Basement.org

The Rise & Fall of The Nintendo Wii

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:18:42 -0500

At Arc90, one of our meeting rooms is proudly called the Wii Room. It’s an informal meeting space with a whiteboard, projector and…a Nintendo Wii. When we first got the Wii a couple of years ago, it was a universal hit at Arc90. The bowling and golf games in the Wii sports package were just plain fun.

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Basement.org Turns 5 Today

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:34:55 -0500

Five years ago today, I launched this blog, www.basement.org. I actually can’t believe five years have passed. I’ve tried to cover the things that interest me (and hopefully interest some readers) around technology and design. Looking back, it’s been a lot of fun, if at times daunting to post something, anything. Still, no regrets.

Basement.org has often been pegged as a bitch-and-rant blog that just does a whole lot of complaining and not much doing. That’s probably true to some extent. I like to think basement.org is for bitching, while Arc90 is for doing.

Still, I’m kind of proud of some (by all means not all) of the stuff that’s made it onto this blog. It’s still a young, fumbling kindergartner today. Hopefully it’ll pay attention at school, eat its vegetables and have a generally well-adjusted childhood.

Above all else, I hope I can keep the curiosity and desire to look forward in place. In many ways, this blog is about daydreaming, as corny as that sounds. The real world gets plenty of press these days. It’s more fun to daydream.

Note: If you’d like to check out some of the more popular posts, here’s a list from 2007.

Introducing: Arc90

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:55:34 -0500

Nearly five years ago, a sort of resurgent movement was starting to take hold on the Internet. From the ashes of the dot-com apocalypse rose a new view of the Web as not only a place to serve up “Web pages” but as a platform. This was incredibly exciting to me. A series of trends seemed to all be converging at once: RSS, AJAX and the Rich Web and of course simple approachable API’s.

Beyond the technology that seemed to be materializing, a new philosophy was taking hold. This new movement was demystifying and knocking down the walls that had surrounded software building since software building began. Technology was no longer the sole domain of engineers and computer scientists. It was now capable of being exposed to good strategic thinking and thoughtful design. The walls were coming down.

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Google’s Fast Flip : Breaking The Internet & User Experience In One Fell Swoop

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:53:15 -0500

So Google decided to break the Internet paradigm today by releasing a new tool called Fast Flip. It’s essentially a visual browser for news. Google apparently has far too much spare CPU time in its datacenters so they decided to take image snapshots of news pages.

This is solid evidence that Google has lost its collective mind. The Internet is about links and connecting content to content. I felt slightly stupid when I clicked on what looked like a search box in one of the snapshots only to find out it’s not a search box but an image of one.

Is there research out there that supports the theory that people want visual artifacts (in the form of snapshots, thumbnails and the like) vs. the actual content? Searchme, a cover flow-style search engine, tried to fulfill a similar phantom need. They raised a ton of venture capital to deliver this visual browse search engine. Nobody cared and now they’re gone.

What’s interesting about this tool is that it’s the anti-Readability. Instead of helping us get rid of the junk around what we’re trying to read, Google fossilized the layout - junk and all - in images.

Bizarre.

The Web And Rewarding Expertise

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:51:11 -0500

On the Web, you (“you” being a designer or developer) can pretty much do whatever you like. Got a hankering to reinvent how a personal profile or company presence is going to look on the Web? Go nuts. Nobody’s going to stop you. Every URL is a blank canvas. There’s infinite freedom.

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On The Web, More Isn’t Only Less, It’s Actually Nothing

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:23:22 -0500

There is always news. Regardless of how newsworthy particular information is, newspapers have to put out the morning paper. No matter how little or no news there is, we’re still going to get “the news” every day.

Every so often, the newspapers resort to banal gossip pieces for the front cover (if they’re the New York Post) or featured investigative reporting that isn’t necessarily timely (if they’re the New York Times). This happens when there really isn’t anything major to report.

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Why Do We Love Rounded Corners? The Answer!

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:09:16 -0500

Nearly four years ago, I asked the question, and attempted to answer: “Why do we love rounded corners?” Back then it hit quite a nerve, leading to an enlightening (and entertaining!) comment thread. But alas, I’m not sure we ever really arrived at the answer…until now.

Konigi recently posted an entry entitled Realizations of Rounded Rectangles, where he points to a bit of Mac history (folklore?) on UI&us. It’s an interesting tale of how Steve Jobs demanded roundedness in everything on the interface. Still, the most illuminating thought comes from Professor Jürg Nänni, a scholar on visual cognition:

A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size. Our “fovea-eye” is even faster in recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down.”

Professor Nänni is saying that rounded rectangles are literally easier on the eye. Put another way, compared to square-edged rectangles, rounded rectangles are more computationally efficient for the human brain. To me, this is a revelation. An idea that at the very least demands more investigation.

Looking back, the original rationale I threw out wasn’t too far off. It’s a fascinating puzzle and speaks to the intersection between visual aesthetics and interaction design.

I’m sure this isn’t the end of the debate. Nevertheless…progress!

What I Need…

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:21:53 -0500

Know what I need? I need some way to cherry pick the 20 or so Boing Boing posts actually worth reading out of my 634 unread.

I wish I could just click a button and remove the pressure. I like Boing Boing, but I don’t like Boing Boing enough to wade through 634 posts. Then again, it would have never reached that number had I liked them more.

Hmmm, maybe I don’t like Boing Boing after all. Unsubscribe?

Elsewhere Links Are…Elsewhere

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:17:06 -0500

Y’all may have noticed that basement.org’s elsewhere links have dried up a bit these days. They actually haven’t. They’re just not happening on this blog. If you’d like to follow the links I’ve been sharing, the easiest way is to just visit (or follow me) on Twitter (@richziade). There’s also an RSS feed fed by that account.

It’s just so much easier to publish quick tidbits this way. I primarily use TBUZZ to share links out. Eventually, I’d like to let that stream show up here on basement.org as elsewhere links. As soon as some time frees up, I’ll make that update.

An Argument For Building Attractive Things

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:13:19 -0500

Here’s a rule of thumb that applied to both people and design experiences:

The more attractive something (or someone) is, the more we’re willing to tolerate its flaws.

When something is beautiful, we’ll work with it just a bit more, despite its inadequacies. We do this because we want to be associated with beautiful things. We want to build relationships with beautiful things (same for beautiful people). We want to evangelize them. We want to become a part of them.

When one becomes obsessed with a beautiful object, it isn’t because we want that object to come into our own personal world. It’s in fact the reverse. We want to enter its world. Of course, that thing that we found to be so beautiful at first glance may actually have some awful flaws. Really expensive yet excruciatingly uncomfortable shoes come to mind. We want it to work out so badly.

Here is my theory in a beautifully elegant visual form (also known as “data visualization.”):

So what’s the moral of this blog post? When you’re building stuff, make it usable but also make it attractive. I mean, we should all be aiming for both, but not everything can be Brad Pitt.

Praying To The Wrong God

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:38:29 -0500

Let’s go back to the year 2000 for a few minutes.

The music industry is in turmoil due to an amalgamation of factors:

The Internet has arrived. Distribution of just about anything that can exist in digital form will change forever. Your big box retailer of compact discs instantly looks like a relic.
People have found ways to compress audio into a manageable size without sacrificing very much in audio quality. Not only has the distribution piping been laid down, but the packages are light and easy to transport.
Napster and its brethren come into existence. Decentralized peer-to-peer farmer’s markets crop up everywhere, compounding the nightmare for the music industry.

The music industry does what any industry would do when their precious commodity – in this case music – is suddenly as available as paper towels at your local YMCA restroom. It’s a scary place to find yourself. The natural reaction is to wrap your arms around that content and hold on for dear life. After all, it is your bread and butter.

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Addicted To Nothing

Fri, 29 May 2009 11:13:15 -0500

We are addicted to nothing. Wait, let me rephrase that: we’re addicted to being addicted. No, that’s not really it. We’re addicted to “the next thing.” Or more accurately, the “next bunch of things.” What those things are is irrelevant. We actually don’t care about their substance. We just care that they are:

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TBUZZ + Readability

Thu, 14 May 2009 11:40:39 -0500

Since I started using TBUZZ (all-caps required), I’ve gotten into the habit of a nice one-two punch with Readability. First use Readability to get rid of all the bullshit, then invite in people who are talking about what I’m reading. It’s sort of like peanut butter and chocolate, except with technology:

4 Things Designers & Marketers Can Learn From the Slap Chop Website (Yes, The Slap Chop Website)

Wed, 13 May 2009 11:14:50 -0500

We’ve all had restless late nights where we can’t sleep only to be greeted with the Slap Chop guy Vince. He’s chopping food and rambling on with unbridled enthusiasm. Yes he’s a little ridiculous and pretty cheesy. And yes, he’s been remixed. Hey, mock all you want. The original TV ad has been viewed nearly 400,000 times on Youtube. The remix has been viewed nearly two million times! How many times have your videos been viewed?

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Inventing The Semantic Web…Again

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:25:46 -0500

Over at Semantic Universe, they’ve published my article on inventing the semantic web again. The basic premise is that you can come up with a brilliant invention in the lab, but if the masses don’t connect to it (especially if it requires the masses to be fully realized) it’s really not much of an invention.

Few would doubt that the Semantic Web isn’t the “right thing.” The only thing that remains is to figure out how exactly to bring it into the context of people’s individual goals and needs. Until then, it’ll continue to be relegated to academic gymnastics.