Here is another interesting article from InformationWeek relating to healthcare. Blue Cross of Northeastern PA plans to provide their subscribers with health records on their cell phones. Check out the article here.

Peace

Keith

This week’s Particularly Useful comes to you from sunny California, where we spent a long weekend soaking up the sun, riding our bikes up canyon passes for gorgeous views, pursuing the perfect fish taco, and attempting to win back bragging rights to the Settlers of Catan trophy.

While cruising around on two wheels in Palos Verdes, we came upon an equestrian center. I was quite amazed when some horses with riders came out from behind the trees at an intersection. These horses weren’t a bit phased by the passing traffic or cyclists. The best part, however, was when the rider reached up quite casually and hit the button for the “walk” signal. It was perfectly placed on the pole to be at the correct height for a horseback rider. How clever.

Then, later on we were in Pasadena, where we participated in our first-ever pedestrian scramble. Here’s how it works. All the cars in the east-west lanes get the green. They go for awhile, get yellow, then stop on red (we hope). Next, the cars in the north-south lanes get the green. They go for awhile, get yellow, then stop on red (again, we hope). Then the really exciting stuff happens. All the cars stop, and the pedestrians cross all four ways, and DIAGONALLY across the intersection. It is amazing how well this works, and how quickly folks get across. Cars turning don’t have to stop for peds, because when cars go, only other cars go. And when peds go, only other peds go. They sure are progressive out there. :)

I have two items for this week’s “Particularly Useful”…

The first is related to my previous post on Skype 3.0. Those clever Brits came up with a way to make Skype ubiquitous in your computing experience. This is even more clever given the fact that you now have to pay for SkypeOut calls (calls to ordinary phones). But I digress…

The new Skype 3.0 embeds a little call widget into web pages anywhere there is a phone number, so all you have to do is press the phone icon to call.

My second entry is a nice little feature for making sure your LCD TV is mounted correctly. We spent a lot of time complaining about the price point of LCD TV mounts, but after we unpacked it we were pleasantly surprised at this little feature that helps you level the mounting hardware:

Ok, not really, but maybe close! On the cover of the latest issue of Dr. Dobbs’s Journal, in big bold letters is an announcement proclaiming that Microsoft Loves Linux. Well, I just had to see what that was all about so I turned to the article and found it to be an interesting read. It seems that Microsoft and Novell have announced a five year patent and technology agreement around Microsoft software and Novell’s SUSE Linux software. The author of the article, Michael Swaine, makes some very interesting observations worth reading. The article can be found online here

Hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Peace,

Keith

I just upgraded to the Skype 3.0 version because of all the cool features I heard it has. Today Erica and I put it to the test when IM left us both confused on a concept. We were trying to discuss it with words when pictures made so much more sense. Erica suggested we give Sketch Pad a try, so I clicked on the “Do More” tab on Skype and installed the Sketch Pad beta app. All of a sudden our concept came to life as we talked through it and sketched it out.

Skype 3.0 has another cool feature called Unyte. It allows you to share your screen with the person you’re talking to and even give them control. This has been available for awhile in apps like MS Net Meeting and GoToMeeting, but with Skype it’s free and relatively painless to set up. Unyte requires the JRE but otherwise is a snap to install. Pretty soon I was showing Erica a new page in an app under development and demonstrating (on her machine) how to do things with the page. Pretty sweet!

I recently bought a book I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s Jennifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces. I have used her patterns online before but always wanted her book. The purchase proved to be worth it in the first few pages. She has a really good perspective on just what “intuitive” is:

What characterizes interfaces that are easy to use?

One could say, “The applications that are easy to use are designed to be intuitive.” Well, yes. That’s almost a tautology.

Except that the word “intuitive” is a little bit deceptive. Jef Raskin once pointed out that when we say “intuitive” in the context of software, we really mean “familiar.” Computer mice aren’t intuitive to someone who’s never seen one…There’s nothing innate or instinctive in the human brain to account for it. But once you’ve taken 10 seconds to learn to use a mouse, it’s familiar, and you’ll never forget it. Same for blue underlined text, play/pause buttons, and so on.

Rephrased: “The applications that are easy to use are designed to be familiar.”

I’m not a big New Year’s Resolutioner. I can’t ever think of anything really good to start or stop, and I already work out. In fact, I can’t wait for February when the crowd at the gym starts to subside. I guess I could do better at saving money, but that’s not any fun. :)

However, if you have decided that 2007 is the year to lose weight, save money, or get organized (or all 3!) check out this article.

Check out this article sent to me by my friend Jeanie. Appears that poor usability can cause physical manifestations of stress and anxiety. I’ve heard of road rage, and unfortunately also bike rage, but mouse rage is a new one for me!

Prototype is one of those foundational frameworks that anyone writing an Ajax application is interested in. While part of the fun (depending on your perspective) of writing cutting-edge Web 2.0 applications is that one must become and expert at Googling to figure out how to do things, it is clearly desirable to have a nice set of documentation on the tools and frameworks one is using. Well, Sergio Pereira has done an outstanding job of doing just that for Prototype. Here are the resources:

Developer Notes on Prototype
Prototype Quick Reference PDF

Source: Ajaxian