Around ten years ago I read an article on heart attack survivors that proved people would rather die than change – given simple lifestyle changes to make, that would literally save them from having another, this time fatal, attack, the majority of people were unwilling or unable to make the change. Changing (especially after a certain age) …
Category Archives: communication
Bedtime stories
One of the joys of reading bedtime stories is, through repetition, seeing the evolving ways the kids interact with stories. Tonight we read The tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, a story about a good natured but simple duck who is (spoilers) unaware that her fox landlord is preparing to roast her for dinner. The story is …
Customer service
I had another reminder of the gap between my own understanding of what constitutes a simple user experience, and what a less-savvy computer user might deem simple. We still have a long way to go, but I’m continuing to learn. When helping someone use a computer, as in many things, listening is more important than …
humans are the future of wearables
I was chatting about technology and futurism today, and the topic of Google Glass arose. Google Glass makes a little more sense in the context of the Apple Watch – two different technologies (I’ve used neither one, so take all of this with a grain of salt). The difference? Glass attempts to sit in between …
Taking better zoo photos
We went to the zoo today as a family. It was a good day, and we had (for the most part) good access to look at the animals. Which is, after all, the point of going to the zoo. There were some people, though, who seemed to be there to take photos of the …
paul ford on coding
Paul Ford’s epic Bloomberg piece on coding is the kind of article / teaching piece / tutorial that people will be talking about for years to come. It’s a long read, and the amount you learn from it will depend on how much experience with programming you’ve had. If you’re looking to work with programmers in …
the end of the Late Show with David Letterman
In the lead up to (David) Letterman’s final episode, there were a lot of best-ofs, tributes, excerpts from the show going up on YouTube and some widespread melancholia. I think I started down the rabbit warren watching a tribute song performed by Adam Sandler, and then went much broader, watching different videos and reading a …
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rethinking the ownership of the web canvas
I still read a lot online; mostly through a feed reader, which I pay for. Part of reading through a feed reader is not seeing the content in its original context, except for those sites that encourage the user to click through to read something. If you’ve been online for a while, you will be deeply …
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addressing the challenge of staying present
Anyone who has owned a smartphone for long enough will know how much it taps into your attention span. Put your smartphone down for a while, and go for a walk: see how many times you feel the twitch to pick it up again, whether it be to check the weather, look up the answer to a trivia …
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24 ways, 2014 edition
Each year, a team of experts from the web community put together an advent calendar of posts about the web. This year, it kicks off with an overview of what it takes to build a website. If you’ve been out of the web development game for a while (as I have), it’s a useful refresher to …