I found a link to MindCanvas today by browsing the site for this week’s Information Architecture Summit in Vegas. Their business is built around a meme called Game-like Elicitation Methods (or GEM) and their manifesto makes the following claim: The overuse of Likert scales must stop. We understand that Likert scales have their uses, but [...]
Monthly Archives: March 2007
Game-like Elicitation Methods
23-Mar-07Free academic images from ARTStor
19-Mar-07Found via Academic Commons, ARTstor is planning to soon start offering high-def digital images for academics. This is great news, and somewhat surprising since it seems many companies are trying to crack down on the availability of digital content: Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube and the RIAA’s influence regarding potential fees levied against online radio are [...]
Lisa Halabi has a very good article at usabilitynews.com on the common question of whether or not to implement usability guidelines (aka an expert usability review) in place of conducting usability testing. An expert review is tempting because a reasonable person would expect to be able to codify what is and what is not good [...]
Comcast is shutting down service to patrons whose bandwidth use reaches a high but undefined level according to this Boston Globe Article. They’re refusing to let customers know what the cutoff point is, because they are claiming that the number changes based on network capacity. One sections I thought interesting: Feddeman declined to say where [...]
Google’s forthcoming Ocropus
14-Mar-07Found via DIGLIB, it appears that Google is not only working on an OCR package, they’re also planning on releasing it open source. Ocropus (open source document analysis and OCR system) currently runs only on Linux, but will surely be ported once it finds its legs. This is one to watch. http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/ Tweet
There’s an interesting article out in Information Systems Journal about the difficulties encountered while trying to get a list of requirements from users. It’s not a problem that affects users only, but it also affects investigators and designers of user centered design: Pitts, M. G., & Browne, G. J. (2007). Improving requirements elicitation: An empirical [...]
On “The Renascence of the Writer”
08-Mar-07Walt Crawford has an interesting article in the latest edition of Econtent: Crawford, W. (2007). The Renascence of the Writer. Econtent, 30(2), 44. Retrieved March 8, 2007, from [Ebscohost] or [WorldCat]. One thesis that I’m working on here is that there is a nascent category of blogging which I’m thinking of as “academic blogging” [...]
Here is a link to an interesting section from this weekend’s On the Media podcast titled Mobile Malcontent. It’s talks about the recent work of Columbia University Law’s James Wu which was also touched on by this Washington Post article. The text of Wu’s article is available via SSRN: Wu, Tim, “Wireless Net Neutrality: Cellular [...]
Salon reviews “Watch Now”
02-Mar-07Reihan Salam of Salon just published a largely positive review of Netflix “Watch Now”. “As a kid, I fantasized about having a kitchen sink with dozens of faucets. Not only would it dispense hot and cold water, but also chocolate milk, macaroni and cheese, and boneless fried chicken. It’s a testament to the primitiveness of [...]
Ma vie en Google
01-Mar-07For the next month, I’m resolved to live (workwise) within Google entirely. Tonight I just finished migrating my email from Thunderbird to Gmail, and from now on I’m planning on using nothing but Google products whenever possible. Is it possible to never open Office again? We’ll see. Tweet