WiredPen

Rachmaninov had big Hands. One of my all too infrequent “just because” posts. Enjoy! (tip)

• Adobe Releases Three Public Betas (sorta): Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth are available to test ONLY for 48 hours unless you already own CS3. So Adobe really only wants feedback from current customers, not potential customers.
• Randstad USA reports that the four components of the US workforce — Gen X, Gen Y, Baby Boomers and Matures — “rarely interact with one another and often do not recognize each other’s skills or work ethic.” Interesting words in the “Top Ranked Terms Used to Describe Coworkers in Same Generational Cohort” table.
• Gorilla Nation, the world’s largest online ad rep firm, is now representing the
  online ad inventory for Horseland.com, a multiplayer game and community set in a virtual world targeting girls ages 8-18.
• Frost & Sullivan champion pre-paid and “credit-challenged” (ahem) market segments due to the “mobile communications market … fast approaching saturation.”

In 2001 and 2002 I wrote a monthly “column” called <TFM>*. My goal was to explore issues in web design, specifically usability.

Even back then, some of my friends (and students) wondered if I had ever met a Web site that I liked. (I still get this question!) Unfortunately, even in 2008, finding examples to illustrate poor interface design and limited usability is much easier than finding exemplary sites.

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I suppose I should start reading Digg more often, but I found out about this free book from Eric Rice (via Twitter, of course), who was pointing to an article at the Read-Write-Web about how crowds can be dumb.

Here’s the deal: that 99designs is officially sponsoring a 30 day giveaway of SitePoint’s Photoshop Anthology (for another 17 days!). Sitepoint decided (intelligently) to add a “Digg” button to the landing page (the promo page). But someone killed the ride to the “top” of Digg with this comment (which is totally bogus): Read the rest of this entry »

I have spent the morning and part of the afternoon listening to Princeton’s Center for Information Tech’s workshop on the Future of News. Great speakers, interesting panels. It is available through iTunes on the University Channel. Also on video through the same. Here’s the link that will get you to both - plus the agenda: CITP

The speakers included: Steve Boriss, Dan Gilmore, and Paul Starr.

Great conversation! Even pretty hopeful - a nice change from doom and gloom we often hear.

Peg

My cousin and I talked a long time Sunday afternoon about diet and metabolism and exercise — and the effects of (practically) zero estrogen on the female body. One of those effects is how hard it is to keep weight off the waist/hips.

Later, I was poking around the Four Hour Work Week blog and then found myself offsite at Protein Power, a site supporting books by Dr. Michael R. Eades. One thing lead to another, and I found this post: How the media disses low-carb diets II.

Because of my complete hysterectomy in 2001, I learned a lot about hormones and how superficially (and, too often, incorrectly) the media report hormone replacement therapy (HRT) research. So I wasn’t surprised to see Dr. Eades complaining about how media like ABC “misrepresents the true outcome of studies.”

But I was surprised to see just how egregious this case was: the reporting was 180-degrees off from what the study concluded. Complete opposite!

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I’ve set up Twhirl (a Twitter client) with three accounts, in order to experiment with grouping tweets (sorta) by topic.

I have my main account (kegill), where I tweet and where I follow people that I really know as well as people who I think have interesting ideas on a broad area of topics; a politics account (uspolitics) where I feed my US Politics posts and follow breaking news and political tweets; and an education account (kegill_uw) where I follow people whose primary focus is, well, education.

However, as you can see from this screenshot, the last account created (kegill_uw), improperly shows the most recent tweet. It also doesn’t seem to update without an occasional kick-in-the-pants.

Thoughts? Am I alone in this problem?

Update: It also wouldn’t let me post a tweet. One of our MCDM students says he’s had similar problems with Twhirl on his laptop and that it doesn’t run well at all on his desktop.

Business Week explains the power of Google Juice and tells us that they have updated their 2005 story on blogs in business. They then explore other social media tools/spaces, like Twitter and Facebook. (tip via Twitter).

Guest lecture for COM302, The Cultural Impact of New Technologies, professor Gina Neff.
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I’m ashamed to admit this, but last week I heard two FM Seattle DJs (102.5) laughing about and dissing Hillary Clinton in the most misogynist of terms … and I did nothing but yell at the radio in the truck and change stations. I should have picked up my cellphone and called, giving them a piece of my mind. Criticize Clinton’s politics if you feel like it (I do, for example, I think her gas-tax proposal is ill-advised pandering), but criticize the policy, don’t personally attack the woman.

My inaction last week has contributed to my including this latest YouTube clip (tip) that highlights not only MSM misogyny but also questionable comments from Barack Obama and his supporters. (Ack - I was not favorably impressed to see that his campaign used a rap song, talking about b*tches, at a rally).

Please show me if you’ve seen any comparable MSM stereotyping of Obama using words or analogies offensive to blacks.

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