Archive for February, 2008

Bulk discount

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I’ve not yet stopped buying CDs because I like having the physical artefacts. Mostly because I have a pretty decent hi-fi setup that trumps any MP3 in quality but, candidly, also thanks to mild music snobbery: the narcissistic chance that some visitor to my home will examine my collection and be suitably impressed. It does happen.

But my modest (615 CD, according to iTunes) collection pales into insignificance compared to this astonishing 3,000,000-strong record collection being sold on eBay. Reserve price: $3 million. Beyond my means – until, that is, eBay generously decided to offer $10 cashback.

Posted in links, music | 2 Comments »

Most (un)wanted songs

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Two artists polled the musical tastes of the American public, then composed two songs containing the most widely-loved and -hated musical components. The Most Wanted Song is short, bland and unpleasantly reminiscent of Luther Vandross. The Most Unwanted Song is over twenty minutes long, and features tubas, rapping opera singers, accordians, and (hideously) a chorus of kids screeching Walmart jingles.

Have a listen and see which you prefer. [From Design Observer]

Posted in music, psychology | No Comments »

February links

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Lasagna Cat – live action versions of Garfield strips, with ridiculous (Dadaist?) musical homages. I found it horribly funny, but then I do like nonsensical crap.
Cuts in movies, and their impact on memory
Joshua Porter on Why I’m excited about the Google Social Graph API (although, like Tom Morris, I loathe the term)
Here’s Looking At You – judging books by their covers
List of American words not widely used in the UK
GUI Magnets – Visio UI stencils meet fridge magnets

Plus, I recommend someecards.com for heart-warming St. V’s D schmaltz:

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Full coverage

Monday, February 4th, 2008

As I’m struggling with my WiFi yet again (I’m on the point of conceding that my MacBook has dodgy wiring – off to Regents Street I go…), I was interested by this article on the pointlessness of mobile signal strength bars.

We, the public, have no understanding of communication technology. We simply trust the designer to translate a complicated number into an easy scale; but even then, the scale is meaningless in isolation. We only know from experience that zero bars means “Don’t bother”, two means “Dodgy” and five means “Perfect”.

The New Scientist blog goes on to comment that it would be more useful to turn this into something that actually makes sense to the user. Granted, labels like “No reception”, “Poor quality”, “OK” would indeed be far more useful. The problem is, no network operator would permit it. Not only would they not be keen on a device that cheerily bleats out negative messaging about the carrier network, but it is already alleged that networks manipulate battery strength indicators – reception standards would probably be equally ’subjective’. [Research apparently shows that customers' use of their phones dips when their battery falls below 50%. The solution? Force the manufacturers to skew the indicator, of course!]

Posted in user experience | No Comments »

Fail

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Maybe a bit unfair to highlight this example of not fully thinking things through; nice concept, shame about the execution. Work through it, you’ll see what I mean.