unraveled notes
This is the archive of unraveled notes, a microblog that I ran from 2005 — 2009. It's been succeeded by my Twitter.
A Twitter mission: add value, provide just enough context, only share constructive criticism, don’t be negative, don’t hijack emotions. 6 Apr 09
Announced UX Book Club SF April meeting. We’re discussing Sketching User Experiences, Part I: Design as Dreamcatcher. http://bit.ly/EKfFi 2 Apr 09
#uxbookclub SF has chosen its next book, “Sketching User Experiences” by Bill Buxton. Read more in our Google Group: http://bit.ly/TVcXM. 18 Mar 09
How to get the most out of San Francisco while all of your friends are socializing, networking and partying at #SxSW: http://bit.ly/cRhvF 13 Mar 09
I’m merging my professional site and unraveled over the next few weeks so there might be some weirdness happening. Don’t panic. 1 Mar 09
I’ll be arriving in Vancouver around 1pm for #ixd09. You too? Get in touch and we’ll share a cab. 5 Feb 09
If you sign up for Gmail from a previous Google account, Gmail becomes your primary email with no way to change it. Sorry, but that’s silly. 23 Jan 09
I’m a judge for the online form innovation awards. Have a great form? Submit it! Thanks to Matthew Solle for inviting me: http://bit.ly/HczY 19 Jan 09
I love the Twitter/Feed app EventBox, but I would love it more if I didn’t have to “mark as read” all the time: http://bit.ly/bozy 14 Jan 09
Putting People First asks how you decide where to post your updates and longer entries. I chimed in: http://bit.ly/3jqIBc 4 Jan 09
And my #1 web form peeve of all time is… not telling me that my password can only be letters and numbers! 21 Dec 08
There are 3 types of Macs: those who use command-tab to switch, those who use Expose to switch and those who use the Dock. What about you? 18 Dec 08
Strands is FriendFeed with a better interface and a recommendation engine. Could actually have a future if they get traction. 15 Dec 08
On iPhone you can set the ringtone per contact, but you can’t set the new text message sound per contact, yet I get 20x more SMS than calls. 11 Dec 08
I just hit “100 following” on Twitter and thinking a lot about signal vs. noise. Most recently: twitter is what you make of it. 11 Dec 08
If you’re considering an interaction design grad program, the MFA IxD at New York City’s School of Visual Arts looks fantastic. 10 Dec 08
Maintaining a blog with customized templates on a powerful publishing platform on a personal domain is hard work. 6 Dec 08
I just started a wiki page for the San Francisco UX Book Club. Who’s in? 1 Dec 08
Oh happy day, bitching is fun again! Kvetch is back! 19 Nov 08
Just bought the Zagg InvisibleShield for my shiny new iPhone 3G. I was considering several different cases but I decided that I liked the iPhone’s form factor to much to wrap it in anything. Thanks to @hprice for the recommendation. 21 Jul 08
The three choices for what happens when you double-click the iPhone home button: home screen, phone favorites and iPod. If Apple really wants to drive the iPhone as a multimedia device, isn’t “camera” a natural choice to include here? 20 Jul 08
Quicksend is a nice idea for an iPhone app, allowing you to quickly select a contact and send them a preconfigured short email, but it would be immensely more useful if it worked with SMS. 20 Jul 08
Radar wins a People’s Voice Webby! Thanks to everyone who voted for us. Radar loves you too. 9 May 08
Radar is up for a Webby Award in the Mobile - Social Networking category. Please vote for Radar now to help us win. Many thanks! 21 Apr 08
Your mobile phone is your social network: Tiny Pictures just relaunched, and we’re hiring senior engineers and a front end interface ninja. 21 Feb 08
Six Apart releases Action Streams plugin. Can I get a “hell yeah!”? I’ve wanted something like this forever. 1 Feb 08
Bono responds to Davos Question: “Don’t change your lightbulbs, change your leaders.” 24 Jan 08
Off-topic for unraveled but hugely important to me: Janine recently launched her new production company, Opal Productions, which specializes in the emerging interdisciplinary field of Dance for Screen. I know I’m biased but it’s hard to deny that her work is pretty amazing stuff. If you want to see artistic work at the forefront of dance and film, you should see this. 10 Jan 08
NetNewWire is now free. For those who are already drinking the RSS kool-aid or want to try it out, this is definitely an app to look at. I personally use Google Reader, but I’ve used NetNewsWire in the past and can highly recommend it. 9 Jan 08
I’m going to Interaction Design Association’s first conference: Interaction 08. Are you going too? Want to meet up? Get in touch! 4 Jan 08
unraveled 2007 year in review: moved from London to Zurich to San Francisco, started a new job at Tiny Pictures and got married. I’m happy, healthy and feeling great about 2008. Happy New Year everyone. 3 Jan 08
Wow, I didn’t know that Chip Kidd was such an arrogant ass. Now I do. 29 Nov 07
Facebook, welcome to the real world. We value our privacy. 27 Nov 07
More and more device companies are catching human factors fever. And it’s about time. 12 Oct 07
Google Reader, meet search. Search, meet Google Reader. I could have sworn you would have met earlier, but it doesn’t appear so. 8 Sep 07
Buddy List Zero (also Twittering) is cute but so far sort of lame. Implying that an empty buddy list means less IMs is just stupid. What’s next, Address Book Zero? 25 Aug 07
Tiny Pictures, my employer and the company that makes Radar is looking for a visual designer. Check out the job description on Coroflot. 21 Aug 07
Merlin Mann lists different types of smart mailboxes you can use in addition to a single email archive, which I advocate in my email organization system. 16 Aug 07
A great quote as it relates to interface design: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 13 Aug 07
John Gruber just recommended Elements of Typograhic Style as good typography book. He’s right; it is good. However, if you’re new to typography and want a book that’s in plain English, I recommend the newer Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton. 7 Aug 07
I don’t want to sound vain, but I’m pretty disappointed by the lack of response to my last entry. Is it really okay to randomly censor comments? Does quality of writing matter? Is everyone really that apathetic? 3 Aug 07
John Gruber: “Does it take more time to edit the portions of quoted text included in your reply? Yes. So does spell-checking and proofreading. It also takes time to shower and brush your teeth each day.” A bit obsessive, I think, but good advice none the less. 12 Jul 07
Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work: Years later, they’re finally figuring how much easier we’ve made their lives. 8 Jul 07
Designer//Slash//Model: Are my designs beautiful because I’m beautiful. Or am I beautiful because my designs are beautiful? 13 Jun 07
I just removed a bunch of “connections” from LinkedIn because I didn’t really know them. It just suddenly hit me that there was little point in keeping up with people I didn’t know, I couldn’t vouch for and who couldn’t vouch for me. I tried to take care in making sure I only deleted people I had no real relationship with, but if you do in fact know me and I deleted you by accident, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to reconnect. 31 May 07
What does $456 billion buy? No words. 13 May 07
Previous subscribers of my “unraveled web” feed (my MyWeb links) should know that I’m no longer updating MyWeb and am using del.icio.us for link sharing. Please subscribe to my new unraveled links feed. 6 May 07
Twitterrific by Iconfacory is a nice little app, but there are two things that are more than stupid about it. 1) It’s menubar item doesn’t act like any other menubar item I’ve ever used. In fact, it’s not even a menu, it’s a button. 2) In its default state you have to open the preferences to quit the app. I’m not even going to talk about that one. 6 May 07
Daring Fireball: “Coda, the new app from Panic, is an epic.” Like I said, this is very big news. 24 Apr 07
Panic’s just-released Coda looks phenomenal. As a big fan of Transmit who doesn’t need all the power of TextMate, Coda looks perfect. 24 Apr 07
“Microsoft, a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe, is urging regulators to consider scuttling Google’s plan to buy DoubleClick, an online advertising company.” This is too ironic. See ya later… suckers! 17 Apr 07
Apologies in advance. Why the bloody hell is the “Edit Groups” command in iChat buried under the + sign at the bottom of the window? Add does not equal edit, folks. 6 Apr 07
International Journal of Design “is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields.” Nice, but no RSS… yet. 4 Apr 07
EMI Music launches DRM-free downloads via iTunes Music Store at an additional price. DRM-free music is a right, not a commodity. I applaud Apple’s plea to abolish DRM, but removing DRM at the cost of consumers is not the way to do it. 2 Apr 07
Please tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom and save network neutrality. 2 Apr 07
Dealing with Microsoft Xbox European support is perhaps the worst customer support experience I’ve had. Ever. That is all. 29 Mar 07
Tantek Çelik’s Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design is over a month old but new to me. Basically, the less your interface makes people think, the happier they are. If you didn’t already know that, go read Steve Krug’s book now. 26 Mar 07
TipKalc tip calculator for ipod is simple and brilliant - even more so considering it’s just a bunch of images. 22 Mar 07
I would love to use 37signals latest Highrise as my personal contact/network manager, but there’s no way I’m going to pay $12/month (their cheapest paid plan), to track a measly 250 contacts. I would expect somewhere more around the neighborhood of 1,000. More to the point: I’m not really the networking type and I currently have more than 250 people that I want to track. The internet takes personal networking to a new level, and Highrise disappoints in terms of pricing. 20 Mar 07
I’m loving the simplicity of Nutshell. I already have a place for my notes and todo lists, so it’s not for me, but maybe it works for you? 20 Mar 07
In case you missed it, Zefrank made the world a ducky place over the past year. 20 Mar 07
Following up on Chumby, check out this interface goodness from Core77. Love the Windows jab. 20 Mar 07
Chumby is a compact device that can be a clock, photo view, news reader, calendar and about a million other other things. It hasn’t gotten much press, but it represents something awesome: persistent widgets outside of your computer. 13 Mar 07
Just signed up for a sweet photo/video sharing service called Radar. It’s been called “Flickr for camera phones” but it’s more intimate because your photos are shared with friends only. I only signed up a few hours ago, but I can already see it has great potential. Check it out. P.S. My Radar invite code is “radradar” if you want to friend me. 1 Mar 07
For anyone who viewed my Image Search Redesign Exercise, you might be interested to know that Google reverted to their old interface, showing the image information on the page without a mouseover. 25 Feb 07
Google’s Feedfetcher recently started reporting subscriber numbers and Feedfetcher is now the #2 most used feed reader for unraveled, just behind Bloglines. 17 Feb 07
Okay, I admit it. Like many others I love Google Reader, but there’s one painfully obvious keyboard shortcut that seems to be missing: go to next unread item in the next feed with unread items. Every RSS reader I’ve ever used had this shortcut, but in Google Reader when I get to to the last item in a feed I actually have to navigate to the next feed (via mouse or keyboard) to see the next unread item. Or am I the one missing something that’s painfully obvious? 15 Feb 07
Apple released one of the funniest Get a Mac ads yet on the topic of Vista’s security measures. As one Digg commenter noted, it’s successful “probably because the Mac guy didn’t talk that much.” 6 Feb 07
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. 29 Jan 07
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. 28 Jan 07
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. 24 Jan 07
An interesting entry at Creating Passionate Users on how people make sense of stuff. 23 Jan 07
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. 16 Jan 07
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. 8 Jan 07
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. 5 Jan 07
Excuse all the maintenance updates, but this is the last one. After finding dynamic archives painfully slow, I’ve switched back to my fast loading static archives. Comments are still slow going, but until I’m getting more than one comment every month, I can wait. :) And what makes me happier than fast loading web pages? The capability to run SmartyPants on my archives again. 5 Dec 06
Well that wasn’t really worth it. I wanted commenting to be much faster on my entries so I thought “Hey, I should just make them dynamic in Movable Type. Then commenting will be a flash!” Not so. After putting a good deal of effort into this, I still have to rebuild my entries to see any changes on the site, the archives take several seconds longer to appear (I was aware that they would take longer, but not that much longer) and commenting is still extremely slow. Was there something flawed in my logic with this or is dynamic publishing in Movable Type way overhyped? I may just concede defeat and go back to static archives. At least they loaded blazingly fast. 5 Dec 06
I’m attempting to enable dynamic building for my entry archives in Movable Type, but because of my somewhat complex setup here I’ve had a few hiccups. Movable Type support is on the case and hopefully will help me resolve the issues soon. Until then, entry archives are temporarily down. I’ll try to get things working as soon as possible. Update: Most entry archives should now be accessible, but the archive index is still unavailable. Thanks for your patience. 29 Nov 06
Holy crap. Google is closing Google Answers. I can’t remember the last time Google shut down a product - at least not one they were making money from. Although compared to their ad revenue, it’s probably just a drop in the bucket. 29 Nov 06
I added a project for my Pandora stations. My personal favorites are Club Lounge and Coffee Shop Mix. Excuse the ugly formatting: they’re displayed via JavaScript and I still have to tweak my CSS a bit. 28 Nov 06
Chicago Sun-Times Andy Ihnatko on Microsoft’s Zune: “Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.” Gotta love that quote. 27 Nov 06
The UI for the One Laptop Per Child project has some nice interface ideas. The Human Interface Guidelines for the project are worth a breeze as well. 27 Nov 06
I turned turned off browser.chrome.toolbar_tips in about:config on the advice of a Life Hacker article. Don’t do this. The poorly named configuration option also disables tooltips in every page you view. 24 Nov 06
PriceFight: this is the best comparative shopping interface since Shopping.com relaunched a few years ago. 20 Nov 06
Kottke recently linked MsgFiler (like Mail Act-On but with search) and noted his life “primarily consists of moving email from one folder to another.” As a devout believer in email organization with one folder, I just have to laugh. If Mail needs anything, it’s better searching and tagging features. I haven’t looked closely at MailTags (still haven’t bought a new Mac yet) but it looks like a great feature set. 18 Nov 06
Valleywag redesigns and Nick Denton says the previous design was one of their weakest. I couldn’t disagree more. (The side story regarding Nick Douglas is worth reading up on.) 16 Nov 06
Happy World Usability Day. There are plenty of activities happening around the world to celebrate the event. See what’s happening in your country. 15 Nov 06
I’m experimenting with Twitter. 14 Nov 06
Some of my thoughts on speed after reading a recent Signal vs. Noise post: “Speed is important for Google because it’s the most easily perceived aspect of their service. You may get a hundred inaccurate results, but if Google responds in .12 seconds it seems to work better and in turn, create a better experience. The situation was similar with OS X and previously Windows. Processors became faster and faster until the interfaces responded instantly, making the experience more fluid and enjoyable. Doing something in Windows might take ten more steps than necessary, but hey – it’s fast! Speed is definitely important, but if the search results are poor or if the interface sucks, all speed does is make you frustrated faster.” 14 Nov 06
Gmail: lets you mute a conversation. A brilliant little feature. 13 Nov 06
unraveled notes now have titles if you’re reading via an RSS reader. (Not subscribed to notes?) 13 Nov 06
John Gruber wrote a great review of stikkit, the new organizer, focusing on many of its interaction design issues. More people should write reviews like this of new web applications. Too many sites seem to be much more focused on the hype behind these applications than their design. 10 Nov 06
Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us: “It used to be that to build a product on the web took a lot of engineering time, a lot of hardware and expensive bandwidth. It took serious cash. Now a great deal of what is necessary is passion.” 5 Nov 06
Passion starts with two simple words: F***ing Cool! 4 Nov 06
A favorite quote of my father: “There are three kinds of people in this world. People that make things happen. People that watch things happen. And people that wonder what happened.” 3 Nov 06
I finally caught a glimpse of Scrybe the new web-based organizer. In short, it looks in-friggin-credible - one of the smartest interfaces I’ve seen in a long time. I signed up for a beta invite and can’t wait to try it. 2 Nov 06
Why does the acronym tag no longer display a tooltip with the title attribute in Firefox 2? (For example, HTML and CSS show the question mark as they did in Firefox 1, but no tooltip) This seems like a step in the wrong direction. 1 Nov 06
Mac disc burning just got a lot more fun with Disco. 30 Oct 06
I’m playing around with Google Co-op Custom Search Engine and have put up a page for testing unraveled-only search. It was a cinch to setup but I wish they provided more customization options for the look and feel. For example, a custom CSS file would be awesome. Oh and it doesn’t seem to work in Firefox 2, but I imagine that will be fixed soon. 26 Oct 06
Resolved: Anyone can be a designer—and should be. Word. 23 Oct 06
Hurray! IE 7 obeys the max-width CSS property! (My site is now readable on 30 inch monitors in IE.) Bah! IE 7 still doesn’t obey the :before pseudo-element. (IE users are still missing the # before each note.) 20 Oct 06
I’ve been testing out Firefox 2.0 RC3 and am loving its new features. My favorite new features are definitely the built in session restore and the ability to quickly open a recently closed tab via keyboard shortcut, both of which restore text typed in forms. How long have we been waiting for that? 19 Oct 06
Shaun Inman just made a courageous redesign and explained his thinking behind the work: “Every item on this site (or any site for that matter) can be associated with an identifiable point in time. Each point encapsulates a unique frame of mind. As time passes, that frame of mind and the items associated with it become potentially less relevant and begin to fade. Visibly.” 18 Oct 06
Stephen Turbek states the obvious with nice little article on real wireframes, showing us how to create wireframes that are efficient and understandable by clients. 17 Oct 06
Bob Jacobson of Corante just sent an email to twenty of the world’s leading experience designers to instill a meme about the need for an experience design institute. I completely agree that it’s time for such a place. 10 Sep 06
John Gruber puts his MacBook where his mouth is and openly challenges David Maynor and Jon Ellch to demonstrate their supposed airport vulnerability. 4 Sep 06
Businesses are getting smarter. UK based Tesco is using ethnographic methods to determine business viability in the States. 4 Sep 06
This Place Is… is cool new blog about “people-centered placed design” that I just learned about from one of the authors, Alexa Andrzejewski, an interaction designer at Lextant. 23 Aug 06
YES! I can now find out the title of that song I just heard on the radio: a handy new service from the CEOs of Yes and Jellyvision. 31 Jul 06
SingShot is a new site that’s basically web based karaoke. How can you not love this? 31 Jul 06
Three thoughts: Permanent URLs, especially on blogs, are highly underrated. Redirection is not rocket science. Most web publishers don’t have a real appreciation for the hypertext link. 28 Jul 06
37signals’ Backpack Calendar launches. Now this is the way a web based calendar should work. I love the “busy” animation that replaces interface elements (when move between months for example) and the natural language input. It’s my first web based calendar and it just might be my last. 27 Jul 06
37signals gets investment from Jeff Bezos’s Bezos Expeditions. Congrats to the Signals on this news. I’m expecting great things. 21 Jul 06
Trying to reach me via MSN/Microsoft Messenger? I just changed my MSN username to unraveledweb. Please update your IM clients. 20 Jul 06
I’m so using Dandelife for my sleeping Chronology project. I never thought timelines could be so much fun. 19 Jul 06
I only contributed to this BBC Reboot entry at the last minute, but I’m very proud to say that The Framfab Ecosystem’s BBC Malkovich was the winning BBC Reboot design. Way to go guys! Do we have some innovators or what? 19 Jul 06
Between moving, working, freelance working, writing and family, I haven’t had much time for anything else, this site included. But don’t stray too far faithful readers, there is good stuff in the oven… 28 Jun 06
Okay, I’m officially intrigued. Vox looks quite cool. Now someone send me an invite ;) (My email is on the right.) 21 Jun 06
Ah, the brilliance of plastic wrap: Never do your dishes again. 18 Jun 06
A nice summary of Microsoft’s new media player with Urge. It concludes, “Apple needs — and customers deserve — vigorous competition. But that’s not going to happen if the best Apple’s rivals can manage is a combination of beta software of dubious reliability and a tie-in to a music TV channel that devotes most of its airtime to things besides music.” How true. 22 May 06
Flickr goes Gamma and launches a fantastic new organizr. Does your web photo gallery do that? 16 May 06
Don’t you just love it when you make a feature request and it’s filled in less than two days? A Yojimbo plugin for Quicksilver is now available. Alcor, you rock my Mac. 15 May 06
Snap is the best new search engine I’ve seen in years. Visual search results aren’t anything new, but it sports a great interface for browing and allows you to interact directly with your results before you leave Snap. 15 May 06
Apple and Softbank to develop Cell Phone iPods?. Probably the most credible rumor about this I’ve seen so far. Could it be true? 13 May 06
Yojimbo by Barebones software is my new secret weapon for managing all the little bits of information on my Mac, and the best software I never knew I needed. Basically it stores text, rich text, images, PDFs, serial numbers and passwords along with simple metadata in an extremely simple and great looking interface. After using BBEdit, I didn’t think Barebones had it on them, but wow - impressive. Now all I need is a Quicksilver plugin that allows me to search its database. 13 May 06
Framfab UK wins a Webby! Congrats to everyone on the Framfab PSP project team! 10 May 06
Via a Technorati search I happened across the Movable Type donors page, a long list that includes many bloggers who started out with Movable Type. Are you a Movable Type old-schooler? 9 May 06
Chris Pirillo is insane. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Who reads 8088 feeds? Apparently some guy named Dimitar Vesselinov. 8 May 06
The fuzzy cloud, the fuzzy cloud, it’s everywhere! (I think SvN was the first place I saw it) 5 May 06
Redesign the BBC homepage. BBC Reboot is asking the world to help them discover what BBC 2.0 looks like. I’m currently planning a submission with a few colleagues from work. You should too. 5 May 06
Vote for what you want my next Digital Web article to cover on my main blog. 5 May 06
John Gruber on the Aperture story: “It’s generally easier to fix an app with a great UI suffering from
performance problems than an app with great performance suffering from a terrible UI.” 2 May 06
Five foreign (not American) films I’ve seen in the past year that were great: The Story of the Weeping Camel, The Consequences of Love, The Return, The Descent, A Taste of Cherry. 26 Apr 06
The Worst President in History? “One of America’s leading historians assesses George W. Bush” Link to this now. 20 Apr 06
Lance Arthur celebrates 10 years online. Lance is one of the big reasons I became a web designer and started my own site. Give it up for the glassdog. 14 Apr 06
Mark Pilgrim is blogging again. I love Mark’s work and writing so I’m very happy to see him back on the scene. 14 Apr 06
It’s been quiet here as I’ve been super busy. I’m on holiday next week so I’ll apologize a head of time for the lack of linkage around here. Stuff in the pipe, I promise. 13 Apr 06
Noticed today on my Backpack: “The #1 request from the survey was a calendar. We’re working on that right now! A calendar is coming to Backpack. Stay tuned.” A calendar is indeed what’s missing from Backpack. After that’s added, I can’t imagine needing anything else to organize my life. 7 Apr 06
Hell yeah! “More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac.” Bootcamp Public Beta. Macs do Windows too. 5 Apr 06
If Japan’s Aozora Bank Ltd. is switching to Macs, so can you: “Bill Chute, Aozora’s chief technology officer, says the company decided to go with Macs because of Apple’s latest operating system, Mac OS X, which has made the machines more stable and functional for many business users.” 5 Apr 06
After chaning the way I group my subscribed feeds at least five times, I finally decided to simplify. I now have three groups: Must Read (things I really must read), Everything Else (if there was only time) and Watching (Everything Else that’s specifically related to me). Three groups. Simple. 3 Apr 06
Let there be light. Plaxo apologies for ‘acquaintance spam’ (spaming people you know). I use Plaxo once a year to update my address book and every year I get nasty emails from my acquaintances, telling me how evil they are. I hope they’ll reconsider in light of Plaxo’s apology. 28 Mar 06
Why is the keyboard shortcut for “Mark as Read” in Mail.app Command-Shift-U? U as in Unread? Anyone? 24 Mar 06
I was just checking out Newsgator now that NetNewsWire has Newsgator syncing features. After being a diehard Bloglines user for almost a year now, I was astounded at the poor readability of Newsgator compared to Bloglines. Its feature set isn’t that great either. I’m staying with Bloglines for now. 24 Mar 06
Proteus, my favorite IM software for Mac, is now free. I know that Adium gets a lot of buzz, but I think that Proteus has more Mac in its blood. 21 Mar 06
This Forrester research report on who’s changing the browser market paints a dismal picture of the state of web browser software. IE is still on top and there aren’t any practical reasons for most to switch. 28 Feb 06
Good stuff from Yahoo! Research. ZoneTag: “Instant upload to Flickr with location tags.” 27 Feb 06
Pillow Fight: Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 6:00 PM, Trafalgar Square. 17 Feb 06
Woo! Yahoo! releases a Design Pattern Library. Thanks to Luke Wroblewski and crew for their work with this. 16 Feb 06
Is a blog without comments a blog? I can’t believe we’re still discussing this kind of stuff. 8 Feb 06
Remember secret note paper squares? I do. And now we can all pretend we’re in 6th grade and make them again. 8 Feb 06
There’s a cool snowboard design competition going on if you’ve got the skillz. 8 Feb 06
Hey, someone invite me to try coComment, the new service that tracks your conversations across the blogosphere. Thanks! 7 Feb 06
Framfab has a new website. Now everyone will know how hip and innovative we are! I’m saying that with a completely straight face. 2 Feb 06
I just received a beta invite for Magnolia, which seems to be delicious for everyone else. It’s gorgeous and has great features, but as an avid Yahoo! My Web user, I’ll probably leave it at that. 1 Feb 06
Is email the primary determinant of which mobile service people choose?: “If you use Yahoo Mail then you may find that Yahoo!Go is the service for you. I think I can say with 100 percent confidence that I would have preferred Yahoo!Go if I was still using Yahoo Mail.” 31 Jan 06
I just fixed an IE bug that has been lingering around here behind my back for a while. I just applied a CSS hack as a fix so everything should look much better now. Let me know if you encounter any problems. Thanks. 30 Jan 06
Anyone want a job at UK’s largest web design company? Framfab is very busy and hiring in just about every area. Just me know if you want a referral. 30 Jan 06
Paul English created a cheat sheet that tell you the steps to follow to find a human on many automated phone systems. 26 Jan 06
Internet Freedom Under Fire: Act Now: “The CEOs of the largest cable and telephone companies are hatching a scheme that would give them control over what content you can view and what services you can use on the Internet.” 25 Jan 06
Here’s an excellent and concise guide to writing for the web. 25 Jan 06
Google News goes out of beta, looks surprisingly similar to how it looked 3 years ago and offers only a small handful of improvements. Makes you wonder what the hell “beta” means these days. Does it still take the traditional meaning of “it has bugs that we’re still working out” or the new Google beta definition: “not 1.0”? 24 Jan 06
Have I mentioned how amazing tech.memeorandum is? Well, it’s amazing. I have no idea how Gabe Rivera rounds up the breaking news like he does, but somehow he manages it. A must subscribe. 24 Jan 06
Ever wonder how unraveled began? You might be surprised to learn that my original vision was for unraveled to host net artists. 21 Jan 06
I’ve been my setting start page to about:blank as long as I can remember. I get distracted enough when I don’t want to be; I can’t imagine having to deal with a distraction every time I open my browser. 16 Jan 06
Here’s a brilliant and creepy Audi RS4 commercial that I love. 15 Jan 06
You would think that after 12 years of education and 3 degrees, I would be able to use “their” and “they’re” correctly… Nope. Anyone know of a method that will force me to doublecheck myself when I’m using these homonyms? 13 Jan 06
Now this is funny. I payed for something using PayPal by “eCheque” (which pulls money from my main bank account) and it takes ten days to clear. Isn’t the idea of electronic communication not having to wait ten days just to transfer money? Amazing. Next time, I’ll just make sure I have money in my PayPal account. 12 Jan 06
The London office of Framfab (where I work) needs project managers. If anyone knows any London-based project managers looking for work, please let me know. Thanks. 12 Jan 06
So I can use the Internet without breaking the law, I’m known on the internet as Joshua Kaufman and sometimes the alias unraveledweb, and I have the intent to annoy. 11 Jan 06
Music downloading creates listener apathy. I somewhat agree with this article as I’ve noticed this attitude in myself as I download more and more music. But it also seems like a natural side product of living in a world that allows this sort of behavior. 11 Jan 06
UXmatters just published a great article on UXnet’s Local Ambassadors initiative. If you’ve heard of UXnet and are still not sure what we’re about, you’ll want to read this. 10 Jan 06
Just to remind myself (and others) again after losing data for not remembering this: in the Finder, when you replace one folder with another, the old folder is deleted. Damn nonsensical Windows behavior! 8 Jan 06
Here’s a semi-dated but brilliant drawing from the always clever Sam Brown. 7 Jan 06
E-Paper? Ha! I think I heard about the “paper-thin electronic-display technology so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging” five years ago and it still hasn’t seen the light of day. 16 Dec 05
Can anyone suggest a weblog that uses tags effectively? I’m implementing tagging on unraveled for narrow context and looking for ideas. Thanks. 15 Dec 05
Starbucks: Using Confrontational Marketing to Build Brand Awareness in a Saturated Market. Innovative marketing from the evil genius that is Starbucks. 8 Dec 05
John Maeda on the subtlety of simplicity: “…the intellectual approach to simplicity is to reduce details, whereas the intuitive approach to simplicity is to add subtlety. The beauty of subtlety is that it is usually weightless, hard-to-detect, and, by most accounts, invisible. In other words, it is the style of something gained from nothing. Thus we arrive at the eleventh law of simplicity: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, while adding the meaningful.” 28 Nov 05
Ha! Sippey nails it with the Web 2.0 Checklist. Nice one Michael. 24 Nov 05
Movable Type’s default search never met my needs very well, especially since I created unraveled notes and the search results stopped displaying a result link. So, no more onsite search until someone releases a decent alternative. John Gruber, I’m looking at you with your slick implementation of the Yahoo! search API on Daring Fireball. 22 Nov 05
Yikes. Isn’t it just like me to promote one of my weblogs and then not post anything to the promoted weblog for almost a month? I’ve got to change that. Perhaps the 1000+ unread items in my newsreader will give a hand? 21 Nov 05
Hey today is No Music Day. I had no idea until just now. 21 Nov 05
Mobile Monday comes to London. The first event will by 7 November at Vodafone! Response to this has been massive so if you want to attend, sign up to the mailing list (in the aforementioned Yahoo! Group) and RSVP pronto! Looking forward to seeing everyone there. 27 Oct 05
Janine’s award winning short film, Torque, is now available to view online at Hurluberlu Films. If you have six minutes and a broadband connection, please have a look! 26 Oct 05
unraveled furl, my Furl feed, is no longer active. It’s been replaced by unraveled web, a feed of my My Web 2.0 archive. Please update your news readers. 26 Oct 05
Praise for simple tools that do one thing really well: BURL is like TinyURL, in that it shortens long URLs but it also leaves some context so the recipient of your slick new URL knows what the hell you’re pointing them at. Nice work Andrew Ferguson! 26 Oct 05
Any Pandora users out there? If yes, look up my shared stations using . I currently have three which I’m constantly refining: Work Lounge, Club Box and Folktronica. 24 Oct 05
Has anyone noticed that Google Desktop automatically changes the default search in Firefox from whatever it’s set on to Google? I expect more than that from Google. And since I recently changed my default search to Yahoo!, it’s reason enough for me to remove Google from the search list in Firefox. 19 Oct 05
I just tried Goowy Mail, a Flash based email client and was more than unimpressed. Slow and non-innovative, it features a lame copy of the OSX Dock and has very little new ideas to offer email management. 15 Oct 05
Metaphorical.net is a fine collection of “interactive studies and strange thoughts by William Ngan.” Enjoy. 12 Oct 05
I’ve been a happy user of NetNewsWire lite for a long time. I never went to NetNewsWire because I couldn’t justify benefits for the money. That was until I realized that it syncs with Bloglines, the slick browser based newsreader. Now I can read at home and at work and never worry about what I’ve already read. 10 Oct 05
Remember that sweet UI that was featured in Minority Report? Well someone has gone and done something similar with an OSX app. Check out this demo of TactaDraw used with the TactaPad, “The Tactile, Immersive, Two-Handed Input Device.” 10 Oct 05
ROLLYO is the best new thing I’ve seen in a long time (or maybe I’ve been asleep lately, which wouldn’t be too surprising) powered by Web 2.0 and Yahoo! Search. 29 Sep 05
A quick tip: when you continually can’t manage to get things done over several weeks or months, take a step back and create a weekly time table. It puts everything into perspective. Now it’s a matter of sticking to it. 25 Sep 05
OK/Cancel Art for Red Cross. 16 Sep 05
GUIdebook interview John Gruber. Good questions and answers on the Mac OS X interface. 2 Sep 05
I’m back from holiday but busy catching up on life. Regular posting in unraveled notes should resume shortly. 1 Sep 05
fac.etio.us —- faceted navigation of del.icio.us feeds. Neat but in desperate need of a visual designer. 25 Jul 05
Fold n’ Drop is a UI technique for Combining Crossing-Based and Paper-Based Interaction Paradigms for Dragging and Dropping Between Overlapping Windows (PDF). I think the use of paper-based interaction paradigms here is somewhat antiquated, but gestural interaction ideas they use are great. 18 Jul 05
You can always count on American tourists for a good laugh. I was walking through Euston Station today when a fight broke out just outside the station. Two American women were walking past speaking with southern American accents. The first said, “It’s just like America!” The second said, “Yeah ‘cept we don’ fight with accents.” 16 Jul 05
dontclick.it is a fun, informative and interactive play on mouse clicks vs. gestures. 9 Jul 05
Andrew Otwell presents Design Engaged 2005. I’m already registered and really looking forward to meeting the rest of the attendees. 4 Jul 05
Movable Type 3.2 is driven by user-centered design. It’s about friggin’ time. 1 Jul 05
The European IA Summit now has an official site! 30 Jun 05
Steve Jobs talk to Jake Tapper about iTunes’s new podcasting features (iTunes link) on ABC News Shuffle. 29 Jun 05
Behaviour by Ben Nolan and Simon Willison is the missing link for your ajax apps. It uses CSS selectors to apply JavaScript behaviours. Yes, really. 27 Jun 05
Hey fellow IAs: join IA Discuss over at Flickr and share screenshots of good/bad/ugly IA/IxD! 23 Jun 05
How about a bit of mid-week fun with DOGJUDO? A Flash designer I work with says it’s a “perfect blend of script writing, promotion and flash animation.” I’ll let you be the judge of that. 22 Jun 05
The IA Summit comes to Europe. “The first European Information Architecture (IA) Summit’s focus is on building the IA community in Europe.” 20 Jun 05
Following up on my ‘gender’ mini rant: The Online Etymology Dictionary states “As sex took on erotic qualities in 20c., gender came to be used for “sex of a human being,” often in feminist writing with reference to social attributes as much as biological qualities; this sense first attested 1963.” So there’s some evidence that ‘gender’ didn’t always refer to ‘sex,’ but my arguement of fact is actually an arguement of preference. 17 Jun 05
My pet peeve of the day: people who confuse ‘sex’ with ‘gender,’ or people who know the difference and just don’t like seeing the word ‘sex’ in print. The difference for the unaware: sex refers to the classification as male or female with respect to reproductive organs; gender refers to sexual identity, e.g. gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. 16 Jun 05
Brad Choate’s tags plugin for Movable Type turns keywords into tags and publishes them as category archives. I have a roadmap for integrating tags into unraveled but it will take some time as I’m currently using keywords for URL slugs. 13 Jun 05
Mesa Dynamics Amnesty allows Dashboard widgets to live on your desktop a la Konfabulator. Probably the most useful add-on to Tiger yet. 12 Jun 05
My latest IA column, Getting IA Done, Part I, was published on Digital Web Magazine last week. I’m looking for killer IA productivity tips for part II, so if you have any ideas, please email me at ! Thanks. 10 Jun 05
Suddenly, London is Hot Again. Business 2.0 reports on the wireless boom that I’m feeling every day here in London: “The city’s accelerated rollout of 3G services and its expanded Wi-Fi footprint (approximately 1200 hotspots) combined with the proliferation of roaming agreements between various hotspot service providers allow US-based businesses access to an emerging wireless ecosystem.” 7 Jun 05
John Gruber on the Apple-Intel rumors: “The only way this makes any sense is that there’s something else. Something big. Not that CNet and the Journal have the story wrong, but that they only have part of the story —- and the part they don’t have is what’s going to knock our socks off.” 5 Jun 05
I love the idea of just in time meeting attendance but I’m a bit unsure about how the rest of my company would handle me appearing to meetings and disappearing from meetings at my own free will. 4 Jun 05
Thanks to Mark Hurst’s advice I’ve decided to redesign my homepage. Gray is the new black, small is the new big and non-underlined is the new underlined. 26 May 05
Following up on my Windows task switching entry, I’ve been watching the development of TaskSwitchXP very closely as it looks like the best bet for emulating Mac application/instance switching. The developer seems to understand my desire for more Mac-like Windows switching and is willing to accommodate. Stay tuned for updates. 22 May 05
I’m not a much of a gamer, but the Killzone 2 gameplay footage just released at E3 is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. If this is a sign of things to come for the PS3 then this once retired gamer is about to come out of retirement. 17 May 05
Happy 9th to Digital Web Magazine! I’m very proud to be part of such a great zine. 17 May 05
Make Your PC Work (Not Look) More Like a Mac. That about says it all. Good suggestions here for the Windows-oppressed. 17 May 05
Omnipelagos.com finds the shortest path between any two things. Reminds me of the now defunct Dirk. 11 May 05
Dive Into Greasemonkey. Mark Pilgrim shows us how to teach “an old web new tricks.” Great stuff. 11 May 05
Backpack goes Mobile. Now that is useful. 11 May 05
Framfab (where I work) aquires Oyster. We’re now the biggest full service interactive business in the UK. 10 May 05
Great thoughts on Dashboard and ambient information from Andrew Otwell. 8 May 05
Backpack, Backpack, Backpack! The next big thing from 37signals is launching today! 3 May 05
PC dealer sues Apple over Tiger. Apple has made the same type of big crybaby moves in the past, but never at such a pivital time. Shame on Tiger Direct for such a pathetic move. 29 Apr 05
After signing up for Google Search History, I was skeptical that I would ever use it. (Why would I want to know what I search for last week?) The light just came on, and I realized it’s not for knowing what you searched for; it’s for knowing what you found. 28 Apr 05
Google Maps UK. Finally a usable alternative to Streetmap and Multimap. 22 Apr 05
My friend Kevin Chang gave me a free Flickr Pro account yesterday, which I intend to use around here very soon. In the meantime, I’m busy trying to figure out who I should add as contacts in Fickr. I’ve quickly learned that just because I enjoy someone’s blog does not mean I’ll enjoy their photos. 21 Apr 05
Peter Merholz shows us how to empower search through genres. I would love to see this on mainstream seach engines. 19 Apr 05
Upgrading to Mac OS 10.3.9 caused my Safari to crash on launch. The problem seemed to be caused by Safari’s ability to handle SIMBL plugins. MacFixIt describes the bug and fix. 17 Apr 05
Why I think Mac task switching is superior to Windows task switching and other interesting reader comments. 12 Apr 05
The Finder deletes the old folder when you replace one folder with another? As a switcher, I’m not sure if consciously knew this, but I may have unconsciously understood it because I don’t recall losing files for this reason. However, all I can think about is how many files I’ve lost without knowing. 7 Apr 05
Qute is a very elegant theme for Firefox that I’ve been enjoying. 7 Apr 05
I recently started using Miranda as my multi-protocol messenger. It has great features but its usability is generally poor. I made a provocative post in the Miranda forums, trying to make a case for usability. A few negative developer replies later and the post was closed, which was quite frustrating. It’s a shame that after all this time and energy, folks are still outright rejecting just the idea of usability. 7 Apr 05
First impressions of the Yahoo! 360 beta: pretty, nice integration, very teen bop. It’s like LiveJournal on steroids. 30 Mar 05
It had gotten to a point where I’d found simply too many cool features in Firefox to continue using Safari. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Safari, but Firefox has a simply awesome developer community that continues to create really great plugins. It’s just too bad that Firefox runs about half as fast as Safari on my iBook G3/800. I used Firefox for only a few days before I couldn’t take it anymore and switched back. I feel at home again. 27 Mar 05
How Yahoo Got Its Mojo Back. It’s nice to see the old man back in the action. 27 Mar 05
Holy form design Batman! Snaptax features one of the sweetest web based forms I’ve used in a while. (The Snaptax homepage appears not to work in Safari, so Safari users should go directly to the form.) 26 Mar 05
Trying to decide between the contact managers Plaxo and Bebo? This should make the decision easier: Bebo annoyingly requires you to register in order to keep your details current; Plaxo encourages you to register but doesn’t require it. I don’t want to register with three different services to update everyone’s address book: Plaxo understands this. 22 Mar 05
Mark Taw relates a hilarious story of tandem writing. 20 Mar 05
Learning about Google X being removed less than 24 hours after it was launched makes Google’s pathetic 404 page even more painful. The stockholders should be proud. 19 Mar 05
I had heard about Greasemonkey, but I didn’t take the time to learn what it was. This morning, I installed Mark Pilgrim’s Butler and Julien Couvreur’s BoingBoing Butler, which are user scripts that Greasemonkey uses to dynamically change the content of a page. Forget user styles, Greasemonkey makes the web a whole new ball game. 17 Mar 05
If there’s any proof that Google is evil, it’s this. Stay tuned for more on this. 16 Mar 05
Interface folks who are in the know have OS X Dock magnification turned off for very good reasons. The last thing we need is it replicated on the Web. 16 Mar 05
O’Reilly Network published great interview with Jason Fried on project management, what it takes to build a great web application, Ruby on Rails and the power of marketing through blogs. My favorite quote: “The hard part is not adding a feature. The hard part is deciding which features really make sense and then nailing them with the perfect interface, the perfect customer experience.” 15 Mar 05
As suggested by Tantek Çelik, I’m now using the rel=”license” attribute when I link to my Creative Commons license. 15 Mar 05
Fun fact of the day from Answers.com: OK was used in March 1839 as an abbreviation for all correct, the joke being that neither the O nor the K was correct. 9 Mar 05
AllofMP3.com escapes criminal lawsuit because Russian law only applies to physical goods. I love it when technology moves faster than the speed of law. 7 Mar 05
Hotel Rwanda belongs in the required viewing category alongside American History X, Schindler’s List and Boyz n the Hood. 6 Mar 05
Does anyone else find it funny that Anil Dash praises John Gruber’s new plugin
without saying a word about how right John is or what Six Apart is going to do about it? 2 Mar 05
Jef Raskin, Macintosh creator and interface innovator, dies at 61. 28 Feb 05
All this discussion about ajax is great, but now I think it’s time to start identifying needs for it. My top request right now is my Amazon.co.uk DVD rental queue. Queue UI is very tricky because you have the ability to remove and reorder items on the same screen, but to see your changes you have to click “Save Changes.” The user interaction would be much smoother if a technology like ajax was employed. I know that Amazon is using ajax for ratings and recommendations so I’m hoping an ajax DVD queue isn’t too far down the road. 27 Feb 05
If you’re wondering how I’m displaying both unraveled and unraveled notes weblogs on the homepage inline with each other, all I’ll say right now is that it was much easier than I expected thanks to two great Movable Type plugins called MultiBlog and Compare. I may document it at some point, but if you have any questions in the meantime, don’t hesitate to ask. 26 Feb 05
Ask Google to turn off Autolinks in their new toolbar. Here’s the background from Zeldman. 26 Feb 05
Google Maps now works in Safari. Sweet. 26 Feb 05
Anti-abortion ideologues beware: I’m promoting objective, factual information on Roe v. Wade and abortion. You can too. Join me in Bombing for Choice. 26 Feb 05
SFGate article about Justin Hall’s web burnout. This is a nice article about what can happen when you spill your heart to the web. I can’t say this won’t ever happen to me, but I can say that I’m not going to stop unraveled just because I’m burnt out. 22 Feb 05
The Da Vinci Code cast. You’ve got to be kidding me. 22 Feb 05
Jeffrey Veen pointed us to Aaron Swartz’ mail archiving with the click of a shortcut script which absolutely rocks. I’ve wanted something like this forever. It’s always nice to be surprised by the capabilities of software that I’ve been using for years. 19 Feb 05
Paul Hammond: “And you should make a backup of your website.” 15 Feb 05
Just when you thought there was a day for everything: World Usability Day: 3 November 2005. 14 Feb 05
I just called the customer service line for TicketWeb and was told that “All customer service representatives are currently assisting other customers. If my call is urgent, I should call back during regular business hours. *click*” I fail to see the service in a recorded voice telling me this. I’ve only encountered this sort of thing once before when I called the UK Immigration and Nationality Directorate. The best approach I’ve seen to handling customer service line queues was with another British company, BT. No “Please hold for the next available representative.” No “All representatives are busy now. Please call back later.” Instead, an automated voice told me the number I was calling them from and asked if I would like to be called back when the next representative was available, allowing me to easily do other things while waiting for a rep. All customer service lines should do this. 12 Feb 05
Google just launched Google Maps, with draggable, interactive maps and enough cool features to make you say woah again and again. 9 Feb 05
I love this Tom Peter’s quote: “Do cool shit. Every damn day. Or die trying.” If that doesn’t make you say “Yes!” out loud, then take a step back, look at your work or role, and figure out what it will take to make you say this. 9 Feb 05
FeedBurner’s browser-friendly page is now subscriber-friendly. This is a valuable new feature which will greatly simplify my XML Feeds page. 8 Feb 05
I had a couple onslaughts of TrackBack spam in the past week. I’ve retaliated by adding several URL patterns to MTBlacklist and a modified version of Brad Choate’s DSBL plugin, which has brought TrackBack spam to a screeching halt. I’ll post another update in a week or so. 6 Feb 05
Search your Furl archive bookmarklet: Search Furl Archive. Warning: it has only been tested in Safari. 6 Feb 05
Welcome to unraveled notes. Here I’ll post short and sweet thoughts, links and ideas. (This entry is actually being posted on 10 February. The only real reason it’s here is so that the archive listing for unraveled notes is balanced. But that’s just between you and me, okay?) 31 Jan 05