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Attention-Worthy, Week of 2009-09-27

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:28:28 +0200

My weekend has been focused on EuroIA, the early European information architect conference, this year held in Copenhagen. As you’d expect, I had a great time and met a lot of cool people!

A good way to start off this week’s link mania is with some impressions from the conference. Jeroen van Geel over at Johnny Holland did a good job summarizing many of the sessions; check out day 1 and day 2! Few people have had time to put their presentations online, this one, from The Architecture of Fun, is interesting.

I’ve actually had some time to collect links before the conference. Let’s continue with another set of slides, this time from SeedCamp Week in London. Startup Metrics for Pirates, expands a bit on the AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) acronym - and uses a lot of funky colors. On the same topic is 7 Things I Learned From My Startup Failing, which talks about skill and focus as keys to success.

Some different types of research also caught my eye this week. This presentation, titled Developing and Modeling Mobile Application [PDF] is really about more than the title suggests. It describes KLM, Keystroke-Level Model, which predicts how much time it takes to execute a task. This seems to be a quite complex system, but heavily researched and empirically validated. Also about mobile is The Google App Market - An Analysis. Since I own an Android phone (and can confirm that most apps are not that good…), I find this article especially interesting.

Not related, is the fact that I found out about webcredibility.org - and the fact that it doesn’t exist anymore. The site was run by a Stanford research lab and published, among other things, guidelines for achieving credibility online. These guidelines can still be read though, thanks to archive.org. Make sure to read some of the related papers as well; I liked What Makes A Web Site Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study [PDF].

I’ll finish up with two random links. First, logoblog.org goes through a list of college and university logotypes. Secondly, The story of the Gömböc is just plain weird - a shape with an apparent mind of its own.

Final note: I experimented with automatically importing my Google Reader shared item into the blog. Ultimately, I decided against it - follow my shared items here instead.

Spotify – liberation or DRM-hell?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:38:22 +0200

Spotify – liberation or DRM-hell?:

Interesting take - and I agree. Putting all your eggs in Spotify’s basket doesn’t feel right.

Henrique C. Alves - Keeping simple with Django

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:38:22 +0200

Henrique C. Alves - Keeping simple with Django:

Code tips of the day!

swissmiss | Arial versus Helvetica

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:38:22 +0200

swissmiss | Arial versus Helvetica:

It’s all in the details.

Raphaël—JavaScript Library

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:59:04 +0200

Raphaël—JavaScript Library:

Check out the demos, it looks pretty good!

What You Should Plan, Do, and Support

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:42:00 +0200

What You Should Plan, Do, and Support:

I posted this comment:

Isn’t the technology adoption life cycle by its very nature misleading? Since it depicts adoption, the actual number of users is not shown.

If the “late majority” is as numerous as the “early majority,” doesn’t that make the values of the groups equal? E.g. Blogs have more visitors than social hubs at the moment, since the cumulative number of users (or cumulative user acceptance) is greater. Or, big family V8s make more money than fuel efficient cars.

Isn’t this kind of a paradox?

The HTML5 drag and drop disaster

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:48:00 +0200

The HTML5 drag and drop disaster:

A lot of frustration and a lot of profanity - and a fun read. Still, HTML5 and its associated JavaScript APIs still have a long way to go. As evidenced by this, the HTML5 Super Friends, and others.

From your 201 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read ...

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:06:16 +0200

From your 201 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,211 items, starred 18 items, shared 25 items, and emailed 0 items.

google-jstemplate - Project Hosting on Google Code

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:46:31 +0200

google-jstemplate - Project Hosting on Google Code:

Another random release from Google - a templating system for Ajax based applications.

Attention-Worthy, Week of 2009-09-19

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:04:43 +0200

I a world where micro equals better, it’s sometimes nice to focus on just one thing for an hour or two. Here is a collection of links to longer form content that I’ve found interesting over the past week.

Longest, and my favorite, is From Nand to Tetris in 12 hours. In this 2007 Google Tech Talk, Professor Shimon Schocken describes a one semester course in which students build (simulated) hardware and software, for a fully functioning general purpose computer. It’s an inspiring video, both from an educational point of view, and because it gives an insight into the inner workings of computers.

Even more technical is Rich Hickey’s presentation, A deconstruction of object-oriented time [pdf]. You don’t have to understand it all to appreciate it—it covers a lot of the general design of object-oriented programming, and how that’s based on several assumptions of time.

Next, I’m happy to note that the book Dive Into Python 3 is released as a free download. A great resource for Python geeks looking to learn about version 3.

Website of the week is Russell Beattie’s blog, a title which he earns with two awesome posts. The first is Mobile Web Browser Thoughts, a monster post on design principles of mobile browsers (exemplified by Mozilla Fennec). The second is Empirical User Experience Design Through Action Costs, a new (?) way of measuring usability.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with two absolutely non-technical links - a reddit post correctly titled Random thoughts from people our age [our age being late teens to late twenties] and beautiful illustrations on sleep by NYT’s Christoph Niemann. ❧

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without..."

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:19:31 +0200

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

- Alfred North Whitehead

Paper explaining how Shazam works

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:24:10 +0200

Paper explaining how Shazam works:

This scientific paper (though short on sources), explains how Shazam, the audio recognition service, works.

MacBook Pro 15" vs. MacBook 13"

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:48:58 +0200

A new MacBook Pro 15” versus the first unibody MacBook - how big is the difference? Since I have both, I’ll try to answer this.

Both computers are the lowest end version. This means a 2GHz/2GB/160GB MacBook and a 2.53GHz/4GB/250GB MacBook Pro. I won’t be running any benchmarks, but a general speed boost is definatly noticable with the Pro. Boot and application load times are a bit better (even after I put Snow Leopard on the MacBook, which I’ve yet to do on the Pro). And heavier usage, such as virtualization, really benefits of the 4 gigabytes of memory.

With its 1440 by 900 screen, the Pro can fit 27% more information than the older MacBook. This actually makes a huge difference, taking my mobile computing experience from slightly cramped to just right. Since both computers fit in the same bag (barely), the larger size doesn’t make any difference for me. As far as quality goes, the screens are about the same—at least to my eyes.

One thing unique to the Pro is its backlit keyboard, which is very cool and semi-useful. The backlight is controlled by an ambient light sensor—you never have to think about activating it. The same light sensor can, optionally, control the brightness level of the screen. This is a feature I think you have to get used to, it sometimes feels too sudden.

The best thing about the Pro is its massive battery life, about 6.5 hours of “browsing time”. It’s really quite amazing to be able to use a powerful machine for that long. The older MacBook is OK, but not more, with its 4 hours.

Both computers have excellent build quality! Though, the Pro actually seems somewhat less solid than the older MacBook, possibly due to Apple’s efforts to keep the weight down. However, this probably wouldn’t be noticeable unless you go from one to the other.

To conclude, I’ll just leave you with the following: I might just have become a 15” guy. ❧

I posted 3 videos after Sweden Social Web Camp, and they made...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0200

I posted 3 videos after Sweden Social Web Camp, and they made quite an impression on my Flickr visitor stats. About 950 views in five days.

CyanogenMod is an “Android Community Rom based on the...

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:40:33 +0200

CyanogenMod is an “Android Community Rom based on the Donut tree”. It is, to quote some more, “focused on speed, followed by functionality from the core system (eg stuff that can’t be added on easily) and then stability.”

My experience is, that going from Cupcake (a.k.a Android 1.5) to this was as big of a speed boost as going from 1.0 to Cupcake was. This video shows the general speed of some core apps.

For the hackers out there: Check out Cyanogen on GitBug.

Thank You, Posterous

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:10:00 +0200

If you’re a frequent reader of my tumblelog (which, let’s face it, you’re not) you’ll have noticed that I in fact don’t post that much. I’ll spare you the reasons for this, and instead focus on the future. In doing so, I’d like to extend a thank you to Posterous.

This super simple blogging tool is the reason why I’ve today redesigned (slightly) my tumblelog, and decided to actually produce some content in the future. Why? Posterous have shown me how easy it is to produce something value. Some key points on Posterous:

You can’t change the theme of you blog. This takes a lot of pressure away, letting you focus on content.
Your main interface to your blog is email. This puts you into email mode, which leads to posts that are short, instant and to the point.

User interfaces tend to use simplicity as a means to reduce mental load. Posterous uses simplicity on a whole other level, and changes the entire mindset of its users. They make it easy to post - and to be inspired.

I haven’t yet decided the frequency with which I’m going to post. But I’ll try a couple of times a week, and take it from there.

More people should use Brightkite. It’s lonely right now.

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:06:36 +0200

More people should use Brightkite. It’s lonely right now.

Me and Peter are studying different ways that tags can be used....

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:23:00 +0200

Me and Peter are studying different ways that tags can be used. One step in this process was Linne2.org, a simple experiment in hierarchical ordering of words. To get help with this, we used Twitter. This graph shows the number of submissions on Linne2.org, compared to the number of ReTweets of our original announcement. Click for bigger.

- Huh, you’re not filming? - (Nod) For about 2 minutes.

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:56:37 +0200

- Huh, you’re not filming?

- (Nod) For about 2 minutes.

The Web Has No Versions, Only People

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:20:19 +0200

2.0. So many blog posts have struggled to define exactly what this version number means. Content aggregation and ubiquitous access to information? Focus on social objects and social networking? Transparency and openness? Long-tail mentality and niche markets? Open source software and standards?

Whatever.

While the human urge to categorize and group information is strong, there are no versions of the Web. There are however continuous improvements, each one building on the last. And I think we can see one overarching trend that has shaped, and will continue to shape, the Web and we who use it: Democratization.

You see this trend in how people communicate - blogs and later microblogs have given everyone a platform to publish and interact. The barrier to entry continues to be lowered, and your ability to reach a large audience, as well as the specific group of people that you care a lot about, continues to increase.

What needs to happen, and therefore will, are two things (at least):

Bringing the Web to more people, more places and more contexts. The mobile Web will play a huge part in this, giving affordable Internet access to many, and giving more Internet access to those who already have it.
Using the power of the crowd. Companies and services have already begun to tap into our collective wisdom. As it stands, most of these initiatives are crude, unintuitive and frankly, not that relevant to most people. The signs are here however - the fact that some have left RSS-readers behind in favor of Twitter is just one. With time, social recommendations will be perfected and become the norm. The Semantic Web will power social classification and create social navigation.

So, Web 3.0? Whatever. But the future of the Web is spelled “people.”

This entry was originally posted as a comment on ReadWriteWeb.