Best of Web 2.0: Remember the Milk
What’s a girl got to do when she has too many things to accomplish and too little time? Creating a to do list, of course! But not any simple, paper-based to do list. We are too geeky and our world is too complicated for old fashion to do lists (you know the drill: the lists multiply, they are never there when we need them, and life changes too fast for a static paper document).
Luckily for us, the Web 2.0 new wave has brought us many tools to create fancier and ubiquitous to do lists, from 37 Signals’ Tada List and Backpack, to Mark Hurst’s Gootodo. None of them however is so elegant, well designed, and grown-up as Remember the Milk (aka RTM).
The social life of humans and machines: How to design for the social interaction
Solitary designers, lonely geniuses, and isolated creative teams: it’s time for you to think about social interaction for your user interfaces. No, I am not talking about social software, user-created content, or Web 2.0. I am talking about any old-fashion user interface: because for us human beings any interaction is a social interaction–even when we are interacting with "a stupid machine."
We all know this: we tend to treat objects that display intelligent behavior as humans. We curse at our computers and at frustrating websites, we trust or distrust them, we talk to them, we find them cute or insufferable; we get angry, happy, frustrated, outraged, even if there is no living creature on the other side. (Well, there is always a living creature on the other side: somebody has designed and built the application. And human qualities bleed into inanimate objects very easily.)
Interfaces can persuade, make us uncomfortable, happy, or unhappy. The personality of an interface emerges by the interactions with humans: the style of the content, the choice of words, the behavior, how well it responds to our expectations and needs, and the appearance blend together to trigger our all too human feelings. Interactions between humans and machines are conversations (or arguments) in which information is exchanged, connections are made, needs are satisfied or frustrated, and relationships are built. When we design applications we need to think of them as social entities.
Unbelievable!
If you are into nerdy Web 2.0 humor, you’re gonna have a good time today:
- Shelley Powers dates Dave Winer through Google Romance (take the Tour)
- Slashdot goes pink
- Scoble moves to Google.
- Yahoo! buys every Web 2.0 company and China buys Yahoo!
- Dolphins surf with Opera Mini
- Cnet reviews E-vri-thin
- And much much more…
Are you thinking what I am thinking? Aren’t these April Fool’s jokes powerful expression of unconscious desires? Mhhh…. not sure about the Dave Winer thing, though…
Tags: april fool’s day, nerd, humor
Update on 2006 Google Earth Census: Unusual sightings
Time for an update on living creatures sightings on Google Earth:
- From Germany, Tom sends the first people sighting I am aware of in which people can be identified:
If you zoom to about 250 ft, you’ll see a trampoline (rectangular blue-ish frame, with black center), with 2 boys on it. The one standing is most likely my son Paul, and lying on the trampoline is his best friend Marvin.
- Sam finds two motorcycle riders in Greece, just north-east of Athens. A little bit hard to see, but they are there: the first one is in the left lane and looks like a white dot in the right lower corner of the picture. On the opposite lane, center upper area of the image, the dark gray dot is the second motorcycle.
- Rosi finds killer whales at Sea World in Orlando, Florida
- And finally, a particularly unusual Google Earth sighting in Area 51.
Tags: Google Earth, 2006 Google Earth Census, sighting, people, people sighting
Cool Readings
-
More Links...
-
