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Once upon a time, I attended a conference about (unclassified) artificial intelligence applications in (defense) logistics. One presentation there trumped any horror flick I’ve ever seen for sheer terror. It dealt with robots designed to enter storage tanks that had a mixture of toxic contaminants, identify their contents, and neutralize them (if possible). What made […]

Among your options:

Turn to one of the Daily WTF’s galleries of interface oddities. If nothing else, you can (probably) give thanks that you’re not the responsible party.
Go marvel at the fine line between boundless optimism and wilfull self-delusion.
Listen to a swell record by a new band with an embarrasing name, like Headlights or Hot Young […]

For my taste, this does not compensate for

the leading edge of intrusive/obnoxious web ad delivery/click tracking tech
(sometimes including spyware)
the general level of inanity
the most obnoxious music player since the glory days of shockwave
funnelling more dollars into Murdoch’s multi-media empire

But Billy Bragg’s efforts to alter MySpace’s TOS (warning: tracking cookies and other nasties) is […]

a. “Don’t call me; I won’t call you.”

On Main Street, near the Medford/Winchester line, my cell phone slipped out of my pocket. I knew what had happened the instant I heard it hit. I screeched to a stop and slewed around. At the instant the truck’s tire hit the phone I was waving my arms […]

One of photo sharing/social networking site Flickr’s interesting features is its ability to create RSS feeds for photos from its members. I have several such feeds to help keep me in touch with distant friends. Today they all suffered an interesting glitch: they delivered me ten seemingly random photographs from a bunch of different folks. […]

I was initially critical of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink for not delivering on its implied promises, but I’ve revised my opinion of it substantially. It’s had a real impact on the way I think about certain types of situations. I still don’t think it provides a foolproof method for applying its principles, but it does offer […]

at least the coffee’s pretty good.

My bank*’s website and the Shaw’s supermarket in our neighborhood have both been undergoing sweeping redesigns.
The common denominator is that both broke designs that weren’t broken (at least from a customer perspective).
The Bank
The bank’s former website was ugly by the standards of the modern web, but its interface was solid — clearly organized, and […]