Note also that, in 1995, Microsoft was already publishing big ugly commercial banners on its own website.

"I can only think about one thing at a time.

Any girl reading this just going to roll her eyes and think, “Of course. You’re a guy!”. But it’s not just true for me, it’s true for everyone. It’s true for you."

Things and a 13" screen help me to focus on one single task. I use one app for each specific task and hide all other apps. Don't try to multitask at home, kids.

"Heuristics are the key to designing programs that work well with humans, that make humans smile. In college computer science classes, we learn all about b*trees and linked lists and sorting algorithms and a ton of crap that I honestly have never, ever used, in 25 years of professional programming. (Except hash tables. Learn those. You'll use them!)

What I do write – every day, every hour – are heuristics that try to understand and intuit what the user is telling me, without her having to learn my language.

The field of computer interaction is still in its infancy. Computers are too hard to use, they require us to waste our brains learning too many things that aren't REAL knowledge, they're just stupid computer conventions."

Interesting shareware. Worth a try.

"Interface complexity is an issue every designer wrestles with when designing a reasonably sophisticated application. A complex interface can reduce user effectiveness, increase the learning curve of the application, and cause users to feel intimidated and overwhelmed.

I’ve spent the past year redesigning a particularly complex application with my primary focus being on reducing complexity. In this article, I’ll go over some of the issues surrounding complexity and techniques that can be used to manage it."

Note that all wrong design examples are from Microsoft.

"Thus our test: We ask ourselves, “Would I be willing to teach my Grandma how to use this over the phone?”. If the answer is “Definitely”, we know we’re doing well; if the answer is “Maybe”, we know we can do better; and if the answer is “No”, then it’s often time to rethink the whole thing."

I wouldn't even think of designing a piece of software if the end user had to go through all these steps. I always say that if my little sister, my father and my grandfather need to call me for technical support, that product is not well designed. Nobody ever had to call someone else about the Wii or TextEdit.

(Also, within every single text field in every application on Macintosh, you click on a red-underlined word to correct spelling mistakes. Why would somebody design it differently? Oh yeah, right, for cross-platform stuff…)

"Trust comes, in part, from simplicity. When something is simple, it’s possible to understand it in fullness. When you understand a thing, you can trust it."

• Cluttered on desktop widget
• Application name, release number and version in the menu bar
• Cool ASCII art in the manager window’s title bar
• Brilliantly ignored Interface Builder helpers
• The columns are not even large enough to display some dates

This is so much wrong, I really hope they will improve the user interface in future versions.

But I’m cool with that : they mention the Finnish city Tampere in the second screenshot. I lived there.

"It’s not enough just to write the basic functionality and add a menu item that runs it. Even a feature as simple as this one requires some up-front thinking, some design."

Right… So Gmail, Gtalk, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Reader, Google News, Google Code have all basically gone nowhere?

Google released Gears, then Chrome, and now Chrome OS. All Open Source. I think these are a great improvement to computer science and Internet, and I can't wait to play with a new OS.

But I just got the Acid test e-mail in my Gmail inbox, and it seems way better (not yet perfect, though) than the ESP shows it on their website : I have, for example, the right brown background color.

Is the browser doing anything? I mean, testing Gmail standards support in IE6 and Safari 4 is a little bit different, right?

Aza's text-to-vibrations solution is a pretty cool idea.

"It's a cleverly concealed webpage you can view on Internet Explorer 8."

They are losing the point, again. Just like they did with IE6 and IE7. By using IE8-only scripts, IE8-only templates and IE8-only pages, Microsoft publicly claims that IE8's recent achievement in web standards compliance is useless.

(note that the previous version of that webpage was more agressive, saying things like "You'll never find it using Safari, so get rid of it or get lost.")

I never really understood why so many people like netbooks. I mean, sure, netbooks are cheap, but the only people I've seen with that kind of computer usually have another desktop or laptop computer.

That is was they call microsyntax.

When iPod was first introduced, nobody *needed* that kind of device. Just like nobody was waiting for an iPhone.

If Apple were to introduce a tablet device, it would be a new kind of device. Something unbelievable, something totally new, something we still think we don't need.

I’ll add that just like the keyboard, the trackpad is crucial. I’ve *never* used a good trackpad on any laptop except MacBooks.

I still don’t get the SD Card slot need, but I agree that a second USB port could be useful for some people (but really not a lot of them).

In the end, the MacBook Air would be the perfect notebook with a additional USB port and a 3G chip. A notebook that is not a notebook.

"Have you ever read the tweets of somebody who genuinely answers this question? "Just woke up", "going to work", "having lunch", "really tired". Dull, dull, dull, and a lot of the parodies of Twitter harp on this aspect. So let's be clear: this is a terrible way to use Twitter. Twitter is not what you're doing, Twitter is what you're thinking."

The logo sums it all.

I wonder, why not even replace the enveloppe icon by a homing pigeon carrying a parchment? No, seriously.

$5 a month seems allright. Plus, the UI is just brilliant.

In addition to the heavily flawed figures, the writing is amateurish and inflammatory. Microsoft’s willingness to sponsor, publish, and promote this report speaks volumes about their integrity and dignity."

I'll just add that you can't price the benefit of Mac OS over Windows.

"Ce qui m’amène à ma théorie finale : critiquer automatiquement les Skyblogs, c’est avouer aussi sûrement qu’on devient un vieux con. Meuh oui. Parce que vous, qui rigolez sur ces blogs, rappelez-vous donc de votre belle jeunesse : mais qui passait donc ses récrés (et ses fonds de classe) à faire remplir son cahier de texte / agenda par des “dédicace à Lâm, t’es trop mon meilleur pote de la 5e B” et autres “Un petit mot de Vaness’ je sais pas quoi écrire à part qu’on se connaît pas encore trop mais que je t’adooooooore” ?
Voilà. On faisait comme eux mais en 1993, on était juste trop pouilleux pour avoir le net. Et donc des blogs."

Once again, TechCrunch are full of shit.

Analogy: I have $2, I want a burger with two meat patties, lettuce and tomato. I go to McDonalds, the burger I want, a Big Mac, is $4, double my budget so instead I get a cheeseburger and conclude that I’m just not cool enough to eat a Big Mac."

Good analogy.

A little bit overpriced for a single user, but would made a very cool gift for a geek. And "export to screensaver" option coming soon.

"The fruit of his labor: a simple 2-D monochromatic apple, with a healthy bite taken from the right side. Jobs loved the conceit-only he suggested it be more colorful. Janoff’s boss disagreed, insisting the logo be made all black to save on printing costs. But Jobs was resolute, arguing that color was the key to humanizing the company.”

I think it worth a try.

Microsoft's strategy for countering Apple's App Store. Good luck, Windows Mobile developers. Oh, and :

"Update: I’ve also learnt that Microsoft will charge developers for resubmitting applications if their prior submissions were rejected."

“The reason I really love Siftables and would love to see it in classrooms is because it has the potential to adapt to a child’s learning behavior, rather than forcing the child to learn the technology’s behavior.”

Sudo !! :
Run the last command as root
Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.

I used to have more than 700 new items to read in my RSS reader every day. When Alex Testu said "Breaking news will always come to me by any way", I reduced my 250 feeds list to less than 30 important blogs. Not 30 news sources. Blogs. Because good bloggers will always comment on stuff that you need to know.

I don't think active websites like TUAW (at least 10 new articles a day) are relevant when you can get the only important article of the day well commented by great persons.

A must-read piece by John Gruber about user interface. If I taught UI, that would be one of the first lesson. That, and Apple UI guidelines.