Kurt Vonnegut is off to the big Breakfast of Champions in the sky.
R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut
April 11th, 2007Microsoft Live Mail Redux
November 4th, 2006Well, perhaps not quite a redux on my previous Live Mail post, more just a recent observation.
However, as I said in the last post, I am still compelled to check Hotmail now and again as I still have a few emails of importance coming in between the far more steady stream of spam. Clearing my inbox today I noticed the Live Mail team have changed the way the inbox interface is laid out. The main difference is that the checkbox for each item now shares its place with the new mail icon:
Basically both icons toggle depending on whether the email is new and/or selected. In practice this is just really bemusing to use. If you want to select messages to delete or move, there is no obvious checkbox. When you work out they’re hiding between mail icons (emphasis on hidden here), the actual task of selecting the check boxes requires a high degree of accuracy: the checkbox is sitting on anchor block linking to the email message, so if you’re slightly off target with the small checkbox you end up opening a message as opposed to selecting it.
And my last gripe is that the checkbox/mail icon column doesn’t line up with the master select checkbox in the top left corner. There is actually room for the checkbox to sit next to the mail icon and be underneath this master selector. Wouldn’t that make far more sense?
I don’t know what the rationale behind the design of this is, but the caveat here is that this is a beta product after all. Although I made that point in my last blog entry as well, after pointing out Live Mail was purely IE6 (now IE7 as well). Windows Live Mail now loads in Firefox 2.0, although load is a pretty abstract concept:
24 errors/504 warnings? Nice.
And for the record, Live Mail is still long way off the simplicity and usability of Gmail.
44.0 KBPS
August 29th, 2006Alas, I’m on dialup. It’s been so long. I must say, when the modem connection sounds piped out of my laptop, I nearly shed a tear.
Almost.
Broadband come back!!
Disconnection
June 7th, 2006I got sent a link today from a work colleague to www.vox.com — Six Apart‘s latest offering. The email described the site as MySpace for ‘thinking people’, which I couldn’t help be amused by. I visited Vox, and lo and behold, it looks exactly like that: another promising Web 2.0 social networking site, complete with snazzy pastels and rounded corners.
And that’s where the anxiety kicked in. I felt it coming. Then I heard a voice from within my head: “Oh no, not another site to figure out and keep up with”.
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Wearing a cheap transfer of your heart on your sleeve
June 7th, 2006With only a few days before the World Cup kick off, and less than a week before Australia plays Japan, last night we went shirt hunting. We have a slim chance of getting tickets for the Australia Croatia game, but chances are we’re going to be sitting in central Stuttgart with thousands of other not-so-lucky Australian and Croatian fans watching the game on a giant screen, drinking a few Löwenbräus and eating some wurst.
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Whaam Baam Thank You Tate
May 30th, 2006Yesterday I fulfilled one of my greatest desires: to see Whaam! in the flesh.
Whaam!, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 (from Wikipedia)
There’s a few reasons I’ve wanted to see this painting for so long. One of them is that of all modern art, this is the first one I can really remember while growing up. The fact that it was reproduced inside a toilet at my high school probably reinforced this. The toilets next to the drama room were all decorated with student recreations of art classics, yet this is the only one I remember.
Apart from the quintessential pop art palette Lichtenstein used, the inherent motion of the diptych is quite amazing: I can’t think of any other art work gets close. The distorted perspective of the fighter really adds to this. And yet there’s the political message hidden in there as well, as Lichtenstein created this based on a page from the 60s comic book
Another reason I think I became so intent on seeing this painting is that when I first visited the Tate Modern in 2000 I was shocked to discover this iconic
The Darker Side of Flickr
April 29th, 2006Looking at the most viewed photos in my Flickr account, I discovered something disturbing — the top photo is one I took on the Mekong in Laos entitled “What’s a boat trip down the Mekong without some naked kids?”. Going through any waterways in South East Asia you see many families washing themselves in various stages of nakedness — it’s part of the cultural experience. I posted this photo to illustrate this, yet I’m in two minds now about keeping the title (or the photo in general) due to the obvious fact that people are finding this based on the search string ‘naked kids’. It’s not wildly popular (82 views since February 2006 to now), but nonetheless it’s a worry.
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Yahoo! 7? I have been out of Australia too long
April 27th, 2006Yahoo! Australia and Channel Seven seemed to have teamed up to create Yahoo! 7. To me that sounds like an Enid Blyton-esque series about a bunch of seven young hooligans who like drinking Bundy on the gold coast. I wonder when this happened? I only left Australia in November! Of course it makes sense for Channel Seven to hook up with Yahoo! to compete with Nine MSN.
What’s next — Ten Google? I seriously doubt that, but surely Channel Ten will follow suit soon. The Big Brother site is currently hosted by 3, perhaps Ten plans to focus more on the mobile market rather than the broader web market? Considering that Big Brother was previously partnered with iPrimus, the shift in sponsor could well indicate this strategy.
Yahoo! My Web 2.0 — Flog those buzzwords
April 26th, 2006I just noticed Yahoo!’s My Web 2.0 service. Is this the second version of ‘My Web’, or is it just blatant buzzword exploitation as I suspect? Oh, there are tags, contacts, sharing… I think it’s the latter. Is this a genius stroke of marketing on Yahoo!’s behalf or just a cheap shot at capitalising on the latest web buzzword?
Google Calendar
April 13th, 2006Another week, another new Google product, another new post about Google product.
Google Calender has finally been released to the public, and it looks very slick. But one surprise with it is that the developers behind it have actually created some valid HTML. Google Calendar even has a doctype! Perhaps the days of Google’s notoriously bad HTML is behind them.
Douglas Bowman was involved in the project, which may have had something to do with it. (Possible quote: "by the way guys, c’mon — your web apps are awesome but your HTML sucks!").
On the functionality side, I’m not sure how much impact Google Calendar will have until it synchs with handheld devices. I’m sure they’ll attempt this in the future, and then along with Gmail, Google might actually give the likes of Outlook a real run for its money. Outlook is hardly the be and end all of desktop communication and organisation — but even Doug Bowman sings Google Calendar’s praise over iCal, which is always getting praise from the Mac camp.