Friday, August 8, 2008

Well I am glad to say that I was wrong about Sweetcron by Yongfook. I received word by email today that it launches in 20 days, but it's unclear whether this will be a beta or 1.0 release or something else. Nevertheless, how exciting! What makes Sweetcron interesting to me is: it's free (to use); it's PHP (we like PHP for a lot of different reasons); it's a bold, new direction for personal publishing; it's open-source (so if the boat starts to sink we can theoretically patch and keep paddling on our own); it looks pretty (a drop of eye candy doesn't hurt). Yongfook's writing reflects a fair amount of arrogance, which I don't like, but at the same time it can also make me laugh, so that balances things out some. His Sweetcron announcement, for instance, was cheekily intimate. Software developers generally aren't praised for writing words that make people laugh or feel comfortable, so I am intrigued by this uniqueness. He stands out without even trying, I think. Last night I watched 3 video clips from Jesse James Garrett and Mozilla Labs describing a potential future web browsing technology called Aurora. Garrett is undoubtedly one of the most important people designing technologies for the web, but I had a hard time believing that Aurora as presented would be successful. I like the idea of creating futuristic short videos to inspire people to create, but the designs shown don't work for me for a number of reasons. In Aurora, it seems that everything interesting you can do is hidden—there are very few obvious interface elements with which to interact except for abstract data objects. To me, this presents a challenging learning curve because it means there is very little to explain how things work—e.g., what can be done with the data objects. With an interface that is so very different than what we use now, I think it will be very hard for people to transition. Aurora might be successful with younger generations who have not yet started using computers, but older generations might be left behind because it seems that nothing in Aurora makes it easy to learn how to use. The video clips show a radial menu appearing over an object, but he doesn't say how it is invoked (right-click?). And why are the possible actions presented with mystery meat navigation? Also hidden are the drag-and-drop actions. How are people supposed to know what to drag and drop where in order to perform the desired action? How would you build teaching tools into the application or online help to accommodate that? What behavior do you get with a table that doesn't support the chart presentation object? Would I have to drag different presentation objects over a table one by one just to find the one that works with it? The clip with the older couple performing multiple, complex information processing actions was interesting, but I had to laugh on the inside—nearly all the people I know older than me would struggle to perform such complicated actions on a desktop computer, and they probably wouldn't be able to do so on an index-card-sized handheld device as easily as depicted. The video doesn't seem to account for dexterity or visual acuity issues which are common with older users. And where did undo and the Back button go? How do you search your history using a method that isn't linear or iconic? Are "temporary" objects stored forever? If not, what happens to them? If the Z axis represents time, what do X and Y represent? I guess the problem with these videos is that they only show the result rather than the path to the result, and that might be okay if the path to the result really won't be as difficult as it seems. Perhaps Garrett really has thought of everything and these kinds of questions will be answered in future clips. Let's hope so. For example, perhaps in a learning mode, when you move your cursor across the left side of the screen the word History briefly appears and then fades away. But right now it seems that Aurora emphasizes object-based, visual simplicity with few explicit command elements at the expense of a steep learning curve, and I fear it will be too abstract to be successful. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Pointed links to the ASSP calendar to a new location provided by student DS. Gave permission to Kate V to use my UCSF photos for UDAR communications. cdrom build followup with Jon J and Albert H. Lunch with James, Ena, and Joel at NKRB. Followup with student EC about the Rho Chi website. Began adding info about the SHS insurance waiver option to our website. Followup with Sierra A and Barbara S regarding RCO websites and ExpressionEngine. Troubleshot a network problem with Cesar and Scott. Read about AOL's buddyupdates. Began coding the entering students update web page. Updated my Flickr profile to grant UC employees wider permission than before to use my UCSF-related photos for business purposes. Patrick picked me up from work. Read about SimpleLife, ComplexLife, quotably. Dinner at JY and Adrian's: delivery from Red Jade, watched the 2008 Olympic Summer Games Opening Ceremonies on HD TV. I found the show to be stunning in scope, precision, beauty, elegance, and execution; I was very impressed. It was very strange to see Taiwan represented as Chinese Taipei and carrying the Olympic flag. We all got a laugh when the athletes representing Iraq entered the stadium and the camera cut to Bush's reaction. It was a long show, but the ending with the lighting of the giant torch was worth it to me. Show ended at midnight, and we drove home not long afterwards. Thanks, Adrian and JY!