Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Umberto Eco loves lists, but Joho disagrees.

Umberto Eco is an information architect! (On lists)

I notice a lot of people have stopped blogging, they’re all on Smazebook and Tweeter I suppose. They’ll be back in a few years.

I was paying before for 10 gigs of extra storage, but now that Google dropped their prices they’ve auto-upgraded my Gmail storage to 87 gigs.

They didn’t even send me an email, I guess for them it’s no biggie?

“The amount of leverage available to a modern Internet entrepreneur is far, far greater than was available to entrepreneurs of previous generations.”

If you use gmail, apparently you can change myusername@gmail.com into myusername+spamsite@gmail.com or my.username@gmail.com and it will still go to your email. Didn’t know that.

(Anne Galloway) These are awesome: blankets with a map on them, I want one now too. Get to know your neighborhood while getting comfy. You can have them made in Brooklyn, they take about 200 hours to make, pretty expensive I would wager.

Cloudvox looks awesome. (via Simon)

Youtube has a new logo.

Nathan explaining some Androidy stuff: “CyanogenMod exists because Android is an open-source mobile operating system – in fact, it is the only commercially viable open-source mobile operating system. When the words “open-source” and “commercially viable” exist in close proximity to each other, I usually start talking too fast and wave my arms excitedly.”

So this is exactly why Google shouldn’t be in the content business. They’re not even any good at the content business (they are good at algorythms and UI).

I noticed Google is using a new (?) layout for forum results. Google has since long identified certain sites as “forums” and given them a different layout in their search results, but this layout is new I believe.

Practically, this means that forums can get 5 links instead of the usual 1 or 2 in a search results page.

More quoting of Dave Winer: “I read the article about this Sidebar Wiki thing and their product manager said it was just like blogging. I suppose if you have no soul it’s just like blogging.“

Agree on this one. Google’s Sidebar Wiki thing is a terrible, terrible idea, and will be overrun with SEO spammers just like their other content wiki initiatives were. It’s not just that Google sucks at content, it’s that content is the wrong place for them to be in the internet ecosystem. They point people to content. They shouldn’t manage content sites themselves. Youtube is an edgecase, this wikithing is way over the edge.

Back to the good old blogging and linking to other blogs. Dave Winer: “the fact that Apple holds up apps and rejects them often because they compete with their own software is to me like buying a coat made of the skins of endangered species. I won’t use iPhone apps for ecological reasons.”

Loosely coupled systems scale more easily and are easier to maintain, but they can cause some unusual error messages when one of the parts of the system is down. I understood this message, but I imagine most users wouldn’t.

The new Amazon Cloudwatch monitoring ($0.015 per hour for each Amazon EC2 instance, so that’s about 10 US$/month per server) graphs in the (free) AWS console for ec2 instances are AWESOME:

(Yea, that’s a strange disk read spike there…) Now I just have to learn to interpret these and understand what’s going on there.

What happens to user behavior when we tweak the site to be slower in various degrees for them? It turns out that over a large gradient of site slowdowns, users in general spend around the same amount of time on Facebook, as measured by session time (user activity up until a certain period of idleness). Logically, page views suffer as a result.

Typical upload/download speeds at the farm with TATA.

Test

Installed blogging client on new laptop. Ready to go.Tesssssst.

Wij hebben 2 katten ter adoptie: 1 witte en 1 zwarte. Ze zijn 4 jaar oud, we hebben ze meegebracht uit New York 2 jaar geleden. Over 1 maand vertrekken we naar Colombia en we kunnen ze (spijtig genoeg!!) onmogelijk meenemen, dus we zoeken iemand om 1 van de poezen (of beiden) te adopteren.

Het zijn 2 vrouwtjes. Ze woonden de eerste 2 jaar in het appartement in New York, maar zijn nu gewoon buiten te wonen, dus ze kunnen binnen of buiten. Ze zijn beiden gesteriliseerd en gevaccineerd en hebben een chip ingeplant. Ze zijn ook zindelijk (binnenshuis). Het zijn heel lieve katten, vriendelijk in de omgang.

We kunnen ze spijtig genoeg dus onmogelijk meenemen, bel ons op 03 / 325 88 70 or email petervandijck @ gmail dot com als je meer informatie wil.

Stuur deze webpagina ook door naar je vrienden, alvast bedankt!

Foto van toen ze nog klein waren:

Foto’s van nu:

Bel ons op 03 / 325 88 70 or email petervandijck @ gmail dot com

Still not great but I like the idea of collaborative UI design:

Eurostar confirmation page: “Unless you have a photographic memory, you might want to print this page for your records.” :)

Jared Spool interviews Brian Kalma, Director of User Experience and Web Strategy for the darling of Internet retail, Zappos.com.

Podcasting isn’t hip anymore (and most of the companies founded during the hype have done really badly), but it’s still a very useful thing.

In Arambol, India, I came across a small travelers’ library where you could borrow and exchange books, with about 100 books organized in the following 4 categories: English, Dutch, German and Funny Languages. Unfortunately I got a picture of the library but not one of the classification:

The Journal of IA is up. It’s a peer-reviewed journal, which is fantastic, because it not only makes IA more serious and research-driven (which it needs), but mainly because it encourages the creation of this kind of research. I don’t particularly care if IA as a discipline survives or goes the way of “knowledge management”, which drowned in unscientific blabla and became pretty much irrelevant (with apologies to everyone who identifies with this). But I do care a lot about good research in my field, and this will hopefully encourag that.

One thing though: content is only available in PDF format. Guys! This is ironic in more ways than I can count.

• Continuing the ear-infection: sick on the Konkan express (Poorbuthappy in India!)
  (tags: india sick ear-infection travel with kids children)

There’s a great discussion going on on the IXDA mailing list about what we call mobile phones (and what we call sending SMS messages) in different countries. I’m trying to summarize here, please leave a comment with info on your country and also note where this list may be wrong:

• USA: Cellphone or cell, texting.
• China: “Handy phone” (?)
• Iran: mobile. (landlines are called “telephone”).
• Spain: "teléfono móvil" or "móvil".
• Denmark: mobile phone.
• UK: mobile or mobile phone.
• Philipines: cellphone.
• New Zealand: “mobile” (but cellphone is also used).
• India: mobile. Telephone or landline for a landline.
• Korea: “handphone”
• Japan: keita.
• Dutch (Netherlands): mobiele telefoon.
• Dutch (Belgium): GSM.
• France: "téléphone portable" or "portable" but since "portable" is used for laptop too some people call them "mobile".
• Germany: handy http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handy
• Indonesia, they call it hand phone or simply abbreviated as "hp" pronounced "ha-pe". "*Ha*" as if in *ha*m and "*pe*" as if in*Pe*psi. In terms of texting, they use "SMS".
• Turkey: "pocket phone" ("cep telefonu")?

In general, “text message” is more widely understood than “SMS”.

I also created a Google survey, I’ll open up the results. Fill in the form about what phones are called in your country here.

Apple’s Belgium language gateway has “Apple” as a language option :)

(In Dutch)

Wij verkopen de volgende dingen, in Belgie, in de volgende 2 maanden. Contacteer op petervandijck at gmail puntje com of 03 325 88 70.

Alles is zelf af te halen in Deurne, Antwerpen (dicht bij autosnelweg).

Wit babybedje Ikea.

Goede staat, 1 jaar oud met matras. Goede staat. Originele prijs 90 euro, nu 49 euro.

Changing table baby.

Van Ikea. Changing table gedeelte is afneembaar om later in gewoon kastje om te zetten. Wit. Goede staat. Origineel: 100 euro. Nu 49 euro.

Kast babykleren.

Ikea kast babykleren. Wit. Nieuwprijs 100 euro, nu 49 euro.

Burostoel.

Van Ikea, redelijk goede lichtgroene buro stoel.

Prijs: 20 euro.

Televisie

Zonder afstandsbediening. Werkt goed (wij gebruiken hem met Belgacom TV bakje). 49 euro.

Grote Ikea kleerkast.

Ikea kleerkast met 5 kasten. Inclusief vele laden etc. Zeer goede kwaliteit. Nieuwprijs 600 euro. Nu 299 euro.

Handmaaier.

Zonder electriciteit of gas (enkel duwen, en geen lawaai), perfect voor stadstuintjes, en ecologisch. Werkt perfect. Nieuw 100 euro, nu 49 euro.

Droogkas

Werkt perfect, 1 jaar oud. 95 euro.

Wasmachine

Werkt perfect, 1 jaar oud. 95 euro.

Mannenfiets.

Goede staat, 49 euro. 5 versnellingen.

Barbecue

Zeer goede barbeque merk Weber, goede staat, 49 euro.

Fietszitje kindje.

Kan op de meeste fietsen gemonteerd worden. Hoogte verstelbaar. 29 euro.

2 boekenkasten.

Van Ikea.

Prijs: 25 euro voor de 2.

Keukenmeubel.

Van Ikea, met 2 laden en 2 vulbakken. Dik, stevig hout.

Prijs: 50 euro.

Sta-diepvries.

Van de makro, 1 jaar oud. Werkt perfect. 6 laden.

Prijs: 150 euro.

Zwart-wit HP Laserjet printer P2014.

Perfect voor thuis- of office gebruik, veel beter dan deskjet printer (goedkoper in onderhoud en sneller). Print enkel zwart wit. Past op Mac of PC. Van Makro, 1 jaar oud. Met USB kabel. Met 1 laserprinter cartridge (gaat lang mee).

Prijs: 65 euro.

Ijzeren kastjes Ikea.

2 kastjes buro-stijl Ikea, met sleuteltjes. 1 horizontaal (rood), 1 vertikaal (grijs).

Prijs: 55 euro elk of 75 euro voor de 2.

Stalamp Ikea.

Mooie lamp Ikea, met stevige voet.

Prijs: 20 euro.

Sofa

Sofa van Ikea. Overtrek kan gemakkelijk gewassen of vervangen worden. 1 jaar oud. Stevig gebouwd.

Prijs: 85 euro.

Oude werkende piano.

Een werkende staanpiano. Alle toetsen werken. De piano is wel vuil (moet gekuist worden). 1 voetpedaal werkt, het ander is kapot.

prijs: 295 euro.

*want*

We are visiting family these days, and I noticed they weren’t very sure which language to speak to the kid, Spanish or English. I think it should be generally the native language (Spanish in this case), unless you want to encourage that other language explicitly. In any case, I have the feeling those things set in a pattern pretty easily so there’s no need to explicitly discuss it.

Anyone care to share experiences dealing with family and multilingual kids?

Why people don’t get that Digg’s new URL shortening “service” is evil is beyond me. It hijacks the URL conversation by using that frame.

Jorge blogs (in Spanish) about the latest IA Summit.

Design is the problem – the future of design must be sustainable is a new Rosenfeld Media book. Go check it out.

Real professionals use Michael Angeles’ Wireframe Sketch Book.

Amazon Mechanical Turk doesn’t work with Google Chrome:

Oh good, someone was blogging the IA Summit. Lots of links to presentations there.

Joshua Porter on the IxDA mailing list: “There is a saying that I particularly like: ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood…Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.’ So…right now we’re discussing what to call the people who are gathering the f’ing wood. Should they be called wood gatherers, or boat architects or sailing experience designers? Here’s a suggestion: Let’s talk about the sea.”

Apple has great documentation for UI designers for the iPhone.