capcloud

Yesterday I downloaded a beta build of Firefox so that I could play with Tab Candy. I am very impressed, and can’t wait until some of the other features that Aza Raskin showed in his demo video are implemented.

One side effect of using this version of FF is that the tabs are back at the top. (I use the Tree Style Tabs extension, which lets me stack the tabs at the side instead.) And suddenly I’m finding that it is harder to scan the tabs to find the one I’m looking for. Maybe it’s just a question of getting used to it, but I think there’s something else going on here,

I think that maybe stacked tabs are better in this regard for the same reason left-aligned form labels can sometimes be the best solution—they make scanning easier. I think this allows you to find things more quickly.

I hope Tree Style Tabs gets updated to work with FF 4 soon…

I was thinking about how we relate to our music. And specifically how this has changed with the move from physical media (vinyl, tapes, CDs) to digital music that has no physical manifestation.

In the old days (eight, ten years ago) you would have CDs on shelves. Maybe some old tapes and vinyl albums in a box somewhere too. Your CDs might have been organized alphabetically. Or maybe by genre. Maybe even by color.

But if you are like me, the stuff that you listened to most often would be the most easily accessible (for me, that means the top shelf). The stuff I listened to less often (or never) would be on the lower shelves. And some would even be in a box in a cupboard or in the attic, gathering dust.

But these days we have iTunes. And all your albums are there, on an equal footing, as it were. Sure, you can order stuff by number of plays or date last played, but it’s not very elegant. (Try ordering by plays and see what a mess it makes of cover flow—it doesn’t show an album once, but once per song.)

Maybe we could take a cue from the physical world, as Apple is urging us to do when it comes to designing iPad apps. Perhaps cover flow could have shelves.

The top shelf would contain the albums you have listened to the most, but somehow taking time into account too. An album that I listened to continuously for two months three years ago but have hardly listened to since would drop down to the second or third shelf. Maybe an album like this would accumulate a layer of dust, which I could choose to blow off now and again by listening to the album.

And why limit it to music? Why not books as well? Why not movies? Why not games? And what about documents? Spreadsheets even?

Finally someone has created an application for Mac OS X that lets you manage windows properly.

Well worth the $14. (It’s just a shame that this sort of functionality isn’t baked into the OS.)

When I read about Jakob Nielsen’s usability test findings on the iPad, I can’t help but think of Fred Beecher’s article from last year for Johnny Holland, The iPhone is not easy to use: a new direction for UX Design.

In the article, Fred talks at length about the low usability and learnability of the iPhone and its apps. But he goes on to say that that doesn’t really matter, because the iPhone is fun. And because it gets so many other things right. That’s what makes it a game-changer.

And what’s true for the iPhone is true for the iPad in spades.

So we just moved into a new office building. A behavior I had noticed in the old building was guys wandering into the bathroom carrying laptops (on their way from one meeting to another, presumably) and looking around (in vain) for a dry horizontal surface on which to place their laptops.

In this new building, I notice that every bathroom has a shelf, which I assume is for putting your laptop on while you have a wee. I for one am impressed :)

Twitter launches its Blackbird Pie tweet embedding tool.

I just watched this TED talk and I am stunned and shocked. Appalled. Sickened. There are 27 million slaves in the world. Twice as many slaves as there are Jews. Think about that for a minute.

And it doesn’t take much to liberate someone from slavery—on average a hundred or so dollars. Go to Free the Slaves now to find out how you can help.

I think this whole design rockstars argument is a bit daft. I think we need both—people who will blaze trails (rockstars) and others who will follow them (most everybody else).