I'm politically active in Sweden's green liberal party. Here's the new site for Södermalmscentern which is our local action group. And yes I produce it.

B

This man. In this video you get the Barack Obama that people seem to like. He hasn't been that good in the debates but see this and you'll see a side of him that is very convincing. I believe this man will win if he just meets enough people face to face. When you see him like this you know he'd do a good job as president.

Labels: barack obama video convincing

B

Sharing is friendship

B

Why speech is a bit problematic as user interface

"other modalities, most notably direct manipulation, had less cogntive load, lower latencies, caused less cognitive dissonance, and incited less social friction (eg there is a reason people text message on their phones) compared to speech"

B

What I'd like google.com to be like

Here's a mockup showing what I'd like google.com to be like (click on the image). If you write your login name and press "Sign in" you get an alert box asking for your password...and if you search for "ride like the wind" and press "Images" you skip the Images search page and get the sweet results straight away.
The idea here is to make the page faster to use by making the buttons bigger, the branding less intrusive and by skipping unnecessary start pages. And yes I know Google's branding doesn't intrude much but they started this first-and-foremost-we-care-about-the-user-experience thing so I'm just doing what they've been doing all along.

B

Coldplay sucks

and here's the confirmation.

B

Jason Kottke writes about a future OS, think web-based with local cache. It's an interesting read but he makes the classic mistake of focusing on the functionality instead of the data. Networks are governed by data, not functionality. He writes about potential functionality; Gmail on your desktop, iTunes on the web, Flickr on your desktop and Word on the web, but doesn't mention the world where documents, photos, videos, spreadsheets and bookmarks are publicly available and enhanced by the network. That's where tomorrow's browser and tomorrow's OS will be.

B

There is a book about Cascading Style Sheets that I find helpful and unique. It is Dan Cederholm's Web Standards Solutions and the reason it is so helpful is that it focuses on what markup to use as much as on how to get your style sheets right. Learning to use style sheets is a bit tricky and getting the markup right is one part of the trick. So I highly recommend this book if you're just getting into style sheets or if you've tried before without success.

B

Here's the best explanation of "API" I've seen. It explains a complex concept in a way that many regular people (eh...well yunno people people, not programmer people) should be able to understand. Well done John Maeda.

B

There are discussions about APIs for web development and how to present your services to developers. Marc has some good points but misses something crucial, something the web should have taught him long ago. The best developers tools are the same tools everyday users use for... well usage.
The web is an excellent development platform because users and developers share the same data, structured the same way. It's not good because of the structural quality, html certainly isn't well structured, but because it attracts many developers, many people who document the medium, many people who find bugs and many end users who will go elsewhere if your service sucks.

B

TV makes me smarter and here's the proof.

B

Here's a question for you. What services and products will companies be able to sell when information is openly available to everyone, when the web is one big public domain?

B

Open source search. Good idea and my guess is it will be very relevant but not yet. It will be relevant when more information is free and open. Then open source web services will rule the earth.

B

I wrote a comment at Slashdot today:

"It would be more Google if they used Firefox to create a browser service instead of a browser software. After all, XUL lets you build the user interface as if it was a web page. That means Google could build a browser service that allows the user to set browser preferences as if they were search preferences [google.com] or Gmail preferences. Firefox would then render the browser interface according to your personal preferences. If you like your back button to be 500x500 pixels large that's just a setting. If you want a blue background for your browser menus that's just another setting. If you want a Gmail interface that's even richer than what's currently available...well then Firefox is the answer and Google probably don't have to alter the code that much since Gmail and XUL both use Javascript.
A browser service would also make more business sense since it gives people incentive to switch browser to Firefox, taking control away from Microsoft, without tying Google's future options in how to serve users."
Update: No one has bothered to grade the post or even read it. I mean read it, it's so full of insight and perspective. Anyone who reads it becomes enlightened, Vishnu-Ganesha-enlightened yunno.

B

Some decent thoughts on why MS won't run the consumer electronics world the way they have computer desktops. All comments except that one are wrong on what competition MS are fighting. It's networks, not Apple, Real or Linux...NETWORKS. And that's an unbeatable market force:-)

B

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

B

For reference, all versions of Mozilla in a downloadable archive:-)

B

Hey there, check out my new blog pet. Nice no?

B

In november John Kerry will be elected president of USA. Here is one of many reasons.

B

This is written from Blogger's rich text editor. Pretty cool. Let's try a link. Some colour. Fonts and sizes.

B

This is new. I have a Google Account!! This is a screenshot from my browser:

B

This intrigues me!. If someone knows which version of MSN Search that's up now please send a message. I don't think it's the legendary version nr 3 but this is starting to look like a real competitor to Google. I've written before that people will choose whatever search service has the best search results, it's no more complex than that. Watching MS improve in this area is very interesting. I hope of course that Google is up for it and will improve their algorithms at a faster pace but we are watching the beginning of the Algorithm Wars.

B

Now here's what I call REST improvement. A9, the Amazon search service, has simplified the URL-line API. Searching for "kabanossen" results in this:

http://a9.com/kabanossen

That's it, no questionmarks, no .php, no search=, no query etcetera etcetera. The domain and the search term. Searching for "kabanossen tips":

http://a9.com/kabanossen%20tips

%20 being the ascii, hexa... eh some standard way of writing space bar. Amazon, oh Amazon. To be continued...

B

What happened to the Plog? I can't find mine any longer and I can't find preferences to show it either. I haven't really had time to try it out much but as an avid fan of all Amazon interface technology I'd sure like to give it a go now. Hello..?

B

Having downloaded the latest version of Firefox two feature requests come to mind.

1. A keyboard shortcut for moving from one tab to another (like the shortcut I use in Safari)
2. Keyboard shortcuts for hiding and displaying toolbars and navigation menus

Tried to find a place to submit those as feature requests but couldn't find one. Any suggestions are welcome and no I'm not going to implement it on my own. You wiseass you.

B