I just listened to a podcast (inside the net) where they interviewed the author of 43folders. The interview was really interesting and kind of reminded me of my old spychology courses.
Specificly, about the trouble a lot of people have of organising their time, their task, and thier priorite. We have to remember that, as humans, this is our life: we do what we want with the limited time we have. Think about what you are doing right now (obviously reading this). Why do you do it? Because it enteirtains you? Because you feel it's important? Whatever the reason, you probably didn't think about it very long before doing it. It felt like the next logical or natural thing to do. You chose (or maybe did not) to read this. You decided that reading this was more important, and more urgent, than doing something else.
A lot of people have trouble differencing between what's urgent and what's important.
The telephone ringing is urgent, but is it really that important? What will happen if you don't answer? What are the consequence? Wouldn't it be the same as if you were out of reach?
Paying your bills is important but is it really that urgent? What will happen if you wait 24h? 48h? Will someone die?
Shouldn't we all be outside right now, enjoying the sun? Why aren't you? What's holding you? It is important?
The world will still turn if we aren't there, so why not enjoy ourselves?
I'm going for a walk. It's a beautiful day.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
technology working for you, not against you
Technology is a field completely invented and controlled by humans. It is the science of better and better tools. Tools that are supposed to help ours lives.
Yet sometimes technology works against us, instead of for us. Tools themselves are not natural. We have to take time (or money) to learn to use the tool. A tool becomes perverted went we invest more time learning it, then it using it, or when it saves use less time then we had to invest to learn it in the first place.
This is why interfaces are so important. We use computers, cellphones, printers, micorwaves or even lower-tech tools like cars, with interfaces to the underlying technology. When you think about it, for all theses devices, someone somewhere decided that putting things this way or that way might be a good idea. Modern devices, cars included, have a lot more functions, and all these need to be accessible by the same, or a better interface. Which almost always means having to learn something new each time. Which also means that someone had to think about how to implement it.
Yet compagnies don't spend that much time on interfaces. Products are designed by engineers more interested in functionnality than design. Marketing is often more interested in functionnality than design, because functionnality are better selling point than design. Corporate buyers are interested in fucntionnality because it easily correlate to Return-on-investement. And simple buyers always ask 'what does it do' and not, 'how does it works?', some functionnality than to sell well.
Of course, if you don't want your product returned to the store, it has to be at a minimum functional. But as I get more and more frustrated with computer, I tend to think, maybe, just maybe there could be a better way to design an interface with computer.
Than I see things like this Ok / Cancel Comic strip and I see that things could be FAR worse. We have come a long way since Eniac and the Havard Mark I.
Yet sometimes technology works against us, instead of for us. Tools themselves are not natural. We have to take time (or money) to learn to use the tool. A tool becomes perverted went we invest more time learning it, then it using it, or when it saves use less time then we had to invest to learn it in the first place.
This is why interfaces are so important. We use computers, cellphones, printers, micorwaves or even lower-tech tools like cars, with interfaces to the underlying technology. When you think about it, for all theses devices, someone somewhere decided that putting things this way or that way might be a good idea. Modern devices, cars included, have a lot more functions, and all these need to be accessible by the same, or a better interface. Which almost always means having to learn something new each time. Which also means that someone had to think about how to implement it.
Yet compagnies don't spend that much time on interfaces. Products are designed by engineers more interested in functionnality than design. Marketing is often more interested in functionnality than design, because functionnality are better selling point than design. Corporate buyers are interested in fucntionnality because it easily correlate to Return-on-investement. And simple buyers always ask 'what does it do' and not, 'how does it works?', some functionnality than to sell well.
Of course, if you don't want your product returned to the store, it has to be at a minimum functional. But as I get more and more frustrated with computer, I tend to think, maybe, just maybe there could be a better way to design an interface with computer.
Than I see things like this Ok / Cancel Comic strip and I see that things could be FAR worse. We have come a long way since Eniac and the Havard Mark I.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Not to be confuse with AJAX, Ajax is located in the GTA. With so many meanings of the word Ajax, I still wonder which one they refered to in 1955. 
Web 2.0
Studying and working in technology is very exciting. It's a field that is always moving, always changing. Years ago, being online meant having a simple web site. Static and never moving, but you had a web precence. It was dull, but it ghad information on it, and this content was usefull. When we update the school association with all the old exams from past sessions, the students stopped comming to pick them up in dead-tree editions and where able to get them all online. Content was king, and the value of a page was all about content.
Nowadays, content is still king, but it is not the only criteria in deciding how important or usefull a page is. That's because pages are not static anymore. I think the Tim O'Reilly article about Web 2.0 is a good introduction on the past and future trends of the web. The web is comming from static, content-and-layout oriented pages to interactives, layout yourself and socially-produced-content. Among the list of existing Web 2.0 sites, there are 2 trend that I, personnaly, find interesting:
User (social) collaboration
Sites like Digg are good exemples. I think this trend is the reason behind most yahoo purchases: Sites like Flickr, del.icio.us and Upcomming. Social sites which requires inputs from the users to have any type of content. And in the case of Yahoo, they even release the api of a couple of theses sites to encourages more user-driven content and tools.
Of course, for social collaboration, let's not forget the kings of them all: Wikipedia.
Web tools
Think about your basic application. Now think Web. Now think both. And you get web-apps. Sites like Google Maps or Yahoo Maps, but also sites like Meebo which is an IM client. Or complete Word processor like Writely, Zohowriter, Writeboard and Thinkfree office. Or little tools like voo2do, Ta-da list orBack Pack...
Anyway, time will tell if any of this will change the way we do things, but the web is never gonna be the same....
Update: Just as I had finished writing this post, slashdot posted this
Nowadays, content is still king, but it is not the only criteria in deciding how important or usefull a page is. That's because pages are not static anymore. I think the Tim O'Reilly article about Web 2.0 is a good introduction on the past and future trends of the web. The web is comming from static, content-and-layout oriented pages to interactives, layout yourself and socially-produced-content. Among the list of existing Web 2.0 sites, there are 2 trend that I, personnaly, find interesting:
User (social) collaboration
Sites like Digg are good exemples. I think this trend is the reason behind most yahoo purchases: Sites like Flickr, del.icio.us and Upcomming. Social sites which requires inputs from the users to have any type of content. And in the case of Yahoo, they even release the api of a couple of theses sites to encourages more user-driven content and tools.
Of course, for social collaboration, let's not forget the kings of them all: Wikipedia.
Web tools
Think about your basic application. Now think Web. Now think both. And you get web-apps. Sites like Google Maps or Yahoo Maps, but also sites like Meebo which is an IM client. Or complete Word processor like Writely, Zohowriter, Writeboard and Thinkfree office. Or little tools like voo2do, Ta-da list orBack Pack...
Anyway, time will tell if any of this will change the way we do things, but the web is never gonna be the same....
Update: Just as I had finished writing this post, slashdot posted this
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Beer in Montreal
While Montréal is not in Belgium, we do have a strong-and-growing beer culture. Montréal has a strong nightlife for such a 'small' city and It seems it has its roots deep in the local culture. The province was the last to pass a prohibition law in 1919, and the first to repel it in 1920. This city (and Quebec city to a lesser degree) was THE legal big city to drink in (until 1933). Even today, the legal drinking age is still 3 years lower than in the US and we get american tourists than come here just to drink.
Since around 1980, there seems to be an international interest to revive Brewpubs and Montréal is no exception. I found a nice website, that details brewpubs in Montréal and a couple of good bars. I personnaly plan on trying them all, if I can. Here is a quick list of the ones I went to and had a good experience:
And I got to try:
Garçon! Une bière S'il-vous-plait!
Since around 1980, there seems to be an international interest to revive Brewpubs and Montréal is no exception. I found a nice website, that details brewpubs in Montréal and a couple of good bars. I personnaly plan on trying them all, if I can. Here is a quick list of the ones I went to and had a good experience:
And I got to try:
- Le Réservoir
- Le cheval Blanc
- L'Amere à boire
- Brutopia
- Bière et Compagnie
- Vice et Versa
- Le petit moulinsart
Garçon! Une bière S'il-vous-plait!
Friday, February 03, 2006
Wikipedia
Every once in a while, I see articles on how Wikipedia is potentially bad because everyone can change it. I have to say that I like Wikipedia and use it almost every day. But while I can understand their logic and agree with most of the arguments, I don't think the authors understood how Wikipedia, even with the vandalism, is relevant.
Think about a real world object, like, for example, the bus stop shelter outside my house. This object is also subject to vandalism. Once or twice a year, someone comes, break a windows or put a tag on a wall. Then someone notices it, call the transport authority and they send a cleaning crew to get the thing back in the original form. Now, as citizens and users of the transit system, we don't stop using the shelter because it's been vandalised, we are just annoyed that the thing doesn't do the job well. So, as society, we put up with some form of vandalism because it's a fact of life. We can't afford to have people at every bus stop watching the installation. It would be too costly and unpractical.
Wikipedia is kind of the same. In order to have the same quantity of the article, you have to give a bit of responsibility. For the same reason why ours streets are not covered in trash and graffiti, we like a clean environment and condemn someone is see as a nuisance. The system attempt to auto-heal itself. Giving a bit of responsibilities to the citizens make sense in some case and it makes a lot of sense in the case of Wikipedia. It's basically a tradeoff. As netizens, we get more rights, but more responsibility at the same time. The result is much faster growth than a closed system, but it will almost always be an imperfect one because you can't control everything.
But it was never meant to be a perfect system. It was meant to be a quick reference with open access to anyone. It is not a reference to be quoted in papers. It is a more a reference that points to where to search for one.
I just think it is a very impressive example of what people can do when they work together
Think about a real world object, like, for example, the bus stop shelter outside my house. This object is also subject to vandalism. Once or twice a year, someone comes, break a windows or put a tag on a wall. Then someone notices it, call the transport authority and they send a cleaning crew to get the thing back in the original form. Now, as citizens and users of the transit system, we don't stop using the shelter because it's been vandalised, we are just annoyed that the thing doesn't do the job well. So, as society, we put up with some form of vandalism because it's a fact of life. We can't afford to have people at every bus stop watching the installation. It would be too costly and unpractical.
Wikipedia is kind of the same. In order to have the same quantity of the article, you have to give a bit of responsibility. For the same reason why ours streets are not covered in trash and graffiti, we like a clean environment and condemn someone is see as a nuisance. The system attempt to auto-heal itself. Giving a bit of responsibilities to the citizens make sense in some case and it makes a lot of sense in the case of Wikipedia. It's basically a tradeoff. As netizens, we get more rights, but more responsibility at the same time. The result is much faster growth than a closed system, but it will almost always be an imperfect one because you can't control everything.
But it was never meant to be a perfect system. It was meant to be a quick reference with open access to anyone. It is not a reference to be quoted in papers. It is a more a reference that points to where to search for one.
I just think it is a very impressive example of what people can do when they work together
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Our image
It's in times of crisis that you see one's true habilities. No matter how small the actual matter, it's how we perceive it that govern our reactions. One's inhability to properly react to the matter at hand show how secure we feel in our habilities and in ourselves. Panicking never helped anyone and usually causes more trouble than helping anything.
But if panic is very unhelpfull, why do we do it?
Panic is a very humane reaction. Panic comme from the notion that the situation seems too big, a change too rapid in the situation. It is a rapid evaluation on ours own habilities in contrast to ours immediate envirronnement. Panic comes from the impression that we aren't ready and aren't capable of dealing with the crisis. Panic does not come from the crisis, but from ourselves. It's not what the situation itself, but more what we think we can do that defines how we react.
I know it's a bit oversimplified a bit, but it's still a good thing to remember.
It's the same thing with almost everything we encounter in everyday life. I see this everyday with people and computers. Some people panic at the first sign of an error message. This reaction comes from a complete lack of understanding how the machine works. An irrational reaction, sometimes without even reading the error message. Problem is, These are also the same people who "can't learn the how to use the computer" because they think it's too complicated. The computer is not the problem. It's their reaction that is. If they simply learned not to panic and take things little by little, they might make more progress. The computer might stay a complicated thing, but at least they would have learn not to panic.
And they would be one step closer to understanding...
But if panic is very unhelpfull, why do we do it?
Panic is a very humane reaction. Panic comme from the notion that the situation seems too big, a change too rapid in the situation. It is a rapid evaluation on ours own habilities in contrast to ours immediate envirronnement. Panic comes from the impression that we aren't ready and aren't capable of dealing with the crisis. Panic does not come from the crisis, but from ourselves. It's not what the situation itself, but more what we think we can do that defines how we react.
I know it's a bit oversimplified a bit, but it's still a good thing to remember.
It's the same thing with almost everything we encounter in everyday life. I see this everyday with people and computers. Some people panic at the first sign of an error message. This reaction comes from a complete lack of understanding how the machine works. An irrational reaction, sometimes without even reading the error message. Problem is, These are also the same people who "can't learn the how to use the computer" because they think it's too complicated. The computer is not the problem. It's their reaction that is. If they simply learned not to panic and take things little by little, they might make more progress. The computer might stay a complicated thing, but at least they would have learn not to panic.
And they would be one step closer to understanding...
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Gaim plugins Testing.
After playing around with this gaim plugin, I find it quite usefull. It doesn't seem to support tittles on posts, but it'll probaly find out how to get around this sooner or later.
I think i'm all set to kept this blog at leat partialy alive :)
I think i'm all set to kept this blog at leat partialy alive :)
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