January 2007 Notes Archive
Thanks to everyone who has given me early feedback on my Google Image Search Redesign. As usual, the best ideas come though collaboration and communication. I’m going to try to work on a new version of Google Image Search, and will let everyone know when I have something new to show.
Humanized, run by Aza Raskin, son of the late HCI pioneer Jef Raskin, recently released a Windows productivity utility called Enso. John Gruber described it pretty well as a “cross between Quicksilver and Mac OS X’s Services menu.” If you have no idea what that means, don’t worry; the video on the Humanized homepage explains the software and its core concepts well.
I’ve been loving How To Be A Good Product Manager, a newish blog by IA veteran Jeff Lash. It’s an excellent resource for product managers and just about anyone else on a product development/design team.
An interesting entry at Creating Passionate Users on how people make sense of stuff.
Beware the iTunes DRM. This summary of the current state of DRM at Apple struck a chord as I had my first run in with Apple’s DRM recently. My finance was making CDs for friends with some songs bought from the iTunes Music Store, and we both gasped when we realized that the DRM would only let us make seven usable CDs. I’ve since stabbed Apple’s DRM in the stomach and removed it from the hundred or so tracks I’ve bought from the store.
Feedback pays off: Snap will be modifying the ubiquitous Preview Anywhere bubbles to include an opt out directly within the preview bubble. A huge thanks to Erik Wingren for making this happen and giving the control back to the users.
Techcrunch notes that Askimet recently caught over 1 million spam comments and Trackbacks. I’ve tried several spam catching tools at unraveled with varying levels of success, but the absolute best combination I’ve found so far is to use Askimet (the version written by Stephan Riha performs much better than the official version from Askimet in my tests) with SpamLookup - the Lookup module only. To disable the URLs and Words modules, go into Plugins from the System Overview in Movable Type and click the disable link next to each plugin. I haven’t received a single spam comment or Trackback since using this solution and is my best recommendation for reducing spam in Movable Type.
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