Being easily convinced is not a virtue.
Archive for May, 2007
Surface Computing – Microsoft
May 30th
The technology certainly isn’t new now and I’m not sure if I’ve posted about this before, but now we can see what Microsoft plan to do with such technology. Three excellent videos have been posted up at popularmechanics.com showing off the new coffee-table-style technology. The whole article is a good read, but I most of all enjoyed the videos. Most impressive for me is the way wireless devices seem to interact with it so seamlessly. In the first video they show a wireless camera spit out a photo onto the surface, then it gets sucked up by a PDA or similar kind of wireless-enabled device just by sitting it on the surface above the photo. I was very impressed.
See the whole article and videos.
SDP Entry 5 – Interaction Design
May 16th
Windows Live Messenger (from here on referred to as WLM) is a program I use regularly (almost constantly, every day) to instantly message, or engage in audio conversations my online contacts over the Internet. I first started using this product some time in 2001, when it was MSN Messenger and had very few (or buggy) features. This makes me a 6-year-long user, and over this time I have seen more and more features being added to it. The problem is, there’s a limit to how much you can add to a system before it becomes too fully-featured, or even bloated. More >
SDP Entry 4 – Critique
May 16th
My iPod has become a very valuable part of my daily life. I use it for storage and playback of all my music files and the occasional video file. It’s a 30GB white, fifth-generation iPod, and has been happily fulfilling its responsibilities with almost no faults. I’m going to critique the software that runs on it.
The iPod software is very menu-oriented. Select a menu item, and you’re faced with another child menu until eventually you find what you were after. It sports some very stylish transitions and animations, complimented by a very attractive, vibrant colour scheme More >
SDP Entry 3 – Suggestions for Improvement
May 15th
For this entry I’ll choose a program called Command Console, developed by Daniel Chambers, for which I will write a form/function analysis.
Product: Command Console – A basic command/application launching program.
Scenario: Archibald likes using his computer but often gets tired of scrambling around his desktop to find his programs. Also, he often forgets long directory paths (e.g. c:\documents and settings\archie\my documents\workfiles\accounting\2007\customeraccounts\) He wishes the process of launching applications, directories, files or directories could be done in a more efficient and consistent manner. More >
More OS Security news
May 2nd
Sorry, I know Vista didn’t come anything near what we expected (even for a first release) but I just had to link this. It makes me feel good when I read things like this. Poor Mac fan-boys… oh well. You would think this kind of conclusion would lead silly Mac fan-boys to see the light, but nope. They just change their tune from “Windows is insecure” to “Windows is too secure”. Simple as that.
Anyway: link
SDP Entry 2 – Vision Statements
May 1st
Vision statements are used by organisations in an effort to state what they envisage to achieve in the future. It states a realistic and achievable position an organisation would like to be in.
Here are two example vision statements:
- “We will be one amongst the top three transporters of goods and people in North America by 2010″ – Wikipedia
- “Our organisation will have global recognition as the world’s most innovative software developers within the next ten years” – Me