Nielsen says simplicity rules the Web

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Jakob Nielsen in this week’s Alertbox comments on why simplicity rules the World Wide Web. Low end media (text & graphics) can have superior benefits at times over rich-media.

Simplicity when used in low-end media has the benefit of User Empowerment says Nielsen, as it encourages user satisfaction and the feeling of control.

I agree with his statement to some extent, although I feel that simplicity benefits both low and rich-media and has it’s advantages in some circumstances.
Minimalist design for documentation and
Minimalist Design for the Semantic Web idea is an example of this.

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Fake War photographs by LA Times

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Brad Main from one of my Post-Graduate classes, commented on this cover article which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald last week.
The article refered to a fake photograph which was published in the front page of the LA Times on March 31, 2003. The image combined two existing photographs seconds apart, to accentuate the message/meaning portrayed by the two photographs.
There is an ethical, integrity and moral issue with this incident. Here is the editors note on the article, photographs and on the photographer, Brian Walski.

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Using special characters in ActionScript

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Colin Moock comments in a Technote on using special characters in ActionScript. The post comments on Flash MX, ways to Escape characters and mentions the HEX and UNICODE equivalents for the copyright, registered trademark, curly single and double quotation marks symbol for left and right.
Unicode is the universal character code that provides a unique number identifier for every character or symbol, in any language, platform or program. More information on Unicode can be found in the Unicode website.

Did you say Wi-Fi or Hi-Fi?

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Technology Review comment on the changing face of Wi-Fi (802.11b). From wireless access points to audio-video streaming network servers.
The article comments on Steve Dossick and his company’s frustration with some of the limitations of the technology and how he decided to take it to the next level, by building a wireless hard-drive-based storage device that connects to a Wi-Fi setup and can stream music anywhere in the network. His idea of streaming audio via wireless is pushing the limits of the wireless technology and is making big companies such as Netgear and Linksys re-affirm the potential of wireless networking.

“Networked audio players are going to be the killer app of this year,? – Tim Shaughnessy, director of solutions marketing and alliances at Netgear in Santa Clara, CA.
Excerpt: Malik, O. (April 18, 2003) Wi-Fi Goes Hi-Fi [Online] Available: http://www.technologyreview.com

Lag between the Eye and Brain

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Dr Karl mentioned on Triple J today that the time it takes for an image to be captured by our eyes and sent to the brain can be measured in less than metres/sec and does not transfer at the speed of light. He mentioned that certain things that captures our attention or stimulates the cortex of the eye, have higher speeds than others.
The idea of Lag on the human brain is quite interesting. Here is an interesting article I found in Google on Physical Lag times from Perception to Reaction (although it is unclear on the accuracy)
Human Perception time = 0.1 second
Brain lag = 0.1 second or more
Human Reaction time = 0.4 to 0.8 seconds
Here is a press release (7 Feb, 2002) from Brown University on the discovery of a new photoreceptor and visual system in the eye, which spans beyond rods and cones.

The end of the free-wheeling Internet is over

In Archive by Fredy Ore

There is an interesting article in the Wallstreet Journal titled, Taming the Internet frontier. The article looks at the Legal changing face of the Internet, including copyright, sales taxes, among others. The freewheeling days of the Internet are ending according to the article which mentions the demand for rules and copyright.
The article also mentions Prof. Laurence Lessig (from Stanford Law School) views that digital technology actually can make it easier for copyright holders to block unauthorized users.

Dystopian visions within IT?

In Archive by Fredy Ore

There is an interesting article in NEXT this week in the Sydney Morning Herald titled, Look out for the butterflies by John Lenarcic. The article comments on professional responsibility, privacy, access to technology, social consequences and computer ethics in IT, and comments that in higher education Ethics is the only field in which students are compelled to formulate and defend their opinions on public issues. The article suggests that perhaps students should be given greater freedom to formulate their opinions within other disciplines of IT.

IT in academic institutions has become a blinkered monoculture in need of an injection of humanity. … Technical material is often disseminated with little regard to historical and cultural context, as if it is value-free. Students of IT should not simply accept what they are given.
Excerpt: Lenarcic, J. (2003). Look out for the butterflies [Online] Available: http://www.smh.com.au (Cited: 16 April 2003)

John Lenarcic is a lecturer at RMIT School of Business Information Technology.

What is Ogg Vorbis?

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
Ogg is the name of the container format for audio, video, and metadata by the Xiph.Org Foundation – a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests. They support and develop free, open protocols and software to serve the public, developer and business markets.
Vorbis is the name of the audio compression (Codec) that’s designed to be contained in Ogg. There are other formats capable of being embedded in Ogg, these include FLAC (a Source Forge project) and Speex.