08 18th, 2009
Lovers of language, unite!Back in December 2007, I quoted a passage from The Meaning of Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod. Tingo is a book I enjoy dipping into; discovering words from other cultures that express a novel viewpoint is always delightful.So I was pleased to hear from Adam the other day, telling me about his new book, The Wonder of Whiffling
Discover all sorts of words you’ve always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one’s money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.
Even better, there’s a blog at the book’s web page with some interesting word discussions.And even better than that, you can follow @wonderwhiffling on Twitter, and get words delivered right into your Twitter feed. For example, the three most recent tweets:
NEW WORD: tyromancy (1652) fortune telling by watching cheese coagulate
new phrase: ash cash (UK slang 1989) a fee paid to a doctor for signing a cremation form
today’s word: pingle (Suffolk) to move food about on the plate for want of an appetite
Enjoy!
I just upgraded to Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), and its option to let me browse my files in the Finder using Cover Flow stopped me in my tracks. Even at its best, Cover Flow seems wrong — even clunky — as a user interface for large numbers of items, say, more than 40. At its worst, Cover Flow has trouble coordinating with finger scrolling on the track pad, skipping items, zooming past others, and making it difficult to hone in on precisely the thing you want.I threw a question out to the Twitterverse: ”Does anybody actually use Cover Flow to browse their media? #UX”@theproductguy responded:
@Power2B i would b surprised if coverflow is used when people have tons of music; it is nice eye candy but not strong that area of usefulnes
@Power2B:
The real use (for me) of “live” page visualizations is for small icons (eg. OS X dock/stack cons) that provide pattern cues to content. #UX
@Power2B Can you please explain in more detail? This sounds like a cool technique.
@Power2B [tweets combined for your reading comfort]:
@Stuporman Not a technique, just a great, usable design. OS X dock icons are an excellent way of quickly navigating apps/docs: the icons show the content (eg, an open mail window minimized to dock actually shows its content miniaturized).
Stacks in Leopard adds another dimension (up in vertical) to the dock, extending the capabilities. Here, icon-as-content browsing is great, b/c it helps compensate for small viewing area, and reduces clicks (vs opening Finder window).If there were a command line (a la DOS or internet address), that would be even faster. Closest equivalent is keyboard shortcut (command-tab) to switch apps; that is even better than dock for app switching. Perhaps gestures will be even better?
But for cover art and for web site browsing, I don’t buy into the visual-icon-browsing model. Too slow. As @theproductguysaid, it’s eye candy. The pity is, if you direct command line/gesture to a file, you don’t browse, and you tend to forget about the 80% of media you access less often, and thus lose use of it completely. Whereas browsing reminds you of things you may have not considered.
The problem of losing your own “long tail” of media files really interests me. It seems to me to be connected to the greater culture of social media / viral marketing / user ratings, where things “float to the top” based on popularity. “Floating” promotes quick discovery and direct access. Popularity, though, depends strongly on a lot more than the quality of the product; it relies heavily on getting a couple of votes early on which trigger more interest and more votes to build momentum (this is why advertising is so important).There are many pros and cons to this system, but the item under consideration now is: what happens to the 80% or 90% or even 99% of products/files that don’t appear in the Most Popular lists? Do they get discovered? Even within your own little digital galaxy of computer, iPod, cell phone, etc., you can create your own Most Popular lists (”Recently Viewed”, “Most Frequently Listened To”, “Recent Calls”) that both speed your access to favorite data and impair your reach to the other stuff. Your favorite old songs, books, or art may slide down through the ranking system over time, effectively erasing the value of ownership. (Is this why we’re seeing the shift to online movie rentals over purchases?)Contrast that to the experience of books on a shelf (the metaphor that Cover Flow seeks to emulate): You have a spatial reference that leads you to where the book is that you want — at least, if your books are reasonably well-organized — but you never see just one book at a time. This leads to fortuitous discoveries, reacquaintance with old friends and stories. It adds value to the history, the collection-as-a-whole.Cover Flow seeks to recreate that experience. However, while you appear to have the added advantage of serendipitous discovery based upon spatial proximity, in fact, there is no spatial point of reference. The item you’re looking at is always at the center. Data organization is still at its essence a list: alphabetical by author, by album, by recent use.Consider the response of a friend via Facebook to my original question:
On my ipod classic, yes, sometimes.
Me:
Wow. May I ask about how many songs / media files you have on your iPod? (10? 100? 1000?) Also, any thoughts you might have on when/why you choose to use Cover Flow to navigate vs. the linear list of songs/artists/albums/genres would be really illuminating. Thanks!
Friend:
I have 2392 songs and 3 video files. I usually use cover flow when I’ve forgotten what I have on my ipod. Ie, after loading a bunch of stuff on or when I’m too out of it to remember what I have and/or what I want to listen to. Don’t know if it makes a difference to you but the most irritating thing with cover flow is its poor treatment of various artists. If you have a couple of compilations with ~20 artists each, your cover flow becomes rapidly inundated with the same album cover. Grouping them all under “Various Artists” would be much more reasonable.
I welcome your input and feedback.
It’s cruel, but it must have provided some welcome humor during a frustrating drive. A great sign, posted by @caseywright.
The sign reads: “You’ll Never Get To Work On Time HaHa!!”
The other day, I posted this tweet to Twitter:
“Harry Potter’s magic wand: the ultimate converged mobile device.”
Within five minutes, I was being followed by “Ron Weasley”. Somehow, I think he’s going to be disappointed…
[You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/power2b]
Disemvowlmnt: The process of pruning a word of its vowels in order to cram an idea into the requisite 140 characters allowed in a Twitter post.
[word seen at @Quatrainman]
@copyblogger is hosting a Twitter-based haiku contest, with a MacBook Air as the top prize.
Here are some of my favorite entries:
- “@John, I am pregnant.” / “@Marsha, will you marry me?” / “Yes @John, my tweetheart.”
- My haiku like a website / running I.E. 6 / really running in reverse
- writing a haiku / I need to use my fingers / counting syllables
- how could anyone/describe their life in only /140
- An Adwords haiku / Google didn’t get the joke / Laughter, ROI
- What’s Occam’s Razor? /// It’s a method for questions /// That cut to the chase.
- The joy of Twitter! / Kevin Rose has sneezed again. / Quick! Blog about it!
(A quick quip which is a reference to Kevin Rose of Digg fame, who recently created a Twitter account especially for his cold.) - This one’s so perfect / Clever, funny, all that… wait. / Twitter eats my tweet!
- You’ve been told you can’t / Because you happen to be / A girl. Girls Can’t WHAT?
- This is senryu. / I really don’t write haiku. / It’s not my nature.
(Technically, haikus are about nature.)
The premise of the contest provided some entertainment for me [a.k.a. @Power2B] this morning:
- Twitter makes me think / Short, declarative statements / What will haiku do?
- Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet / Self-promoting twitterers / Drive me to delete
- Writing poetry / Serves mostly selfish yearnings / All the moreso here
- Economic melt- / down is pulling companies / Under needlessly
- We thought the lovebird / Had broken free once again / Now he’s got a friend
- Heck, writing haiku / Is so much fun, I might not / Get much done today
- Dearest Twitter friends: / I’d like to hear your feedback / Which haiku to send?
I know, I know. I keep harping on the selfishness of social networking. Well, the unselfish side is subscribing to the status updates, blog posts and twitter feeds of people you care about. You get to see a whole side of the person that you might never see, you know where people are visiting, and most important, you hear about what matters to them in a way that would be impossible (or tedious) in person.
A conversation across media (email, various Facebook modalities), across generations (30-something [me] and 20-something [him]), and across continents (hence the time zone oddities).
Jul 3, 2008, at 5:22 AM
D:
Uh oh… I just wanted to let you know that I decided to join the twitter-lution yesterday and I am totally addicted. If you don’t hear from me for a couple of weeks, you will know why. Just to explain why it’s so cool… a) There is no barrier to “friendship”. On facebook, you rarely friend someone you don’t know. Or at least I don’t. On twitter, you can follow anyone. Since it is not reciprocal (meaning I can follow someone but that doesn’t mean they are following me back) it is not uncommon for someone to have many more followers than people he/she follows. So I have made friends just by searching for people with similar interests and following them. Some of them have followed me back. b) You can follow well know bloggers and other “celebrities” and get a window into their personal life. You can also tweet at them and they will reply. I have already had a back and forth with a fairly famous blogger who completely ignores my emails. But he responds to my tweets cuz it is so easy. Once I responded on his “wall”, a whole bunch of people started following me. c) There are all these great services. Timer allows me to send a message such as “d timer 45 pay parking meter” and in 45 minutes I will get a message reminding me to pay the parking meter. Trackthis sends package tracking updates. There is a CNN feed that ONLY sends breaking updates (the last one was 19 days ago) so that you can get important news and nothing else. There is an app to track and graph your gasoline usage. All these cool plugin apps! And this is after using it for less than a day. I am totally doomed! Anyways, that’s my experience so far. Just thought I would share. Now back to twhirl (my twitter client of the moment).
Jul 3, 2008 at 1:20 AM
Sarah:
My Twitter handle is power2b, but I never use it.
Jul 3, 2008 at 5:07 PM
D:
Yeah… you have 2 posts… Hardly giving it a fair chance… But then again… I highly advise against giving it a fair chance… You’ll regret it… You can thank me later.
D
PS. I think it is also a lot more useful and interesting if you are in the US and can do it from your phone.
Jul 11, 2008 at 8:30pm
Sarah added the Twitter application [in Facebook]. 4 Comments
Jul 11, 2008 at 6:30am
D:
Uh oh… Did I start something?
Jul 13, 2008 at 8:56pm
Sarah:
You wish. I can’t even figure out how to add a follow unless I accidentally stumble upon it in Google…
Jul 13, 2008 at 9:56pm
D:
Yeah… That’s why it won’t catch on like facebook did (or at least not as fast). It’s too command-liney sometimes. You can either navigate to that person’s page and click the follow button (i.e. twitter.com/usernamehere) or just send a message with the follow command (i.e. “follow usernamehere”) and you will be following that person. let me know if you have any more questions.
Jul 13, 2008 at 10:20pm
Sarah:
You’ll note that this has the prerequisite of knowing the user names of people you’re interested in following… I suppose that makes it more purely viral…
Jul 13, 2008 at 8:06pm
D:
Nope. Just go to sites like http://summize.com/ and http://www.twitscoop.com/ and search for things other people are talking about that interest you. Try searching for the word “jerusalem” (or anything that interests you). When you find others that are talking about jerusalem, read what they are saying about it. You will find a couple of people who are saying things that are interesting to you. Once you follow them you will find that they have friends that are interesting to you too so you can follow them too. As I mentioned, I also follow bloggers or other personalities who are interesting to me such as kevin rose, founder of digg (twitter.com/kevinrose). There are also a number of people who are just amusing to follow since they say interesting/funny things. There were a couple of blog posts that had the top 10 most interesting twitterers or something like that and I signed on to a few of thoset.
Facebook status Jul 14, 2008 at 8:29pm:
Sarah is tentatively Twittering.
Jul 14, 2008 at 9:46am
Sarah:
That’s helpful. I’ll try it out. Sarah (twit)
Sent via Facebook Mobile
Jul 14, 2008 at 2:38pm
D:
Also u might wanna get a twitter client. I like twhirl. There are ppl who like snitter too. Lastly 2 reply 2 ppl on their “wall” type: @usernamehere messagehere
Sent via Facebook Mobile
Jul 14, 2008 at 5:11pm
D:
Now that I think about it, I think the mac twitter app of choice is twitterific but I believe it costs money. The two I mentioned should work on mac and they are free. Also see this link:
http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2008/060208-top-twitter-tools.html
Jul 15, 2008 at 10:45am
Sarah:
Muchas Gracias! Ahora venidos a esperar.. yo puede que busca tiempo por el Twitter. Hasta luega…
Jul 15, 2008 at 4:30pm
D:
I assume this means you now have time to spend on twitter.
Here is the translation I got from babelfish:
“Thank you very much! Now come to hope. perhaps I look for time by the Twitter. Until luega…”
LOL… I will be frolicking by the riverbank and perhaps I will look for time by the twitter.
Jul 15, 2008 at 8:49pm
Sarah:
Translation from morah sarah: ‘thanks very much. Now let’s hope i Will be able to find time for twitter. See you later.’ other than reversing the meaning, not bad. Sarah
Sent via Facebook Mobile
Jul 15, 2008 at 8:54pm
D:
I actually think the translation is pretty poor. Technology can definitely do better than that. On a side note, have you ever used remember the milk or any other web2.0 to-do list manager? If so, what did you think?
Jul 15, 2008 at 9:02pm
Sarah:
Nope. I never have been effective with non.paper lists.
Sent via Facebook Mobile
Jul 15, 2008 at 9:22pm
D:
Ooooh… I kinda hate paper. I usually use my mind but that doesn’t always work out so well. I am interested in Remember the Milk and other similar services like todoist and vitalist since they integrate with all the other things I use such as gmail/google calendar, twitter, SMS, IM, firefox etc. It could be seriously useful to be able to text “Pick up milk tomorrow” from my cell and have it show up in a firefox panel on my computer as a to do item due the next day.
Jul 15, 2008 at 9:40pm
Sarah:
Some people use jott or spinvox…
Sent via Facebook Mobile
Jul 15, 2008 at 9:55pm
D:
Never heard of spinvox. Jott I have heard of. But neither of these programs alone, will let organize your tasks. However, Jott and RTM will work together so that you can call in a todo list item to Jott and have it show up in your RTM list. See: http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2007/11/jott-your-tasks.html
Jul 28, 2008, at 3:51 AM
D:
So it looks like you are totally twittering now (I love alliteration). What do you think?
Jul 28, 2008 at 3:44 AM
Sarah:
Hm. Well, I use my cell phone rarely for the Twittering. Partly because the texting is harder than typing. Sometimes in the taxi.
I also don’t follow many people (yet), or have many followers (yet). I have un-followed one person, because they created too much noise…
Jul 29, 2008 8:58 PM
D:
For all my big talking, I actually haven’t added SMS to my twitter although I do post items from my phone (web) once in a while. I don’t find it much harder to do a 140 char message from my phone. I SMS text all the time so I am used to it. I am not really addicted to twitter anymore though. The reason I think is because I deliberately didn’t follow anyone I know even though there are many people at work and personal that are on twitter. I think it would be much more useful and interesting to me if I follow people I know. I will probably decide to do that soon. Until now I have just wanted to test it without friending people I know… Until I decide that I am using it and what I am using it for…
Jul 29, 2008:
[@Power2B:] Since using Twitter to update my status, I’ve begun thinking in short, declarative statements. I wonder if this is a good thing.
Facebook Status, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:53am:
Sarah: Twitter: the ultimate means for self-centered communication. http://www.reallysarahsyndication.com/2008/07/16/why-tap-when-you-can-talk/
* * *
In a related line of thinking, I take a look at the list of people on my Facebook friends list. With a few exceptions, they aren’t my close friends (if you’re reading this, consider yourself an exception, OK?), yet I am in touch with them more frequently than I am with my closer friends.
Few of my closest friends and relatives are on Facebook. Partly, this is generational. Partly, this is cultural. But this also reflects the reality that my activity on Facebook, such as it is, is motivated by my own personal/selfish search for entertainment than by a desire for social contact. When I want social contact, I call, meet for coffee, or send an email to get contact initiated.
Charlie Kalech just twittered the prayer news that the MacBook Touch — that mythical Apple-branded touchscreen notebook computer — will hit the market by October. He links to Apple Insider (although I don’t see an item there).
I hope he’s right. I’m glad I’ve held out on upgrading my PowerBook. Is mobile computing salvation at hand? (Sorry about that.)
UPDATE July 28, 2008: I found this rumor report on the D: All Things Digital blog. I have to keep reminding myself: It’s just a rumor. Don’t get too excited. It isn’t working.
Thanks to @CharlieKalech for the tweet tip.
