Posted by Jeff June 29, 2006
A nice video of NYTimes Tech columnist David Pogue’s talk at TED is here. He performs some suprisingly unsucky song parodies and comments on the state of user interface, tech support, and Steve Jobs’ simplicity meme.
My notes…
* Parody of “sounds of silence” - very good
* Emails: getting a lot of frustration. Too much tech, not enough support.
* Computers have gotten easier to use– broader, less technical audience. Entire Mac OS used to fit in 212K. War stories about listening in on Apple tech support - they collect funny dumb user stories, burning to CD.
* Error type 11…user keeps typing 11, LOL
* Screens getting smaller, fingers staying same size.
* Software: like joining a club, more features every year. “The software upgrade paradox“: if you improve software *enough*, you’ll eventually ruin it.
* Microsoft introduced a low-end stripped down word processor called MS Write. It tanked. This is the SUV principle: people like to surround themselves with unnecessary power.
* As you add more features, where do they go? Funny screenshot of Word with all toolbars open
* MS Shutdown dialog: 4 options - why in a combo box?!
* Funny - “Welcome to the Type a Word Wizard. I see you’re trying to type a word…”
* Intellegence: making something not consistent. Why is United States way down in the list in the U’s- should be first.
* Print Dialog: way too many options for simple stuff: why isn’t there a button “Print”?
* “Tap Counter”: at Palm - person whose job was to count how many taps for each task. If more than 3, had to redesign.
* “The Bill Gates Song” - “I am Bill Gates, and I write the code” - to the tune of “I write the songs that makes the whole world sing.”
* “Don’t cry for me Cupertino” - Steve Jobs as Evita.
* The Cult of Simplicity - Jobs always cared about simplicity, elegance, beauty. IPod: did everything wrong. fewer features, cost more. Lesson: simplicity sells.
* Really cool - SD card that folds in half, becomes USB. Macbook magnetic power plug.
* Voice macros - “thanks for that”, “piss off”-> “I admire your frankness..let’s agree to disagree.”. Version 8: improved from 95% accuracy.
* Remember: if it doesn’t work, not necessarily your fault.
* Easy is hard: sweat the details. Count the taps. Motivation: simplicity sells.
apple, davidpogue, HCI, ipod, microsoft, userinterface
Posted by Jeff June 28, 2006
Stylish “is to CSS what GreaseMonkey is to Javascript”. Stylish lets you to modify the look and feels by modifying a site-wide CSS to a site. I used it to tweak Chowhound. Even more impressive though, is the script library at Userstyles.org. You can install with a click even if you don’t know CSS. I’ve installed-:
boingboing, chowhound, css, firefox, gmail, goatse
Posted by Jeff June 27, 2006
Problem: The Chowhound redesign uses a freakin’ huge font (see comments here), and lots of ALL-CAPS RED text. This is annoying and hard to read. I have a way to fix it. Here is the before and after:
The after tones down/removes annoying interface elements, and gives more room to post title and contents.
If you use Firefox, you can install this style sheet:
- Install Stylish extension and restart. Open the chowhound site.
- Upon restart you should see a new icon in the lower right of Firefox:
- Click the icon, and a menu will appear. Choose “Create Style for chowhound.com”.
- Enter “Clean Chowhound” in the name field, and replace the text beneath it with the contents of this file. Clicking Apply, you should see the layout change as shown in the screenshot.
- If you like the changes, click Save — you’ll see Chowhound this way from now on!
- Let me comment if you like it, or these instructions didn’t work…
chowhound, css, firefox, stylish
Posted by Jeff June 25, 2006
In this post, I compare the chowhound redesign, yelp, and how to find good eats with the least investment of time. Summary is here. Images are clickable for larger versions.
Chowhound Classic
Tagline “For those who live to eat” — has always been a site you love to hate. A labor of love with no ad revenues, scraping by on user donations, the site features a text-based aesthetic. (We don’ need no stinking CSS!) The design (or lack of design) parallels the restaurants its readers discover - where fancy friends look around suspiciously at first, then fall in love with the food and reasonable prices.
The main draw of chowhound was its message boards: big sprawling nested discussions, one post per page. Finding a good restaurant would take an hour or two of combing through posts and seeing emerging concensus. It was only the passion of the contributors, and the knowledge that only hardcore hounds would make their way to these backrooms that made it worth it.
Lack of structure was its selling point and its main flaw. Small or new finds would often be followed by a comedy of errors, as readers tried to follow imprecise directions to obscure locations.
Yelp
A database-driven web site would have an entry for each restaurant, with address, telephone number and linked reviews - probably even an amazon-style star rating. Yelp.com is that site - sort of a localized epinions mashed up with google maps - very web 2.0. I scroll the map and restaurants appear sorted by reviews (and number of stars). A click yields the restaurant page with reviews. Pictures abound - the reviewers, the restaurants, the food. In a brilliant move, photos require a yelp account. Social features abound: reviews are given compliments, rated usefull funny or cool. It’s an addictive fun site - with the ability to send messages to members, one of who told me he’d written 80 reviews in a week.
Yelp vs. Chowhound
When we’re out shopping and want to seek out some good chow, I pull up yelp on my EVDO-equipped laptop. Sorting by review, the “Maptastic” feature gives me ten choices near my current location. Fewer choices is a good thing: Paradox of choice says that with more choices, happiness goes down..
I’m in Boston, a town filled with college students and recent graduates; my sense is that Yelp’s average age is mid-20’s, with more interest in fashion, nightclubs, etc. Chowhound likely has a wider range of ages, united by the common love of food. There are deep wells in Chowhound of people who have travelled and pay very close attention to their chow. Chowhounders seem to focus in on the food, not other aspects like whether it’d be a good date spot.
Chowhound 2.0
Now, Chowhound has a new redesign. Here are my impressions, compared to the classic chowhound site:
Feels very fast and responsive.
Ads: flash based, animated.Distracting.
Clean, bold red navigation elements.
Slick world map
Thread all in one page: didn’t use to be able to do that: Huge annoyance, much better now.
RSS feeds updated
Broken permalinks: old links to the site don’t work.
Content good as ever.
login: has stronger sense of identity, accountability
The Great Taco Search
Letr’s try a test– tacos in Waltham: I thought this would be a good example of a difference. First off- Yelp knows location. I ran a search for tacos in Waltham, only looking within 5 miles. This yields 4 places. From these hits, Taqueria Mexico sounds like good bet. Or, I can view on Google Maps .
Chowhound’s search only allows date/author restrictions - . The search shows the 10 most recent threads, out of 62. The new thread-at-once interface makes it more readable, but the results are inherently fuzzy: you get to be a fly on the wall on a lot of conversations, and draw your own conclusions. They include a place Yelp has never heard of - Tacqueria el Mariachi.
Bottom Line
Pressed for time? Yelp maps: find the closest, best-rated.
On foot? Yelp maps.
Find places near your hotel in a new town? Yelp.
Want to find the absolute best? Chowhound.
Find latest news, like if the chef has quit? Chowhound.
Want to hang out with obsessed food lovers? Chowhound.
boston, chowhound, food, goodeats, google maps, yelp
Posted by Jeff June 25, 2006
awesome…
chess, DIY
Posted by Jeff June 25, 2006
Recently, I was in the market for a 4 gig SD card. I have a Thinkpad Z60m: the Thinkpads feature an accelerometer to watch for sudden movement and suspend the hard drive. No podcasts on the train for you, buddy.
Built-in SD card reader solves that problem. $84 buys a 4 gig card from Newegg (my preferred vendor). I picked this one due to its good reviews and distinctive pink color — should make it hard to lose when it’s not in the laptop.
The fun part is, for $10 you can get add an Ezonics SD2GO USB reader which takes an SD card. Elana now carries this in her purse to offload digital pics to her Macbook. It’s small enough, she always has it with her - making it easy to offload photos.
ezonics, sd card reader, thinkpad, usb reader
Posted by Jeff June 24, 2006
After good reviews and reading the owner’s blog, I’ve signed up with BlueHost. It’s been pretty painless. Setting up Wordpress, SSH and importing blogger posts took a few hours. Python, ROR, SSH, MySQL, Fantastico.. what else can a growing geek ask for?
Already I’m looking at the old blog and cringing - how could I have worn that template?
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Posted by Jeff June 24, 2006
Apparently I am. Spurred by a post about Pyrcast, which rips Pandora streams, over at Rod’s place, I’ve been on a jag of researching the various Pandora unboxers. Pandora’s Jar is especially nice, as it sports band info, last.fm integration and of course, MP3 saving. With java source.
So how am I predictable? I like the band Cake… and I’ve happily listened to the Cake channel for a few hours now. Guess I’m a sucker for subtle use of vocal harmony and major key tonality. Mmm… major key tonality. Bishop Allen and Rusty Truck were bands worth noting. Hopping nodes on the cobweb spun of the long tail.. or something like that.
Technorati Tags: pandora, mp3, cake
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Posted by Jeff June 14, 2006
Use mouse to move around in bullet-time kitchen pics.
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