks to them), which means they don't even have a physical product to manufacture. And still so many recordings have disappeared, seemingly for good.
Can record companies really be surprised that people take the law into their own hands and just copy stuff? I still have drawer-fuls of tapes that I'm trying doggedly to replace with digital media, with little success. Without any prospect of filling this void, if someone offers me un-licensed MP3s, I'll take them. I'd very much like the original artists to get their royalties, but if record companies make this impossible, what is a person to do?
5:29 PM|
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Update
It's been a bit quiet here recently, owing to loads of fieldwork in off-line environments, travelling, and the acquisition of a marvellous new hi-fi, and so on. My apologies.
I've just updated the UX calendar page with many new goodies. Discussions are underway with David Hawdale and Nico Macdonald about the proposed new UX calendar for the UK, and I'm looking forward to the day when calendars are something I contribute to rather than maintain...
4:27 PM|
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Friday, February 11, 2005
From Arial to Wide Latin: The secret language of fonts
A fascinating BBC Radio 4 programme on fonts.
"Ariel is a rubbish font..."
11:34 AM|
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Sunday, February 06, 2005
Cadius Spanish interaction design blog
The people behind the 'Cadius' Spanish interaction design discussion list have just launched a Spanish-language blog on interaction design, usability and information architecture.
The blog has the merit of bringing together both a 'Spanish' (Iberian, Maxican, Argentinian...) perspective on these sub-fields, with pointers to original Spanish-language material, and a window on the UX world for Spanish-language-only speakers.
Congratulations to Nacho Puell, Javier Cañada and the rest of the team behind the project.
4:17 PM|
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