I think you highlighted why 'remix Amon Tobin's finest loops' is not a ridiculous feature. If it keeps visitors hanging around then it does its job. You may think its ridiculous but no one is forcing your to use it. As Feelafel said, if the basic features are there and not in Flash, then you have what you need without playing with the gadgets.
[NITPICK]
Clippy was finally removed from Office with the XP release.
[/NITPICK]
[ANECDOTE]
I worked with a designer who had created the original spec for intelligent assistance while at Microsoft. He became supremely annoyed whenever anyone lashed out at Clippy because his original design was actually quite useful and the development team had surgically removed the useful parts, leaving us with..."It looks like you're writing a letter!". Poor designer...to go through life with people hating you for designing something that would actually have been great.
[/ANECDOTE]
As a professional in the field, I feel qualified to say that everything that comes from the Mouth of Raskin should be consumed with a liberal serving of NaCl. The field of HCI moves as fast (some would even say faster) than the technology it works with. Anyone whose major claims to fame are the original Macintosh (~18 years old) and the Canon Cat (~15 years old) is only showing his distance from the bleeding edge.
During the summer of 2001 I was unfortunate enough to attend a Humane Interface workshop led by Mr. Raskin. The day long session served only to show how out of touch he truly has become, acting more as a soapbox for venting about his importance to the HCI world than as a platform for teaching. He frequently contradicted his own book (a copy was provided for each table), strayed from his own agenda which he had liberally changed from the published one, and told un-interesting stories about his major innovations from fifteen years ago. The only worthwhile part of the day was to hear the one-mouse-button justification from the mouth of the man who originally created it. A significant number of attendees (myself included) asked for and were granted a full refund of the CDN$150 fee due to the poor quality of the session.
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I think you highlighted why 'remix Amon Tobin's finest loops' is not a ridiculous feature. If it keeps visitors hanging around then it does its job. You may think its ridiculous but no one is forcing your to use it. As Feelafel said, if the basic features are there and not in Flash, then you have what you need without playing with the gadgets.
Check out Orisinal.com, a Flash games site that puts almost anything else I've seen to shame.
[NITPICK] Clippy was finally removed from Office with the XP release. [/NITPICK]
[ANECDOTE] I worked with a designer who had created the original spec for intelligent assistance while at Microsoft. He became supremely annoyed whenever anyone lashed out at Clippy because his original design was actually quite useful and the development team had surgically removed the useful parts, leaving us with..."It looks like you're writing a letter!". Poor designer...to go through life with people hating you for designing something that would actually have been great. [/ANECDOTE]
As a professional in the field, I feel qualified to say that everything that comes from the Mouth of Raskin should be consumed with a liberal serving of NaCl. The field of HCI moves as fast (some would even say faster) than the technology it works with. Anyone whose major claims to fame are the original Macintosh (~18 years old) and the Canon Cat (~15 years old) is only showing his distance from the bleeding edge.
During the summer of 2001 I was unfortunate enough to attend a Humane Interface workshop led by Mr. Raskin. The day long session served only to show how out of touch he truly has become, acting more as a soapbox for venting about his importance to the HCI world than as a platform for teaching. He frequently contradicted his own book (a copy was provided for each table), strayed from his own agenda which he had liberally changed from the published one, and told un-interesting stories about his major innovations from fifteen years ago. The only worthwhile part of the day was to hear the one-mouse-button justification from the mouth of the man who originally created it. A significant number of attendees (myself included) asked for and were granted a full refund of the CDN$150 fee due to the poor quality of the session.