There are many "rules" when it comes to User Interface / User Experience design. One that I try to stick to is "Don't let users do things they can't do." It's one of my gripes with Linux. If you're editing a configuration file, you are relying on yourself to sanity check your input - often without knowing what the limits are. Take these two different examples. In a text file, we might have: #Maximum Widgets to fidget maxW_to-F = 0 Whereas a GUI would show How many Widgets do you want t…
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WordPress is only for people rich enough to buy a smartphone and cool enough to choose the right brand. Right? From the WordPress Blog: I like to moderate comments when I’m waiting for something: a checkout clerk to help me, the dentist to call me back to the office, a soy chai to be made. I don’t lug my laptop everywhere I go,* so I love it that we have mobile apps that make this possible. I don’t know of any other blogging platform that has mobile apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. D…
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Blah blah Twitter.... Blah Blah BlackBerry... Blah Blah.... http://www.blackberry.com/twitter NB1: I primarily use SocialScope on my BlackBerry. SocialScope's terms of use prohibit me from showing screenshots of their beta. Hey, guys, I want to show everyone how great you are! NB2: Screenshots taken on a BlackBerry 9000 running OS 5.0 First Impressions I've never understood the need for a EULA. They're long, confusing, boring and a terrible way to make a first impression on your customers. …
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As any student of computer science knows, line breaks are confusing. There are styles of line breaks unique to Unix, Mac and Windows - so what should a web renderer do when faced with a newline command? In HTML, it's simple, they should be ignored. But what when it is user generated text, not HTML? This was a problem I faced when trying to get Dabr to render the ASCII* art produced by Aral Balkan's Feathers App. Feathers uses line breaks to achieve images like... 〰❀❃ Introducing ❃❀〰 My new i…
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After the tragic death of Ernest Marples, I'm sorry to say that the site fell in to a bit of disrepair. With no postcode data and no new boundary data, it looked like VoteUK was going to be permanantly out of business. Thanks - once again - to the clever-clogs at TheyWorkForYou, at least half of the problem has been solved. The API call getConstituency now has a future parameter. Adding future=1 to the call will return the constituency the Postcode will be in for the 2010 General Election. …
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Twitter have announced that all third party site will have to use OAuth. You will no longer be able to just type in your username and password to get access to Twitter via your favourite web client. Usually, I would be a big fan of this move - especially if it forces password anti-pattern sites like TwitPic to implement the new, secure standard. This means that you won't be able to log in to a third party site by giving them your username and password. You will have to use OAuth to se…
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Today is the European 112 Day! Because the date is 11/2 - just like the number - see! 112 is the European wide emergency services number. Wherever you are in the EU, dialling 112 will get you through to the local emergency services. In fact, most GSM networks outside of the EU will also route your call correctly. This is an important day. Dialling 112 could save your life. Sadly, the UK isn't doing anything to promote it. So, what better way to celebrate than by designing a JIL widget to …
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I'm a big fan of OAuth - despite some claims to the contrary. It's an excellent way of teaching people not to stick their username and password into any old site which asks for it. Which is why I'm so incredibly disappointed in Twitter's implementation of mobile OAuth. For a service which started out operating by SMS, Twitter takes a surprisingly unenlightened view of mobile. It's main mobile service - http://m.twitter.com/ - is almost completely devoid of useful features. That's one of…
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This could be the most important email I ever sent... Subject: Come One! Come All! Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 13:27:51 -0000 Yes, this Sunday our charming colonial cousins will be playing the American Football Superbowl!!!!!!! If you're anything like me you can contain your excitement at the thought of watching a bunch of Yanks try to play rugby while dressed up like nancy boys... but come anyway - there's gonna be beer and nachos... LOTS of beer... MANY nachos... So, yeah, Sunday 28 Jan our…
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I'm a manic book reader. When I'm on holiday, I like to try and read a book a day. So, my recent two weeks off was the perfect time to indulge. Here, for those of you that care, are what I read and what I thought. In no particular order... Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde Jasper Fforde is one of the few truly original writers. The plot is so-so (a mystery, a quest, a conspiracy) but the sci-fi is just the right side of weird. Absolutely no exposition about why the world is the way it is…
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Facebook has a funny idea of society. From telling you to reconnect with dead friends, to offering your partner up as a "single" in your area - Facebook has a habit of getting things wrong. My partner and I, like many married couples, live together. We speak over breakfast, commute together and send each other emails and texts throughout the day. But we don't do any of this on Facebook. This worries Facebook. It thinks our marriage may be on the rocks because we haven't - excuse me - "po…
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Voting is now open for the Open Rights Group Board of Directors election. I'd be delighted to answer any questions you may have. Post them as a comment here, send me an SMS or an email and I'll do my best to answer. A quick look over the candidate statements shows that we're all fairly well aligned. For no reason other than they're very Web 2.0, I've made a Wordle of the candidate statements. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic License.…
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