links for 2009-11-07

"The unemployment rate in the US rose to 10.2% in October, which was its highest rate since April 1983, according to figures from the US Labor Department."

"Some large-scale computer simulations may be overestimating the impact of climate change on biodiversity in some regions, researchers have suggested. They said models that analyse vast areas often failed to take into account local variations, such as topography and microclimates. Local-scale simulations, which did include these factors, often delivered a more optimistic outlook, they added."

"In partnership with the OpenOffice.org community, WarMouse announced the release of the OpenOfficeMouse, the first multi-button application mouse designed for the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. With a revolutionary and patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, the OpenOfficeMouse is intended to provide a faster and more efficient user interface for OpenOffice.org applications such as Writer and Calc than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit."

"The point is that American Airlines is clearly a failing company. They’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter. The experience of traveling on one of their flights is terrible. Their website is terrible. These facts are not unrelated. How does this happen? It happens when a company is run by executives who don’t have taste and aren’t concerned about customer experience."

"As you probably already know, IE doesn’t allow you to create rounded corners without using images or endless hacking. Enter the CurvyCorners javascript project. CurvyCorners allows you to quickly create rounded corners within Internet Explorer."

Twitter icons.

"The best current estimate would be about 15 percent if peat degradation is included. Given the uncertainties involved one can not rely on estimates to the nearest 1 percent."

"Sexuality is considered one of the most powerful tools of marketing and particularly advertising both online and offline. Post-advertising sales response studies have shown it can be very effective for attracting immediate interest, holding that interest, and in the context of that interest, introducing a product that somehow correlates with that interest." The best trend used is great images.

"How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley." I would have to agree.

"The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad." Beyond bad.

"Let me remind everyone that Apple rejected a Someecards application last month partially due to the fact that one of the cards included was mocking Hitler (and more specifically, the film Inglourious Basterds). They flat out rejected it, didn’t require a certain rating for the satire, just rejected it. So when you see Mein Kampf in the store, complete with a swastika as its icon, you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit dumbfounded."

"Google Reader and Twitter are fundamentally different products that serve fundamentally different purposes, regardless of how many different uniforms people try to squeeze Twitter into — but we'll disregard all that for now and focus on why Twitter, in it's current iteration and feature set, simply cannot function as a legitimate newsreading tool. I will do this by providing you with a dumb analogy I came up with while loading some towels in the dryer."

"Even though Apple recommends it, placing preferences in their Settings.app is currently probably not a good idea. The list of applications in Settings.app quickly becomes unmanageable, and people don’t look for settings in there."

"Fruttabuona, which is Italian for Good Fruit, is our first free icons set. When I first started drawing the apple, which originally was intented to be a personal avatar, I knew I wanted to do something glossy but not too shiny, with a heavy outline and a strongly circular set up. But, once I was smitten with my first one icon, I’ve kept going on drawing and here you are Fruttabuona."

"I used to think that John Stuart Mill was right that when ideas were freely exchanged the marketplace of ideas would eventually expose the truth and that people would come to know it for the truth. But then I started learning more about the flaws and weaknesses in human reasoning and perception. We’re extremely vulnerable to this kind of emotional manipulation, and it threatens to overwhelm our rational faculties. Being true is different from being convincing. I no longer trust that the truth will win out. Talk about intellectual cowardice. This entire argument is a blatant appeal to emotion which should be dispelled by stopping to think for 10 seconds. But when you’re irrationally terrified, it’s hard to form rational thoughts. Too often, religion uses bad logical arguments slipped in the ‘emotional’ side door to our beliefs."

"
OK, OK, I'm exaggerating for effect. But if the 2009 cycle is a referendum on either party, isn't more of a referendum on the Republicans? Or perhaps, more precisely, a referendum for Republicans about the meaning of Republicanism?"

"Personally, I’m all about innovation. Allowing an innovator to benefit from his or her innovation through patents is what makes businesses innovate in the first place. At the same time however, gestures are not innovative, nor should they be patentable. Pinch-to-zoom is just common sense. How else would you do it with one motion? If Apple wants to patent something, patent the technology that allows the device to recognize multi touch and react to it, don’t patent the gestures themselves. Gestures should be treated as a language, like sign language for touch devices. We need a common set of gestures to interact with all touch enabled devices. I shouldn’t have to lean a different language just to use a different device."

"When I first learned about this, I was horrified. Mr. X is actually a good UX designer, and his email had me thinking there was hope for American Airlines. The guy clearly cared about his work and about the user experience at the company as a whole. But AA fired Mr. X because he cared. They fired him because he cared enough to reach out to a dissatisfied customer and help clear the company’s name in the best way he could."

"You don't want everyone. You want the right someone. Someone who cares about what you do. Someone who will make a contribution that matters. Someone who will spread the word."

Indeed.

"An automated censoring service has left iTunes embarrassed after it censored "doo wop" to "doo w*p", confusing consumers, including Radio 2 DJ Jeremy Vine. Doo wop was originally performed largely by African-Americans, but was later popularised by Italian-American artists. It's the latter ethnic group that has borne the brunt of the racial slur in question, so in censoring the word, iTunes is being a little over-sensitive."