posted by on January 30, 2010 at 08:22 PM
“My personal 35-year long software odyssey has made abundantly clear to me that the task of satisfying the user can only be achieved by fully integrating both the development and the interaction design practitioners into a single, self-organizing, self-directed team.”
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posted by on January 30, 2010 at 01:45 PM
“Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone. What we’re trying to say is that Apple has opened the door for people to create Jumanji-style games – music-filled, fun-packed experiences that can be shared in a novel way. The iPad is an interactive board game platform that could easily revive board game culture and introduce new generations to classic family games. It’s up to developers though to take advantage of this opportunity and show us the future of family-based digital games.”
posted by on January 29, 2010 at 08:08 PM
sciencevsromance :
worth every Penny, I’m sure.
Sure, you know. If you had some savings, put it all in some solid investments, were sick of all your friends and had a few years to kill, why not?
We are getting totally desperate for new photo ideas.
posted by on January 29, 2010 at 04:28 PM
rachelmercer :
p. What makes a campaign viral?
Wow this makes me want to get into another line of work.
posted by on January 29, 2010 at 12:58 PM
“Waxy”: points to a nice essay about the iPad . The whole thing is worth a read, as it highlights many of the reasons that so many people have been down on the device, but what really got me was this quote:
Is a stick shift better than an automatic? No. Is an automatic better than a stick? No. This misses the point. A better question: Is a road full of drivers not distracted by the arcane inner workings of their vehicle safer? It’s likely. And that has a value. Possibly a value that outweighs the value offered by a stick shift if we aggregate it across everyone in the world who drives.
I often try to explain this same idea to people when it comes to different modes of communication. You can’t say email is better than a face-to-face conversation because they’re just so different. Sure, face-to-face is much higher fidelity, but flying to Japan for a two minute face-to-face conversation asking a friend to send back my copy of some book they borrowed hardly seems like the best use of anyone’s time (not to mention environmental impact).
The saying “it’s like comparing apples and oranges” didn’t become a cliche because there was no truth. Comparing two things that are totally different doesn’t really get anyone anywhere. (No pun intended by the apple thing, by the way.)
via Waxy.org
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posted by on January 29, 2010 at 09:03 AM
Whole Foods has an interesting new initiative to encourage healthy behavior amongst its employees :
The pricey grocery chain will give 30% discounts to those who don’t smoke and have low blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index (BMI) rates, says CEO John Mackey … Employees will fall into four categories: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Those showing “platinum” health will earn 30% discounts; “gold” gets 27% and silver 25%, while “bronze” wins 22% off.
Now there are certainly problems with a program like this, and the article goes on to outline them with lots of quotes from people who are outraged. I, for one, don’t think this is such a bad idea. If it were purely based on weight it probably wouldn’t be such a good program, however, it also includes blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking habits. By combining all these I imagine you get a pretty good picture of overall health (as a side note, I’m the first person to say that BMI is a far from perfect measure of health). This is an attempt to combat the biggest problem with health insurance as it currently exists: There is no incentive to be healthy. While it’s not a perfect program, it’s nice to see some high-profile examples of companies putting the idea into action.
[Just to be clear, it’s my understanding the discount is off food at Whole Foods, not their health insurance.]
Update (1/29/09) : For what it’s worth, some people got real upset with this post over at Tumblr (partly, I think, because it wasn’t clear that this discount was on stuff at Whole Foods). Anyway, I wrote up a pretty lengthy response if you’re so inclined.
via House of Naked
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posted by on January 28, 2010 at 02:59 PM
on January 30, 2010 at 08:22 PM
