Surf*Mind*Musings

I installed IE8 on Thursday on a windows box and was dismayed to discover the easy setup path would set it as my default browser despite Firefox already configured as such.
Is this really how it works? I haven’t seen anyone else mention this aspect.
The installer respects your previously set default search engine in IE, [...]

The good folks at Microsoft’s Live Labs finally shipped!  I got a peek at some of the efforts to get the DeepFish zooming browser done while at MSFT and can say that’s one of the sharpest teams in Redmond.  The video demo shows off the fancy zoom effects.
Right on the heels of the Minimo 0.2 [...]

I haven’t seen this basic truth described about tag clouds, aka weighted lists, though we have a nice blogdom exploration of the cognitive implications of folksonomies and plenty of contrasts with hierarchies. 
Tag clouds are an extremely rational UI design, trading off efficiency of access (font size) against frequency.  This optimizes user effort, independent of [...]

Watching Bill Gate’s latest channel 9 appearance, alas it’s not the gonzo Scoble, but a video with a bit more polish.  BillG hits one on the head, re: AJAX: “What the heck too you so long?”.
My first efforts at loading data ascyhronously for a smoother screen paint experience in 1999 shortly after innerHTML was released [...]

While many of the jabs at IE7 about copy-cat featurism may hold some water, the redesigned toolbar is a smart step forward. Read on for details…

Node type: designate permalinks. [[Post destroyed by spam infiltration]]

Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user andyed on 2005-07-26

Monday, July 25, 2005 —
Tagged as: andyed opml
Twilight Universe » Blog Archive » WordPress: Touched —
Tagged as: wordpress

From Emergic, Slashdot does the Memex.
Highlights of the slashdot fray:

a dive into the world of web and desktop search
pay me for my browser history
pr0n across history

Reflecting upon my own consumption of public media, I’ve got no less than 10 blog aggregator systems. None of them are quite fluent enough for me. Start.com comes [...]

So I promised some commentary on the Tablet PC that is now a frequent companion. Tablet’s have started to get a bum rap in the blogosphere, or at least a healthy dose of skepticism.
I’m super attuned to the flow experience and don’t hesitate to regard a “feature” as a impediment to my [...]

Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user andyed on 2005-07-24

White.Steve.Blog : Avalon 3D File System Visualizer (FolderTreemap3D) —
Tagged as: .net viz
trendalicious! —
Lisp is aliveTagged as: delicious lisp
TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook —
Tagged as: js wiki
Singularity! - A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds —
Tagged as: cyber
UHS: Half-Life 2 Hints —
DHTML spotting, [...]

Just a test. I’m getting some exceptions invoking menu items by mouse (keybd works). Guess I should try an older version.
This think needs a MSN Search based hyperlink lookup. I implemented this in Blozom — one of the tabs in insert hyperlink is “Search” which auto runs the anchor text phrase and offers [...]

It’s been a while eh? Nifty new wordpress install here. We’ll see how it goes. Old news here, but these are some of the things that have tipped the scales between dedicating energy elsewhere and participating in the generative & evolving technical commons.

StartPlane: An exploratory del.icio.us zeitgeist
Twingine is a frame based [...]

The CHI conference was good — gotta love any venue that publishes multiple papers on increasing the effectiveness of core interation techniques like scrolling. Kieran has a great summary even if he refers to me as an “evil empire employee”.
I’m finally getting around to writing some code in what’s been dubbed “Ajax” by the [...]

I’ve said it before but the recent googlex buzz and subsquent dock fandom brings another round of a situation akin to tree-trimbing back button (an inferior solution cemented by user learning and pervasiveness).
While the dock does offer a fun factor, it’s tantalizing close to a true performance optimization but fails to meet the bar. [...]

I’ll be attending CHI this year and participating in a workshop on integrating approaches to logging and qualitative data collection. The program has been published, lot of good stuff in the papers.

news@nature.com - Concentration hampers simple tasks

doron’s blaahg: Improved Navigation is a Benefit, Tabbed Browsing is A Feature

winsupersite offers up an intriguing set of major paradigm shifts for tablet pc computing: WinHEC 2004 Longhorn Prototypes Gallery features a slate form-factor PIM mode and a large-font pen-oriented skin.
Hmm, I hadn’t thought of hacking my tablet pc with a windows shell add-on thing… Targetting the ’s in tree user interfaces with the [...]

blogathyant: Feed reading belongs in the browser argues that consuming blogs is best done in a browser — particularly one with better support for multi-threaded reading (e.g. tabbed browsing).
I’m still looking for an acceptable aggregator. I tried IntraViews recently, an Outlook addon, and it has a very nice notification popup that shows [...]

So I read bloglines mobile during the 30 minute bus ride to the *mothership* this morning and discovered a flaw in my smartphone I’m dead set on fixing.
I’m happily reading merged view (newspaper) feeds in bloglines and get a buzz alert that new mail has arrived. I tap the hardware home button to get [...]