Author Archives: Vidar Andersen

Rants, Software, Usability

Do you know where you’re going?

UPDATE 2013: Problem (mostly) solved today. Multiple rounds of shortening still tend to garble the original url address.

To be able to post links (URLs) to pages on the Internet in their updates on twitter and Jaiku, people are using additional services like urlTea and tinyurl to help reduce the numbers of characters to transmit the address, but leaving it functional. Those services take a potentially long address like ‘https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ index.html’ and truncate it to ‘http://tinyurl.com/2b2kg9’, leaving more characters to write a personal message to go with the link with. However, any identity or clue as to where that address may lead has now been removed. (Not to mention the additional burden the use of those additional services places on the poor user. I’ll leave that discussion for later posts.)

I’ve illustrated how this looks when using the web interface of twitter below:
Screenshot of twitter.com

Notice that there are no clues in that address as to what to expect when you click on it. The clever twitterer might suggest that if you’ve been following Chris Pirillo for a little while you’d expect the link to be leading to one of his web casts on his site, but then again there is no information in that address to tell you at a glance what to expect. You can’t know if it’s linking to the story you already read two weeks ago, if it’s self promotion if it’s linking to a site you know and trust – it could even link to an address that would get you in trouble at work.

Enter ‘The Gulf of Evaluation’:

“Does the system provide a physical representation that can be directly perceived and that is directly interpretable in terms of the intention and expectations of the person?The Gulf of Evaluation reflects the amount of effort that the person must exert to interpret the physical state of the system and to determine how well the expectations and intentions have been met. The gulf is small when the system provides information its state in a form that is easy to get, is easy to interpret, and matches the way the person thinks about the system.” – Donald Norman in ‘The Design of Everyday Things‘, Doubleday 1990.

I’ll argue that the gulf of evaluation is light years wide in the case in question. I’d like to have some transparency please. Show me a proper address!

Another solution would be to develop a plug in for e.g. Firefox that would identify addresses from services like tinyurl and urlTEA, look them up and show the complete address in the status bar below left and as a tool tip when hovering with the pointer over the link. I’ve illustrated how this may look below:
Screenshot of twitter.com

Here’s a another perspective on URL shortenings from Jeff Atwood of codinghorror.com

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Weird

Is it just me or do you also see colours?

I used to believe things. Not that there was a Santa Claus able to travel faster than light, a fairy that ate teeth and shat coins or that there is a life after death (there’s a reason why it’s called DEATH, don’t you think?). No. Until a couple of years ago I believed, or more like took it for granted, that everybody sees numbers in their mind as coloured numerals. What? You don’t? Let me try to explain how this looks to me.

Every number from 0 to 9 has it’s own colour or shade of gray. I’ve illustrated roughly what they look like below:

Image overview of coloured numerals

Now as you see, it’s a bit complicated with the shades of gray. Hey! I didn’t invent this – it was just sort of always there. To make matters worse, when numbers stand together to form yet another number, as they often do – the clever bastards, the colours at the end of the number seems to outshine the others. I’ve tried to illustrate this with some of my favorite years in colored numbers:

Image of some years in colours

I only see this in my mind when thinking about numbers, not when reading numbers, mind (no pun intended) you. I have more strange things going on in my mind, but I’ll keep that for future posts.

I’ve later learned that some incredibly intelligent and fascinating autistic people see numbers as coloured three dimentional shapes. Pretty cool! There’s some very interesting research to be done in this field.

Do you see colours? Do you have some interesting visualisations in your mind? Am I crazy? I’m looking forward to be reading your stories!

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Frivolous Friday, Music

Frivolous Friday – The Friday the 13th Premiere

On every Friday I’ll try to give you all a little something-something. Be it music, advice, knowledge or a warm fuzzy feeling. To kick it all off, I’ll be lazy be doing some housecleaning:

Do you remember the times before the daily hustle and barter for new invites to the next social überkiller site? The time before myspace and flickr? Before mashups and mixups? The early days of Napster and mp3.com before people had to try and find a Pirate Bay proxy to access the site?

Well, it’s not important that you do – all those hours of post traumatic stress disorder therapy probably did us all some good in the end – but back then I used to host music from talented unsigned friends on my server. I recently saw that the pages and the mp3s are still there beneath layers of dust and mold, so I thought I’d share them with you – as is. My friends are still making music under different and various names these days, but with no financial success – However, they are still relatively young. They’ll make it! Someday.

UPDATE 2013:Some of them went on to see some success.

group_shot

First up there’s Bello Semen with four professionally recorded tracks http://www.blacktar.com/old/bellosemen/ If you’re into the likes of Jeff Buckley, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Give them a try!

tbg_image

Secondly, but by no means a runner-up, I offer you TBG on a http platter http://www.blacktar.com/old/TBG/ This old school dude made all his music on one sucky old PC. The eclectic style ranges from hip hop to game scores to old school chip tunes. Check him out if you’re into any of that lovable oldskool stuff!

UPDATE 2013:These days you can find TBG on Soundcloud.

bg

Last – but by no means least – there’s BK http://www.blacktar.com/old/bk/ This guy plays all instruments himself and records it in his own home studio. The style is hard to describe, but I’ll suggest tagging it as dark pop would not be jibing. Even if that sounds awkward, give it a try – it’s catchy!

UPDATE 2013: Check out his latest project DIM on MySpace

As I said, everything is provided ‘as is’. That is to say there are e.g. no streaming Flash goodness hiding behind those URLs. Take it as a sign of my lazyness snapshot of bygone times, or something equally crappy esoteric .

Be sure to leave a comment on how much you love or hate the music! It would be ueberkillercool if you’d also leave me some suggestions on what you’d like to see in the Frivolous Friday posts!

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Hardware, News

Headplay wearable display and media player – Now taking orders

Some of you may remember Headplay, a wearable display – only a concept and a pitch for VC at the time. After what seems like ages (well, maybe more like six months), I finally got an email from Headplay last night announcing that they are now ready to ship. It’s allegedly available for shipping at USD 499.99.

Image of Headplay

I had almost forgotten about the concept designed by ideo and written it off as yet another vapourware product. At the time I learned about Headplay, icuity was building up hype for their wearable iPod display. There was also MyVu.

Headplay, as opposed to icuity and MyVu, sports an own media player – a separate box – that can reportedly play most familiar audio and video formats. Furthermore, where as the two other brands supports resolutions of 640 X 480 and 320 X 240 respectively, Headplay touts a native 800 x 600. However, there is no VGA or DVI port, only an y/c (svhs). There’s a page up on the site detailing the specs further.

Let me know how it works for you if you ever get your hands on one – or better yet, send me one to test!

Another new affordable wearable display to check out would be the icuity VR920 which includes stereo vision (Nvidia only) and head tracking. I have no information on how well it works at this time.

I’ve been looking for an affordable wearable display to use with a laptop for a couple of years now. A display I would actually buy would have to have at least 800 x 600 native resolution and a DVI or VGA interface. Optional niceties would be head tracking and stereo (twin) cameras. The threshold for me actually considering a purchase would probably be between USD 500 to 800, depending on specs.

Be sure to leave a comment if you know of other affordable and interesting wearable displays, or maybe you have some ideas for use that you would like to share? I would like to experiment with augmented reality myself. Virtual Light anyone?

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