I’m currently looking at doing is social-networking via MySpace or Facebook.  It’s sad, but the very idea of social-networking scares the bujeezes out of me.  I’m a very private person, but I know a writer can afford only so much privacy and an Independent Author can afford even less.  And so I must decide to jump into the network and mingle or be forever handicapped.

Because I have ink for blood, I’ve decided I must mingle.  Unfortunately, I am now faced with trying to decide what network to mingle on.  I found a great article called “MySpace vs. Facebook” (very appropriate ) by Kathryn Vercillo that lays out the basics of each site and how useful it might be to each type of person: business or creative.  I usually find the comments to be as helpful as the article, but in this case it just turns into a mish-mash of “I like (fill in the blank) better” without any good reasons behind the vote of confidence.

Although the article warns that MySpace has more spam than Facebook, the author says that creative types (like writers, musicians, and the like) may feel more at home on MySpace.  MySpace has also received less negative press than Facebook.  On the other hand, Facebook has more applications and it’s the latest craze (or so it seems).

I signed up on Facebook last year to keep in touch with my niece when she was doing study abroad in the Czech Republic, but found it annoying and difficult to use, so I deleted my account.  After reading Kathryn’s article I thought I’d take a second look at Facebook and a first look at MySpace.

Since I’ve used Facebook a little I thought I’d check out MySpace first.  I took the tour and was instantly impressed.  There’s even certain profile types you can sign up as (though I didn’t see writer listed).

Next, I went to see if Facebook had a similar tour, thinking maybe it would help me figure out what I missed the first time.  Surprise!  No tour for those just wanting more info.  If you want more information you have to click the links at the bottom of the page.  Not exactly user-friendly.

In the end, though most everyone I know is using Facebook, I think I’ll be going with MySpace.  I guess that’s just one more way I’m standing out amongst the wandering crowd on The Road to Writing.

Now that there is some free time at hand, I am reflecting on the number of ‘first attempts’ I have made. Other than participating in 3 runs within a year for the first time, I have learnt how to say ‘No’ and am more accustomed to taking overcrowded public transport. And, well, I do not know about you, but this year is also the first I have ever stepped into an OSIM store. Think the majority of us will bypass it in preference to our favorite and frequently patronized fashion houses. I am absolutely guilty of that.

But a rare opportunity allowed me to visit one without feeling intimidated by the luxurious & high-tech aircraft ‘space bed’ look alike. If you think that you need to belong to a certain caste to feel welcome, it’s time to change the mindset and step into one today.

Warm welcoming smiles greeted me when I visited and I still remember behaving like a kiddo in a ‘Toy R Us’; there are so many buttons and amazing inventions available in the store. The knowledgeable and helpful sales personnel showed me the latest products and their functions. I must say that OSIM products are very easy to use and user-friendly.

There are actually many new toys that I wish to get for my loved ones and myself; they do make practical & presentable gifts. And I’m definitely thrilled to declare the uKimono, endorsed by S.H.E as mine. Now it is the best friend of the 3 ladies in my family. Although 1 month is really hard to see any obvious results, what make us happy just by using it, is that our ‘snacking’ time, tea breaks and 2^nd helpings of carbohydrates have been reduced.

The initial plan to journal my attempts to reduce those unwanted fats by using uKimono is being pushed aside because of laziness, irregular working hours and personal commitments. But for sure, the uKimono actually creates more talking points between the 3 ladies in my family. Many a time, I will start by teasing my mum if she is ’secretly’ using the uKimono when I call back home. Having my own room has lessen the interaction between my sister & I, but nowadays, she will pop by my room more often, cheekily asking if she can have ‘uKimono’ time. Sometimes, I wonder why my sister requires it in the first place. But what she said makes sense; she needs to start maintaining now and not wait until the congregation of tummy fats becomes obvious. Sigh, wish I am more ‘body’ smart (derived from street-smart) like her so that I do not have to work extra hard to achieve my ‘old’ bodyline and have a flat & desirable tummy like her.

Seriously, after the age of 27, it seems I am trying to re-understand the different ways my body is forming. Just like when I was 19, growing through puberty. The realisation of a thicker waistline is quite alarming so I am trying to strap on my Cherry Cheery more regularly than my sister! Haha.

And I prefer to disagree with friends who like hugging their ‘bear- like’ SO (significant other) with ‘fatty’ waistline and exclaim ‘so cute!’ remarks. Accepting flaws is one thing but honestly, don’t you ladies like guys who have hot bods & vice versa?

For me, having a slim waistline is being a good steward of my body and it makes me feel good by having a higher confidence level.

So I started to follow OSIM_SG on Twitter where they furnish useful tips on a healthy lifestyle and news tweets on the recent uKimono challenge.

Join uKimono Sayonara Fats Contest now and win a mystery gift! One winner to be picked at end of every month, from now till March 2010!

You can read more here: http://www.osim.com/SG/home.aspx

Okay, maybe I should print this out to remind me of those dreadful fats I am trying to shed and stick it on my mirror! The ‘fat’ may look harmlessly cute here but in actual fact, they are not!

P.s: Love it that the jolly festive season is approaching, time to give & receive but also a time of very sinful feasts. I really need to revisit my best friend (uKimono) soon and greet those fats ‘sayonara’! Repeat after me, Sayonara Fats.

Specifications General Product Information The HP LaserJet 1000 is a stylish design in black and white laser printers, personal, today. The whisper quiet operation makes it even more interesting, regardless of paper type, size or weight used. The machine is suitable in every other sector of space, with the total size of 16. 3 x 19 x 10 cm and 16.1 kg in weight.

Media sizes and types of permits: The printer is certainlynot picky in terms of media management, when it was adopted by the wide range of media types and formats. Compatible media formats are A4, A5, B5, Legal, Exec, Letter, Com 10 and Monarch. Compatible with the types of media include cards, labels, envelopes, cards, plain paper and recycled paper, transparencies, postcards.

Play quality prints produced in a very average speed of 10 pages per minute with a maximum resolution of 600 x 600 dpi. The print quality is generally good.The text is completely indelible stain and without edges, with corners at all, but perhaps a bit 'too bright color copy. Small fonts tend to lose a good amount of detail. Grayscale and graphic prints are labeled on the side. The device is highly recommended for personal use and for small businesses.

Interface Options interface options, unfortunately, are limited to USB connectivity. Wiring will be included in your purchase.

Warranty –normal 12 months warranty comes with the printer to buy. Telephone support is also included, five days a week. However, it is essential that the relations of labor and parts, which is observed as collateral, rather limited, under strict conditions.

Starter Toner HP LaserJet 1000 is included with your printer investment is what is required only a hundred copies before replacing. Standard cartridge format U.S. retailers shape$ 64. 99 and return approximately 2500-3500 print cartridges, depending on the model. The printer comes with a surprise at 7000 pages per month duty cycle.

Thanks to the versatility and capability that is in its entirety and, accordingly, the HP LaserJet 1000, unrivaled. The car is really all the criteria, when the absolute power to provide for the needs of modern business back home. Whatever the workload, the HP LaserJet 1000 is abest home business experts dynamic, constantly providing stellar impressions.

In combination with the HP LaserJet 1000 toner shows a phenomenal success for the creation of some of the most beautiful and playful prints are on the market. Specific details and print speed are second to none and demonstrate why the HP LaserJet 1000 is a valuable investment for any home business that will electrify more than the owners and employees continuesimilar.

Granting a user-friendly interface, the HP LaserJet 1000 can print as a simple wire to use and very simple. Regardless of knowledge or understanding of the HP LaserJet 1000 is a small learning curve and fits the needs of each user. Install or remove the exception Toner HP LaserJet 1000 is so easy and convenient.

This story about a new Bible software called “GLO” was sent to me by one of my ex-co-workers from 13 years ago!

Check out these videos:

Cool. One thing I would add to this software is resources for allowing people to explain the Bible to their neighbors. Probably the most useful thing would be to evaluate major passages to see when they were written, how closely the passage is based on eyewitness testimony, whether it appears in other New Testament sources, whether it passes criteria like embarrassment and dissimilarity, and whether it is confirmed by archaeology or even non-Biblical sources.

Additionally, commenter Matthew has some concerns:

Translations? Only NIV, which is OK but far from exemplary. For $90 this needs every translation known to man, in most languages. And full text of all historic bibles as well.
Scholarship? An article found through google critiques Glo for not having a panel of scholars advise on the extra-biblical resources offered.

I don’t think this thing is meant as a scholarly resource – they are aiming for a different market.

Debates about the Bible

If you think that talking about the Bible with non-Christians is fun, you might want to take a look at these debates:

• Richard Bauckham defends the reliability of the gospels against James Crossley
• Richard Bauckham defends the divinity of Jesus against James Crossley
• Crossley debated against William Lane Craig before on the resurrection
• Crossley against Michael Bird on the origins of Christianity, (part 1, part 2)

If you like seeing fringe historical skeptics of Christianity go down in flames, check out this post for some historical debates with evangelicals and radical skeptics.

All of my blog posts to date have taken you through the what, when, where, why, and how of online newsrooms. Ford is a great example of a who in regard to successful online newsrooms. Ford has been awarded the 2009 Brand of the Year by the Society for Communications Research for their use of social media to better the dialogue with customers and other stakeholders. In a post on The Big Fat Marketing Blog, Scott Monty, global digital and communications manager at Ford said that social media is about humanizing a company and creating a presence that’s more than just dollar signs.  The Ford newsroom connects you through a short, media related, URL to the world of news within the Ford Motor Company.

a screen grab of the Ford online media newsroom

The Ford newsroom, which was created, using TEKgroup software, imitates the color and feel of the Ford corporate Web site. As the viewer scans across the top of the page they see tabs for specific links to the corporate page, news, products, biographies, facilities, photos, video, audio, and contacts. These are all things that we know, from the 2009 TEKgroup’s survey, are vital in today’s corporate social online newsroom. After clicking on a specific section on the right side such as e-news, you’re taken to a page that gives other options like the history of the company and financial reports. If we were to create a checklist, Ford matches up with what I have defined as a successful newsroom.

The one thing that Ford’s newsroom does that I do not like is password-protect photos and video from anyone who is not an accredited media source. The user cannot view any thing in these areas if he or she is not a media journalist. I think in this Web 2.0 world there needs to be availability for all. Instead, for consumers, they link to a different site called The Ford Story where visitors who are not part of the news media can view customer stories, the Ford Twitter feed, and vote in different types of polls about what they like in a car. This site is much more specified to the needs of the customer or future customer, rather than the news media but it would also be a good place for a journalist to explore.

Ford’s newsroom is organized to say the least. Clicking on a product or link to the e-news on the right side of the page will take you to a realm of endless story options if you’re a writer for anything car. They offer a briefcase function where you can save files that you find interesting or useful to your story and they have the availability for email alerts and RSS feeds. Ford has created an organized, easy to navigate, and user-friendly newsroom that should be used as a model for other large corporation newsrooms.

It is my experience that web site design should be left to those who know what they’re doing.  It’s all too easy to buy a user-friendly program such as Front Page and whip together a site with all manner of bells and whistles (much to the annoyance of the visitor).  Or, somewhat better but no less unprofessional, is to buy a package deal from your web host that includes some kind of basic web design program.

Why am I being hard on writers who try to cobble together a site?  Because I am one of those writers who used to design web sites and I am by no means a professional.  Unless you’re a natural who understands both html and css (and whatever other web standards that crop up) putting together an eye-catching, user-friendly site can be difficult at best.  At worst it can be a complete disaster.  If you don’t believe me, check out Web Pages That Suck 2.0.

So what’s an Independent Author to do?  We all know it’s almost career suicide not to have a web site.  My suggestion is to make friends in the web design industry.  Find a starving student willing to design your site for a big discount (or free for the practice ).  Or, if you can afford it, spend the money on a professional who will design and maintain your site.  (Maintenance is crucial for sales.)

Barring all that, go ahead and design your own site, but keep it simple.  A clean look says professional more than all the “really cool” stuff combined.  When in doubt, check out Web Pages That Suck 2.0 to make sure you don’t fall into any traps.

With a little money and some effort you can have a great web site that stands like a clear road sign pointing to your work on The Road to Writing.

Recently i came across an article about ‘why windows7 is a serious threat to Linux’ I found the arguments and counter arguments quite funny yet thought-provoking. The arguments were about how user-friendly has windows become, also less resource hogging.And the counter arguments were about How advanced has Linux become with its ext4 filesystem and KDE4 desktop environment. Any non initiated going through the article might have concluded  ‘ Windows might have virus vulnerabilities  and might be slow but it seems user-friendly and looks good,Linux is bit over the top for me’

But After several years of switching between windows and Linux desktop, i can assure you that Linux is ready for Tom,Dick and Harry.In this article i would discuss some basic features in Linux, especially Opensuse11.1 with KDE4.2

Looks and Usability

Plasma Dashboard

If you Google for ‘plasma desktop‘ you can find more awesome desktops, but here i would like to stress  on user-friendliness . You can see how i have cluttered my Plasma desktop with ‘post it’ notes and Trashcan. You can also add calendars , RSS feeds, photos from flickr, twitter clients. And this virtual desktop coexist with your normal desktop. But once you click “Show Dashboard”, the dashboard comes to forefront. If you look closer u can see applications running in background.

Desktop

Yeah, my desktop is cluttered but i find it pretty useful! The appearance setting supports several color schemes and icon sets. Here i have used ‘Glassified’ theme.If you look at the task bar u can see mini preview of “Yast Control Centre”.

Krunner

MAC users might be familiar with an application called ‘quicksilver’. krunner is the quicksilver for KDE4. it comes up at ur service when ALT +F2 is pressed. Start typing in what u want to do. It starts guessing and does it for you. Here i am trying to launch Firefox..

Start Menu

Needn’t say much more.Look at that

Menu is organized into categories and anybody can find there way through it.

There are lots of application in opensuse like Kontacts that will improve your performance in home and office!!

Audio and Video

Years back audio and video capabilities were nascent in Linux, community stressed on networking , multi-user, .. the core of the computer. But now there are sever applications to choose from for Audio and Video. I prefer amarok and kaffeine

It plays almost all conceivable formats…

System Management

Non-linux users have a fear of system management in Linux. It is not any more complicated than in Windows. you have a control center called Yast2. you can pretty much do anything from there.The tiered menu structure is intuitive

Automatic Updates

operating system updates itself and all installed programs!! It quite hassle free!

Performance

Here comes the clincher! I tried to load my system with all applications i usually use on my desktop to see how much will the performance decay.The RAM never went above 1 GB mark and i did not even experience a glitch.See for yourself

List of applications running

• Firefox 3.5
• Video-player- kaffiene
• Audio Player-AmaroK
• Picasa scanning for new photos
• Yast2
• Personal Settings manager
• System Update
• Personal Information Manager
• Word processor- OpenWriter
• System monitor
• pidgin- Chat client
• Awesome theme
• Knetwork manager etc

I can personally guarantee that  i have never had to restart the system because it hung when overloaded.I can imagine how a system running windows would have performed under load test..lol . Also No viruses and No performance degradation after few months…

These are the advantages of using opensuse but USP is its FREE!!! so tell me will Windows7 be threat to Opensuse

PS: I am no techie. Things that i have disscussed here are just from a regular users point of view. If you want more insightful comments go to http://anshumanpandey.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/linux-desktops-lead-the-way/

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve seen the storage industry boom into a gynormous (a word my 9-year-old loves) industry. While some storage vendors have grown by selling their products directly to companies, others have grown by selling their products via a network of channel partners or a combination of both. I believe that there are two key ingredients necessary for channel-friendly storage solutions: a user-friendly product and an easy-to-understand value proposition. So why should whether a product is channel friendly matter to customers like you?

Let’s look at the concept of user-friendliness first. Consider these statements on simplicity from two men of science separated by five centuries:

Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance inventor, artist and scientist: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Alan Perlis, computer scientist and recipient of the first Turing award: “Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.”

In short, complexity should be the means to an end and simplicity the end goal in product design. And product simplicity, or user-friendliness, delivers real value to your organization – from the systems administrator to the CIO – by requiring less upfront time to install and integrate and being easier to manage on an ongoing basis.

Now let’s examine value propositions. Why should an easy-to-understand value proposition be as important to customers as it is the channel, particularly customers who can appreciate a complex story?

Generally speaking, a clear value proposition – such as a TCO based on hard, quantifiable numbers or an ROI of short duration – has two benefits for customers. First, it will be a lot easier to get buy in and sign off from superiors if you can easily explain what benefits a solution can provide your organization in the near term. (For an example of what I’m talking about, check out the Avere Systems savings calculator – once you input your numbers, it’s clear what our value proposition is.) And second, clarity allows you to make before and after comparisons and hold vendors accountable, something that isn’t easy to do with a vague or complicated value proposition.

So, the next time you hear a vendor’s products described as channel friendly, tune in. The very same attributes that make a product good for the channel make it good for you as well.

Over the centuries, writers have demonstrated you can tell more truth with satire than non-fiction. So when I recently had an opportunity to do a fake presentation for FakeHEWeb09, a satirical non-event for those unable to attend this year’s real HEWeb09, I picked the topic of Web Site Unusability. And in the process, came up with an all-too-real formula of how NOT to make a user-friendly Web site.

I scrawled the presentation in about 5 minutes and gave it via Twitter. The key points included:

Intro:
* Welcome to the session on Web Site Unusability! Click here to continue!
* Web sites are all about you! Users are overrated.
* Who should your Web site please? Look in the mirror. That guy! (Or girl!)

Multimedia inconsiderations:
* Always use an animated musical splash page people have to sit through. Preferably on an old version of Flash.
* A splash page says: “Wanna attend our college? Then you’ll have to sit through crappy gif animation and music composed on a Casio keyboard!”
* Seek a CMS that’s as hard to update as possible so your minions won’t use it. Don’t they have better things to do?
* Put all important information in pdfs. Again, make people *really want* your information!
* In addition to pdfs, inaccessible/slow-loading videos are a great way to share critical information.

Putting users last:
* Use your organizational chart as your guide for Web architecture. Who cares if it makes no sense to rest of the world?
* When writing for the Web, use as much dense academic jargon and obscure acronyms as possible.
* If prospects easily find what they want in 2 clicks, you’ve failed. You want more hits. Go work in sales.
* Make sure no two department pages look alike in colors, structure, organization, navigation, anything.
* Actually, why bother even putting the name of your college on your pages? You know where you work! Good enough!

Anyone who’s worked in Web content for any length of time realizes how absurd such recommendations are. And yet … how often do you see real estate spent welcoming people to a page, readers told to click here as if they’re a trained dog, splash pages and pdfs and videos making information as hard to get as possible, Web pages organized by unknowable institutional divisions, copy no one outside of academia would understand and a glaring lack of consistency. Many of these bugaboos are all too familiar.

Making the fake session all the more interactive, the audience added their own pet peeves about user-unfriendly Web design and not one but TWO people linked to this cringeworthy Appalachian State promo video. It almost makes me wonder if there’s a very real hour-long presentation one could give on this subject.

So what would be your tips for making a Web site hard to use?

During the past month I have done fair amount of cruising on New Zealand websites. And if I am honest, they drive me mad – or a lot of them do. I think quite a few of Kiwi web designers have spent too much time in kakapo or kokopeka or whatever land.

Plenty of web designers would certainly benefit of some sort of usability studies: how to make their sites user friendly; make navigation structure easy and logical; make pages error free. Some pages don’t even have a simple ‘home’ button on the menu bar.

I am going to take a big risk here by nominating the worst websites in NZ. I still need a residency stamp for my passport, but here goes. The winner of the worst website in NZ competition is…

The Department of Internal Affairs. Congratulations! Their site is simply dreadful. Have a look - http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf

The second prize goes to: the Ministry of Health. The navigation structure on the site is truely appalling: http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf

The third prize goes to Ebos, because if you land on their homepage you do not have a clue what they are on about: http://www.ebos.co.nz/

My fourth award goes to TVNZ, a broadcasting house which has managed to hide the icons for “watch” so well that you would not belive it is a TV company. They could learn something from Sky. Check them out at http://tvnz.co.nz/

And fifth place goes to… Karen Walker. OK, she is a fashion designer, but the flash technology used on the site makes it nearly totally non-functional: http://www.karenwalker.com/flash_yes.html

Please note, that I am not a web designer, I am merely a humble consumer who tailors ready made platforms to suit my needs. I also welcome criticism of my own websites! Feel free to comment:

http://myllyme.com

http://lontoocalling.com

Social networking sites are a blessing and a curse. High-speed, fast-paced interactivity and multitasking for little or no money. The price? Brain overload and increasingly short attention spans. Yes, because most of the information is not important, and the really big news gets lost in there too: In with one blink of an eye, out with the next one.

On a blog called Advertising Age (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=139550), the author dicusses how social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook truncate how much people can process and how quickly they can process it. Much like the strategy of the inverted pyramid in news stories, consumers place emphasis on clear, concise statements. So, the longer your Facebook status or Tweet, the less people will read it. The shorter, snappier, punchier, (more like “drive-by commenting” as the author calls it), the more popular it is.

The ability to state the five Ws and the secret H in one clear concise sentence is wonderful. If you can remember it, its even better. Ultimate question:  is the content important, no matter how juicy it is? Not usually.

Earlier this week I scanned my own Facebook home page and one simple declaration in capital letters captured my attention (I have edited it to spare the innocent):

“[Girl's name] IS A C****. END OF STORY.”

The presentation was bold and I was hooked. Important story? No.

If social networking allows for the creation of headlines that clearly get people’s attention (remember the lady who Tweeted about her miscarriage?), maybe the news media can take a leaf from these sites and let authors create their own headlines. This could increase the chances that people will actually stop and look at a story that really matters.

For example, if I were writing a story about Congress’ delay on health care, I could title it:

“The Democrats do not want to risk embarrassing Obama by securing  a veto of the health care bill!!”

Catchy, right? Wishful thinking. Most people can’t process that in two seconds. That’s why some still take the time to read the whole story.

It would be scary if news stories were boiled down to sentences. It’s already happening. Just subscribe to the online version of the front page of the New York Times and try to read it without opening a single story.

"NO WAY! I can't remember why I'm so excited!"

The way we choose to organize our world dictates our own place within it—in Gothic times the cathedral, for example, stood at the center of town, inherently helping us perceive what was important, where we stood in relation to it, and how we should and could interact with the rest of the space surrounding it.

The first generation of interface designers had to decide, then, how to organize the computer space. They had, essentially, an entire world at their fingertips, which they could mold and design and organize in any way possible—the space could look like anything. It was important, however, especially given he limitations of technology of the time, that the space was easy to represent.

In this week’s reading of Interface Culture, Johnson takes us through the creation and evolution of the desktop from its early stages to the interface we know today. Throughout his discussion in this chapter, he emphasizes consistently the idea of the “desktop metaphor.” Similar to the metaphor we discussed last class, it encompasses the way in which reality is represented and even simulated on the desktop interface and how those representations help us to understand the way we use and navigate it.

The desktop metaphor was born in 1972, at a Xerox research center in Palo Alto (PARC). Working off of Engelbart’s ideas about mice, bitmapping, and windows, a researcher named Alan Kay stumbled upon the first implementation of such a metaphor in his hesitation over Engelbart’s windows. He said that the windows were difficult to use because they lay side by side and the screen could get crowded easily. Kay suggested that they “regard the screen as a desk, and each project, or piece of a project, as paper on the desk” (Johnson, 47). He decided that the windows should overlap, just as pieces of paper in real life would. A fitting analogy for a paper company, no? Windows gave the computer space while Kay’s overlapping of them gave the computer depth. And so, the original desktop (metaphor) was born.

The original metaphor was weak, but as the Xerox PARC team continued to develop the interface, they began to tighten it up. They realized that if the computer could look like anything, and since the computer was on its way to replacing the world of filing cabinets and stacks of paper, it may as well imitate that world. This expansion of the metaphor to digital files, folders and trash cans ensured that a user’s navigation of the computer was made that much easier, and that much more familiar.

Why a “desktop” though? If the space could look like anything, why didn’t it look like a park, or a house? I mean, there was already the window metaphor, so why not hallways and doors? The desktop most likely seemed like the most obvious and relatable way to represent the interface because it reflected what the computer was used for. In the 70’s the computer was mostly just being used in place of paper, and a desktop simply reflected that. As we will soon see, something like a “house metaphor” doesn’t really work as well.

Xerox PARC completed the interface and packaged it as Smalltalk, an experimental operating system. Xerox never did anything with it, but a few years later a man named Steve Jobs got his hands on it and created the first successfully marketable personal computer in 1984, the Macintosh—“the computer for the rest of us.” The computer, with the use of the Smalltalk technology, became a medium. It was no longer a flat vehicle. Now, it was creative and had character, complete with folders, trashcans, and icons. The creation of the Macintosh was the first time that a computer interface was genuinely user friendly, and was a revolutionary shift from a concentration on hardware to a fascination with the software. Here is Apple’s one-time Superbowl ad that illustrates this countercultural tone.

And another to show how the Macintosh desktop was marketed thereafter.

Bill Gate’s Windows system, slightly different in design but still using the same original metaphor, outdid Apple and became the more dominant in the marketplace for whatever reason.  The triumph of Microsoft Windows confirmed the effectiveness of the desktop and its ability to translate well to the average user.  Still, many were initially critical of the new interface, writing it off as an unnecessary toy.  It was deemed too silly a design for a serious corporate environment, which was happy with simple drop down menus rather than icons. 

Johnson goes on to talk about the importance of subtlety when implementing the metaphor.  He describes an interface called Bob, released by Microsoft in 1997, which took the use of metaphor too literally, thus simulating a 3D living environment modeled after a living room.  The interface wasn’t just a representation of real life objects but a complete simulation of them.  A calendar hung on the wall, a mailbox with envelopes sat on the coffee table, and to enter the interface you had to knock on the door.  Needless to say the system was a failure, despite its intent to make the user interface more relatable and user-friendly.

Johnson claims that Microsoft Bob wound up preventing novice users from exploring beyond the simple interface.  Users would rely on the comfortable look and feel of a home and never really explore the computer’s capabilities and move beyond the novice level of computer use.  It might push the user further from the technology.  The desktop metaphor works because it is simply that: a metaphor.  Here is a tour of the Bob interface.

Johnson’s insights only take us as far as 1997, the year in which Interface Culture was written, but here is another, more recent graphic interface, BumpTop, that turns the desktop metaphor into something of a desktop simulation.  Does Anand Agarawala take the metaphor too literally?

Johnson sums up by wondering what the future of interfaces might hold in a world of public life on the Internet.  Well, we know just what does happen with the introduction of online interfaces like MySpace and Facebook and even WordPress.  This notion of “interface culture” is a real one, now even more than in Johnson’s time.

The next reading, which I will discuss briefly, is Lev Manovich’s discussion of “teleaction.” Teleaction literally means “acting at a distance.”  When we talk about telaction, we are talking about our ability to be telepresent (present at a distance) and at the same time use controls to manipulate and affect the environment in which we are telepresent. 

We can be telepresent through the use of a webcam.  We can see, in real time, a very important concept here, what is happening in another remote location anywhere in the world, or essentially the universe.  We are not actually present in these remote locations, but it is as though we are.  Teleaction, then, is enabled through certain image-instruments that allow us to act in that distant location, such as a switchboard operator controlling a vehicle under water to explore the bottom of the ocean (the opening scene of Titanic) or pushing a button in a small room to shoot a missile from one remote location and aim it at another.  To teleact is to manipulate reality through representations.

These ideas of telepresence and teleaction are not restricted to the real world, however.  We can be telepresent in a computer generated world as well, a world commonly known as virtual reality.  I would like to regard a desktop as a virtual reality, especially as its interface becomes more and more three–dimensional and interactive.  As I said in the very beginning of this post, interface designers had an entire world to create from scratch, which is essentially what they did in the simplest way.  By using the desktop, it is like we are telepresent in this digital workspace.  The desktop interface is a representation—we are not actually inside of this virtual computer world.  Yet by using other interfaces such as the mouse we are able to control and manipulate it.  We are essentially teleacting.  

And thus concludes our discussion of interface culture.

For your amusement.