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• A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

  6 February 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  I completely agree %100 percent with this rant! Whenever people imagine what "the future" is going to be like they just take what we have today and make it cooler, but the future is going to be cooler AND different!

  It is all in response to this:

  And here is how it starts out:

  As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video.

  My problem is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It's a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible.

  This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you're a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, I really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact.

  This little rant isn't going to lay out any grand vision or anything. I just hope to suggest some places to look.

• Bas Rutten, Bar fighting Genius on Devour.com

  4 February 2012 01:00pm UTC 1 comment

  Remind me to never get in a bar fight...

• Where's the pixel?

  3 February 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  How clean is your screen? This is a super simple game where it shows a white page, with one black pixel. Find and click on that pixel!

• Animals in the News

  2 February 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  Series of 42 pictures of animals in the news by the In Focus blog. I already know that this link is going to bring Keri to tears, but there are a lot of interesting stories in here.

• Rant: I Love Photography

  1 February 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  I absolutely love this piece on contemporary photography. And it definitely touches on something I need to remember a lot: it isn't about getting the best, most amazing photos, photos worthy of books, it is about capturing the moments in my life as best I can.

  I love photography.

  Why am I telling you this? Isn’t it self-obvious? Don’t we all love photography? The answer is no. There is a percentage of photographers who hate photography. They do not appreciate photography. They do not consume photography. They don’t look at photo books or photo magazines. They hate the guy with the iPhone taking Instagram shots. They hate the guy who just bought the D4 because they don’t have one. They hate people using digital because film is what real artists use. They hate photographers who embrace social media because images should stand on their own. They hate Getty, Corbis, the AP, day rates, photo editors, assistants, rental houses, camera stores, point-and-shoots, iPads, zoom lenses, padded camera straps, wheeled suitcases, younger photographers, older photographers. The photo of so-and-so on the cover of whatever it’s called sucks. That guy copied the other guy, he sucks. Terry Richardson sucks. Chuck Close sucks. Vincent Laforet hasn’t taken a still in 17 years. Kodak hasn’t been managed well since the 70s. Blah, blah, blah.

  I love photography. Let me show you why.

• You want to see Never Say Never. Defend yourself.

  30 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  Great piece in defense of Justin Bieber and popular culture in general. Really I'd like to quote the whole thing, so be sure to click through and read it:

  But it’s the Twilight argument – I may not love Twilight (and I don’t) but I’m not about to say that everyone who likes it owes me an explanation. It means something to them, therefore it has value. And I will never, NEVER, indicate that there’s no artistry in things that aren’t highbrow – there is, just of a different sort than people like to quote when they try to make themselves sound important.

• Curious Mountain Gorillas on Devour.com

  28 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 1 comment

  Oh my god, this looks like simultaneously the most amazing thing that could possibly happen to a person and the most terrifying!

• Good news: Whales and dolphins are friends

  27 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 4 comments

  I kid you not, pictures of dolphins riding whales:

• Scott Adams on goals

  26 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) doesn't set goals, he has systems. This is similar to what I am trying to do with my New Year's resolutions this year or what Erik was talking about in his comment on my post.

  Here's how Scott starts out:

  The other day I put on my workout clothes and drove to the gym. But when I arrived I didn't feel like working out. This was not a huge surprise, since I didn't feel peppy before I even laced up my running shoes. Perhaps I hadn't gotten enough sleep that week. I wasn't sure what the problem was. I ate lunch in the snack bar then drove home and took a nap.

  Question: Did I fail at my exercise goal?

  And to recap, here's what Erik said:

  I don't do New Year's Resolutions. Maybe I'm just using a different operational definition of "resolution" than everyone else, but when I think of resolutions I think of things like lose weight, quit smoking, and get out of debt. In my opinion all of these "resolutions" lack any gravity because they are not measurable, have no time frame, and are generally vague. I see them as wishes waiting to be given up on, nothing more.

  I am a goal setter. To me goals have more power than resolutions if they are set in ways that are specific, measurable, and that have a deadline.

  I think that both Scott and Erik are against goals and resolutions (respectively) in an entirely semantic way. They both have goals or resolutions (or whatever you want to call them) in the way that most people intend them to mean. They have just figured out better ways of making sure those goals or resolutions come true and have decided to call those ways something else.

  At the heart of the matter is the fact that it is easy to want to change but harder to actually do it.

  And to me the advice is, A) don't be vague, B) choose things that are easy to do, and C) choose things that help develop good habits as opposed to grand changes or gestures.

• Rolling in the Deep covers

  25 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  Apparently Adele's Rolling in the Deep has been covered more than 350,000 times on YouTube! Holy cow that's a lot!

  Here are 71 one of those mashed together:

  All I can think when I watch this is how a lot of those people were probably hoping to be "discovered" and make it big. So, this video is sort of a depressing monument to hope.

• California High School student devises possible cancer cure

  24 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  She sounds like no ordinary high school student, but still, pretty inspiring!

  Angela's idea was to mix cancer medicine in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles -- nanoparticles that would then attach to cancer cells and show up on an MRI. so doctors could see exactly where the tumors are. Then she thought shat if you aimed an infrared light at the tumors to melt the polymer and release the medicine, thus killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.

  I hope this isn't like the Skin Gun and isn't actually as amazing as they make it sound.

• Internet Story

  22 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 2 comments

  This is a disturbing story about why the internet isn't all fun and games!

• 30 giant hornets vs. a whole honey bee hive

  21 January 2012 02:00pm UTC 3 comments

  I literally had a nightmare this week about the hornets from this video. Look at how big they are!

  I don't care if they have any redeeming quality whatsoever for the ecosystem of the earth, if I could get rid of all hornets (and wasps) with a wave of my hand, I'd do so in a second. They scare the crap out of me! Especially these ones!

  Click through to read more about how some bees have learned to fight them...

• Tiny tips for everyday life

  20 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  This is a cute website! Sign up to get little clues for life every day in your email. Or just randomly click through the archives. For example, I never knew this:

  usually, saran wrap and tinfoil containers have tabs in the side. push them in to get the roll to stay in the box.

  And sure enough, I checked the boxes we have here in the kitchen and they had little tabs to press in. Wow!

• Great video about SOPA and PIPA

  18 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments

  This goes into a little more of the actual wording of the proposals and why they are bad for the world:

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