One of Internet trends that has started to irritate people over the last few years is dropping vowels from company names – Flickr, Tumblr, Pluggd, Talkr, Anothr. As diehard members of the spelling Nazis, we decided to see what had become of the correctly spelled domains, which are still racking up pageviews from visitors who can actually spell.
Archive for usability
iPhone & LG KE850: separated at birth?
Two sparsely-buttoned large, touchscreen phones: the Apple iPhone, and the LG KE850 (which already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007). Separated at birth, or possible lawsuit number two for Apple? You decide.
As for me… I prefer Nokia!
Edward Tufte Clarifies Quantitative Information
When information needs to be communicated, Edward Tufte demands both truth and beauty. Article by Fran Smith for Stanford Magazine.
Some quotes:
“Tufte has demonstrated how confusing medical charts can lead to mistakes in treatment and how corporate reports that highlight years of rising revenue without adjusting for inflation can mislead investors. He has shown how a lawyer used a simple spreadsheet to defend mobster John Gotti and how 19th-century physician John Snow used detailed maps of London to pinpoint the cause of a cholera outbreak. “
“After an encounter with Tufte’s ideas, people can never again look at a chart, a map, a scientific table or a PowerPoint presentation quite the same way. In his romps through statistics, art, history, science, policy and anything else that grabs his interest, Tufte tackles a fundamental problem: how to accurately render complex, interrelated information on a two-dimensional paper surface or computer screen—how to, as he puts it, “escape flatland.’’ Tufte explains how to do it well and demonstrates the many, many ways it’s done badly.”
