November 2007 Archives
After an adult lifetime of putting up with Windows (although I'm primarily mac), I have finally bit the nerd-bullet and installed Gnu/Linux on my Thinkpad. After a few bumps (no optical drive - painful), and with the help of Sears (James-Nick, not &Roebuck), I finally got Ubuntu up and running.
Why Ubuntu? It's Debian-based, and I'm a huge fan of Debian. The install-base is huge. And what have I found? All love.
Despite some misgivings, I was still almost excited about the Chumby project. But when one arrived this morning at Organic, and we gleefully ripped open the packaging [cue montage of kids in a candy store on Christmas]... that excitement pretty much faded to complete disappointment.
The device is chunky - like a little, ugly, bloated change-purse. The material seems cheap. The LCD is lack-luster. The touch-screen is trash. In a weak attempt at customization, a few 'chumby charms' are included in the package - which can be attached to a metal stud on the side of the device.
As a ubiquitous device, the chumby fails miserably - tied to a power-outlet. The sheer size of the thing is a limit on its mobility. And it feels so goddamn out of place in pretty much every setting... with the exception of a child's playroom.
I felt the future of ubicomp crashing down into a pit of sharks...
...and then I pulled out my iPhone to check my email.
I spent yesterday at the Javits Center for Carson's Future of Web Design conference. The space was packed with all flavors of web-people: designers, developers, managers, marketers... The color-coded conference passes were a nice touch (green for developer) - it was cool to get a feel for the practical distribution of attendees.
The conference was held in the glass-enclosed, cavernous West-side wing of Javits, a poor choice of venue. The PA system was awful, the room was incredibly noisy (what is this, a boxing match?), and sunlight coming in from the ceiling washed out the projector through-out most of the day.
But environmental complaints aside, the con was great. Josh Davis opened up with an irreverent talk about his path and process, showing some of his more recent work with algorithmic design. Ryan Singer (of 37 Signals) gave a great presentation on web application usability. One of his past FoWD presentations (on web app form design) is available here. Ryan gave a deserved shout-out to E. Tufte, which got me super excited.
UPDATE: Seems that Carson puts conference materials (audio and pdf of presentation) up under the past events section... sweet!
