It's been a hot July2002.07.11

It's been a hot July so far this month in Toronto, so I finally gave in and bought another air conditioner for my place. You know you've bought a serious piece of air conditioning technology when it comes with a remote control, timer, and an installation video. Funny thing was, the first few minutes of the video went through how to unpack the air conditioner (and related parts) properly from its box. Heh. Trouble is, of course (say it with me) was that the video was in the bottom of the box, packed in between the accessories and such. Meaning everything was already unpacked by the time I put the video in. See? The user experience is everywhere. You'd think just one person at Danby might have raised their hands at some point and said "Uh, guys...".

edesign: the magazine of interactive design and commerce. Looks interesting. (via ia/)

Jeffrey Veen has a blog. Went into my hotlist immediately. I enjoyed his book a great deal, and also had the chance to hear him speak several times at Web2001 in San Francisco.

Ran across the link to the old NCSA archives this week. Talk about a wonderful trip through history. Want to educate your friends and neighbours on the beginning of the Web? Take 'em to the '93 archives and maybe they'll understand why you sometimes long for the days before Big Commerce woke up and smelled the packets.

Speaking of trips through history, did you know that Povray just released v3.5 of their raytracing software? Talk about time warp! I think I still have the code and manual for version 1.x somewhere. That program and the Povray-generated images you could find on ftp sites started a long-lasting love of CGI for me. My skills are a little (!) rusty though!

Emotion & Design: I ran across this last week but then forgot to link to it. Written by Donald Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things. Interesting thinking here, particularly the bit about colour monitors... I felt the same way about the colour Palms that started coming out a year or two ago.

Lastly, a bit about smart companies doing smart things. Amazon just launched their Canadian site (yay!) a week or two ago, and I've already received an email from them about their associates program. The program is separate from the US site, but instead of forcing me to sign up all over again and go through the hassle, they pre-approved me and sent me my new ID. Two thumbs up.

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