If, like me, you weren't at IxDA Interaction '08 in Savannah, you might enjoy this collection of videos from the conference. I've only watched a few so far, and though some skip the slides at seemingly important parts, many are really interesting. I especially liked Doug Bolin of Avenue A | Razorfish's presentation on making the complex help system for Microsoft's Sync, but maybe that's because we've been working on a help system recently as well. [via Thomas Baekdal]

Merciless deadlines at the hands of a famous wizard (you know what I'm talking about) have really had me busy and a bit high strung lately, so here's some Japanese Zen wisdom for you.

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl" said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

You're welcome.

The Veranda, Orlando. With French doors. A romantic place for a codejam.

One of my personal biggest inspirations, Edward Tufte, the king of information design and one of those old farts who apparently just can't grasp why they'd want to use RSS, has a review up on his website about the iPhone's interface. He also references some of his earlier work that reinforces his opinions.

The verdict is, he mostly likes it a lot, although he criticizes the weather and stock apps for mis-utilizing the high-res screen by showing too little information. I can dig it.

The main points seems to be:

1. eliminating "computer admin debris" from the interface, letting users directly manipulate the content, has allowed the tiny screen to contain the maximum amount of data possible.
   
2. Changing the paradigm from "temporal stacking," which becomes instantly tough to manage and navigate on a small screen (enter Exhibit A, Windows Mobile) to a sideways navigation on the same "surface" helps users keep track of "where they are."
   

My favorite takeaway, though, is something that is central to much of Tufte's work.

"Clutter and overload are not attributes of information; they are failures of design."

I love that quote. It's a principle Apple occasionally struggles with: they'll rip out functionality you might wish you had, in the name of simplicity. That being said, though, they do get it right much of the time, and the iPhone proves that.

Remember why your bank is closed today, and try to forget the sad irony that roads named "Martin Luther King" often run through ghettos. We still have a long way to go (definitely true in Detroit), but I'd like to think today is a day to remind yourself of hope rather than get bogged down in despair.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

Here's the whole speech from YouTube:

MacWorld is usually a pretty fun and exciting time, when swanky new products are announced that I'll never buy. Usually it's two stupid announcements paired off with one really cool one, and then an iPod update.

But this MacWorld gave us a lot of fun stuff. At least one of those things, the overdue Google Map locator for iPhone, was free (unless you're an iPod touch user, in which case they'll extort you for $20) so I already got it. It's lovely. Now Google not only knows what I'm doing, they know where I'm doing it! Exciting.

The Time Capsule is cool, but the MacBook Air is of course the flagship announcement. Alex likens the mixed response to the release of the iPod, or at least to the original floppy-free iMac. But the floppy drive was way dead when I got my first bondi iMac. I very much doubt that real life will happen for a lot of people without an optical drive; Apple is taking a very Microsoft approach in which convergence happens fantastically and your life is totally easy as long as you drink ALL the Kool-Aid instead of picking and choosing the parts of the Apple Experience you want. I mean, why insert a CD/DVD when you can buy the album/movie on iTunes, right?

I'm sure there's plenty of speculation (there definitely is in my mind) that the recently-surfaced patent application for an iMac-like docking station that a thin laptop slides into has something to do with this. That would, of course, make things even more absolutely perfect. In fact, I could probably get behind that if the total package wasn't going to run somewhere in the neighborhood of eight zillion dollars.

And to wrap it all up, here's a video my friend sent me yesterday of David Lynch expounding on his iPhone opinions. I suppose I see his point, but here's a man who makes Movies with a capital M, whose films don't even belong on the television. I don't even like it when people are eating popcorn when I go see a Lynch movie. But the sad truth is, part of what makes David Lynch great is that he still carries around a lot of romantic notions about movies - and Stomp The Yard is not Blue Velvet. It's real sweet that the idea of someone watching a movie on a small-ass screen makes him sad, but the idea of someone watching the latest Uwe Boll movie at all kind of makes me sad, so to each his own.

Haven't blogged much lately. Too busy either working, playing music, or just dicking around in the semi-real world to dick around on the intertubes. So here's a few fun things I've looked at lately.

The decapitator. Check this mess out. A guy goes around London and replicates street ads then gruesomely removes their heads. Awesome and crazy street art.

Multi-touch whiteboard on the cheap. In case you don't follow my del.icio.us links (see sidebar) - This guy (not too surprisingly, from Carnegie Mellon) created a "whiteboard" with multi-touch capability that you can put anywhere as long as you have a projector or LCD screen and a Wii Remote, of all things. Surface what? Amazing stuff, and frankly I kind of want to try it. Also check out his rad 3D display.

Gary, Indiana: Ghost Town. I've lived here for how many years now and only recently went on my first urban exploration trip (Fisher Body Plant 21), but I've always assumed that Detroit was the King of Blight. Turns out, Gary Indiana isn't just that really smelly town on the way to Chicago, it's a nearly-abandoned empty shell. Much smaller place than here, but apparently much more complete devastation. Pictures of this kind of subject matter are a dime a dozen in Detroit, but the quality of these is really fantastic.

And finally, my new heroes, DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei (ages 8 and 5). I got nothing to say to this. Via Eliot's Twitter.

60 Minutes apparently ran a story on the "Millenials," the supposed nom de unlikely of the group born between 1980 and 1995 who are, if the story is to be believed, a bunch of worthless slackers that make "Generation X" look like diligent coal miners by comparison. Link is to the web companion story.

I may have technically missed this by one year, but only one year so that means that I'm some sort of "Millenial," and I've rarely seen a piece of reverse-ageism so offensive in my life. A bunch of so-called "experts" giving anecdotal evidence of why these damn kids should get off my lawn is not real journalism, it's useless pablum to tide retirees over until Andy Effing Rooney comes on at the end and makes some "timely" observation about how he sure gets a lot of junk mail - and say, everyone says "holiday" instead of "Christmas" these days.

Doesn't this happen every time they coin a name for the current generation? They did it for my brother with Generation "X" and now they're doing it for me, but the story is essentially the same: Ego-centric, drag-ass, and tantrum-prone, but gawrsh they shore do know them computers better'n us so can't live without 'em huh?

Perhaps most disturbingly, the reversed priority of being family- and lifestyle-minded rather than singularly career-focused is presented as odd. And the desire to be rewarded, in however small a way, for a job well done (the core of so many books about management I've glossed over, and just plain human nature) is presented as selfish and spoiled. Sorry, no I didn't walk uphill in the snow both ways to school. I grew up in Texas. And the bus was invented at some point in the years leading up to my birth.

If you need any proof that this is a load of complete nonsense (I sincerely hope if you're reading this then you don't), have a look at the 90% of my blogroll that falls into the "Millenial" category.