WaffleBox

A History of Windows Icons, a list of, you guessed it, Windows icons throughout its existence, is painfully boring. Well… The article is not boring, the icons history is boring.

Windows-Icons.com has laid out the most common Windows icons in a time line, quickly you grasp that there has been little to no change through the years. Take the Notepad icon below (taken from Windows-Icons.com):

Credit: http://www.windows-icons.com/history.htm

Forget the poor quality, the visible dots, and just judge the icons on their lack of creativity. Sure, in 1990 it was cool, but nearly the exact same icon for 10 years!

Yeah… Icons are meaningless, or are they. Apple is winning people because of their interest in aesthetics, and have somehow tied the idea of “Good vs. Evil” into the mix.

To be fair, some icons have completely changed, maybe it is just looking back 7 years to see how shockingly different icons have changed in such a short period, but remained static for so long.

Whenever you try to install a Firefox plug-in you usually get a warning stating “Firefox has prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer”. If you actually read this, which most people do not, you then notice two options in the upper right hand corner of your browser window, as below.

What you are actually suppose to do is not really clear because the implications to a non-techie are hard to understand. (We, as techies, understand that Firefox has not been instructed that this site is “legit” and needs permission to install the plug-in, that we have to create an exception to allow it to be installed.) The options may seem easy since there are only two to choose from, but since most people don’t understand why they need to edit the options, they simply may not and instead click the X. The problem being that the necessary steps are unclear.

Shareaholic.com has bent around this issue as to make installing their plug-in completely pain free by creating a mini step-by-step how-to. See below:

Yes. There is more to read, but less to understand. It’s just 4 easy to follow steps. Fantastic! I love this!

What is Shareaholic?

Oh, I should mention, since you may be wondering, Shareaholic is also a really useful plug-in that makes submitting articles and bookmarks to your favorite social news and bookmarking sites pain free.

Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re viewing to digg, del.icio.us, facebook, google bookmarks, magnolia, reddit, stumbleupon and twitter. If you prefer, you can also e-mail the web page to a friend.

Developers should take note as to what they have done, you don’t have to put up with lousy errors. You can easily find ways to remove their heuristic nature to your benefit.

The new BoingBoing.net website is taking a tiny bit of flack for its redesign, people are claiming that it has an “ad-supported-template” feel to it. The site right now currently has 9 ads, 4 of which are individual Google Text Links. A quick hop over to archive.org you can see that there are 12-16 ads, no Google text ads for the given day day. (12-16 depending on how you “look” at a couple.) I’d add all those image links running down the left side even if they are more “blog roll” like simply because there is no way to know if they are ads or not.

The legibility is about 100x better, the previous tiny text and lack of real post divisions I felt always made the site hard to read. No it is so much easier to read, scan for interesting articles. The navigation links on the top make them feel like “first class citizens” where previously they seemed to lack any importance. I am not sure how important this is, but I will be curious to see if this helps boost their usage.

Great job guys!

Read about the redesign in their own words:
Welcome to the new Boing Boing!

I really miss blank cassette tapes. Sitting all night in glued to my stereo, mixing tapes, mashing songs together, pause-rwd-stop-rec. These early theft tools did not steal any of the history attached to music like the digital medium has. I really miss passing tapes wound with friends, talking about the music we recorded. The funny thing is that music is actually kind of hard to share with your friends now simply because there really isn’t a need to, you can sample or buy/steal virtually any song in the world.

I’m losing focus of why I started this post, sparked by the article Cassette Tape Culture. They have pictures of one of my favorite toys from when I was a kid… Cassette tape Transformers. I had a few of these and I completely forgot about them until I came across this post.

AListApart.com has a very interesting article by Mark Boulton, a graphic designer from the UK, about the use of whitespace in design, the effects of negative or unused space has on a print advertisement. In his article, Whitespace, Mark discusses some of the direct effects whitespace has, the perception it give.

Designers use whitespace to create a feeling of sophistication and elegance for upscale brands. Coupled with a sensitive use of typography and photography, generous whitespace is seen all over luxury markets. Cosmetics, for example, use extensive whitespace in their marketing material to tell the reader that they are sophisticated, high quality, and generally expensive. - Mark Boulton

Here is a photo of two design copies that illustrate what Mark is talking about: figure3_luxury_direct.jpg

It is a very interesting side-by-side of two methods of a direct mail advert. What I find so interesting is the signals that we identify with that determine what we will let into our lives simply because of whitespace.

Mark continues the article discussing whitespace in the context of text, in terms of readability and luxury, a very interesting read for you web and product designers.

Article Link: Whitespace
Author Link/Blog: Mark Boulton

I have a new found respect for Jason Calacanis, not that I had lost any I guess, but I just finished listening to his FULL interview (CalacanisCast Beta 28) on NPR’s On The Media with Brooke Gladstone. He really is passionate about media and clearly has some interesting and agreeable views on the way journalism should be conducted.

(I say full interview because Jason released the fully unedited version of the interview while NPR released their edited version)

The topic in discussion was on the media purposely mis-quoting interviewees in favor of “gotcha moments” for the purpose of boosting ratings. Also, that the process of journalistic editing is important, if not crucial, to help define a conclusion as to what is the truth within a given piece. The argument Jason made is that readers are bright and smart people, that they have the ability to get to and understand the meaning behind questions and answers in regards to interviews. This ability should not be taken away from them.

My favorite part of the interview comes when Brooke Gladstone explains to Jason…

Sometimes we will ask a question half a dozen times before the person we are interviewing gives us the answer.

Jason interjects…

The answer that you’re looking for?

Gladstone answers…

The real answer to the question.

Hmm… Jason continues to argue that the audience should be given the right to be treated intelligently and be shown each question asked and each answer given. That multiple answers should not be edited down to the one the journalist sees fit. If an interviewee gives 3 different answers to the 6 questions asked, how does the journalist know which is the “real” answer? They don’t. They take the liberty of deciding, something Jason clearly is against.

To believe so highly in your editing prowess is a complete insult to listeners and I applaud Jason for taking such a strong stance on this issue simply because there are NO unbiased editors, it is an impossibility simply for the fact that we are all human with our own set of opinions and beliefs that are impossible to shake, big or small.

Another interesting moment is at the beginning of the interview when Brooke Gladstone argues that the spontaneous nature of voice recorded interviews offer a human element to the interview. In my mind this goes against the argument that editing is crucial. Why remove that spontaneity in favor of something else? If you listened to NPR’s version, you would have missed some really funny banter at the end of the interview when Gladstone makes a mistake as to Jason’s employment, all heard on Jason’s version.

I believe clearer lines need to be drawn between what is opinion and what is fact and editing interviews, an interaction so human, makes absolutely no sense to me.

Missing Piece

No heart, no brain, no kitten… Quite clever actually.

via http://www.planetdan.net/blog/2007/06/missing-piece.htm

I came across this site called DoshDosh, a blog geared towards making money online via blogging. The author made a post yesterday in reference to another post (blog niche choice) about how choosing a niche, hers/his in particular, means there is a ceiling or cap on the number of people who will visit the site. Of course, this is what a niche is after all, but it is a very blunt way of looking at it.

Collis from NorthXEast writes about how your choice of a blog niche affects your blog’s growth in the long run. He suggests that distinguishing your blog from others within a competitive niche is important for success.

I have been thinking of this for some time and I’ll just like to add that there’s some sort of a traffic ceiling for every niche you choose. - doshdosh

Niches are meant to place harsh filters on your blog/site/business/whatever
I never really put it so bluntly myself. I always thought of a niche as a way to define your worldview, get some clear understanding of your audience was. I just found it jarring that there is a perceived ceiling to a niche.

I think that it not so much a concrete or immovable ceiling as it is one that will raise slower than others, but the rate at which it raises, or its adoption rate, is a good thing.

The content doshdosh has to offer would be valuable to most any blogger, even ones who have absolutely no interest in making money from blogging simply because the site offers all sorts of tips about building readership, new startups and even software reviews. They way their niche is defined, as many niches are, is through their color scheme, tagline, titling of posts, subject matter of the majority of the posts, advertiser links, communities the site belongs to and so on.

I just feel that a niche is about building and concerning its own world view, but in terms of growth, the sky is the limit… It is the timing and patience that has the potential to kill it.