So an old friend of mine asked me today if I was still using my Newton. Sadly, like everyone else left with a newton when the hammer fell, I eventaully switched to a Palm device.

I was happy with something so small, fast, and.. well, so small and fast, and as they got smaller and faster, I forgot what I loved about my Newton. It wasn't the size (well, after the first few months) and it wasn't the handwriting recognition (which finally got really good just a few months before the whole thing was scrapped).

It was the interface.

I pulled out my messagepad an hour ago and I still remembered how to edit text, use Newton's shortand for touching up notes, navigationg around the OS, sending a fax, all of it. This, even though I hadn't touched a Newton in two years.

After playing with it for an hour I wanted to see if they actually got IrDA compliance in before Newton was sacked, so I got my Palm V and tried to beam it a note. No go.

Then I tried to beam from the Palm to my Newton and it literally took me two minutes to figure out how to beam something from my Palm! Don't get me wrong, I beam stuff all the time, but using the Newton for 30 minutes was the clearest case of cognitive dissonance I've ever seen. Its interface paradigm is so embracing that after using it, I found the Palm OS to be clumsy and minimal (note that I've always loved it for being minimal before, but it's under the limit of what it should be).

The problem is the menu bar. The menu bar on the Palm OS is a cop-out. It's where programmers put functionality they don't have the ability to incorporate into their program's interface.

The menu bar has always served as the catch-all repository for functionality, but the Palm OS not only uses it as an unseen repository for essential functionality, they make it counterintuitive to get to it.

First off, you don't see any representation of a menu bar on screen, just a button at the bottom of the silkscreen which, if tapped, will bring up the menu bar. Never mind for a moment that it's the only button that won't entirely transport you from your current environment, a condition that strongly impedes a user's curiosity, but if you do need to access menu functionality, there's no affordance that it's there, and you can only get an indication that additional functions are available by tapping at the very bottom of the screen, to get a menu bar that appears at the very top of the screen, necessitating a full navigation of both the eyes and the stylus.

Basically, it sucks. Without going into (more of) a tirade, it's bad enough that PalmOS creators and other developers can't incorporate all the needed functionality into interface elements without resorting to menus, but to implement menus in a counterintuitive and inhibitory fashion is just plain criminal.

Yet, even with all that, it's a hundred times more intuitive than Windows CE. I won't even go in to my recent experience trying to play with a few of these at Circuit City.

A Microsoft logo does not a quality product make.

It makes me cry for my Newton.

I'm cleaning my apartment and reorganizing my office. The aforementioned IKEA furniture is coming on Thursday, and I have to make sure my place is ready for it.

Considering almost all my friends have moved at least once in the last 5 years except for me, and they've had moving parties to help, I'm planning a construction party to help assemble my furniture.

Of course, I watched Fight Club last night which, as those of you who have seen it know, is not the movie to watch as you're reaching the final stages of furnishing an IKEA-inspired apartment.

This is fantastic. Now, when simply having and using a cellphone, PalmPilot, and pager isn't enough, you can go one step further.

Just be careful when you go to the airport, or are in an area with police activity. Don't make any sudden moves.

Karen, Crystal and I were having lunch in the city today, and I mentioned I had a word that needed naming. I'll often call a friend who I know is in front of a computer, at work or at home, because I need a piece of info off the web, and others have done the same to me (directions, a zip code, what have you) and it's becoming such a specific practice nowadays that I thought it deserved its own word, so I mentioned this to Karen and Crystal and Crystal says 'lifeline' without skipping a beat.

I think it's perfect. Certainly better than 'on-star'.

Anyhow, some friends and I are going to Jammix tonight. I recommend it to anyone who loves to dance several styles to eclectic music.

This brief note is a precursor to a full essay, but so I don't forget...

You're always hearing about metaphor in interface design, the desktop metaphor, the window metaphor, clipboard, paste, etc. The question is, at what level should the metaphor be implemented?

To use the desktop metaphor as an example, modern windowing systems, like KDE for example, while still sharing a very similar look and feel with Windows and MacOS, is gradually divesting itself of 'desktoppy' items in key ways, such as making it more difficult to save items to the (for lack of a better term) 'desktop'. This results in a more action-oriented space instead of a file-structure space.

To show extremes, General Magic's MagicLink, amongst others, tried to create a 1 to 1 mapping between the desktop and the screen, such that you see an actual desktop on the screen, complete with drawers, an alarm clock, a filing cabinet behind it, a door and a window. You could navigate the space in an RPG-like fashion, strolling outside to see the storefronts (post office, AOL, etc) and interact with the stores. (In the full version I'll go in to why this is awful and was one of the downfalls of the system)

OSes like WebTV and TiVo abandon the desktop metaphor completely, resulting in what I'll call an 'appliance' OS. The realization here is that interactions with these appliances and consequently their OSes, is not a completely immersive experience. These items are tools and you're using them in a greater context. They exist primarily of modal, full-screen views, and they don't attempt to be everything to everyone.

Well, I've gotta run, but I will write more on this later.

Adieu!

Picture a movie version of Futurama.

Okay, now lift themes and sometimes straight camera shots from Star Wars, Jedi, Star Trek II, Tron, The Last Starfighter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Myst, and a soundtrack somewhere between Mortal Kombat and The Abyss.

Next slap such great CGI backdrops, sets, and ships behind animation so different that you literally think at one point (Who's in the spaceship? Wow! It's a real spaceship full of ragtag fugitive 'Toons!)

If you've done this in your head, congrats! You now don't have to see Titan [AE], but you should anyway.

It's a romp, and though it's worth seeing for either the soundtrack or the blatant logical inconsistancies alone, it's a good time.

So, to be the bearer of bad news, my latest major accomplishment, the e-commerce site for Petstore.com, has been permanently taken down, upon the acquisition of Petstore.com by Pets.com (read: Amazon.com) Smothered by a sock puppet... How unfortunate.

Of course, it's a success story for Petstore.com (or at least for it's parent/partner, The Discovery Channel (I haven't figured out who the winners and losers are there yet...) as they got lots of money for what nets out to a mailing list and the demise of a significant competitor.

Still, it's another piece of evidence that the web is anything but static, and I should archive screenshots of all my work even before it's finished, because you never know what might happen after it's out of your control...

Well then, this just means I need to churn out a few more corporate sites, and maybe try to get a stake in them, so I can feel a little better when they're gobbled by the inevitable and insatiable bigger fish.

I can rest assured that this site will remain mine, as the subject matter is a little too specific. Then again, maybe if I strike it rich I'll acquire Peter, Jenni, or Stewart's site...

So of course I've gone into full gear from thinking about thinking about grad school to actively researching HCI programs, thinking about letters of recommendation, and working backwards from application deadlines (which range from December 15th (Berkeley) through to March 1st (Tufts)).

Then there's the GRE to worry about, though I hope to get it out of the way early. At any rate, the short list is still to short and isn't much different than the long list except schools overseas aren't on it, and Canada still seems like an awfully cold place to try to innovate and learn...

Research to be performed, fretting to be done, recommendations to be gathered, and of course, freelance work to be freelanced, and a personal website to be fleshed out.

Well, I'm back from Alaska but, after a 25-hour stopover home in Berkeley, I flew down for a wedding in Los Angeles, and I'm sticking around until Thursday.

The trip was fantastic. I have 200 megs of photos to sift through, and I'll put together a microsite both about the trip and about my experience with the cruise line (Celebrity Curises) that I'll be linking to off of epinions. I'll have reviews of the cruise line, and ancillary items like the eight TalkAbout walkie-talkies our group used to keep in touch on the cruise ship and at destinations, and my Nikon CoolPix, which I've finally learned to like, through the use of high-capacity rechargable batteries.

Anyhow, that's all for the moment, except to say that it suddenly hit me that I need to be thinking about grad school now, and I should be boning up on the GRE right now. Everything happens at once!

Thanks for hanging out. As always, there's more to come.

Hey! I'm in Alaska! I'm actually working on a travellogue of my journey, day by day, but for the moment I'll leave you with two pictures, which will hopefully convey the thousand words I don't have time to type at the internet cafe right now!

(note that the pictures might be fucked up... If so I'll fix them when I get back!)

This was taken on Friday morning in Friday Harbor, Washington. It's the plane we took from the San Juan Islands to Vancouver, B.C.

I took the second picture while fishing for King Salmon in Ketchikan, Alaska yesterday. I didn't end up bagging a fish, but Bradly, the youngest of our crew (10), caught a King nearly half his size!

I'm trying to write each day, and take as many pictures as I can, so you can look forward to a day-by-day account and a full review of the Celebrity Cruise ship Mercury, as well as several of the excursions I and the rest of our crew experienced.

Next stop: Skagway!

Vital stat of the day: Juneau has a population of 31,000. Interestingly enough, 31,000 people live within a 20 minute walk of my apartment in Berkeley...

From the Northlands, out!