Mi madre es toda una maquera
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The problem with haircut specifications
Defective Yeti is on brilliant form with Haircut 2.0:
They wouldn’t even give me a haircut at first; I had to go through a “consultation”. The stylist who drew the short straw came out and asked me a number of questions only slightly less than that found on the LSAT. To each I provided the same reply: “just do whatever you think is best.” At one point she even asked me if I wanted “a clipper and scissors cut or just clippers” and I explained that this was like me asking my grandfather if he wanted his email delivered via POP or IMAP. Haha, just kidding. Actually I said, “just do whatever you think is best”.
Go and read the whole thing, it's brilliant.
I go to the hairdressers slightly more often than that, but I have the same kind of communication problem. On the one hand, I have a vague idea what I'd like my hair to look like, but I don't have any of the right terminology that would allow me to transmit this mental image to the hairdresser. On the few occasions that I have stumbled across a bit of hairdressing jargon (for example: 'vertical bob'), I've managed - without having any understanding of what the jargon means - to use it like a secret password to get a haircut approximating the kind of thing I had in mind.
A Week with Google Wave
I've had my Google wave account for several weeks now, but I've only used it regularly for the first week.
The google provided front end is a pretty ambitious web application that merges instant messaging, e-mail, and collaborative documentation (aka wiki) and discussion. Extensions allow for all sorts of other forms of collaboration - video conferencing, voting/polls, turn-based games, etc. Wave uses standard protocols on the backend (extensions to XMPP/Jabber) that will allow "federation" or organization-hosted wave servers that interconnect with others - similar to how organizations host e-mail and web servers today. To date, my experience is with the Google provided front-end and here are my impressions:
Real Time Editing Can Be Confusing
Imagine five... or thirty of your colleagues all sitting at the same desk attempting to author the same document at the same time. No matter how talented the individual, the model eventaully breaks down and everyone starts stepping on each other's toes. The realtime document editing concept needs to be managed better in part by software and in part by proper netiquette. The software may be able to facilitate the netiquette using a moderator system found in other sytems. This feature should be optionally enabled or disabled on a per-wave basis.
Revisions Tracking (aka Playback) Needs Some Work
Playback/revision tracking needs some work both in its implementation and in its design. Maybe its the developer in me, but a simple revision log with side-by-side diff is more obvious than finding the edits while "playing back". Playback is the only mode that caused the wave ui to "crash" requiring a reload. And was a times slow to respond.
A New Dimension to Instant Messaging
Wave adds new dimensions to instant messaging. No longer do you have to cut and paste part of what someone said to make it clear that you are replying to that bit. You can click on an IM line and reply to that bit - kind of like a threaded discussion forum. The only danger is that the recipient might miss the new message if it is off their screen. Wave UI designers might want to consider a way to keep the conversation linear and still allow replying to past IMs - or perhaps some sort of visual cue to indicate new messages above/below the current visible portion of the screen.
Got RAM?
The web front end is memory intensive taking anywhere from 100M on initial load to 500M on viewing a large wave.
Helloooo... Is This Thing On
Google, Build Some Bridges
Google wave is NOT ubiquitous like e-mail and IM and its current UI is RAM heavy. No one is going to be willing to keep the RAM eating wave client open all the time like they do for e-mail, the web, or IM. Google needs to be able to push notifications of wave activity to users via e-mail and IM. Likewise, wave should support sending plain-old-e-mail and IMs from the wave client. With these hooks in place and as the UI gets better, people will spend more an more time in the wave UI. In short, people need a migration path that is less disruptive than switching to a whole new tool and protocol.Internets, Federate
"A Federation is multiple computing and/or network providers agreeing upon standards of operation in a collective fashion. ..." -- wikipediaOrganizations are likely the first to find real value in what wave offers - more so than the end "mom and pop" users who chat with their grandma via IM or shares photos via flickr. Organizations and businesses, are in constant collaboration and as business becomes more and more global more of this collaboration is happening electronically. For the same reasons business host their own e-mail servers, privacy, identity, etc. they will want to host their own wave servers.If the wave client is still in preview, then the federation software is pre-preview. As of this writing, reference/prototype modules exist for the OpenFire XMPP server software. This is all free and open source. A quick glance at the installation instructions and it looks pretty straightforward to install. Unfortunately, there is no wave graphical wave client that will work with it. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this point.) All that exists is a simple, limited, command line client.For more see: http://www.waveprotocol.org/Hey, Its a Preview!
Some people love Google to a fault. Some people hate Google because some people love Google to a fault. I love technology. Email, instant messaging, wiki's and other forms of online collaboration and discussion are a part of my daily life. None of them are perfect and some of them are getting long in the tooth, or at the very least being abused. I work in an environment where e-mail and IM is the medium by which almost all collaboration is carried. I welcome a change from the overload of static discussion threads, MS Word attachments etc. While I welcome a re-imagining of e-mail, IM, and wiki's for the 21'st century it isn't clear that Google wave is it. Based on the preview, It has a ways to go but lets not declare it an overhyped flop before it even makes it to beta. I think it shows some promise simply for its use of existing and extended open protocols. Further, if Google can't get the UI right, I'm sure someone else can.You could be looking at the next big thing since the browser, but a lot of maturing and adoption needs to happen between now and then.Want More?
Driving myself into a new time
After the storm, here it comes the peace. land with water. the evening sun appears. Anyway, seems to be that my life has evolved again. A new cuantic jump to another reality. I would like to be more consecuent right now, between my inner richfulness and my outer one. Anyway, i will share with you a piece of the sky today in my country. The same sky right there, but with a latinamerican style.I don´t know who you are, but, if u can stand a Dj, an Geek and a Poet at the same time, ill be glad to hear from you something. An learn from you, for sure...dear bloggernaut
a monkey needs to dance
via crunchgear.com
und diese Dinger, solche Aktionen, die tragen dazu bei, dass Google einen sehr sympathischen Touch hat. Ganz ähnlich wie das der Zuckerberg von Facebook macht, aber irgendwie nicht so aufgesetzt.
Achja, dazu diesen Track anhören: http://blip.fm/~gmhya
Evil rants because I almost lost my only train
I am leaving France now, heading home.
I have to take a traing from Besancon to Lyon, then a bus to the airport, then a plane home. And the tricky thing is that my plane is at 10:55, and I only have one train to get me there on time, leaving from Besancon at 5:08 AM.
Because it is so early, I have to buy my ticket from an automatic vending machine. And, I know that those vending machines accept only coins (for cash) and credit cards with a security chip - which I don't have. So, at 4:45 AM I head to the trainstation with my friend, so that she can pay for my ticket with her card, and I can give her the money in cash.
We get there at around 4:55, and we head to the ticket vending machines. Two are occupied, one has a nice empty blue screen (not a BSOD), but I recognize the Windows cursor (I giggle), all alone, in the middle of the screen. Anyway, we head to the last machine, and start pushing buttons (on screen that is). After the payment is done (probably), the machine asks us to remove the credit card, which we do.. then.. some flashes, and we see the nice blue screen on this machine too. My first reaction was along the lines of "WTF?".
We wait a little.. no ticket, no receipt, no nothing. The train was about to leave in a few minutes! Well, let's try another machine.. while pushing buttons on that one, I have another look at the first one. In the mean time, it has rebooted, and it was running a diskcheck now.. I was thinking whan an excelent time for maintenance.
I was lucky in the end, this machine worked fine, I had my ticket, and now I am on-board the train. But it was a close call. But my friend probably lost 30 euros on this (maybe.. we don't know yet, because I am not sure that the transaction was done the first time), and I was cursing the hell out of Windows.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like Microsoft, I am not very fond of any flavour of Windows, but I have to admit that it is actually quite a good product. And they do have some good stuff. XP was the first desktop OS that really impressed me (I haven't had used a Mac before it), and I think it actually is pretty good for the average user.
But, for a machine that has to be reliable, cheap and secure.. I dare say that are some better choices out there. It's only my opinion, and I don't have any experience with this kind of devices, but.. my knowledge from the PC area I think is quite enough.You don't need the whole desktop on these, or a bunch of graphical tools to set things up, etc, It's not an workstation.
My choice? Linux. Why? It's cheaper (there are a lot of those machines all over trainstations in France), it can run on lower speced hardware (cheaper again, both as hardware costs, and as power), once set-up, it's more stable and secure.
I know, it may be more difficult to set it up at first (hardware support, networking, security), but.. once set up.. it just runs.
It's just a thing about the right tool for the job, and in this case, I find XP to be not the best tool available.
I have seen billboards and ATMs showing some funny errors, or rebooting, ar showing a corner of the familiar XP/Vista desktop, or rebooting, and I was considering it funny, but now, not anymore.
Ok, maybe a little funny, but when it comes to more serious stuff.. it makes you wonder a little.
Edit: I got to the plane now, no issues except the crying baby in the bus to the airport :P
Edit 2: I got home, enjoying some beer! Yey!
Less and More - The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams
via designmuseum.org
And another exhibition worth seeing: Dieter Rams at the Design Museum in London, 18 November 2009 - 07 March 2010.
The Simplest iPhone Stand You've Seen
If you're looking for a simple way of having your iPhone/iPod stand in front of you without spending any money. Here is an old Mini DV tape case, this hack is just pure genius. Sometimes the greatest ideas are just lying right in front of you. (photo by @danlane)
BTW, Posterous's new RT button was great. (if you've got a twitter account) you can retweet this post without ever leaving here, try it.
