“A earthquake wiped out Etchistecthistan today”
Entertainment Scientists Warn Miley Cyrus Will Be Depleted by 2013
The news story, whilst humourous, it has made up a new word that has 0 results on Google!
Firefox 3 is to be released on the 17th (if you’re reading this after the 17th, it’s been released, Hurrah!), but don’t get too excited, whilst the Mozilla developers have done a good job trying to integrate Firefox into OS X, but it’s not complete — I’d prefer Firefox to look closer to Safari — the toolbar buttons are too rounded, as is the address bar and there are a few other annoyances. (more…)
The UK press has been having a field day recently about the growing “need” for a database of every one’s email address, visited websites and other internet related data.
A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.
The UK government are going too far with their requests for data in the name of terrorism, I’m fed up with it. There’s officially no privacy in the UK with today’s government.
It’s one thing to ask ISPs to do all of this for them so the government don’t look as bad as China’s, but it all amounts to the same thing. If the government had the balls to construct a great firewall like China it would give the public to really moan.
I want my basic internet freedoms back, no more requests for data, no more traffic shaping and no more data logging.
So, what’s CHI? In short Computer-Human Interaction, the art of computers adapting to suit us, the user.
In today’s modern computing, there’s a lot of talk about how developers, engineers and designers should make their work usable by the user (well, duh), but what if they didn’t need to think about how a user interacted with it?
CHI, by my definition at least, means a computer based system that is a completely transparent layer, so when someone is using a computer, they shouldn’t know they’re using a computer — Wait, what now?
Think of a basic home appliance, a toaster is a good example of CHI, when you use a toaster you don’t think of it as a computer, but it is! It’s a good example of a computer too, it calculates information regarding the time of how much longer to keep the bread toasting.
Shouldn’t every device be like a toaster? I think they should.
If we change the device to an MP3 player, we automatically think of it as a computer rather than a device, we all know and accept that it’s a computer, you could as anyone if it was a computer and they’d agree that it’s a computer.
Is the key to something not being a computer as simple as removing the screen? Unsure, but I’d guess it’s a probable start.
Are people on the whole, trusting social web applications too much?
Near everyday you open a newspaper to find a case of identity theft and how the thief managed to get hold of information about their victim from once source or another. Are social network sites partly responsible? A quick web search on my name returns a list of results that show:
Well, this is the start of my blog. Blogging is something I’ve been meaning to do for sometime, I’ve had loads of topics to post over the years and months — I’m sure some people will find them dull, but on the flip side of that very coin, some people will find them entertaining.
So, I guess I should introduce myself properly. My name is Simon Thulbourn, I’m 21 years old. I study software engineering at De Montfort University. I’m interested in all things web related, specifically things that centre themselves around HCI and UX (User Experience).
Hi, my name is Simon Thulbourn, I’m a 21 year old software engineering student at De Montfort University based in the UK (location changes depending on the time of year).