Death: when the life behind shared social streams ended
Mai 14th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiThe Internet is changing not only our life.
It is also changing what is left after we are gone.
Social life streams stop when the life behind ended.
But those streams of activity continue to be accessible until the service provider will delete the account or close doors.
We dont know Carl Backstrom, but we can access his feeds:
Carl shared last time on 24th October 2008 a bookmark on delicious.
Source:http://delicious.com/carlback/?page=1
He listened last time on 24th October 2008 to a song on last.fm.
Source: http://www.last.fm/user/carlback
Carl published last time a photo from a cellphone to his flickr photostream at 25th October 2008, 8:20pm.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlback/2973612702/
On 26th October 2008, 2:53am Carl died in a car accident.
Until today you can access Carl’s activity feeds via FriendFeed.
Social networks are a new phenomenon, and the Internet itself is immature:
- Is the accessibility of those streams after death a good or bad thing?
- Is it good or bad when those accounts would be deleted (on request or because of inactivity)?
- Should we maybe have not even published this post?
Carl lived, he died, he has family, friends and colleagues that are expressing on the Web their feelings after Carl’s death.
His death is a tragedy.
The details of Carl Backstrom’s life stream activities that he shared during his life and that we accessed months after his death touched our hearts.
You can find here details to donate to Carl’s memorial fund.
Our condolences to Carl’s friends and family.
Zooming interfaces: an alternative to the Windows user experience
Mai 11th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiJef Raskin, the human interface expert who started the Macintosh project at Apple in the late 70´s, was not happy about how most of us today work with their computers:
“In present systems, work gets done in applications (which are sets of commands that apply to certain kinds of objects). Tasks are not accomplished at the desktop, and desktops (or launching areas in general) should disappear as interfaces improve. The idea of an application is an artificial one, convenient to the programmer but not to the user. From a user’s point of view there is content (a set of objects created or obtained by the user) and there are commands that can operate on objects. Commands should be independent of applications and be applicable at any time and to any object.”
Source: http://jef.raskincenter.org/humane_interface/summary_of_thi.html
(This link is not (any more) reachable at the point of publishing this post)
Raskin looked into zooming user interfaces to overcome what he considered as one the root causes of today’s computer usability issues.
What are zooming user interfaces and in how far are they different from what we all are used to by Microsoft’s Windows or Apples OSX?
The following three applications will allow you to experience zooming interfaces yourself. Two of them will enable you to build presentations that do not work based on the concept of “slides” but instead allow you during your presentation to zoom in and out of the set of information that you are providing to your audience.
1) Prezi
http://prezi.com/ is a new web based application to create presentations. It is a great example of how zooming interfaces (can) work.
Creator of this video: prezi / http://www.youtube.com/user/zuilabs
Is Microsoft ignoring zooming interfaces because maybe it does not want to provide itself an alternative to the Windows user experience?
Wrong.
Find out below what zooming user interfaces you can get for Microsoft Office as free downloads from Micrsoft itself.
Posted in Good Ideas, Interesting Links | No Comments »Why is there no natively built-in appstore for desktop applications in Microsoft Windows and Apples OSX?
März 14th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiApples iTunes application store for iphone and ipod touch has demonstrated the value that a simple and integrated access/purchase/install/use/upgrade/uninstall life-cycle solution for applications can bring to a platform. Obviously Microsoft (Google has the Android Market, Nokia will launch Ovi Store) is now also introducing one for its own mobile platform.
The better user experience of the application life-cycle is becoming a competitive platform advantage
BUT: Neither on Windows (not mobile but the desktop OS) nor on Apple´s OSX there is a native built-in application store existing for those applications that run on those platforms.
That is not needed because you can buy and download applications everywhere on the Web?
This is precisely where the issue is: The user experience for nearly every application that you download, purchase, install, use, update and uninstall on Windows or OSX is left in a lot of aspects to the individual decisions of the various different software developers. Just look at all the different methods of paying and getting a license, serial number and/or online activation mechanism. Same for updates, some applications offer an individual check for updates others do not have even an option to uninstall easily.
To us it does not look like that this variety of different options to achieve the same goal (buy, install and use a new application) is adding any value to users.
Probably a good example of how an applications store on Windows could look like is Valve Steam platform. Steam is a platform for buying/installing/playing games and it runs on Windows. It covers the application (games) lifecycle in a similar way as Apple does with the iphone/itunes combo. But Steam is limited in scope and reach and because it is not a “natively build into the desktop platform” solution.
Microsoft would have to modify only slightly their announcements for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile like we have done below and we would immediately have to congratulate them for once delivering an innovation without the help of Apple:
“In the past, it has been challenging for developers to get their Windows Mobile applications into the hands of consumers. In addition to fragmentation in the distribution channels, there has been no definitive marketplace experience on the device desktop for users to browse and acquire applications and/or content. This has prevented developers from achieving broad reach with their application offering, and inhibited the user’s ability to leverage the power of their Windows phone. Fortunately, Windows Marketplace for Mobile addresses these challenges while also including a number of key benefits for developers. Examples of some of these key benefits include:
- An easily discovered on-device application that is installed on every Windows Mobile 6.5 device, and includes prominent placement on the Start menu.
- Leverage existing Microsoft developer tools, such as Visual Studio, for faster time to market.
As you can see, the opportunity for developers is quite clear. Windows Marketplace can help you grow your business profitably by connecting you directly with millions of Windows Mobile users that are looking for your applications. Whether you are a hobbyist developer or a large ISV, we’ll make it easy for you to bring your applications to market and manage them effectively throughout their life cycle.”
PS: Also desktop application users would very likely appreciate if Microsoft would help developers so that users would get applications with improved quality delivered:
Posted in Good Ideas, Issues explained | No Comments »“We want developers to focus on their core competency of developing innovative applications. At the same time we will work with developers to ensure that their applications run optimally on Windows phones. We will accomplish this by running a rigorous certification and testing process before applications go to market.”
It is easy to start an online presentation on Google Docs, but do you know how stop it?
Dezember 13th, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiPaul Thurrott recently published two interesting articles about user interfaces and the difference between a simple UI and a UI that is easy to use:
“Google’s Web applications are simple—they are—and a certain audience out there really appreciates that.”
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/11/24/a-great-google-article-the-difference-between-easy-and-simple-and-why-this-is-a-problem-for-windows-7.aspx
“Today, we take it for granted, and while the details may change, the desktop UIs used by systems as supposedly diverse as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are all in fact very similar. But they’re “intuitive” only in the sense that if you’ve used one you should be able to adapt to the others.”
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_simple.asp
Google Docs as any other Web Office application is mostly easy to use because it is leveraging the user experience we all got used to in the past through interaction with desktop applications. Because Google Docs is web based it adds to the expected set of desktop features (”File-Save as” etc.) rich online sharing and collaboration features.
There are two special features of Google Docs default behavior for “Started Presentations”:
- People will not have to ask you in the future to access the latest version of your presentation and
- you will not even be able to notice that others are accessing your presentation, Google Docs will tell you instead that there are no Viewers for that presentation.
Google Docs online presentation mode is a concrete example where a user interface (in this case of the Google Docs 2008 UI) looks simple but is in reality not always easy to use.
If you would like to know how to stop others from accessing a presentation on Google Docs after you presented then please find all details after the click.
The value of application integration: Gmail Labs integrates Gmail, Calender and Documents
November 9th, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiWithout Gmail Labs from Google the Google Mail Beta user interface looks like this:
Gmail Labs was introduced in June 2008. The feature it offered were not seen by everyone as interesting: “Gmail labs is live but also boring”.
But the team behind Gmail Labs released some new features recently.
With those new Gmail Labs features enabled Google Mail looks like this:
The integration of the separated Google applications Calendar and Docs into the Google Mail user interface has proven in our seven days long practical test to be of good value. Gmail Labs is in our view now a great enhancement to Google Mail.
Click below to see:
- Our top 5 recommended Gmail Lab features
- What could be one of the reasons why you can not find or access Google Labs in your Gmail
- For our German readers a simple tip of how to enable those Labs features in Germany (valid in November 2008):Wie kann man Google Mail, Kalender und Text & Tabellen mit Google Labs auch in Deutschland in Google Mail zusammen anzeigen bzw. integrieren?
34 billion German Internet users can teach you something about the web
Oktober 23rd, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiUpdate 25.10.2008: See updates in blue text in the body of the post below
A research institute confused million with billion in a news release published last month. Someone called them and they fixed the one-letter error immediately. Case closed, what could be learned out of this? What is the importance of million vs. billion in the light of the current financial market crisis anyway (sorry, bad joke)? After all we are all humans and we are all making mistakes, right?
Good that you are asking. The mission of line-of-reasoning is to help making the world a better place by explaining issues of our today’s information infrastructure.
Based on the small and unimportant error of the institute we will showcase with concrete examples some of the most simple and fundamental issues that continue to plague the web since its beginning:
- broken links: URL´s are pointers and they are great as long as the page that they point to is still existing. But if not …
- copy and paste helps somehow avoiding the issue of broken links but it makes the removal of errors somehow even more difficult
- Google, currently THE web search engine, is not providing you with a good answer related to the most essential information out there on the Web although Google itself has been -so to say- built on the answer to this question: What pages are linking to another page?
Read on for all details, artifacts and explanations.
Posted in Issues explained | No Comments »Free Google search training from Google: How to become a Super Internet Searcher
Oktober 1st, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiWhile it is easy enough just to type some keywords into Google`s famous simple search UI this does not necessarily mean that you will find always quickly the most valuable and reliable information that is available out there.
 |
Daniel Russell working at Google for “Google Search Quality & User Happiness” is making us happy with his great training course called “Becoming a Super Internet Searcher”. (download here the 3MB PDF). In this search training course you will learn:
- How to use Internet search and Internet resources for schoolwork and home use
- Develop effective search query formation
- Learn how to organize your search
- What to do when you are stuck
The best thing is that Daniel does not stop here, he is providing also excellent tips of how to evaluate the trustworthiness of the sites that you will find, so that search results can be put into the right context.
The PDF “Becoming a Super Internet Searcher” contains 97 pages of insights and advice and it is interesting for beginners and advanced Internet users: It provides you with the required background knowledge to improve your search. We highly recommend it.
Posted in Interesting Links, Recommended Products | No Comments »The rise of the virtual exchange of pros and cons
September 25th, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiIf someone is making a “statement” (positive or negative) about a specific thing this contextual relationship between the “thing”, the “statement” and if it is “pros” or “cons” can be captured and saved. This information can then be later easily used to combine “statements” about specific “things” and create by this dynamically a “virtual exchange of pros and cons”. The value of the virtual exchange of pros and cons is very clear and it is nicely demonstrated on the site opposingviews.com :
We call this a “virtual” exchange of pros and cons because it is not necessarily a given that each pros and cons were provided originally in direct relationship/context to each other. The logic that puts specific “pros” and “cons” left and right together on one page is also not necessarily transparent. This missing or disputable transparency is leaving room for hidden intentions or stupid errors behind each and every page that displays a virtual exchange of pros and cons. Why is this important to be recognized?
The real world effects of information put into the wrong context was just recently clearly demonstrated:
“What made a six-year-old article about a bankruptcy filing by United Airlines reappear on Wall Street traders’ screens on Monday as if it were fresh news, prompting a sell-off that erased $1 billion in the company’s market value in a matter of minutes?”
Source: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/a-stock-killer-fueled-by-algorithm-after-algorithm/
The real world effect of potential errors in the context of a virtual exchange of pros and cons on Amazon would be probably limited.
But would that be also true for possible errors (intended or not) in the virtual exchanges of pros and cons during the ongoing US presidential election campaign (see below Google Labs “In Quotes” as an example)?
How the Aberdeen Group has proven that the Quality of the End-User Experience needs improvement
September 3rd, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiSometimes you turn your head around and ask yourself if you are on candid camera. Today this mail titled “Improve the Quality of the End-User Experience” from the Aberdeen Group created such a moment for us:
User experience is one of the core interests of the Line-Of-Reasoning team so we tried to access our “COMPLIMENTARY COPY”. What we got as result of clicking on the provided link was not what we expected:
aberdeen.com provided us with the bad quality end-user experience named “Active Server Pages error ‘ASP 0240′”:
We assume this is not what Aberdeen has to say about End-User experience. Or maybe this is a sophisticated indirect method of showing the need to improve the Quality of the End-User Experience. Whatever, thank you Aberdeen for making us smile.
PS: 5 hours later and the link to the report is fixed. If you are interested in the Aberdeen report try yourself here:
http://aberdeen.com/summary/report/benchmark/4906-RA-application-performance-management.asp
The essence of information based human creativity (and how Robert Scoble´s Techmeme game is related to John Boyd´s military strategy)
August 31st, 2008 Ralf ScharnetzkiOur understanding of the core aspect of information based human creativity that can be for example sometimes (and not often enough) found in
- blogging,
- mails,
- reports/presentations and
- innovative software products and services
is expressed in this slightly modified quote of Colonel John Boyd:
Live the instinctive see-saw of analysis and synthesis across a variety of domains, or across competing/independent channels of information,
in order to spontaneously generate and share new mental images or impressions that match-up with an unfolding world of uncertainty and change.Source: “The Strategic Game of ? and ?”, Slide 58, (words in bold indicate our modifications )
Boyd defined Strategy in this way:
“The Strategic Game is one of Interaction and Isolation. A game in which we must be able to diminish adversary’s ability to communicate or interact with his environment while sustaining or improving ours.”
In this sense a specific type of Blogging can be easily understood as an instance of the war for attention. Herbert Simon identified already in 1971 attention as the scarce resource of the information age:
“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it”
Source: Simon, H. A. (1971), “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” from here
One of the blogger’s who participated intensively and with success in this war for attention is Robert Scoble. He called this activity himself recently the “Techmeme Game”:
“See, if you want to earn links and attention in this world you’ve got to be first, or at least among the first articles to go out. I’ve seen this time and time again. I call it the Techmeme game.”
Source:http://scobleizer.com/2008/07/30/cuil-why-im-trying-to-get-off-of-the-pr-bandwagon/
In the picture Boyd`s well known OODA Loop is applied to Scoble´s Techmeme game:
Competitive advantage comes from quickness over the entire “loop,” not only the single direction O–>O–>D–>A sequence. Those who publish quicker and know how to get the attention of the Internet (via sites like Techmeme and other methods) can interrupt the OODA loop of their Blogging competitors and win the bigger share of attention.
It is your choice if you would like to be like the old Scoble or to focus less on competition and your ego and more on generating, contributing and sharing new mental images or impressions that match-up with an unfolding world of uncertainty and change. But whatever your choice is we would recommend strongly to study John Boyd’s work. It will enable you to make a more informed decision:
- Great collection of Colonel John Boyd’s work:
http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/strategy-and-force-employment/boyd-and-military-strategy/ - Access Frans P.B. Osingas thesis about the strategic theory of John Boyd as pdf: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/5555.html
- Video (also) touching on Boyd´s ideas:
http://spookyaction.blogspot.com/2008/06/whats-going-on-in-there.html
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