brandonkm

I'm especially surprised at where the discussion of this speech is focused. It seems that people aren't focusing on the context or the core message.

He's speaking at a HBCU to a largely if not all black graduating class. This isn't Stanford or MIT. I know theres a blind spot to the inequality African American students face and that this is a sensitive issue, but I don't think telling African American students who are graduating college to be wary of a lot of the distractions these days such as xbox and twitter is a bad thing.

I could go on for a bit about why, but Obama lays out the statistics for you...

American students are ranked about 10th overall compared to top-performing countries. African Americans, however, are ranked behind more than twenty nations, lower than nearly every other developed country.

I would say that Obama is inspiring a generation of African Americans to work harder and strive for more because inequality is still pervasive throughout American society and education is the key to overcoming this. Why is it so hard to miss this message?

Spot on.

The problem space being addressed is more complex than what it looks like. Customer perception of reliability is everything. Shipping companies have made their offerings as reliable as banks. There's numerous safeguards in place to protect the customer in case of an accident and you have professionals handling your valuable items.

Perhaps an ebay-like system of feedback will help eliminate some of the wariness that accompanies a total stranger delivering your package, but even then the event of loss, theft, and damage will be much higher than it is with the existing shipping companies. That alone would make it difficult to get this idea off the ground.

Twitter was never about having your personal info on display. There's the 'bio' section and that's it. Twitter is a broadcast medium where the information is the primary interest point. I think the stickyness of Twitter correlates to how interesting the tweets are of the person you're following, rather than the person itself (like facebook).

In the case of Jaiku, at least they open sourced the entire application. Can't even begin to describe how much I've learned from the Jaiku source code.

I wouldn't take this news as the huge bummer that it looks like. One thing Microsoft doesn't have with the courier is the element of surprise. Windows phone 7 is coming out later this year, so I would think that they want to focus on that as much as possible and then consider how to scale that experience to something like a courier/tablet device.

As amazing as the concept video looked, something even better could be on the horizon.

Very neat seeing the webkit2png tool in action. This is something I may find useful, nice project!

Scanning rss feeds in this type of format is sometimes preferable to the list inlay style that Google reader uses. It's also more enjoyable to discover things this way as well. I would only really want to scan topics I'm highly interested in this type of presentation layer rather than all the topics in my feed reader. This format definitely works best for that.

I was always really impressed with the types of animations you could make in kid pix. Reading about the ui thought process that went on with the creator was quite interesting. It really highlights why that program was so successful and a hit with kids everywhere.

I don't think getting permission was ever part of the protocol with graffiti artists.

He didn't make it. Those shirts literally appeared hours after the story broke and his name was out there.

I'm 23, signed up for Facebook my freshman year of college (when it was only college students and had ~40 schools). I use Facebook frequently but will no longer be doing so. Good riddance if you ask me.

I'm deleting my account after I relay to all the friends I want to keep in touch with where else they can reach me at. Its a personal decision and never before have I been so personally offended by any one company's vision of what the internet should be. I disagree with the notion of a "social by default" web so much that I can no longer entertain being part of Facebook.

There's an educational component to this recent bit of news as well. People by and large don't care enough to really cause the critical mass exodus that would make Facebook backtrack on these announcements. I think this may largely be because people don't know anything about the origins of the internet or even how it works on a basic level. It makes me think that knowing these things should be taught in schools in some capacity. I would assert that if people knew more about the internet then they could form more of an opinion when a company tries to hijack it it and change the paradigm.

No one company can or should ever be allowed to change what the "default" of the web is.

I was a bit skeptical at first due to the frequency I read articles like these with nothing really new to report. However, this post is a collection of solid tips and explanations that are very important to practice.

'Hideous' is a rather relative in the context of the geocities/angelfire web era. I don't even think things like 'good web design' really crossed my mind. At least not in the way that you see those "top n ways how to code a modern website" type of articles. The web in general was a giant novelty, so all my friends and I really cared about was how cool something looked on the screen.

I would check out the Bang & Olufsen A8 earphones. They run about $160, but the sound quality is amazing and they will last you a lifetime.

I remain unconvinced that this shift is taking place on the scale you're referencing. Search is a fundamental web activity that isn't mutually exclusive from "social surfacing" for discovering content. Rather, they are complimentary to each other and the main points of differentiation are with branding and marketing rather than any specific shift toward one or the other.

I also think its a bit simplistic to state 'Facebook works the way humans work' as people hear about stuff through numerous other channels than the people around them (ie: nyt.com dining & wine section for a new restaurant).

The 'crazy AI gymnastics' Google is doing isn't for nothing. I actually think those gymnastics are advancing the web in ways other companies aren't. There will always be some overhead to interacting with your friends on the web and those gymnastics Google is doing make the web a better platform for people to interact with (more like your friend).

Exactly. Looking at pictures and videos of this UI and actually using it will certainly change ones prior opinion. I thought the Zune ui looked especially awkward. After using it as my personal music player it began to seem efficient and the information hierarchy extremely well thought out.

I think the biggest negative aspect of Microsoft being this late in the game in rebooting the windows mobile line is that theres now an inherent familiarity with the current smartphone interfaces. When all you interact with is an android device all day, the new windows phone ui seems alien. But again; once you use it that perception definitely changes. I know thats my experience as an android user with a Zune. The central question with the new Windows phone is how well does that 'metro' ui scale in the context of a smartphone device.

You bring up a really good point. There is definitely a perception gap square needs to overcome before a device like that is trusted by consumers on a wide scale. When someone buys something from a mall kiosk, the mini credit card machine is probably perceived as more secure and trustworthy than a square device on a iPhone.

Theres no doubt that the concept and execution of square is ahead of the curve, but there certainly exists an array of intangibles that may prevent it from gaining critical mass.

This new refresh of the windows mobile line is a very bold move by Microsoft. I'm really surprised they threw out all the existing winmo architecture and started fresh. The carrier network that supports WM7 will mean lots of choices for consumers as well. Not only that, they seem to really be emphasizing consistency across devices with the three buttons (start, search, back). This is undoubtedly uncharacteristic of how the winmo division has previously operated.

Most of all, todays announcement shows me they get it. I had always written off windows mobile as an OS, and after looking at things a bit, I'm considering WM7 for my next phone OS.

Yep. It almost seems like magic sometimes. I'm really happy to see what looks like a solid mongodb solution for django. Everything else I've seen didn't quite strike me. Interested in trying this one out.

I agree. Around 2000, I remember reading all these articles in video game magazines talking about how microsoft will never be a major player in consoles. "Microsoft is not a video game company, its not in their dna". Fast forward a bit and look at the console landscape now. 5.5 million xbox 360s were sold in the 4th quarter of 2009. The xbox can now be considered a runaway success, despite the numerous setbacks that have occured (red ring of death).

With search the landscape is a bit different, but we shouldn't be so shortsighted as to count microsoft out of the game or think that bing will never gain >50% marketshare. We could look at articles like this in 3-4 years and laugh out how off the mark it was, just like the articles in game magazines bashing the xbox in the early 2000's.

Agreed. This is by far the most enriching interview I've seen on mixergy. And theres been some excellent ones.

Agreed. The only situation in which I'd choose Windows Mobile in is if I were getting a HD2. The sense ui that HTC built on top of windows mobile is quite nice and the device is amazing.

Some excellent titles throughout this list. I'm currently enjoying 'Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence (Rethinking Theory)'. Such a great read.

Considering the scale and dynamics of that game, an entire floor is a necessity. I think at this point so much of Blizzard's revenue is tied to World of Warcraft that they have the ability to throw whatever resources are needed at it.

"Understand what normal people are trying to get out of technology."

This is key. I've found that public transportation gives you more insight into how people use smartphones than anything else.

Good overview of Google's history but I don't think I would classify this as a critical analysis.

Is anyone else much less excited about the CrunchPad than they used to be? This bit of news is the first I heard about the CrunchPad in months, I used to think it was a great idea, now... not so much. A 12" tablet that boots into firefox? I'm perfectly happy with my android phone. Is this supposed to be a mobile device? I have hard time imagining how successful a single purpose tablet will be for people on the go. Devices now are about convergence. For $300-400 you could buy a netbook, iPhone, or Droid. The average consumer won't see any value in purchasing an overpriced internet tablet over alternative devices (that have more functionality and are smaller).

Have never heard of 'Interaction of Color'. I'll need to hunt that one down, thanks for the recommendation!

I recommend checking out 'universal principles of design' and o'reillys 'designing web navigation'. These two will give you a good overview of different aspects of design while helping you understand how design works on the web. I think that in starting to learn about all of this, it would be advantageous to approach things from an 'information' angle. That is, web design is information first and aesthetics second.

Beyond that 'A Designer's Research Manual' is well worth reading.

And for colors check out http://www.colourlovers.com

Based on this list you may also like dextro http://www.dextro.co.uk/ also Mike Sheridan is great, I've had one particular album of his on repeat for quite some time http://www.discogs.com/Mike-Sheridan-I-Syv-Sind/release/1473...