FYI Dreamhost changed some config somewhere, so comments aren't working until they fix the permissions problem. Let this be a lesson to me not to trust filesystems, and do all my data stuff in mysql...

Looks like AOLiza got a press mention. It got a whole slew of hits from Google searches yesterday, and a lot of people trying www.aoliza.com (which redirects to the AOLiza home page).

That usually points to a press or web mention without an associated URL. Anyone know where it came from? Clue me in?

Thanks!

Thinking about the interface, right now we have a narrow, linear keyboard interface (okay, slightly 'chorded' when you consider simultaneous keyboard and mouse activities (shift-clicks, etc))

Lots of directions are being taken to make this pipe wider and deeper at the same time (voice control, intelligent appliances, etc.). Eventually, the best interfaces aren't going to be little command pipes connecting the human to the device. It's like a jacket. It works because of what it is. It stays with your body because of its construction. You don't have to tell it to keep you warm. You don't have to tell it to move its arm when you move yours.

The jacket is not smart.

But it does its job very well. So many 'ubiquitous computing' initiatives are about making very smart things, then hiding that intelligence so that it seems to just 'act naturally'. Maybe going the other direction isn't so bad: Making devices that are so dumb that we know how they work the way we know how a towel works. Give them small, yet powerful functionalities that don't currently exist, and manipulate them, combining their capabilities in ways people understand, not via APIs, interfaces, and coding linkages, but by stacking them, putting the jacket over your sweater, putting the 'heatball' in the water to cook it, or point the remote control at the TV and hitting the 'ON' button.

There's a good one right there: One remote with the basic cognitive tasks (play, channel up/down, volume, power, blah) that's directional enough that you point it at the unit you want to control. Point it at the TV and the TV's little red light glows a little brighter to say "I'm the one the Remote sees now" then you press the button you want. One remote, no modal interface.

This is obviously a rough cut, but I'm so busy at the moment (and for so many moments previously and henceforth) that I just wanted to get it out in any form, as a topic for discussion...

Your thoughts?

AOLiza turned one year old yesterday! Though some of the conversations came from as early as the 15th, they weren't posted until the 19th.

If you'd like to convey your birthday wishes to AOLiza, or just say 'Hi!', you can do so on AOL Instant Messenger tonight from (looking at watch) now until 8pm Pacific, when she has to go to bed. Her screen name is imabot2.

For those interested, I'm working on a tangential AOLiza-related project with a couple new friends from New York. The fruits from that labor will be posted shortly. If you want email notification, join the mailing list from the AOLiza home page. This is the 'Phase II' of the project that has been alluded to for so long.

Regular conversations are forthcoming as well...

Call me nitpicky, but I find it amusing that today's front page of Wired has a picture of a Palm device with 'Back to schqql" written on it...

People have been bitching about computers inability to regognize human writing. It's refreshing to see that the reverse is sometimes true as well.

The Jesus Freaks are outside again today, saving souls by squandering electricity on loudspeaker-enhanced prayer, singing, and proselyting. I've got to get out of here before the words crack my skull.

Dear god, the Hari Krishnas are coming by now too.

You guys think I'm kidding, but no. I'm living on Telegraph.

Okay, it's off to lunch at Baja Fresh, read some more Crypto, sketch some more design ideas for Randompixel, write up our playtest report for Nanofictionary, and just maybe Jesus will have saved everyone by the time I get back.

Twelve years ago, Egghead Discount Software awarded me a $10,000 scholarship for an essay I wrote. While my parents paid my tuition at Berkeley, I used the $2,500 a year to buy hardware, which probably had as much or more of an impact on my future than the first years at Berkeley.

Yesterday Egghead announced that they're giving up and selling their assets to Fry's (which, incidentally, explains why Fry's dropped their bid to buy Outpost.com). A couple years ago Egghead closed up their brick-and-mortar shops and became an online-only vendor, and it looks like it didn't pan out.

Anyhow, I just want to say thanks, Egghead. You did some good, and you changed some lives.

"Whether interning in Modesto, Merced, or Washington D.C., working in one of Rep. Condit's offices can be an extremely rewarding experience."

Also of note on the site is Gary's Page for Kids which features the same navigation as the main pages, but in truly garish colors...

Back, oh, three years ago, in early 1998, I was working at an 'integrated marketing' firm called CKS Partners (which later merged with USWeb to become reinvent, then was reinvented as USWeb/CKS after threatened lawsuits over trademark infringement, then merged with Whitman Hart to become marchFirst, then filed Chapter 11 and got split up and cast to the winds, but that's another saga).

Anyhow, at that time I was doing promo ('marcom') web pieces for Levi's, essentially sites that would live for about a month or two, and be trendy and cool.

So one afternoon I'm checking my email and I get a letter from Paul Moriarty (I always picture a top hat and a twirly moustache), the guy who's basically in charge of IS for the entire company (about 1400 employees, in nearly a dozen offices worldwide). The email just has a single link in it, and so I follow it, to find a page on how to diagnose and live with gonorrhea. 'Hmm. Okay...' and I hit reply and respond with a '?', followed by the quoted text. Five minutes later he rings me up on the phone.

I should mention that despite me being a relatively new hire at this relatively large company with about seven Kevins, I still managed to have the email address 'kevin@cks.com.' Paul asks me to forward the source code of the message to him, so that he can grab the headers, and I go ahead and do just that. To satisfy my own curiosity I take a look at the originating IP of the message and track it down to the computer of another Kevin, working in the New York office.

At this point I chalk it up to another kevin trying to email something to 'kevin@cks.com' just to see if that email address will forward to their own email account. I figure the link was a joke, and it was just dumb thinking that caused them to decide to spoof the email as coming from the one person in the company most likely to track down the source if the email went awry.

I never heard anything more about it while working at the company (which I did for another 18 months).

(to be continued...)

"If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter."
-Mark Twain