"I'd be glad if someone can come up with a fashion that looks decently "business like", is practical and doesn't involve ties and zillions of buttons."
Ever watch a show called "Star Trek"?
Get out there and get the trend going. We'll join when folks stop pasting "kick me" signs on your back.
Wish they'd do one battery for the radio components and one for the CPU/etc. That way your CPU (MP3, gaming, PDA) requirements wouldn't be a slave to your talk time on the phone - and vice-versa.
Ever have to get some data off your mobile but couldn't turn it on because you've been talking all day and run it down?
We do a one-on-one facilitated session with a user in one room, have an observer session in another room watching in real-time.
You want to have developers in the observer session, and part of the point of this is to change developer minds, and give them unfiltered feedback on what users are doing with their work. I've watched this in action many times, and it has a profound effect on developers.
Most developers write UI and processes for other developers to use. One example: 'you have to create a row or data entry object for a database table before you fill it out with data values' - developers and DBAs think like this, but most other humans think that the filling-out of data creates the row or object. for them it mimics the real-world concept of writing a note on paper; they don't think about creating the paper first. If developers want people in the real world to use their programs, they need to make them work in the way that regular humans expect, and the best way to convince them of that is to show them humans behaving normally...that is, not like developers.
It was odd to see Shuttleworth quoted as wanting "User Experience Testing". This is almost certainly a misnomer or misunderstanding of "Usability Testing" - which is part of (some would say tangent to) User Experience practice.
One important thing to know about usability testing: It's reactive. It's not generative. It can tell you what's wrong with your project, but it can't create new ideas about what project to create.
The latter goal is the domain of User Experience practice. User research, surveys, ethnography, rapid prototyping, shadowing studies at customer sites, JAD, search, site and other analytics (and yes, Usability Studies) all go into the User Experience (UX) practice. It's bigger than usability testing.
Yeah, I'd agree to that: the Livescribe Desktop software is not good.
In addition to the fact that the data isn't portable Mac <=> PC (the real sin in my eyes):
The software is very modal, and you wind up having to switch screens to do simple, related things
It can't do simple management tasks like multiple selection for deletes or OCR.
Can't do multiple selection at all, much less multiple-discontiguous selection for any purpose.
Won't allow you to do any kind of editing (you leave the pen recording for an extra 30 minutes by accident at the end of a note-taking session - no way to cut off the:30 of dead air...).
Won't allow you to lay back better-recorded audio from elsewhere to a note session.
The OCR is a Windows-only add-on (that comes with the 2GB pen, but you still have to download it, and it's not integrated with the Livescribe software).
The software is very closed-end, and prohibits lots of innovative uses without hacking (and you accept a clickwrap that says you won't hack it).
None of that stops the software from being incredibly useful. It's a worthwhile tool - I just wish they'd open it up (and I suspect that the Anoto firm that owns the dot pattern intellectual property is the real villain here).
I've been using the Livescribe since June of this year in my meetings, and it'd be perfect for this use, particularly if you're the lecturer (vs. listening to the lecturer in a large hall).
Livescribe records your handwriting and your audio, synchronizes them, allow you to play back your audio from any point in the recording by touching the spot in the notes later (on the notebook, or on your computer), and allows you to upload the notes and audio to a community site. It does a really good job at recording your voice, and there's room for many hours of it on the pen. It's a good writing instrument (much better than the cheap-ballpoint tip in the "Fly Pentop" which uses the same handwriting technology, but doesn't record audio, isn't as polished an experience).
You'll want the pen, and a few of the hardback journals (so they provide something solid to write on as you pace or stroll).
the 2GB pen (vs. the 1GB) is $199, can find it at any Target, and comes with one Livescribe notebook (you'll need to use Livescribe's special paper, but they offer a number of good, flexible and classy options).
Much lighter than a pentop, and arguably less fragile, less of a theft target.
Only downsides:
The pen is completely round and will roll off your podium if you don't tend to it. When it hits the floor, it will break.
If it does so prior to a synchronization with your Mac or PC, you'll lose whatever's on it and not-yet-synced.
You can't move pen content back onto the pen.
You don't have any control over line weight. If you sketch a lot, you'll have to double- or triple- stroke lines to add weight, learn to crosshatch for shadowing and filling.
You'll run out of ink before you run out of paper - keep spares around.
Finally the Mac and PC software uses different data models, and you can't exchange data between the two, nor move from one platform to the other.
These things don't stop the pen from being quite useful. More info at Livescribe site.
The facility isn't flashy, but they have real Enigma machines, a cipher that may have been owned by Thomas Jefferson (they can trace it to near Jefferson during his lifetime - he described something similar in his writings), the US "Cryptographic Bombe" used to break Enigma 4-wheel machines after Bletchley Park initially cracked the code, Super Computers, government crypto gear, and displays on US missions involving cryptology.
We were fortunate to get a very helpful dosant who was ex-NSA. Best way to see it
If you're in DC, you'll see ads for the "Spy Museum", which is interesting, but half fluff. The National Cryptologic Museum is the real thing.
I've actually tried to peel tape in a vacuum, but I couldn't get the bag to seal around my wrists. Too dusty - cat dander and hairs and stuff. Got all over everything.
Yeah, really - Designing a game doesn't require knowledge of a computing language.
It requires design skills, story telling, previsualization, facilitation and salesmanship skills, among many other things.
Look toward Jane MacGonigal for some leadership - she's awesome.
Dunno about OP, but I'll post non-anon: Mensa meet-and-greets would indeed be a good place to meet other geeks of both genders.
I almost never fess up to being a member because of dim-witted reactions like that of parent. Isn't parent being a "pretentious windbag" by judging others as a group?
I joined because I wanted to see if I could get in, pure and simple. I don't lord it over anyone.
At the occasional meeting I attend, I don't see people who think "the less-intelligent aren't good enough for me" - instead I often see people who have a hard time fitting in with most of the folks in the world, and who are looking for friends to whom they can relate. Occasionally I see some very smart AND very social Mensan who does a great job of making every outsider feel welcome. That's a great reason to join.
Mensa "First Friday" is open to members and non-members (at least in my area), if you want to get a feel for the folks you'll meet.
Also: I met my geeky wife NOT through Mensa (she'd dated another Mensan, but is not a member. Mensa didn't figure at all), but through a circle of casual friends.
My advice is this: Find some people to hang with. Almost any will do to begin with. Strike up a conversation with the smartest person in the room, and that may lead you to other geeks one circle of friends at a time.
Gotta get out of your comfort zone if you wanna change your life...
Your front-line contact with technology users gives you insight into what's troubling them, and your tech knowledge may help you translate user needs for geeks. If you're a good communicator (and can manage not to think of your customers as lUsers), you can work on the solution side: making things easier to use.
Look for a local chapter of the UPA (Usability Professionals Association), IxDA (Interaction Designers Association), CHI (the CHI sig of SIGGRAPH), or get on Twitter and start to follow UX professionals, information architects, usability researchers to get connected.
Follow Jakob Nielsen's alertbox columns at www.useit.com, read Boxes and Arrows regularly for a taste of the work that's out there to do.
Read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, if you read no other usability book.
It's a cheat, 'cause I don't have 'em any longer, but around the time I built my first computer (with a soldering iron...you kids...) a Sinclair ZX-81, I went looking for a printer.
At the time, printers were maybe $1-2,000, and $1-2000 was a hell of a lot more money than it is now.
I found 2 Baudot-code teletypes at the SC School for the Deaf, and they wanted something like $50 for the pair. I borrowed the van from the A/V company where I worked and lugged them back home, to the great disdain of my soon-to-be ex-wife.
They were amazing pieces of gear - way ovebuilt, a lot of machined cast metal, huge synchronous motors, and a current-loop interface that I never did get around to interfacing with the ZX-81 (though I did get 'em to talk to each other).
They were huge (think of large heavy desks full of dusty gear about 4-1/2 feet tall), and I dragged them around for a few years. A couple years after my divorce, I moved out of my parents' home and eventually they told me to get the things out of there. I called museums, couldn't get any takers, and though it broke my heart, I had to let the trashmen drag 'em off. Really a pity.
I know someone would want them today. And I could interface them today (but for my very young child - takes all my time). And I still have the ZX-81.
And Baudot, for those who don't know, is what you had before you had EBCDIC or ASCII. it was a 5-bit character code, with a control character that shifted the character set up, and shifted it back down to extend the characters it could communicate (think of the shift key on your keyboard as "push-on, push-again-off". Very, very steampunk...
Have had this discussion with Clear already. You can roam anywhere on their networks - as long as you're in Atlanta or Portland Oregon, the two cities where they have a presence.
Was thinking about WiMax as a solution to mobile connectivity for my laptop, until I realized I'd have to set up different service in the different cities where I want to work (and would have to wait until some of those cities have WiMax in place). FAIL.
Not like I want to pay for 3G, either.
I figure in 10 years, a lot of this gets sorted out. I'll put the MacBook Pro on standby 'till then, k?
Thank you so much!
I've been wondering for weeks if there was a way to turn that index crap off - it's pretty profoundly broken on every platform I use, takes forever to load, makes the page disappear out from under me every few minutes - awful!
The experience designer, IA and IxD do the most to make a site not suck, and their work begins long before web designers OR front end developers get started. The front-end dev is often just an implementer, but crucial (and crucially, great with HTML) nonetheless.
You hire a Web Front-End developer because no matter how hot your Java/.NET/Python/PHP backend guys think they are, everything the end-user sees and interacts with on the browser is conveyed through the HTML and its styling.
There is such a thing as a "Web Designer" but calling a Front-End Dev a "Web Designer" is pejorative. It implies typical software developer usability-blindness.
The big back-end guns think that all they have to do is make something that functions for developers. They never think about the delivery layer at all, nor the semantic structure of the delivered page, nor about the people that have to use it, the accessibility for folks on screen readers, the appearance of an app or content on a mobile device or the ability for Google to make sense out of the garbage that comes out of back-end apps so your customers can find it over all the noise.
These are the waters in which the Front-End Developer, the Interaction Designer, the Usability Practitioner, the UX Lead (now starting to be called "Experience Designer") and the Information Architect swim. We all do a certain amount of HTML and CSS to meet our ends.
If you (and I'm using the royal "you" here parent and grandparent...) think that HTML and CSS are just graphical frosting on your beautiful server-side creation, you're irredeemably clueless.
Whole different thing. Yes, I read it on the day I posted, and have been back between now and then.
The difference is that I don't read Slashdot obsessively any longer, don't often get past the front page or the article summary, have looked for other content sources to fill the void.
I'll come by and graze once in a while, but I seldom post, never moderate, just use the site less in general because it's a bit** to do so now.
Seriously. This is what we get paid to do. There's far too much to communicate on a forum, and if the SNR here is typical, you'll get awful, unrelated and just plain wrong advice.
If you can't hire, see if your school has a library science program and look for a good intern.
Failing that, read the Polar Bear book (Rosenfeld & Morville, pub: O' Reilly) yourself and follow the threads to resources particular to your problem.
Tactical help: populate the kewords, title, subject properties in your PDFs and Office docs. If you populate in Office and make a PDF, the properties come along. They're in File>Properties... Filling them out will help any search engine that can consume binary docs make sense of your content.
And there are bulk scan-to-OCR packages out there. Funnel into PDF and populate the properties.
We're moving to mobile browsing guys; all the pipe-clogging, ARM-processor-choking, cursor-freezing bullshit you're sending down the line had made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now.
Have just shut off the Beta2 crap, and it's so much faster, so much easier to use.
Slashdot Mirror
you got my new Droid to be able to dial hands-free and sync with Outlook. Would help me out a bunch more than faster http. No, really...
Ever watch a show called "Star Trek"?
Get out there and get the trend going. We'll join when folks stop pasting "kick me" signs on your back.
Wish they'd do one battery for the radio components and one for the CPU/etc. That way your CPU (MP3, gaming, PDA) requirements wouldn't be a slave to your talk time on the phone - and vice-versa.
Ever have to get some data off your mobile but couldn't turn it on because you've been talking all day and run it down?
I do usability studies as part of my job.
We do a one-on-one facilitated session with a user in one room, have an observer session in another room watching in real-time.
You want to have developers in the observer session, and part of the point of this is to change developer minds, and give them unfiltered feedback on what users are doing with their work. I've watched this in action many times, and it has a profound effect on developers.
Most developers write UI and processes for other developers to use. One example: 'you have to create a row or data entry object for a database table before you fill it out with data values' - developers and DBAs think like this, but most other humans think that the filling-out of data creates the row or object. for them it mimics the real-world concept of writing a note on paper; they don't think about creating the paper first. If developers want people in the real world to use their programs, they need to make them work in the way that regular humans expect, and the best way to convince them of that is to show them humans behaving normally...that is, not like developers.
It was odd to see Shuttleworth quoted as wanting "User Experience Testing". This is almost certainly a misnomer or misunderstanding of "Usability Testing" - which is part of (some would say tangent to) User Experience practice.
One important thing to know about usability testing: It's reactive. It's not generative. It can tell you what's wrong with your project, but it can't create new ideas about what project to create.
The latter goal is the domain of User Experience practice. User research, surveys, ethnography, rapid prototyping, shadowing studies at customer sites, JAD, search, site and other analytics (and yes, Usability Studies) all go into the User Experience (UX) practice. It's bigger than usability testing.
Yeah, I'd agree to that: the Livescribe Desktop software is not good.
In addition to the fact that the data isn't portable Mac <=> PC (the real sin in my eyes):
None of that stops the software from being incredibly useful. It's a worthwhile tool - I just wish they'd open it up (and I suspect that the Anoto firm that owns the dot pattern intellectual property is the real villain here).
I've been using the Livescribe since June of this year in my meetings, and it'd be perfect for this use, particularly if you're the lecturer (vs. listening to the lecturer in a large hall).
Livescribe records your handwriting and your audio, synchronizes them, allow you to play back your audio from any point in the recording by touching the spot in the notes later (on the notebook, or on your computer), and allows you to upload the notes and audio to a community site. It does a really good job at recording your voice, and there's room for many hours of it on the pen. It's a good writing instrument (much better than the cheap-ballpoint tip in the "Fly Pentop" which uses the same handwriting technology, but doesn't record audio, isn't as polished an experience).
You'll want the pen, and a few of the hardback journals (so they provide something solid to write on as you pace or stroll).
the 2GB pen (vs. the 1GB) is $199, can find it at any Target, and comes with one Livescribe notebook (you'll need to use Livescribe's special paper, but they offer a number of good, flexible and classy options).
Much lighter than a pentop, and arguably less fragile, less of a theft target.
Only downsides:
These things don't stop the pen from being quite useful. More info at Livescribe site.
I loved the National Cryptologic Museum just outside Fort Meade in Maryland.
The facility isn't flashy, but they have real Enigma machines, a cipher that may have been owned by Thomas Jefferson (they can trace it to near Jefferson during his lifetime - he described something similar in his writings), the US "Cryptographic Bombe" used to break Enigma 4-wheel machines after Bletchley Park initially cracked the code, Super Computers, government crypto gear, and displays on US missions involving cryptology.
We were fortunate to get a very helpful dosant who was ex-NSA. Best way to see it
If you're in DC, you'll see ads for the "Spy Museum", which is interesting, but half fluff. The National Cryptologic Museum is the real thing.
Mod Parent Up! Udvar-Hazy is a stupendous flight museum. Well worth the trip!
thanks for trying to help, but apparently the feature I'm missing has been "improved" out of the settings.
No matter which setting you choose, you can't restore the Firefox 3 behavior that worked so well for me.
Worth noting that some posters on the bug thought it worked well the old way - as I do.
to get the Close [X] gadget back on the last tab? Firefox 3.5 is KILLING ME with this...
I've actually tried to peel tape in a vacuum, but I couldn't get the bag to seal around my wrists. Too dusty - cat dander and hairs and stuff. Got all over everything.
Yeah, really - Designing a game doesn't require knowledge of a computing language. It requires design skills, story telling, previsualization, facilitation and salesmanship skills, among many other things. Look toward Jane MacGonigal for some leadership - she's awesome.
Dunno about OP, but I'll post non-anon: Mensa meet-and-greets would indeed be a good place to meet other geeks of both genders.
I almost never fess up to being a member because of dim-witted reactions like that of parent. Isn't parent being a "pretentious windbag" by judging others as a group?
I joined because I wanted to see if I could get in, pure and simple. I don't lord it over anyone.
At the occasional meeting I attend, I don't see people who think "the less-intelligent aren't good enough for me" - instead I often see people who have a hard time fitting in with most of the folks in the world, and who are looking for friends to whom they can relate. Occasionally I see some very smart AND very social Mensan who does a great job of making every outsider feel welcome. That's a great reason to join.
Mensa "First Friday" is open to members and non-members (at least in my area), if you want to get a feel for the folks you'll meet.
Also: I met my geeky wife NOT through Mensa (she'd dated another Mensan, but is not a member. Mensa didn't figure at all), but through a circle of casual friends.
My advice is this: Find some people to hang with. Almost any will do to begin with. Strike up a conversation with the smartest person in the room, and that may lead you to other geeks one circle of friends at a time.
Gotta get out of your comfort zone if you wanna change your life...
Your front-line contact with technology users gives you insight into what's troubling them, and your tech knowledge may help you translate user needs for geeks. If you're a good communicator (and can manage not to think of your customers as lUsers), you can work on the solution side: making things easier to use.
Look for a local chapter of the UPA (Usability Professionals Association), IxDA (Interaction Designers Association), CHI (the CHI sig of SIGGRAPH), or get on Twitter and start to follow UX professionals, information architects, usability researchers to get connected.
Follow Jakob Nielsen's alertbox columns at www.useit.com, read Boxes and Arrows regularly for a taste of the work that's out there to do.
Read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, if you read no other usability book.
HTH
...and delightfully crunchy!
It's a cheat, 'cause I don't have 'em any longer, but around the time I built my first computer (with a soldering iron...you kids...) a Sinclair ZX-81, I went looking for a printer.
At the time, printers were maybe $1-2,000, and $1-2000 was a hell of a lot more money than it is now.
I found 2 Baudot-code teletypes at the SC School for the Deaf, and they wanted something like $50 for the pair. I borrowed the van from the A/V company where I worked and lugged them back home, to the great disdain of my soon-to-be ex-wife.
They were amazing pieces of gear - way ovebuilt, a lot of machined cast metal, huge synchronous motors, and a current-loop interface that I never did get around to interfacing with the ZX-81 (though I did get 'em to talk to each other).
They were huge (think of large heavy desks full of dusty gear about 4-1/2 feet tall), and I dragged them around for a few years. A couple years after my divorce, I moved out of my parents' home and eventually they told me to get the things out of there. I called museums, couldn't get any takers, and though it broke my heart, I had to let the trashmen drag 'em off. Really a pity.
I know someone would want them today. And I could interface them today (but for my very young child - takes all my time). And I still have the ZX-81.
And Baudot, for those who don't know, is what you had before you had EBCDIC or ASCII. it was a 5-bit character code, with a control character that shifted the character set up, and shifted it back down to extend the characters it could communicate (think of the shift key on your keyboard as "push-on, push-again-off". Very, very steampunk...
Have had this discussion with Clear already. You can roam anywhere on their networks - as long as you're in Atlanta or Portland Oregon, the two cities where they have a presence.
Was thinking about WiMax as a solution to mobile connectivity for my laptop, until I realized I'd have to set up different service in the different cities where I want to work (and would have to wait until some of those cities have WiMax in place). FAIL.
Not like I want to pay for 3G, either.
I figure in 10 years, a lot of this gets sorted out. I'll put the MacBook Pro on standby 'till then, k?
Thank you so much! I've been wondering for weeks if there was a way to turn that index crap off - it's pretty profoundly broken on every platform I use, takes forever to load, makes the page disappear out from under me every few minutes - awful!
Why are critical systems not protected by a one inch air gap between the NIC and cable from remote exploit?
Won't help. The 12AX7s the air traffic control system ENIAC runs on are microphonic. Brings a whole new meaning to the term "ping" ;)
Yes, I'm old. You will be too - if you're lucky.
The experience designer, IA and IxD do the most to make a site not suck, and their work begins long before web designers OR front end developers get started. The front-end dev is often just an implementer, but crucial (and crucially, great with HTML) nonetheless.
You hire a Web Front-End developer because no matter how hot your Java/.NET/Python/PHP backend guys think they are, everything the end-user sees and interacts with on the browser is conveyed through the HTML and its styling.
There is such a thing as a "Web Designer" but calling a Front-End Dev a "Web Designer" is pejorative. It implies typical software developer usability-blindness.
The big back-end guns think that all they have to do is make something that functions for developers. They never think about the delivery layer at all, nor the semantic structure of the delivered page, nor about the people that have to use it, the accessibility for folks on screen readers, the appearance of an app or content on a mobile device or the ability for Google to make sense out of the garbage that comes out of back-end apps so your customers can find it over all the noise.
These are the waters in which the Front-End Developer, the Interaction Designer, the Usability Practitioner, the UX Lead (now starting to be called "Experience Designer") and the Information Architect swim. We all do a certain amount of HTML and CSS to meet our ends.
If you (and I'm using the royal "you" here parent and grandparent...) think that HTML and CSS are just graphical frosting on your beautiful server-side creation, you're irredeemably clueless.
Whole different thing. Yes, I read it on the day I posted, and have been back between now and then.
The difference is that I don't read Slashdot obsessively any longer, don't often get past the front page or the article summary, have looked for other content sources to fill the void.
I'll come by and graze once in a while, but I seldom post, never moderate, just use the site less in general because it's a bit** to do so now.
Seriously. This is what we get paid to do. There's far too much to communicate on a forum, and if the SNR here is typical, you'll get awful, unrelated and just plain wrong advice.
If you can't hire, see if your school has a library science program and look for a good intern.
Failing that, read the Polar Bear book (Rosenfeld & Morville, pub: O' Reilly) yourself and follow the threads to resources particular to your problem.
Tactical help: populate the kewords, title, subject properties in your PDFs and Office docs. If you populate in Office and make a PDF, the properties come along. They're in File>Properties... Filling them out will help any search engine that can consume binary docs make sense of your content.
And there are bulk scan-to-OCR packages out there. Funnel into PDF and populate the properties.
Worth saying again: populate the properties.
Lighter-weight is better.
We're moving to mobile browsing guys; all the pipe-clogging, ARM-processor-choking, cursor-freezing bullshit you're sending down the line had made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now.
Have just shut off the Beta2 crap, and it's so much faster, so much easier to use.
Hey, thanks for the tip! THIS is close to the Slashdot I wanna see! (though I'd like all the comments available, please...)
All you need is a modern style sheet for this and it'll work great! (only half-joking).
This is the antidote for the gigantic, CPU-sucking, bandwidth-hogging fscking mess that the Slashdot main page has become.