blog . taylorbeseda

matthewb: The Panic Status Board by Cabel, Steve and Neven....

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:23:53 -0700

The Panic Status Board by Cabel, Steve and Neven. WebKit-powered via AJAX and various APIs, displayed full-screen in Chrome running on a Samsung professional display. Fantastic.

This will serve as some great inspiration for the web-based iPhone application I’ve been building.

the ragbag: know your commonplace figurative uses of animal shit compounds

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:45:28 -0700

the ragbag: know your commonplace figurative uses of animal shit compounds:

bullshit · connotes hypocrisy, lies, and red tape as in why should i put up with all this bullshit?. to bullshit is to bluff or to make small talk.

horseshit · connotes crumminess as in he did a horseshit job, and this motor is running horseshit.

chickenshit · means “something petty”…

godzillahaiku: 10 I realize “butterfly” provided...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:26:57 -0700

godzillahaiku:

10

I realize “butterfly” provided the correct amount of syllables, but Mothra is a moth.

davidkaneda: Mozilla has posted these Firefox 4.0 Mac mockups....

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:53:58 -0700

davidkaneda:

Mozilla has posted these Firefox 4.0 Mac mockups. They look a bit contrasty and noisy to me, and the background loading indicator looks very awkward, but overall there are some nice new ideas being introduced.

Interesting that Mozilla is going with the tabs-above design. A beta of Safari had this, users revolted, Apple caved, and tools are above tabs again. We’ll see if Firefox 4 ships this way. I prefer it.

"If you’ve wondered why there haven’t been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately,..."

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:50:39 -0700

“If you’ve wondered why there haven’t been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it’s because we’ve shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5.”

- Ian Fette, Gears Team, Hello HTML5 (via webkitbits)

So… this happened. BAM! Know what else can be replaced by HTML 5? Flash.

This talk goes into some great thought about our interaction...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:20:26 -0700

This talk goes into some great thought about our interaction with games and the world around us, with special attention to authenticity and the commercialization of games. It’s applicable to most any technical or design discipline and is well worth your next 28 minutes.

begin rambling I realize the speaker, Jesse Schell (not Schnell as it was misspelled on G4tv), is, on the surface, talking about games and their player’s acquired points/achievement, but the concept of engagement, work (skilled and social), and reward applies to anything human¹, and can be awarded by something more rewarding and interesting than trivial points.

I more than agree with the assessment of achievement based social games - a product of marketing scams - as crass, but do hold reservation that there may be a larger social good to come of our overwhelming connectedness. (Though, the good may not be simply explained as being more accountable because our lives are digitally recorded.)

I wish I had the foresight to think more about these topics when I was paying gratuitous amounts of borrowed money to study them… perhaps a game would have been more engaging.

As an aside, a lot of commentary has been made around the web about this talk, pointing out the “ethics” of the 1984-esque substance covered by Schell, but that’s just not the point. His examples are, though interesting, only surface-level ideas about what is possible and could happen. He wants his audience to think about the process taking place; not the implications a trivial (unperceptive) majority infer.

¹ But may not be employed by scheming, snake-oil salesmen such as “social media gurus”, “seo experts”, and skeezy ad douche bags robbing the compliant and ignorant of their limited resources.

Pro tip:

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:14:00 -0700

When meeting a girl at a bar to discuss her boyfriend problems, don’t:

1.) Refer to yourself when replying to her woes- “Well, I would never say that to you.”

2.) Reference specific facts about your and her relationship- “In the 4 months I’ve known you…”

3.) Earnestly reveal details about your prior relationships that distantly relate to your present company’s troubles- “Honest to God because of [girlfriend X] I learned how to communicate with the people close to me… Like you.”

Just some brief knowledge realized while in awkward proximity to a key discussion in the developmental period of a new (and likely short) relationship.

Bonus tip: if her vocational aspirations are “music marketing”, gtfo.

Kids and their FPSs

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:56:47 -0700

Kids and their FPSs:

The author has a point. An incredibly valid point. An underemphasized point about “old” gamers.

I may not be old, but I am beyond the prime of most gamers. (The reservation in the previous statement is to reassure myself that I could succeed again one day). I’m old enough to desire “better”, more dynamic gameplay. 2:1 kill to death ratio; done it. Obscene killstreak lengths; done. 100% achievement unlocks; check. Tactical team communication and execution; … Uh, not quite.
I’m too busy having my sexuality analyzed and my balls busted for adhering to common tactical strategies.

I want a good, cooperative experience, dammit!

Whose responsibility is that? The developer? Maybe they can facilitate that (case in point: M.A.G), but it’s really up to us, the players to organize. Someone tell me how. kthx

The guy who thought of the interfaces used in Minority Report,...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:10:06 -0700

The guy who thought of the interfaces used in Minority Report, started his own company to develop those experiences in real life. Rad.

Quite The Opposite, Really

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:54:38 -0700

cosmocatalano:

stevenf:

In case you thought I was exaggerating when I said that the computer infrastructures of 2010 were too hard to understand for a vast number of people.

It’s easy to read this and be cynical about “how dumb everyone is”. But there are some seriously deep issues to analyze here for anyone interested in HCI.

stevenf, while I respect your expertise in this field, I believe your assessment is inaccurate.

The problem here is that the infrastructure is too easy to understand partially. No one ever munged their way onto ReadWriteWeb while looking for Facebook using Lynx. That’s because to do anything from the command line, despite the power it provides, you need a very deep, very specialized of understanding of how computers (and by extension the Internet) work. Neal Stephenson’s metaphor of free tank is very apt.

Graphical user interfaces, broadband connections, human-friendly URI’s, web browsers—all these things have lowered the bar tremendously. Some say that touch interfaces have dropped it even lower. That seems awesome, until you realize that these people are fumbling around with extremely powerful devices that have the potential to utterly ruin lives.

If these AOLiens can blunder their way onto ReadWriteWeb while looking for Facebook, just imagine how they’d do on a phishing site—or a malware trap? What if someone of them are using company machines full of proprietary and sensitive data? This is a near-daily occurance that’s sapping millions of dollars worth of productivity out of the economy.

We don’t need easier interfaces. We need more educated users.

+1 for education

This RWW Facebook Login fiasco is the reason Sarah Palin almost became the Vice President of the United States.

For those just joining us, please click through stevenf’s post.

Not confirmed for PS3, but I doubt they’d pass over the...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:16:43 -0700

Not confirmed for PS3, but I doubt they’d pass over the platform.

That stealth suit looks almost like something out of a fantasy game.

Should be interesting.

101 Free Games - 1up.com

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:34:00 -0700

101 Free Games - 1up.com:

Don’t lose your day to this like I will.

implodr: (via ready-able) Approximately my level of...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:53:07 -0700

implodr:

(via ready-able)

Approximately my level of excitement…

cosmocatalano: ohryankelley: The iPad provides the ultimate...

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:24:34 -0700

cosmocatalano:

ohryankelley:

The iPad provides the ultimate browsing experience?

Abobe uses some well known sites (and one that’s NSFW) to point out the glaring lack of Flash support in Apple’s iPad.

Millions of websites use Flash. Get used to the blue logos.

Being a Flash platform evangelist is the tech equivalent of being a climate change denier.

… or a Scientologist.

Hockey. Club level. Nice.

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:51:26 -0700

Hockey. Club level. Nice.

soupsoup: No flash support and no multitasking are HUGE...

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:39:55 -0700

soupsoup:

No flash support and no multitasking are HUGE mistakes.

This device SCREAMS out for rich interactive flash-type content. I’m not saying Flash necessarily as a platform is the answer, but you need to allow people a way to develop the content this device was made for.

It’s also a huge disappointment that I can’t listen to Pandora, and flip between e-mails and browsing the web. That simply has to change.

I think you need to expand your “development” skills, kid. Flash is likely one of the largest inhibitors of the web. Apple is doing their part to push forward, past the first iterations of the web.

Learn something new.

Photo

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:11:23 -0700

ragbag: the royal line the other day, me and my three...

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:31:27 -0700

ragbag:

the royal line

the other day, me and my three handsomest friends and orson went to a trivia night at a local pub. one of the first few questions was, “how many british sovereigns were alive in 1684?” orson, who is an actuary in real life* estimated that five was the maximum overlapage among generations. so we added one for good measure (ie. some sickly pipsqueak who ruled for 12 days, or whatever) and said six even though, my other friends (who are more handsome than orson) thought this seemed way too high.

we were therefore quite floored when we found out that the answer was eight. it was at this point that i proposed that we adjourn the trivia game so i could go home and graph out the logistics of how exactly that this was possible.

a: it was a perfect shitstorm of joint sovereignty, the glorious revolution, and lord protectoring.

_

* not professionally

Oh, bloody Hell.

I can get behind a “color code”. (Well known fact...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:31:10 -0700

I can get behind a “color code”. (Well known fact IRL: I’m color blind.)

cosmocatalano: stepliana: Beginning to understand the outrage...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:28:42 -0700

cosmocatalano:

stepliana:

Beginning to understand the outrage I saw when NBC canceled this.

Nonsense. NBC doesn’t make mistakes.

Yeah… about this… AND Friday Night Lights!