Is there any good alternative to Microsoft Visio (for the PC)?

Continue reading

I’ve been using greasemonkey scripts almost as long as I’ve been using Firefox, and I’ve had little to no trouble with them – up until now.  Last night, my darling wife suggested that I might like a script for Flickr.  It looked pretty nice so I installed it.  The next thing I know, I can’t actually CLOSE greasemonkey.  Hmm, peculiar but not necessarily that big a deal.  I use the big X button to close the window, and then restart Firefox to let the new scripts (there were two related ones, actually) do their things.

What they did wasn’t quite what I had expected.  Continue reading

And for information on the new iPhone itself, check out the Apple Site

See the iPhone mania

When my wife told me that Adobe was putting out the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta last Friday a few weeks ago (yes, I know – she knew before me), I had a Pavlovian response. So, I kept checking all last Friday day to see when it would (finally) be ready to download. Then, late in the afternoon, it was there and I grabbed a copy. It should be noted that those without a current CS2 license can only try CS3 for 2 days, what is 30-day limit, but those with an authorized copy of CS2 get it for free until the actual release in the spring. Pretty sweet deal, actually. Continue reading

There are detractors that say that Microsoft has been following Apple for years, borrowing from their innovations and creating a popularization of that adapted technology – and I would argue, though I usually won’t defend Microsoft, that they did do so, and they did it pretty well. For all of the faults of the Windows platform, there is a reason that it grabbed so much of the market share. However, Apple turned the tide with the introduction of the iPod, dominating the market and putting Microsoft to “also-ran” status. And the introduction of Microsoft’s new digital music player, the Zune is NOT going to unseat Apple any time soon.

For me, Apple’s dominance is partially based on their method of treating ownership of the music (MP3s and MP4′s, mostly) with sane, understandable limits instead of Microsoft’s previously introduced proprietary and draconian DRM-managed .WMA files. The iPod was excellence, its music management and iTunes were genius. While others have tried to compete, adding radios and bigger screens, ability to record and satellite radio, none has come close to dislodging the iPod’s dominance. Enter the Zune and Microsoft’s attempt.

The Zune does have a few nice features (FM Tuner, WiFi networking and more adaptability of the interface screen), but almost immediately starting seeing some bad press. Granted, some people love to disparage Microsoft, but I have a friend who had similar installation problems (if not as severe), so this isn’t just sour grapes.

One thing that I scoffed at from the beginning was the Zune’s continued utilization of DRM and DRM-protected files. I’ve found DRM to be a ridiculous restriction of current Fair Use laws, but the Zune takes it to another level. Having the ability to share files via a WiFi network is a great idea; but it is an idea hampered by the DRM restrictions. You see, unlike the iPod – which does not have the file-sharing ability, wireless or otherwise – you can literally share your music and files with your friends directly on the Zune. However, that sharing of music files is controlled by the “3 plays or 3 days” restriction that locks a file after it is played 3 times or after 72 hours. I have no problem with this as a general rule, particularly with purchased/protected music. But that restriction is universal to all music, even if the material is your own and you don’t extend copyright protection or if it’s free domain stuff; i.e. Microsoft is setting use rights on material that isn’t restricted and they don’t have the right to.

But fear not, ’cause Microsoft and DRM have once again proved laughably fallible. As described on Gizmodo, the solution is as simple as setting the Zune to be recognized as a hard drive, changing the file extensions to .jpg, and shipping the files along with a real .jpg to another user who has also set their Zune to be recognized as a hard drive. They then rename the files back to .mp3 files, and voila – unprotected files.

So, once again an expensive attempt to restrict the consumer unneccessarily through DRM has failed, felled by a decidedly simple and low-tech method. I wish I could say that they’d learn their lesson, but I know better.

I’ve been a fan of fast internet ever since I used my first T1. I might have been a bit young (and naive), but I thought everyone should have one at home (instead of a stinkin’ dial-up). Eventually, when DSL arrived I was one of the first to sign up in my area – only to find out that I wasn’t actually eligible for this nirvana. When I moved in with my future wife, however, I got to enjoy the pleasures of DSL and the speed associated with it.

So, I became a DSL zealot. I dislike Comcast as a rule, and sided with DSL over cable modem whenever asked (and usually when I wasn’t). I explained the differences, and how DSL’s speed was a function of distance (how far you were from the trunk, which was about 2 blocks from us) and cable’s was a function of users (if you’re neighbors want to be online, too, you all get sucky speeds).

We upgraded to high-speed DSL a couple years back, moving up to the blazing 5Mbps speed – which never actually beat about 3Mbps, but that was okay because it was still 4x faster than our old one. Then my wife gave me a surprise this week – we’re getting fiber optics put in, and fiber optics meant I was getting 20Mbps speeds. TWENTY MEGABITS PER SECOND. I think I had a Pavlovian response right on my desk at work.

Coming home last night, I came home and tried it out – indeed, our download speeds are 19.5 – 21.2Mbps, and uploads nearly 5Mpbs, meaning that stuff flies on the web. And Daddy likes that.

IjAD – Information (Inside joke) Architecture Document

Recently, much of my design work has been involving tools work and CMS, back-end systems, etc. I like the challenge of solving design problems and throwing in U/A standards where I can, but there’s not a whole lot of room for creativity. So, to add a small bit of humor to my designs, I started adding small ‘easter eggs’ (for a lack of a better term).

It’s always subtle things that avoid being overtly ridiculous or NSFW. Must of it has been relegated to finding better usernames: instead of J. User or John Doe, I’ve taken to A. Lien, B. Cirius and D. Lishus. Sometimes it’s a subtle joke word or phrase in the Lorem ipsum… text:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla ligula ligula, tincidunt vel, insert nifty web twopointoh phrase here gravida ut, gravida consequat, justo. Curabitur sit amet quam ac enim viverra interdum…”

So, aside from amusing myself and the rare notice by anyone else, it’s harmless. But is it professional? I understand that it does have a childish element to it, and that it might be considered so by others, but the outlet after 8 hours of staring at Visio, Dreamweaver and Photoshop is something that I’ve enjoyed.

So, I’m wondering if there are any thoughts out there among the 4 or 5 readers I have about this? Anyone else put in hidden/secret things within their designs? Many artists have done things like this for ages, such as Shepard Fairey and his “Andre the Giant has a posse” graphic which found it’s way into other pieces of art, or the old Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs, who hid his personal Riggs Logo in the drawings of Eddie, Maiden’s mascot. Programmers are notorious for their Easter Eggs, although they are usually hidden; IADs – being a visual medium – aren’t that complex.

I’m just curious how normal this is among IA’s and related design fields.

Last night, GSI Commerce hosted a seminar for AIGA Philadelphia and Phi Chi (the Philadelphia branch of the ACM SigCHI) members, along with Avenue A/Razorfish. The topic was The Visual vs. The Usable, and we were presenting two cases of how we managed to mesh top-notch creative with functional, usable design. Avenue A/Razorfish did the same, talking about how the two groups – often at odds – collaborated on projects to create a better end result. Continue reading

I haven’t had much time to write, but I’m so incensed over the complete idiocy of this company that I had to spout.

Originally, the problems began when my site went down more and more often over a 2 week period, but culminated with a 10-day outtage.  10 days, NO site, which sucked because I needed to use it as portfolio.  Then came the better news – our bad, but we probably lost ALL of your data.

Technical problems happen, I understand that, but they’re responses became more and more formulaic, little information was forthcoming, promises of uptime weren’t kept and support tickets were given “Check the status page to see new information” – which led to a page with the same information from a few days ago.

I had finally had enough when I asked for a refund of that month’s charges because they had fallen below 40% uptime – which they wouldn’t give me.  They would give me 2 months credit – which was useless since I was dropping them after the repeated outtages and increasingly horrible customer service.  I cancelled the service on May 12th.

Lo and behold, I got charged on June 17 for another month.  Not so fast, I said – I cancelled, so you need to refund those charges.  They told me that they couldn’t (bullshit), so I cancelled again, and had the charges reversed by the credit card company.

Fast forward to today, and I get 2 emails – one telling me that my invoice has been generated, and a second telling me that it has been PAID.  Yes folks, 2 months after I last cancelled, and 3 months after I first cancelled.  It was like being with AOL but without any of the few benefits they offer.  Not only that, I see that they decided to renew my contract at $70+.  Must be nice to just decide to charge arbitrarily.

I have the confirmations of my cancellation.  I have emails from billing saying as much.  But they just can’t get their act together – and when I went to check my account and make sure I removed a credit card, I found that I can’t remove my credit card from their system.  There’s no way to do it.  So, they got this nasty note instead:

I already touched on this on a previous email, but now I’m VERY angry.
I cancelled this account in MAY, and then again in JULY, and yet I am STILL BEING billed.  If you could please pull your heads out of your asses just long enough, you need to refund:

• My July payment ($6.95)
• My August payment ($6.95)
• An annual charge ($71.40)

IMMEDIATELY.  If this sitation is not fixed by EOB 8/17, I’ll be reporting you as a fraudulent biller to my credit card company, have the charges reversed, and report you to the Attorney General of my state.
I’m not really confident about it, but hopefully this THIRD cancellation request might make an impact with you.  And you wonder why you are losing so many clients?

I wonder if they’ll get the message THIS time.

While working on a website we are redesigning, I was seeing some minor usability/accessibility issues that I was concerned about. I brought up those issues, mentioning that the site would be significantly less functional in some cases to those with disabilities, such as the vision-impaired and physically handicapped persons for whom using a mouse is difficult. That was when someone asked, “Do blind people actually buy sporting goods?”.

In their defense, the speaker asked the question in good faith, and they were thinking of snowboards, golf clubs and footballs when they said it. It took me only a second to respond perhaps not, and to ask if they had considered sweatpants, baseball caps, knee braces and more. Suddenly, it was more pertinent, and I decided to look into the question – do the disabled really buy sporting goods, or more specifically, do they buy them online? Continue reading