GMail hotkeys

I am so addicted to using letters to work in GMail. Y for archive, C for compose, L for label, GI for inbox. Also love the Send & Archive button.

Anyway, what I meant to report is that I sometimes find myself pressing Y when I'm done reading something in a tab in my browser. I think it's going to go away. haha

Email Length & Self-Imposed Constraints

I write long emails. I hate receiving long emails and I feel bad sending them.

Whenever I type out an email on a BlackBerry or iPhone though, I feel like I'm writing a normal email but when I see it on the computer later, it looks super short and to the point.

I think the combination of physical restriction and the illusion of long email due to constant linebreaking help me to edit. Also maybe the context to being out and doing something else helps too.

Maybe I should write my email in something that has like 30-40 characters per line to help me visualize the length of the communication I'm putting out.

Yelp?

Exchange with my colleague:

Me: Your Skype status is "Exploring Laranjeiras" [where our new office is]

F: Yeah, I cannot find a good place to have lunch.

Me: We need a Yelp! [here in Brazil]

F: No, we need delivery.

Me: oh. interesting.

Digital Agencies on Mobile Browsers

So many of these digital agencies have Flash-dependent pages and no graceful degradation. I guess in their strategy they needed to show "flash" more than anything. See the screenshots of digital agency websites on an iPhone.

Thread Jack

Is it just me or does it seem like more and more of my email threads (I use GMail) become jacked by others or I jack them myself with topics rending the subject utterly irrelevant? Sometimes several times.

The rise of search making labeling (subjects) further irrelevant?

Eating challenge demonstrates good design

Watching Man vs. Food with my housemate, I noticed an eating challenge that is unusually well designed. Typical food/eating challenges have the basic time limit and so on and looks something like this:

• Defined quantity of food.
• Fixed time limit.
• Prize for the winner.
• Hall of fame public recognition.

Here's what's different about this Randy's stuffed pizza challenge that I think is so well designed:

• Two people do this challenge together.
• There is not only a hall of fame but a hall of shame where the losers must write their names.

The hall of shame is great advertisement. This challenge sees about 1% success. Plus, the fact that it's 10 lbs of pizza for TWO people, seems to make it seem so much more fun and likely that two people would see the hall of shame and say "Look at those losers, I bet we could beat them." So much more normal and likely sounding than some individual deciding to go do this on their own. And more fun than two friends going to do their own challenges at the same time.

Opacity

Photo credit: Ben

Citigroup Plutonomy Report

"What are the common drivers of Plutonomy?

• Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains
• Creative financial innovation
• Capitalist-friendly cooperative governments
• An international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation
• The rule of law
• Patenting inventions.

Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time."


Something about that passage intrigues me.

The Goldilocks of Websites

Note the error message in red: "Error ! The current browser is either too old or too modern (usind DOM document structure)." This page is at the SD Storage website which is apparently new as of October 2009.

I think it was just for the calendar feature which I'm surprised is so sensitive to browser version. It's incredible how long it takes to get a sense for what prices the different storage sizes are via the workflow of this website.

Not only is the error itself unfortunate since I'm sure the website could have been designed with more cross-browser compliance but the message itself is really "ugly". Reminds me of the book Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points.

Wandering through the halls of an ER

Emergency gas shutoff valves.

Oh, I see. I'm looking at a map next to the object that it is pointing out.

Never seen so many push-buttons for opening the doors. 2 per corner, per side. Critical, I'm guessing.

Beds in the hallways are not being stored. The signs on the walls are actually "addresses" or "room numbers" for them that can be tracked as locations for where patients are.

Good thing it's not blocked.