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I can't believe I never took the Roosevelt Island tram till yesterday. Wouldn't it be great if all public transit was aerial trams?
Roberto Bonini, Steven Perez and Derrick liked this
*faints*
- Anika
I've never taken it yet either. Never had a reason to go out there.
- ronin
from iPhone
Did online checkin about 47 hours before boarding; all the best economy seats were already taken. What the frak.
Frequent flyers!
- Rene Wirtz
Doesn't hurt to ask when you get to the counter. Often seats open up. Plus the airlines themselves often withhold seats for one reason or another which you may be able to switch into.
- ronin
Gamasutra - News - In-Depth: On Company Culture, Hiring, And Retention - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin...
Piaw Na liked this
When it comes to compensation, bonuses are "not such a great way," it turns out, says Edery. The best thing to offer, rather, is fair compensation that people don't ask for more of. You should be "surprising the employee pleasantly with raises. They shouldn't have to ask for it." Netflix keeps employees at the maximum the company would be willing to pay for an employee. They're less...
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- Piaw Na
Ran into John Oliver in a SoHo bookstore; was asked to do a "man on the street" interview. Hopefully it airs. =) (I never did get a chance to mention I was Canadian... didn't want to jinx it. On second thought, Oliver is British...)
Steven Perez, JSNFLMNG, Mathew™ one of a kind and 7 other people liked this
Sweet! What was he 'reporting' on?
- Christopher Chung
It's airing now. Uh, what do you look like?
- Rob H.
Sorry, you didn't make it. The highlight is a bunch of little kids saying all the ways they'd kill themselves rather than read Palin's book.
- Rob H.
That is freaking awesome!
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I didn't see you in the piece. :(
- cecily
Ah well, easy come easy go.
- Andrew C
... wow, those kids were dark!
- Andrew C
Dang! Wish you'd gotten in. :)
- Ayşe E.
Why is it that if Google, MS, etc have so much talent, they can't make a beautiful and /consistent/ and *usable* UI? I think it comes down to not making user experience a priority.
Mushin Schilling, Dan Hsiao, Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie) and 9 other people liked this
I never understood making all these tools and NOT having them talk to each other. It's so silly.
- Anika
It's hard... tons of different projects all moving in different directions at the same time, no Steve-Jobs-like overlord.
- Jim Norris
Isn't Mayer supposed to be that?
- Andrew C
Why would they need an overload. It's like my complaint with Xbox and Windows Live. The Xbox people are aware that Windows Live exists and vice versa. When I go to Windows Live, there *should* naturally be an option to connect my Xbox Live profile. Instead, I had to create a new profile. Don't even get me started on the mess that is Google.
- Anika
Engineers who think that EMACS is a great UI find it hard to design UIs for others. :-)
- Piaw Na
Google's UI is pretty consistent imo. Keyboard shortcuts work the same in gReader and Gmail for example. If you're used to vim shortcuts, it's darn right intuitive
- Maxamad
Guilty as charged, Piaw. But I'm learning.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
keyboard shortcuts are the LAST thing anyone should be worrying about for UE. almost nobody uses them, particularly on gmail/greader... the overwhelming majority of computer users don't use keyboard shortcuts other than copy and paste at all
- mjc
But Gmail/GReader are designed for engineers to use themselves as well.
- Jim Norris
Can you guys be more specific? I'm totally lost as to what the problem is, but this seems like an interesting topic. :)
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Rahsheen brings to light an excellent meta-point: This Question/Response here up till now has a poor UsereXperience for some because there's little exposition to contextualize the meaning. So again, UX is hard :)
- Micah Wittman
Gmail/GReader are great UIs. What's wrong with them. :-) Gmail even got me to switch away from Emacs for mail reading.
- Piaw Na
I was actually thinking of Android here. For example, in the calendar app, when on the 'add a new appointment' screen, the back button silently deletes the pending appointment. However, when viewing an existing appointment, you can add or delete reminders and there, the back button _saves_ changes rather than discarding them...
- Andrew C
from Android
Android is a completely different can of worms. :) But yeah, engineers aren't big on calendars. Our social lives are empty, and meetings are a thing to be avoided at all costs. :-)
- Piaw Na
Not sure about now, but In the past, Google did not have enough good UI designers. Some of the UIs were designed by a committee of engineers.
- Peng-Toh
Have you tried to design a UI in a meeting consisting of engineers? It is worse than a group of economists debating economic policy. UI is art, not science. No untrained team of engineers is going to give you a Picasso. Caring about it is different from being able to design a good UI.
- Peng-Toh
Furthermore, if you want your UI to have unity of vision, you can't just have different teams all running their own UI and metaphors. That way lies madness. You want one strong designer who can make his decisions stick. Preferably at the CEO level, like Steve Jobs.
- Piaw Na
Civil engineers are not architects.
- Peng-Toh
That's OK. People don't remember his mistakes, just like Apple TV being a flop doesn't stop people from buying iPods, iPhones, and Macs. It's just like with VCs. It doesn't matter if you pick 15 flops if your successfully funded 1 Google. The wins compensate for all the flops and then some.
- Piaw Na
Oh wait, Piaw is saying that Apple has many wins? Aren't you the Apple antifan-boy?
- Peng-Toh
...I agree with Micah: UX is hard. But as long as you have engineers leading the way, the "average" user is usually going to have bad, or less than optimal experiences. forget about cellphones and laptops -- those are easy to bash -- let me offer you two "UIs" that persist today which were clearly designed by engineers, with very little consideration of average people: ATMs and microwave ovens. These things are too f***ng hard to use!
- .LAG liked that
Whenever you wander away from the standards and release software that does something the user does not expect or things are not located where expected, or certain behaviors of your UI is not what the user expects, you are not thinking about the user's experience. You are thinking of your own and catering to your own tastes. To give you a perfect example of what I am referring to, with...
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- April Russo (app103)
Hahahaha. I hate Apple products. But they definitely have been selling well and at ridiculously high prices.
- Piaw Na
Safari is another application with a non-standard UI on Windows, that ignores the user's desktop settings. No matter what your desktop theme is or what colors you are using, it's the same ugly silver that doesn't fit in well with my desktop.
- April Russo (app103)
.LAG, re. the microwave UI, see http://friendfeed.com/micahwi...
- Micah Wittman
I guess the word 'gourmet' in the name of a Manhattan establishment pretty much only means 'we serve food here'.
The 'Ninja Assassin' street poster team definitely knows how to get a job done.
Community is just ridiculously good. I don't think they've had an off episode yet.
Akiva Moskovitz and Derek Coward liked this
This week's episode was probably my least favorite and it was still better than just about anything else on TV.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Are all you "how to eat a chicken wing" re-sharers serious? You don't clean the meat off the two-bone section without resorting to gimmicks? For shame.
Yahoo's "You" campaign is maddeningly vague. Maybe that works for a company without any real competitors, or with crazy buzz, but for Yahoo it's an epic waste of marketing dollars IMO.
Jérôme Flipo, Chieze Okoye, Bindu Reddy and 4 other people liked this
Don't people test these things? Maybe we're just not the target audience. Maybe the goal is just to increase brand recall and warm fuzzies. (I admit, I have the same reaction.)
- ⓞnor
Also not helping : Yahoo advertises it's behind the free wifi in Times Square. That would be great, except I cannot get it to work on either laptop or phone. The best I can do is connect to the wifi access point; not to the internet. And there's no hotspot web page either.
- Andrew C
Looks very 1998
- Steve Crossan
"Y!ou were named Time's Person of the Year, so we decided to let Y!ou run the company! Only not really, but Y!ou won't notice. Now finish Y!our Big Gulp."
- Kevin Fox
Both of whom took steps to cry mea culpa. Coke introduced Coke Classic and Tropicana reverted their packaging.
- Kevin Fox
I don't think Yahoo's stumble is quite so massive. They won't have to apologize for it, but I think it won't generate a lot of business... in a few months, then, I'd expect them to find a new direction and drop this campaign. (Whereas successful campaigns can go on for years)
- Andrew C
from Android
I agree Andrew. Unlike Coke and Tropicana, Yahoo's branding campaign is not a mandatory gateway along the user's path to purchasing the product. Their brand campaign may or may not be effective in attracting new users, but it's less likely to dissuade current users (even Thomas Hawk, who will continue to use Yahoo! no matter how much he hates them. ;-)
- Kevin Fox
AmazingSuperPowers: Webcomic at the Speed of Light » Waste - http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2009...
Anika and Jim Norris liked this
New York News - The Strangest Landlord-Tenant Relationship In Town? - page 1 - http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-11...
Christopher Chung liked this
I remember reading about these sub-tenement conditions in NYC's Chinatown of decades past; had no idea one survived to this day.
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
Cupcake mouse
PENGUIN: MAJOR CAPS LOCK, Will Higgins™, Yolanda and Anna Haro liked this
... this was cuter in person. I think the angle I took the photo flattened out the face too much. (but then again, it also looked better than it tasted.)
- Andrew C
D'Artagnan makes duck bacon! ... it tastes pretty much like regular bacon, actually, though the rendered fat does smell a touch more "ducky" than bacon fat does.
Also, I went up to Flushing, Queens yesterday and the window on Corner 28 does indeed make pretty tasty duck wraps. So it was a particularly high duck index for me yesterday. =)
- Andrew C
So this is New York, huh? More street food carts here than there were a few years ago. I approve.
LOOKBOOK.nu: "breathe in for luck" by Alissa Laderer - http://lookbook.nu/look...
LOOKBOOK.nu: "Hi ~Mr Yellow" by D .l - http://lookbook.nu/look...
LOOKBOOK.nu: "Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you and I'd probably be happy." by Annika M. - http://lookbook.nu/look...
When you see a couple with a major hotness mismatch (say, 5-9), what's your reaction?
YouTube - DJ Jazzy Jeff - Billie Jean Remix - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Tofu De la Moore liked this
LOOKBOOK.nu: "Before Today " by Aga K. - http://lookbook.nu/look...
I love this woman's sense of colour.
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
Regulation Going Backwards | The Big Picture - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog...
Piaw Na and Kohl S Gill liked this
"Floyd Norris has the details. Under the guise of helping small businesses, the accounting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley are being watered down to near nothing."
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
"This is a shameless attempt for a freer hand to avoid responsibility and correct marking of assets. If we really wanted to just help small companies reduce their reporting burdens and maintain acceptable financial controls, how hard is it to exempt an appropriate number of firms with modest revenue. Instead, this is yet another grab for control by the same groups that helped caused the previosu accounting crisis in the 1990s and 2000s. The gall is simply unimaginable."
- Andrew C
Norris: "The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a name George Orwell would appreciate -- to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional ones as well."
- Andrew C
"They also suggested that more foreign companies would list their securities in the United States if they were spared that onerous requirement. No one seems to have asked if investors really would benefit from making it easier to invest in companies that fear such an audit."
- Andrew C
The accounting requirements of SOX don't do anything to prevent fraud anyhow...They need to actually tighten enforcement of companies and not simply ask companies to do better accounting.
- Alex Scoble
I thought there was some deterrent effect by putting the CFO/CEOs personally on the line for the quality of the accounting?
- Andrew C
It didn't stop Madoff or the banking scandals...The only thing that deters fraud is good enforcement.
- Alex Scoble
As Ritholtz points out, though, the banking scandals were aided by explicit waivers from certain regulations.
- Andrew C
chapter 12: On Time Management « The Way of the Consultant - http://twotc.wordpress.com/2009...
Greg GuitarBuster liked this
"Computer graphics distract the eye./ Downloading music distracts the ear./ Browsing the web disturbs one's taste./ Video games obsess the mind./ Ordering online disrupts one's judgement."
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
"Therefore, the Consultant/ cultivates his intuition, instead of distracting himself:/ by avoiding the one, he chooses the other. "
- Andrew C
Open Left:: Only fiscal conservatives would say we can't afford to reduce the deficit - http://openleft.com/diary...
Piaw Na liked this
"Truly, only fiscal conservatives like the Blue Dogs would argue that we can't afford to reduce the deficit."
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
Blue Dogs live in an incoherent shadow land, not quite conservative enough to be truely Republicans and certainly not liberal enough to be Democrats The problem is without a coherent frame they flay about from issue to issue trying to hang in their shadow land of muddled mddle but mostly not making sense
- WarLord
Hullabaloo: Remember, Remember The Fifth of November - http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009...
"Ten years ago today, they repealed [Glass-Steagall]."
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
Whoa, John Reed steps up. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps... "Lawmakers were wrong to repeal the Depression-era Glass- Steagall Act in 1999, Reed said. At the time, he supported overturn of the law, which required the separation of institutions that engaged in traditional customer banking services from those involved in capital markets. "We learn...
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- Andrew C
Fwd: How to Explain Moral Hazard - http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009... (via http://friendfeed.com/piaw...)
Michael R. Bernstein and Piaw Na liked this
"Pensioners, otoh, are subject to "moral hazard." Believing their contracts were viable, reasonable, and negotiated by people who were working in the best interest of the firm--that is, people who were not writing a check with their mouth that their pockets couldn't cash--clearly causes them not to do enough to save. Because they don't understand that mismanagement of their pension is their fault, and that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will only ensure that their pensions will be paid "up to certain limits," no matter how much extra Roger Smith or Michael Eisner or Jack Welch took from the company for performing almost as well as the rest of the stock market."
- Andrew C
"So, let us say to Mr. Brown and the rest of the workers who depend on their pensions being funded: Don't worry about being treated the way AIG was. You're going to be dealt with as a "moral hazard" problem for believing that the contract you negotiated will be enforced."
- Andrew C
angry asian man: deadly viper: christian book overdoses on kung fu imagery - http://www.angryasianman.com/2009...
"Yesterday, my longtime friend and mentor Kathy alerted me to Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership, a "kung fu-inspired" Christian book/dvd series on leadership integrity published by Zondervan. It looks like it draws heavily from Eastern imagery and Asian martial arts... for no apparent reason. I mean, it lays it on thick."
- Andrew C
from Bookmarklet
Zondervan is a major Christian book publisher. It is (through Harper Collins) part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire. How did such a ridiculous concept get all the way to publishing?
- Andrew C
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