May 2011

Harnessing your digital breadcrumbs

May 31, 2011
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This story in the Wall Street Journal discusses the wide-ranging research implications of collecting millions of data points from cell phone users. Most people carry smartphones. In addition to holding your contacts, your emails, and text messages, even the cheapest of todays smartphones are equipped with advanced sensor technology like accelerometers, GPS, magnetometers, etc.  It knows where you are even [...]

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For projectors, new technology means new training (and new errors!)

May 23, 2011
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Mode errors! Coming soon to a theater near you? Have you ever forgotten to set your camera back to Auto from Portrait? How about not understanding what those modes mean? Apparently a similar phenomenon occurs in the professional world of movie theaters. There is a special lens filter used for 3-D movies and when it is not removed for normal [...]

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Bill Buxton Likes Input Devices

May 13, 2011
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And now you can browse his collection with him — all 28 minutes and 48 seconds worth! Channel 9 has the whole story and you can browse the collection one by one on the Microsoft Research site for Buxton. (Buxton obviously has his own site as well.) Photo credit andreakirkby @ Flickr

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Miller Column Inception (or the geekiest movie you’ll see today)

May 11, 2011

Miller Columns are the browsing/visualization technique used in the Mac OSX Finder. It was inherited from the NeXT operating system (one of my favorites). I personally prefer this to the tree view that’s common in Windows Explorer. The embedded video below summarizes the essential action of the movie Inception (spoiler alert!): INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo. (via Kottke)

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“Feel the pleasure of the mind in the least allayed”

May 6, 2011
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Enjoy this short but entertaining look at “Benjamin Franklin – the first American ergonomist?” by Dr. John Senders (who has appeared previously on this blog). An excerpt: Professor Chaplin states of Franklin (p. 65): Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old Age (1744). Franklin solicitously printed the book in large type so that elderly readers (beyond the help even of [...]

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Does this color make me look fat?

May 2, 2011
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Funny post from Consumer Reports showing that perceptions are altered by color: Wearing black is the time-honored technique for appearing thinner without shedding an pound. Apparently it works for the iPhone 4, as well. Recently an avalanche of news and tech sites reported that the white iPhone 4 was thicker than the black iPhone, even showing side-by-side photos claiming it [...]

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