UI of the Week: Disqus(ting! Boom!)

May 16, 2012 11:38 PM

I am not letting a whole month go by without updating this blog. I've actually got a couple of translation articles cooking, but they're not ready to post. So, until those show up...

Marvel at the idiocy of Disqus' notifications UI!

Screenshot of Disqus' notification UI displaying 'three new notifications' and 'you have no notifications' at the same timeFun fact: Since it's Disqus, who really gives a shit which one is true?

In case it matters, this was spotted on a post on AllThingsD.

Doing It Right: Diablo 3 Beta Downloader

April 20, 2012 6:14 PM

Slow on posting "UI of the Week," but not from a lack of crappy UI. Far from it. (Plenty of Flash websites this month. ugh.)

ON THE OTHER HAND, I felt like sharing a pretty nice piece of UI, and a clever tool in general. Men and gentleladies, the downloader for Diablo 3.

Screenshot of the Diablo 3 beta downloader"Chill, dude, it's not gonna take THAT long."

That progress bar is what I want to talk about. Only a certain amount of content is required before the game is playable; at that point the game can start, then the app will continue downloading content into the app bundle while you play. That's the kind of useful, well-designed info a good app should present.

Okay, who's going to play Diablo with me?

UI of the Week: Zynga Poker

April 7, 2012 9:59 PM

Considering the fact that many personal computers ship without Adobe Flash pre-installed, you'd think Zynga could have designed a better experience than...well, this:

"The second contextless link to Adobe.com is what really convinced me."

I was worried I couldn't do a bad UI post weekly, but it seems like I'm achieving some semblance of regularity. Feels good, man.

UI of the Week: "Windows? What's That?"

March 28, 2012 9:53 PM

I really love this one on Microsoft.com because the Bing search failure recommends...searching with Bing instead. And on Microsoft.com instead of...wherever here is?

a silly Microsoft.com search result"You may also want to try switching to a Mac."

Sounds Familiar

March 5, 2012 8:24 AM

In an article about future iPad market share by the NY Times' Nick Wingfield:

Microsoft's introduction of Windows 8 promises to shake up computer designs further. Microsoft and its hardware partners have shown laptops with keyboards that can be swiveled around or removed altogether, turning them into tablets.

I think the words for those are "convertible" and "slate" tablets, like Microsoft called them in 2002 when Windows XP Tablet PC Edition first launched.

UI of the Week: "No Thanks"

February 27, 2012 5:38 PM

From Adobe.com, this is the page presented after pressing "Add to cart" on the Adobe CS 5.5 Design Premium Web page:

Screen capture of Adobe.com error"Would you like to refuse a survey about your shopping cart error?"

106

January 24, 2012 11:26 PM
According to Wikipedia, 106 is the number between 105 and 107. [citation needed]

It's also the number of posts I made on Knee of the Curve, a blog about futurism, video games, programming, and pretty much anything else that struck my fancy over the last five or six years. That blog was started out of a desire to do something a little more substantial than the angsty rants that I was writing on a previous weblog network, Xanga. (And I wrote a lot more than 106 posts there. Yeesh.)

Now, I'm following the advice of one of my myriad role models and attempting to fully own my writing. What exactly I'm going to put up here, I'm not quite sure, but I know some specific things that will and won't show up:

  • I won't write about my current employer or speculation thereabout.
  • I will translate some Japanese technology writing into English, and vice versa.
  • I will post a few of my creative indulgences:
  • I won't post like this is a Facebook, here's-what-I-ate-last-night personal blog.
So, that's the brief for now! よろしくお願いします！