snowdeal.org

“Pronouncing Mozilla dead has been a favored spectator sport since Jamie Zawinski first took a cut at it in March 1999. This is another in a long line of such articles, not the first, not the last, and those
participating in the project are for the most part used to this. Criticism won’t slack off until the project ships a 1.0 release (which IMO is at least 6 months off)”

“The one major “hindsight” decision that could be seriously questioned is the decision in fall 1999 to do a rewrite prior to Mozilla 1.0 as opposed to releasing a 1.0 based on the original code. But then again
the conventional wisdom (put forth by the Web Standards Project and pretty much every other “outside observer”) at the time was that the old code base was unsalvageable, and that the cause of standards compliance demanded a rewrite.”

“Information science operates with a binary logic of reflection which results in multiple paths, but these paths are always circumscribed by laws of combination (Deleuze, & Guattari, 1987). In this manner the fragmented space and time of information flows is reordered and directed toward specific objectives. But the objectives of information processing within the capitalist dynamic are not end points– they are aimed at an accumulation of knowledge that is always an impetus for further accumulation, for multiplying the flow, opening out into every horizon. But this flow is at the same time stored up in a central memory which traces the exact paths of this flow, connecting geographic spaces and matching up the temporal
locations of dispersed market centers. This central memory system functions through command trees, centered systems and hierarchical structures that attempt to fix possible pathways of the network and thus to limit the possible variations immanent in the network. The definitions of information formulated within information science and information economics derive from and serve this modeling of the system. As we have seen, information defined as nonsemantic discrete bits flowing across space and then directed and stored substantiates information as the object of control. Thus, the enemy of the information scientists and economists is heterogeneity, disorganization, noise, chaos. They want an uninterrupted flow, but at the same time a destruction of the unnecessary. This encloses or territorializes information; it becomes a part of capitalism’s mapping of space and time. But what we have found is that information’s function is precisely to disorganize, interrupt, to remain itself and at the same time to disperse. Information may, in fact, be a keyword connecting the phenomenon we have examined, but not as an element, nor as a content, but as a heterogeneous remapping of space and time. If the information
society is to be our society, let it be disorganized. ”

“In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the “bodies” that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans “beamed” Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.

Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist “subject” in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the “posthuman.”

Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity.”

“There is an unarticulated war currently raging among those who make web sites. Like the war between dark- and light-skinned blacks in Spike Lee’s School Daze, this conflict is one that only its participants recognize. The war is not between commercial sites and experimental sites. It’s not between “Bloggers” and “Flashers.” This war is between usability experts and graphic designers.”

“What’s just as interesting, though, is the account of how two normally mortal enemies – human factors engineers and visual designers – worked together to come up with an innovative and creative solution to a user problem.

In scenes of tolerance and understanding only ever hinted at in Revelations, human factors lay down with visual design, with each party gaining some of the sensibilities of the other.

“Abomination!”, you cry. Not so.”

“Yet a growing body of research by automakers is finding that buyers of these two kinds of vehicles are very different psychologically. Sport utility buyers tend to be more restless, more sybaritic, less social people who are “self-oriented,” to use the automakers’ words, and who have strong conscious or
subconscious fears of crime. Minivan buyers tend to be more self-confident and more “other-oriented” — more involved with family, friends and their communities.”

“Dr. Rapaille looks at the intellectual, emotional and “reptilian,” or instinctual, reasons why people buy consumer products. He said sport utilities are designed to be masculine and assertive, often with hoods that resemble those on 18-wheel trucks, vertical metal slats across the grilles to give the appearance of a jungle cat’s teeth and flared wheel wells and fenders that suggest the bulging muscles in a clenched jaw.

Sport utilities are designed to appeal to Americans’ deepest fears of violence and crime, Dr. Rapaille said. People’s earliest associations with sport utilities are wartime Jeeps with machine guns mounted on the back, he explained. Sport utilities are “weapons” and “armored cars for the battlefield,” he said.”

Thousands download and pay for King novel

“Stephen King’s latest online publishing effort got off to a smooth start Monday as thousands of users downloaded the first installment of “The Plant,” a new serial novel.”

King E-Novel Short of Expected Demand

“In a closely watched test of the Internet’s potential to transform the book business, the horror writer Stephen King yesterday became the first major author to self-publish online. But demand for his new electronic book fell far short of his last, an event in March that seemed to foretell a revolution in
publishing when more than 400,000 fans jammed computer servers trying to download it in the first two days after it appeared.”

“Websites must tone down their individual appearance and distinct design in all ways:

– visual design
– terminology and labeling

– interaction design and workflow

– information architecture”

“Even as websites become more similar and appearance design becomes more simplified, there will be a large number of design decisions that still need to be made in order to optimize the usability of each individual site.

Most important, each Internet service needs to be based on a task analysis of its specific users and their needs. You can combine standardized user interface elements in many ways, and the better sites will support the way users want to approach the problems.”

“This piece is the promised follow-up to Nielsen’s June 25th piece, which dissected Microsoft’s .NET announcement. In that piece, Nielsen argued that since the network is the new user experience, individual sites will no longer “supply a complete user experience, [instead] each site will supply a component of the overall user experience that is coordinated by the new nexus.”

To put it bluntly, Nielsen has it backwards.”

“Nielsen believes that this network-centric world will demand that all websites look and act alike, since we’ll be traversing amongst multiple sites even more frequently than we do today. This makes very little sense to me. If information can move freely, why should I have to jump from site to site to have an “overall user experience?” If all information is networked, why should I have to travel the web to find it? Why shouldn’t it come directly to me, in a user experience that’s uniquely tailored to my needs?”

“Standard methods of exchanging and delivering information will open up opportunities for Internet application developers to provide more distinct user experiences for more distinct target markets. If there’s a market for a particular type (or brand) of user experience, information standards will only help create that market, by helping users avoid information-based application lock-in (a la Microsoft Office), and forcing developers to cater to the user interface and functionality needs of their particular audience.

This is just the beginning of web design. Not the end.”