http://billpapa.org/readingblog Reading (b)log of researcher Bill Papantoniou Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:04:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Boxes and Arrows investigates the unintended uses of technology. No matter how hard we try to create designs for certain uses, people will always utilize them in their own way. These unintended uses can be strange, even brilliant. In the end, you have to tip your hat to the ingenuity. Our ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2008/01/06/our-way-the-ingenuity-of-unintended-uses-boxes-and-arrows-the-design-behind-the-design/ Sometimes the data are so interesting, that even a mediocre chart works (via Think or Thwim): Think or Thwim Blogged with Flock http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2008/01/05/presenting-data/ David Brooks of the NY Times writes about our externalized cognitive functions. In the beginning it was only the calculator, now it is everything, even things we couldn't think that would be outsourced: Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/11/02/outsourced-externalized-distributed-mind/ The age of the Google Man is upon us! Great work by Michael Wesch (of The Machine is Us/ing Us fame), shows how search (and search literacy) has altered the landscape and shattered hierarchies. http://www.youtube.com/?v=-4CV05HyAbMInformation R/evolutionTags: search, information, netculture, cyberpunk, anthropology, ethnography http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/21/information-revolution/ He may be arrogant, obnoxious and his last book "The God Delusion" was mediocre... Still, he is a brilliant thinker which shows in his response to Edge's excellent "What's Your Formula?": Richard Dawkins Tags: evolution, formula, algorithm, theory, biology, epistemology http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/20/whats-you-formula/ Coding Horror complains about the terrors of bloat. I think that there is a parallel here with cars (albeit in the ultrafast timescales of IT). Cars keep getting bigger and bigger: I think know the current VW Polo is larger than the 1st generation Golf we used to own. So with ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/19/bloat-and-cars/ For those who want to get things done fast, or just want to study some of the principles, Smashing Magazine has published 30 Usability Issues to be Aware Of. It is a mix of rules, principles and phenomena related to usability. For serious studying, I suggest to delve into the depths ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/09/gorilla-usability/ Wired has a nice article about the locus of memory moving from "wetware" to hardware. The fact that it simply is more convenient to digitally store, or altogether bypass low-level pieces of information (like telephone numbers). Sure, I'm a veritable genius when I'm on the grid, but am I mentally crippled ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/06/73/ I've uploaded the short (following Guy Kawasaki's rule) presentation I gave in OpenCoffee IV. It was an interesting event and the presentations showed that something IS moving. Onic's especially was inspiring even for me, a conservative non-entrepreneurial kind of person. Thanks to the OpenCoffee Athens organizers for the great event! Tags: opencoffee, ... http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/10/03/usability-guerilla-gorilla-and-beyond-opencoffee-athens-iv-presentation/ The NSF Science & Engineering Visualization winners (via Data Mining) are inspiring pieces of work. The real challenge is to find ways to exploit the work put into visualizations like the modelling of the flight of a bat. Tags: visualization, design http://billpapa.org/readingblog/2007/09/29/inspiring-visualizations/