White Screen of Death
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Poutine: A meal? or a form of assisted suicide?
Last night, I went out to eat at Frite Alors!, a french fry restaurant in Montreal. Yes, a french fry restaurant. I was chowing with Mikol, who has a bunch of in-laws in Montreal, and has been here a few times, so he knows the drill.
Mikol told me about Poutine, which I guess basically means "mess"... which is fairly accurate: fries; gravy; cheese curd. That's it. I mean, you could order it with a bunch of other stuff, but I thought I would go native.
First off, I have to say, this shit is tastey. I can see why this is a "fast food staple," It is probably fab hangover food. That said, it certainly hits you hard. When the waitress asked me what size I wanted, I hesitated. She illustrated the difference in scale by holding up the two bowls, petite and grand. My initial thought was grand. I mean, I was hungry. I should have taken heed of the conceptual weight she was giving le petite; she held the smallish bowl as if it had some serious heft, clearly she was warning me.
I let my hunger get the best of me and succumbed to the grand.
It is 2:30 now the followign day. The greasey curds are still churning in my belly.
A word for travelers: stick with the small. You will not regret it.
Mikol told me about Poutine, which I guess basically means "mess"... which is fairly accurate: fries; gravy; cheese curd. That's it. I mean, you could order it with a bunch of other stuff, but I thought I would go native.
First off, I have to say, this shit is tastey. I can see why this is a "fast food staple," It is probably fab hangover food. That said, it certainly hits you hard. When the waitress asked me what size I wanted, I hesitated. She illustrated the difference in scale by holding up the two bowls, petite and grand. My initial thought was grand. I mean, I was hungry. I should have taken heed of the conceptual weight she was giving le petite; she held the smallish bowl as if it had some serious heft, clearly she was warning me.
I let my hunger get the best of me and succumbed to the grand.
It is 2:30 now the followign day. The greasey curds are still churning in my belly.
A word for travelers: stick with the small. You will not regret it.
CHI2006 04.24.2006: Scott Cook, Co-Foudner of Intuit; a Helluva Lot of Faceted Metadata
Scott Cook was the opening speaker for CHI2006. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how the preso went, despite a number of logical inconsistencies.
His content generally revolved around using contextual inquiry as a product design tool. His idea seems to be that if you root around with the customers long enough, the "unexpected" pops out and bites your face. I don't know how much I agree with that... but I agree with the spirit of his arguement.
Scott describes the following as a typical product design lifecycle:
Write requirements > Design product > Show product to users
of course, he thinks this is bass ackwards.
Watch users > Design product
Of course this is where is whole premise falls apart ... because based on his anecdotes, it sounds like the typical Intuit product lifecycle is the former. Who needs consistency. This is about IDEAS my friends.
I liked three things most in Scott's presentation.
1 - 6 — Dessenters (d)
7 - 8 — Neutral
9 - 10 — Promoters (p)
They calculate Net Customer Sat thusly:
%p - %d = NetSat
After that, it was pretty much all faceted metadata all the time. It was a fairly interesting day.
Seeing the new eBay redesign (which actually is looking pretty nice) was interersting, and definitely gave me somethings to chew on regarding the display of large quantities of data. They have implemented a system that allows a customer to build and manipulate a query in a fairly intuitive way, integrating search and browse fairly seemlessly.
Much of their work is in line with Flamenco, a newly opensource platform for accessing huge amounts of faceted data.
Also got to check out a Microsoft Research project called Phlat which is built on top of Windows Live and allows you to add tags to any file (e.g.: docs, pics, emails, etc.) It then lets you to build something similar to the query eBay has worked out, though it is far more experimental.
Anyway, all in all, a fairly good day.
His content generally revolved around using contextual inquiry as a product design tool. His idea seems to be that if you root around with the customers long enough, the "unexpected" pops out and bites your face. I don't know how much I agree with that... but I agree with the spirit of his arguement.
Scott describes the following as a typical product design lifecycle:
Write requirements > Design product > Show product to users
of course, he thinks this is bass ackwards.
Watch users > Design product
Of course this is where is whole premise falls apart ... because based on his anecdotes, it sounds like the typical Intuit product lifecycle is the former. Who needs consistency. This is about IDEAS my friends.
I liked three things most in Scott's presentation.
1. Intuit calls the product approval process "The Greenlight Process". This is far more positive than the standard "Executive Review" process. It's all about getting the green light.
2. At any stage of the Greenlight Process, a product team must simply answer a small number of predefined questions about the product. I am sure that this cuts the review cycle significantly, and prevents the reviewers from biasing their analysis based on their pre-existing opinion.
3. Net-Customer Satisfaction is the key metric they use to measure success. We did this at Navis, and despite the many things Navis did that I feel are wrong, this is the only metric that should matter. The use a 10 point scale 1 - 10.
1 - 6 — Dessenters (d)
7 - 8 — Neutral
9 - 10 — Promoters (p)
They calculate Net Customer Sat thusly:
%p - %d = NetSat
After that, it was pretty much all faceted metadata all the time. It was a fairly interesting day.
Seeing the new eBay redesign (which actually is looking pretty nice) was interersting, and definitely gave me somethings to chew on regarding the display of large quantities of data. They have implemented a system that allows a customer to build and manipulate a query in a fairly intuitive way, integrating search and browse fairly seemlessly.
Much of their work is in line with Flamenco, a newly opensource platform for accessing huge amounts of faceted data.
Also got to check out a Microsoft Research project called Phlat which is built on top of Windows Live and allows you to add tags to any file (e.g.: docs, pics, emails, etc.) It then lets you to build something similar to the query eBay has worked out, though it is far more experimental.
Anyway, all in all, a fairly good day.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Supercar "B"
This video by Supercar is fairly disturbing, but I really like it.
Hint: it's a lovestory.
and there's more!
Last Scene
Wonderword
White Surf Style 5
Aoharu Youth
and more....
Yumegiwa Last Boy
Strobolights
Sunday People
Hint: it's a lovestory.
and there's more!
Last Scene
Wonderword
White Surf Style 5
Aoharu Youth
and more....
Yumegiwa Last Boy
Strobolights
Sunday People
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Monday, April 17, 2006
We so totally have one of these
On BoingBoing, they point to BB&B (via Gizmodo), animal shaped humidifiers.
We have the froggy!
Streams of fog shoot out oh his eyebrows!
On BoingBoing, they point to BB&B (via Gizmodo), animal shaped humidifiers.We have the froggy!
Streams of fog shoot out oh his eyebrows!
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Lost frown emoticon
This week's episode of Lost, S.O.S. has a sweet little easter egg: a frown emoticon. There is no way this could have been an accident, there is too much symmetry here.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Fibs
Fibs
Words
Ordered
in sequence:
not interesting
to me. Wait. Maybe this one is.
I
love
when Lost
gets mentioned
unexpectedly.
I think that Locke is a freakshow.
Words
Ordered
in sequence:
not interesting
to me. Wait. Maybe this one is.
I
love
when Lost
gets mentioned
unexpectedly.
I think that Locke is a freakshow.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
When mashups go horribly wrong ...
... for Chevy. Chevy has a "make your own Chevy mashup!" feature.
"Whoa, that is rad,"
![[image lifted from treehugger.com]](http://www.stricken.org/uploaded_images/chevy-777949.jpg)
or not.
Some smart people have decided to make anti SUV ads!
I guess this would be an example of a nice try.
(image lifted from treehugger.com)
"Whoa, that is rad,"
![[image lifted from treehugger.com]](http://www.stricken.org/uploaded_images/chevy-785904.jpg)
or not.
Some smart people have decided to make anti SUV ads!
I guess this would be an example of a nice try.
(image lifted from treehugger.com)
America's overvalued real estate: Nice
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is in my neighborhood ... but not too far from it! America's overvalued real estate: Nice
