Saturday, November 26, 2011

Chance Favors the Connected Mind



Nice video. How do we apply it to today's world and the work place? What can institutions do to promote the connected mind? The elitist would say that not all minds are worthy of being connected. And ... that may be true. But even if true - who would make such a determination?

So here's to less intrusive, more private inconnectivity. Here's to it being possible.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Kludge of the Year

My nomination for kludge of the year comes from a friend who is working in Africa. He took this picture of a man jump starting his car.


Friday, November 18, 2011

The most popular programming languages in 2011

There is an interesting graph at IEEE Spectrum.

I agree with the author who wrote:
What has been interesting in recent years is the rise of JavaScript for writing Web-based applications that connect users to databases—think Gmail. In fact, JavaScript's ascent is largely due to Google's creation of the V8 JavaScript engine, a speedy compiler that powers its Chrome browser.

And then there is the rapid rise of Objective-C which underlies Mac OS and iOS.
[It] was barely in TIOBE's top 40 in 2008. But since then, it's climbed rapidly in popularity because people have been using it to write apps for the iPhone and iPad.

I've been looking at Objective-C for a while. An excellent site is at djavupixel.com

How do different age groups perceive web applications?

I’ve been wondering how different age groups perceive web applications. I am not finding what I’m looking for. Too many of the tests seem to focus upon how *today’s* elderly perceive the web. For example: “In most cases designers can use standard Web-related terms and assume that users understand them. But in this study, several users were unsure about Web terminology, such as page, homepage, website, or the Web.”

This is not a function of age – but a function of new users. It just happens to be that these new users are also elderly.

I’m looking for such information such as contrast, font size, font type, line-width, pop-ups, amount of content on a screen, decision making, etc…

Jakob Nielsen wrote the following back in 2002

Why Usability is Lower for Seniors
Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. These assumptions rarely hold, even when the users are not seniors. However, as indicated by our usability metrics, seniors are hurt more by usability problems than younger users. Among the obvious physical attributes often affected by the human aging process are eyesight, precision of movement, and memory.
Usability for Senior Citizens

OK. So we have the IA perspective on it - but how about the UX? We know reading comprehension is imperative. How about more tests on what *works* in a wider sense? What stimulates interest? What changes exist in how people scan and use websites as they age? I suppose we're going to have to wait for more tests. Maybe as eye-tracking software become more and more affordable we can have more information.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.

I'm learning ASP.NET; installed Visual Studio Express 2010 and had some issues getting started.

I was getting the following message whenever I tried something a little more complicated than request.write(now).

Parser Error Message: Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.

After looking around I found that the error was that ASP.NET 2.0 and not ASP.NET 4.0 was installed.

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > IIS

Right click on WebSite > Properties > ASP.NET > Version >

It should be some version of 4.0 and not 2.0

Don't forget to restart IIS.