SBS presents a new 3-part documentary series starting tomorrow night called The Human Odyssey which looks at the development of mankind as a species, from the early hominids to homo erectus.
The series also covers human settlement and scientific theories towards the big bang theory and living creatures on Earth. More on the documentary can be found at the series website.
First rule of usability – Don’t listen to users.
Macromedia have released their 3rd public Beta version of their new Macromedia site based on User feedback. It is interesting to read the documentation they have gathered on the statistics and data from user feedback which they collected, namely bandwidth connection, platform, CPU, browser and satisfaction levels on interface, load time and performance.
I recalled a Jakob Nielsen Alertbox article on a similar topic to this titled “First rule of usability? Don’t Listen to Users”. Here is an excerpt from the page:
To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.
Sony Ericsson Clicker uses Bluetooth to control OS X
While visiting Todd Dominey’s What do I know?, I came across an interesting article on the OS X Software: Sony Ericsson Clicker an amazing application which lets you control Mac OS X using Bluetooth in your Sony Ericsson mobile phone.
The most amazing aspect of the application is that you can control, PowerPoint and Keynote, iTunes (play, pause, next, prev, volume), the DVD player and basically any other AppleScriptable OS X application.
A google-enabled visual search
Anil Dash posts an interesting link to a google-enabled visual search in his daily links section of his website.
The Google demo Visual Search developed by Anacubis integrates the Google Search API and a Anacubis viewer to display Google search results in an interesting visual way.
Jorn Utzon honoured for the Sydney Opera House
Jorn Utzon, the architect who designed the The Sydney Opera House in 1959, but never saw the finished design in 1966, was honoured today by the University of Sydney by receiving an honorary doctorate for his achievement. He unfortunately was too frail to come to Sydney and his son accepted the award on his behalf.
In 1965 Ultzon resigned from the project and left Sydney following a NSW change of government and consequent budget cuts to the project. Interestingly, he has never been back to see the finished design. He was invited last year at the age of 83 to help and supervise in the Opera house’s renovation.
Steve Scott’s Amazing Illustration & Animation portfolio website
This has to be one of the most amazing illustration portfolio site’s I’ve come across. Australian Illustrator and Animator, Steve Scott
DVD authoring pixel dimensions and bandwidth
DVDRHelp have a useful table article on Video File comparisons. The table shows information on the different types of pixel resolutions of various formats including VCD, SVCD/CVD, DVD, X(S)VCD, DivX, ASF, SMR/nAVI, RM and DV.
The table also contains useful information on PAL & NTSC, video & audio compression, Video & Audio bitrate(kbit/sec), MB Size per minute, timelength, CPU usage and also overall quality. It is a useful resource when authoring in any of these formats
Browser and Screen Resolution statistics
Some Web Browser statistics (22 March 2003) which shows browser trends, resolution and colour depth-trends.
Credible free web stats are hard to find these days, but Browser News shows some interesting references and sources. Dave Phillips (Cafedave) posted a related link today to an article which commented on current technical requirements for web interfaces.
Expanding the Approaches to User Experience article revisit
I revisit the Boxes and Arrows article to read over some of the comments and responses by Jesse James Garrett and others regarding the article titled, Expanding the Approaches to User Experience by George Olsen.
The article published last week, commented on possible additions to the Garrett view of user experience. Here is a link to my previous post on the article.
www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/expanding_the_approaches_to_user_experience.php
What is Bioinformatics?
Daniel Steinberg comments on Bioinformatics saying optimistically that the field will not have strong focus in 10 years (2012) as it will have the same/similar context as other scientific disciplines.
What is Bioinformatics you say? Well, there are several definitions according to Steinberg, from DNA and protein analysis to computer & biology integration. The Bioinformatics.org website provides two definitions labelled as loose and tight definitions one being,
the use of computers to store, retrieve, analyze or predict the composition or the structure of biomolecules.
The article further explain the field and comments on applications of development, careers in the field, etc.
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/biocon2003/stein.html
More info can also be found in the Bioinfomatics website
http://bioinformatics.org
The HCI Bibliography project resource website
The HCI Bibliography project is a reference library website on Human Computer Interaction and User Interface Usability. I came across the website while reading the foreward by Gary Perlman from the book Interaction Design: Beyond Human-computer Interaction by Preece Rogers and Sharp for my Masters HCI subject.
The website is a collection and repository of information on the subject since April 1998 and contains publications, journals, definitions and links by a multitude of authors and writers. It is definetly worthwhile visiting even if you are new to the subject area.
www.hcibib.org
David Attenborough presents The Life of Mammals
The Big Picture on ABC tonight presents the BBC David Attenborough documentary The Life of Mammals.
The documentary will look at mammals from the tiny pygmy shrew to the enormous blue whale, is presented by a BBC/Discovery Channel Co-production and is produced by Mike Salisbury who also produced the 1998 series, The Life of Birds.
More can be found at the BBC Mammals website
www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/mammals
Peterme.com is back online
Peter Merholz’s blog site, PeterMe is back online with a first post today. Peter has written extensively on Information architecture and Interaction design and his site contains a wealth of articles, essays and resources
Extended Drag & Drop fuctionality in Internet Explorer 5.0
Nicholas C. Zakas writes an interesting article in Web Reference on some of the extended drag and drop “events” built in functionality & behaviour of Internet Explorer version 5.0.
Images and text for example can be selected and dragged when the user pushes the mouse button and begins moving the cursor. There is variations between IE 4.0 & IE 5.0. IE 5.5 for Windows only, Microsoft went one step further and added the dragDrop() method.
It is important to know that this functionality is available and possible, but considerations of users with other browsers and platforms is important.
www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/dragdropie
How to run a design critique from UIWeb
UIWeb.com post an interesting and useful article on how to run a design critique.
The article shows the many different ways to drive the design process, one process being the critique in meetings, a process teammates are involved, while maintaining a high level of design dialogue and quality idea discussion.
www.uiweb.com/issues/issue23.htm