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There has actually been a lot of research into how to make progress bars "feel" right -- it turns out that certain psychological tricks can help with that, too. Roughly speaking, it tends to be better to be conservative at the start (i.e. give a worst case estimate) and then improve it over time, than the other way around. Hence a simple trick to improve the user experience is to take whatever you think will be an accurate value for the progress, but then apply a scale to it to make it appear slower at the beginning, and faster at the end. This is studied and discussed in depth in the paper "Rethinking the Progress Bar": http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/ProgBarHarrison.pdf

For example, if x is the progress ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, then instead of using x directly, use f(x) = (x+(1-x)/2)^8 to calculate the progress estimate you are going to display to the user.

The key observation here is that if I am told something will be finished in 1 minute, but then it turns out to take 2 minutes, I am upset; if instead I am told it will take 2 minutes, but then it finishes already after 1 minute, I'll be happy. Of course this has limits, and one needs to strike a delicate balance: if the original estimate is too far off and bad, the negative reaction to the initial bad estimate and how far it is away from reality will create a strong negative reaction on its own (what would you think if you were regularly told "performing this operation will take ~2 days" when it ends up needing only 1 minute each time...)

There are other tricks to make the UI feel "faster" when it comes to progress bars, see e.g. http://uxmovement.com/buttons/how-to-make-progress-bars-feel-faster-to-users/

I saw this (although for a different purpose) years ago here.

Whoops. http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/scratchinput/index.html

At CMU: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/skinput/

The hand gestures aren't really needed beyond simple interaction like touch, drag, and swipe. This is much more along the lines of skinput.

And any large sea-level rise would lead to tremendous losses in the global economy (see this picture, featured on Slashdot recently. You recognize the continents? why is it that you recognize the continents on this picture? think about that.), which could also lead to destabilization and war.

Hmmm, let's see, now where in the map is Ecuador?

No, I don't think it will rank very high on the list. However, this doesn't mean they are free to break the law. If you don't like the law, then do not open a branch in that country, it's as simple as that. Being a small country makes it a small loss not having a branch there.

Yes, .com (,net, .org) are essentially international TLDs. I agree. I believe my section title remains true: "The death of .net, the rise of .org, and the madness of .com." However, I have changed the title to downplay the US connection.

However, more important than the fall of .com and .net domains is the rise of international domains. US websites rarely use international TLDs. Yet, these TLDs are growing fast (ru, pl, il, cz, br, etc.). This is a strong indicator that international websites are gaining clout, or at the very least, websites are shifting to country specific domains.

International TLDs are clearly gaining traction. Take a look at this chart: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/I nternationalGrowth.html

In response to domains like .ag and .tv - These domains don't penetrate the top 500, so it's hard to gauge how much influence they have.

Chris

"Where are Canada, Australia, New Zealand?" Here: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/o therdomains.html

The international growth page shows everything else (there is about 30 domains represented) - http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/I nternationalGrowth.html

"Where are Canada, Australia, New Zealand?" Here: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/o therdomains.html

The international growth page shows everything else (there is about 30 domains represented) - http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/I nternationalGrowth.html

Seems like he's got it right to me, both here:
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/i ndex.html
and here:
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/o therdomains.html

Seems like he's got it right to me, both here:
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/i ndex.html
and here:
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/o therdomains.html

It doesn't seem to be that simple. Look at Sweden for example (liberal and small). Since mid 2005, it has tanked. see: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/w esteurodomains.html In fact, many european countries and Canada and Australia have similar trends.