You print something out on the office printer. You think, “I’ll grab a cup of coffee and grab the printout on the way back to my office.” Then, you find yourself writing blog entry about how you always forget to pick up the printout.
I got a flier in the mail today and couldn’t resist a quick comment. If you have the patience to load a large Flash page, check out [Waterstone Pier](http://waterstonepier.com/), a new condo development in Richmond right on the waterfront. That surf sound you hear will be coming directly from your living room after a few more years of global warming!
[Really](http://worldusabilityday.org/). In honor of this milestone day, I’ll do some usability work.
Have you seen small groups of teens hanging out? Why are they all plugged into their mp3 players at the same time? I’m seeing more and more kids walking around together, yet they are all wearing headphones. Why didn’t we see this with walkmans? Why mp3 players? What is going on in our society that’s leading these people to be together but not. Have TV and movies finally convinced kids that their lives need soundtracks at all times?
Maybe I’m just getting old.
Wow, [news.com linked to my previous blog](http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-5929432.html?part=rss&tag=5929432&subj=news) on hacker’s and GUIs. Welcome, visitors.
[Slashdot](http://slashdot.org) links to this [interesting article in Wired](http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,69428,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5) about [Neuros Technology](http://www.neurosaudio.com/), a company with a new portable video player, that has open sourced its firmware development. They hope to get an edge in the user interface department because, according to the article:
Open-source geeks might not represent the typical consumer, demographics-wise. But hackers don’t like to waste time with a clumsy user interface. Just like other consumers, they want a minimum of fuss when they access advanced features, such as transferring files over Bluetooth with the latest Nokia phone or establishing a Wi-Fi connection with a Hewlett-Packard iPaq — especially if they’ve spent hundreds of dollars on the latest and greatest device.“According to a survey we conducted, the greatest concern hackers have is the user interface,” said Born.
Whoa. Really? Consumers don’t really want to know what bit rate their bluetooth connection is running at, but hackers love crap like that. Not to say an open source project can’t produce a decent UI (look at [Firefox](http://firefox.org)), but that’s the exception.