SensoryMetrics

One thing I have to say I love about YouTube is seeing different versions of my favourite music videos. Here’s a sample of what you can find for ‘The Distance’ by Cake.
Cake version

Movie clip version

Speed Racer version

Yeah, there’s also the Guitar Hero version, the Tricycle version, the stop-motion version and so on…

[tags]Cake,The Distance[/tags]

Popularity: 14%

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User Experience Cake, The Distance

Scientific American reports on a study published in Oncology which claims that blogging is a good way to relieve psychological or physiological stress. The article likens a person’s overwhelming urge to blog with “self-medicating”. I’ve always believed that self-medicating and blogging go together well! I’m surprised someone hasn’t created a “Wordpress Wine”… or “Typepad Tequila”.

Anywho…

Blogging is supposed to make us healthy.

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Popularity: 15%

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Media, User Experience blogging, health, mental-illness, scientific-american

This morning, I’ve been nagged by two questions.
Question 1. Are software developers zombies?
According to Wikipedia,

modern zombies come in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill or infect. Typically, they show signs of physical decomposition such as rotting flesh, discolored eyes, and open wounds, and move with a slow, shambling gait. They are generally incapable of communication, showing no signs of personality or rationality.

ok, ok – just kidding developers!
Question 2. Why would anyone visit Toronto?

The answer to both questions comes from the musical Evil Dead The Musical. Everyone should be a zombie, not just developers. And you should visit Toronto, at least to see this show now playing at the Diesel Playhouse.

At the very least you should try and steal one of these terrific Miz Zombie posters!

via Ad Land

Popularity: 22%

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Bones, Events, Media, Software developers, Evil-dead-the-musical, Les-Miz, Toronto, Zombies

The old adage is that data is never wrong, but its interpretation may be left to “interpretation” is a good analogy to many software systems. Back ends spew out data. Middle layers sort through it. The UI layer displays it and sometimes tries to make sense of it… Trouble is… does the user really know if the final interpretation is accurate based on their interpretation of what is being said???

When you think of User Interface… STOP thinking of ONLY “ease of use”!! Think of “accuracy”, “reliability”, “effectiveness”, “efficiency”…

Consider this pile of garbage as the middle layer being spewed out from a big SQL database… Think of the light and the resulting shadow as the interpretation of that data. Is it accurate??

Inaccurate data is everywhere! Below is a Swiss Air Map. Go back to your High School Geography class… scratch your head.. and identify the cities that are way out of whack. For starters, Ottawa is certainly not located in Quebec… and Portland is not a mountain town!

Wacky map via Strange Maps
Shadow Art via Funtasticus

Popularity: 13%

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Bones, Usability, User Experience bad-UI, strange-maps, Wrong-data

So which would you find to be the better option? Would you rather eliminate the need to eat by replacing your stomach with an artificial one or would rather change the meat you eat to meet the needs of your diet?

Why not both you say?

Option A – Artificial Stomach: Bio-cell food replacement system for the human body

It slices it dices it does the job for you. You no longer have to eat with this upgrade. Just plug in a bio-cell fuel pack and you’re good to go for a few hours. And no messy clean ups!

Option B - Artificial Meat it tastes like meat but it’s actually harvested in a test tube

It tastes like meat but is it really meat? Well yes it’s meat grown in a jar like well.. slabs of meat. Yum, yum, for now I think I’ll stick to toffu. Uh.. option c? How about Icepop cow?

[tags]Artificial-meat,artificial-stomach[/tags]

Popularity: 15%

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User Experience, health Artificial-meat, artificial-stomach

Popularity: 23%

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Events, Innovation, Media, Software, User Experience, Web 3.0, Web Apps Alec-Saunders, democamp-ottawa, Ian-graham

SM friend Marko points us to a terrific software development site: SoftwareCreation.org. Author Andriy Solovey has just posted an essay detailing the principles of good user-centered design. This isn’t something that many (most?) developers pay attention to. Andriy’s mantra is different:

Effective Software Systems are the systems that are easy to understand and operate with human brains.

The key here is the human brain. There’s no Moore’s Law for genetics. Our brains can’t be upgraded just because our computers demand it. If it could, I’d be the first to upgrade to SQL 2008, just to remember all my account passwords!

Andriy lists seven areas that software developers should consider to better align their product to the user’s brain. It’s standard stuff for UI / UX designers, but worth repeating for the C# dudes out there!

1. Knowledge Creation and Retention – parsing, memorization and comprehension of the system ideas
2. System Organization – elements, relations and structure in the system
3. Sustaining Emerging Order – support evolution of the system and gain control over chaos
4. Minimize Noise and Purify – avoid adding unnecessary stuff to the system
5. System Discovery and Learning – making sense of the system
6. Mental Models – our internal explanations for how things are working in the real system
7. Shared Knowledge – ideas exchange, reconciliation of opinions and creation of mutually enhanced knowledge.

Popularity: 12%

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User Experience SoftwareCreation, User-centered-design

This morning, I got an interesting email from a dazzling woman named Melinda Hathaway from GroundUpAdvertising. She wanted to purchase ad space on SensoryMetrics. But…we don’t do ads here. Then I checked out GroundUp… They have four lovely ladies working as advertisers. Troubling thing about those profile pictures though… they’re all stock photos. Using my shiny new TinEye account each profile pic was traced to a dozen different sites from around the world. Those GroundUp gals sure are busy!!

It’s a great comfort to know that the talented staff of GroundUpAdvertising have worked for a Croatian ISP (Power-labels.com); a German dating site (flirt-fever.de); and a Florida-based cosmetics manufacturer (jascoorganics.com); among others!

Thanks to the power of TinEye, we can unmask fake profiles. Hey, I wonder if Melinda Hathaway has a profile on Plenty Of Fish?

Popularity: 25%

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Bones, Business, Media, Pirates, Web 3.0 fake-profiles, groundupadvertising, stock-photo, tineye

Strange things happen when your parents decide to clean out their basement and offer up vintage junk they’d been hoarding! This past weekend, I acquired a Jackson Instruments Model 648A portable dynamic tube tester (circa 1948 – maybe). Now I’m looking for some tubes to test!!

“Tubes? What are tubes?? Yogurt tubes?? Why do they need to be tested?”
-iPod wearing brat

Before transistors and other solid state components, electronic devices were powered by vacuum tubes – sealed glass containers that could amplify, or switch signals by controlling the flow of electrons. The development of this technology began in the late 1800s, and was commercially viable in the early 1900s. This made consumer radios and TVs a reality.

The problem with tubes is that they wore out over time. They were reasonably easy to replace – just pop them out of their sockets. The hard part was figuring out which tube was failing. To the rescue came products like this Jackson. They were used mostly by radio and TV repairmen. Some stores also offered tube testing machines to consumers who could handle their own maintenance.

Using a tube tester though is not trivial though. Every tube is not created equally, so for each model you need to manually calibrate the testing apparatus. Check out the UI below! I’ll let you know how difficult this is once I find me some tubes…

BTW – For a great “vacuum tube fanboy” site, check out Tales From the Tone Lounge!

Popularity: 15%

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Gadgets, Long Tail, Usability Jackson-648A, Tone-Lounge, tube-testers

You’ve probably heard already of Tin Eye. We just got our entry into their beta… beta late than never!!

It’s a Toronto-based startup that’s re-inventing image search>> you upload an image, Tin Eye finds the matches. This is a bonus for web designers and publishers who need to know who else is using that stock photography. Totally cool service. According to Paul Bloore (co-founder and CTO), Tin Eye allows content sellers to track where their content is going. The advantage for web marketers is you can find out where your chosen stock items have been before you buy them… discreet or promiscuous??

Right now Tin Eye only has only half a billion images indexed. They’re looking to pump up the company this year with more indexing and more corporate licenses.

It’s a must-have tool. If I wanted to know where this putrid blue and yellow picture of myself has been – I’d quickly find out that WebGuild.org uses it as my profile pic!

Bravo, Tin Eye!

Popularity: 24%

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Events, Gadgets, Innovation, Media, Pirates, User Experience, Web 3.0, Web Apps idee, tin-eye, webguild