The Future: Findability

We only noticed three months later, but we passed something of a milestone last December. I’m hoping it might, finally, wake us up to the real power of the Web: findability. According to Ericsson, a mobile network company, in December we exchanged more data over our mobile devices than we talked on them. In short, … Read more

links for 2008-09-21

PrintWhatYouLike.com How to print web pages leaving out all the extra stuff you don’t want to print. (tags: webapp tools web2.0 web howto) Web 2.0 Expo NY: Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure. Clay Shirky explains that our problem is not too much information, it’s the filters use to control it. … Read more

The Uneven March of Progress Bars

Why are the progress percentage bars in programs so useless? This one in TrendMicro’s HouseCall has been telling me it’s 99% done for more than an hour: This is by no means unusual. Software, whether it’s loading, installing, booting, scanning or whatever, doesn’t seem too hot on the old timing front. The jump from 0–99 … Read more

Recharge Vouchers and Fantasies of Schoolmistresses

I’m doing a piece on speech recognition for the Journal, all the time wrestling with my own voice menu cellphone demons. One message from Hong Kong’s 3 network sends me apopleptic with rage while at the same time kind of turning me on, which tells you more about me than you probably want to know. … Read more

Website Annotation Is Back?

Techdirt points to an effort by Slate’s Paul Boutin  to Make Website Annotation Cool Again. As Techdirt points out, this idea — where surfers can add their comments to websites so that others who use the same annotation software can view them, and add their own comments — is not new. (The semi-official term is … Read more