RasterWeb!

We’re all familiar with digg, the web site that lets the readers “digg” or vote on stories, which then get top billing on the front page… Well, check this out:
Wisconsin paper lets its readers choose news:

The Wisconsin State Journal allows readers to go on its Web site every weekday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and vote for their favorite out of five story ideas. Barring late-breaking news, the winning story typically will appear on Page 1 the next day.

Interesting, hmmm?

I know open-source is all about scratching the itch, submitting patches, and being open about things, but sometimes I feel like the devs in charge of certain projects aren’t visionary enough. Meaning, they don’t see the coming trends and what will be important in 6 months and poo-poo things that aren’t of concern today.

Maybe that’s ok, but I like to think that I’m as bleeding-edge as the next geek, and when projects hold back what you want to do, or others see no value in it, all you can really do is hack at your own copy of the code, maybe submit a patch, and hope people catch on in the future… Sure there are plugins and extensions, but sometimes you need changes to the core, or to things that no one else would ever think needs a change. Change… Change…

I used to accuse Microsoft of developing things in a half-assed way just so they could add it to the checklist and say “Yup, we got that feature!” but on occasion I think some open-source projects are doing that too. Users also tend to get in the habit of working around things that aren’t quite right, and not complaining about it, but just “get used to it” and eventually become blind to it, thinking “that’s how it works” even if the usability is poor and the users suffer.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe open-source is the way to go, and how software should be written, but sometimes I just feel like some of the leaders need to be more risk-takers in looking to the future.

Of course we sometimes see people who are visionary, but have a hard time convincing others that there needs to be code to realise the vision, so, well, let’s just say when everything lines up right, good things can happen. We need more good things happening…

Joel talks about Great Design and, um, lack of Great Design… He brings up the Motorola RAZR and it’s on/off keys…

Upon first looking at them, I figured the green key was a phone held vertically and the red key was a phone in the “hung up” position. Mind you, the icons look like the old time phones, not a modern mobile phone of today… (Well, sort of, if you stretch the imagination…)

This brings up an issue I’ve always wondered about… In my car is a little icon for when the level of fuel gets too low. It looks like a gas pump that existed back around 1970 or so. You know, the kind with the single hose and handle that hangs on the side of the pump. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those, except maybe in a museum.

It’s the same thing with the icon of an old time oil can, and numerous other examples. I still see systems that use an hourglass to represent having to wait for something. I doubt my kids have ever seen an hourglass, but the know that’s the symbol for “wait, this will take some time…” Do we need to worry about using icons of things that we no longer really use, or that don’t look familiar anymore? Is it just a matter of knowing what the icon currently represents and we should be ok with that? I dunno…

Back to issue of buttons doing things, when I used my Rio 500, I was happy it had a button for volume, and another one for on/off. With the iPod, I often try to turn if off, and it doesn’t seem to work. And the volume is accessible only if you are in the right mode, with that option available. I was happy when I got a Mac keyboard (like the old NeXT keyboard) with a volume control on it, because grabbing a mouse and trying to navigate to a tiny on-screen volume control can be a challenge you don’t need at 3 AM when something comes out of the speakers at full blast…

With the RAZR, I would have guessed as Joel did, that green turned it on, while red turned it off. I can pretend I’m superior with my Nokia, where it has a single button for on/off at the top, but to be honest, I almost never turn it off, because the boot up time is ridiculous. Sure, it’s more computer than phone, but still, I’d rather just change the profile from ‘Normal’ to ‘Silent’ than deal with turning it off and turning it back on. Oh, do you know the easy way to change the profile? Obviously you just push the off (or on) button quickly to change the profile, but don’t hold it down too long, or the phone will turn off, and you’ll be forced to wait for it to go through it’s long boot process to turn it back on.

Some days I feel like we have dozens of modern equivalents to the blinking 12:00 on the VCR‘s of yesteryear…

In a recent email newsletter from Jakob Nielson (no link, since it does not appear to be on the web, ponder than one for a while…) he talks about Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote, and even makes a joke!

In my last newsletter, I complained about the webcast of Bill Gates’ CES keynote: we didn’t get to hear the speaker until 8 minutes and 57 seconds into the video. Too drawn-out (thus boring) for Web video. In contrast, Apple’s video of Steve Jobs’ recent Macworld keynote had him talking after only 36 seconds of intro. They could have tightened this a bit, but basically, that’s the way to go. The video image was the same size as Microsoft’s (320×180), which is too small to see demos well. For long videos, better quality is needed to keep users’ attention, even when you are webcasting from a reality distortion field.

As for the Macworld keynote, Drew mentioned that it would be a most excellent idea for Apple to make the keynote available via the iTunes Music Store. What Mac-fanatic wouldn’t pay $1.99 to download all the Stevey goodness with “Oh… and one more thing…”? Isn’t it the perfect content for that shiny new video-capable iPod?

What’s up Apple?