Yes, I think I understand some of this frustration.

Life with Linux:

“The ups and downs of converting to open source.

Gary Parkinson had a torrid time when he converted to Linux. Here he shares his experiences with one of the alternatives to Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I should be lying on the sofa sipping sweet tea and watching Football Focus.

Instead, I’m stamping loudly round the living room swearing like a sailor, looking for a cat to kick and cursing a Finnish computer programmer whose name meant nothing to me only days before.

The source of all this disquiet sits on the coffee table looking defiant yet lovely.”

(Via BBC News | Technology | World Edition.)

Left-Hand-Man productions announces the “Color for Creative” video podcast series:

“News Copy:

Left-Hand-Man productions announces the ‘Color for Creative’ video podcast series

‘Color for Creative’ ColorUPDATE 2008

Left-Hand-Man productions has just released a five part on-demand video seminar series on Color for photographers and designers. ‘Color for Creative’ ColorUPDATE 2008 covers color tips on input, calibration and printing, industry interviews with Xrite & HP and software demonstrations in Photoshop, Aperture and LightRoom.

read more“

(Via Zoom In -.)

Protect yourself from ID thieves:

“Even weeks after Brenda Clarke’s identity was stolen and thousands of dollars in illegitimate credit card charges were discovered, she is still saddled with extremely high interest rates on her credit cards and a damaged credit score.”

(Via CNN - Personal finance news.)

Do you need permission to publish pictures of buildings?:

“Dear Rich: I have a question. Do I need to ask permission to publish a picture that I took that contains several local buildings and a city cultural monument?’I’m’so glad you asked. The short answer is ‘probably not’. Here’s the scoop.’

If you took the picture, you own the copyright (with exceptions, if you were hired to take it). As for the copyright in the buildings, it’s true that architecture created after 1990 is protected under copyright law, but that’s not an issue for you because there is an exception that permits you to photograph and publish constructed buildings that are publicly viewable.’(That’s not true if you must trespass on’private property to photograph the building.)’Even if the building contains sculptural elements like vampire figures, you can still photograph those elements and even use them as part of the backdrop’in a Batman movie. (I’d refer you to Circular 41 — Copyright Claims in Architectural Works — for more information, but the Copyright Office is currently updating it.)

The city monument may be a different copyright issue. If it has been around for more than 85 years, it’s most likely in the public domain (and even if it’s newer than that, it may be PD as well — see Fishman’s fab PD Nolo book or his new treatise for more info). Post-1923-created monuments may be protected under copyright law, in which case, you can’expect to get hassled (though public pressure can always change public policy). Generally, you don’t need to worry about a lawsuit over photos of public art unless your use is blatantly commercial — for example, in a movie, TV show, or on a poster.

There’s a minor hiccup when it comes’to trademark law. Building owners have claimed building appearances as a trademark when used in connection with the sale of goods and services — think White Castle and the Sears Tower. But in order for a trademark owner to stop you, the following would have to be true: (1) the building would have to have an identifiable,’distinctive appearance; (2) the building would have to be publicly associated with certain goods or services; (3) your use would have to be commercial (not editorial); and (4) your use would have to be linked to an offer or endorsement of similar goods or services. For example, you will run into problems if you use a picture of the Transamerica’Pyramid in an ad for another company’s financial services. Generally, this strategy hasn’t always’fared so well for trademark owners, and you probably won’t need to worry about it. If you are concerned — for example, you’re working for an ad agency or movie company — obtain a release for your photography. (There are’property releases in my book on getting permission.)’

Actually, the biggest hurdle for photographers in public spaces is a national paranoia following 9/11, as exhibited by building owners, employees, and security guards. Photographers of public spaces are now considered suspect‘even when taking pictures of their own kids.‘Anyway, feel free to come by and photograph the Nolo building before the company is moved out of town. Or better yet, feel free to shoot the Dear Rich Building (see above) anytime — the Dear Rich Staff will even take you on a guided tour.

Got a question for Dear Rich? Send it to dearrichquestion@gmail dot com, and make sure it has the header: ‘Question.’”

(Via Nolo’s Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Blog.)

Debugging PHP:

“I just checked in a little project, I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.

It really begun at the last Copenhagen php-meetup; Joakim Nygård and Jacob Oettinger made a presentation of their project, WebCacheGrind. I casually mentioned something about having played with the dbgp-protocol (The debugging part of Xdebug) and that it ought to be simple enough to write a fontend for it. That prompted some snickering from the back row. Apparently some guys had this rule at their workingplace, that whomever said that something ought to be easy to do, had to do so himself. Not an unreasonable rule, I suppose. Obviously, I couldn’t let that go unattended, so I gave it a shot.

Spectator is a XUL application, which should make it cross platform. I have tinkered a bit with XUL before, but not a full application. If you’re wondering what XUL is, it’s the GUI toolkit, in which the frontends for Firefox and Thunderbird are written. It’s a markup language — much like HTML, which can be scripted with Javascript. This makes it very easy to work with. The only problem seems to be a rather lacking documentation, but a bit of detective work got me through that.

So what can spectator do? Mind that this is a first version and I really just meant it as a proof of concept. I think I got a bit further than that, but it probably still has a few bugs. Still, with the current version, you can step through a program, set breakpoints and inspect the stack. Really all you would expect from a debugger.

Of course, as some of you might point out, there are already other implementations available. Most notably Komodo, which is also implemented with XUL. However, these implementations are proprietary, and are integrated with an IDE, that you may not want to use. Spectator is an open source alternative and is IDE/editor agnostic.”

(Via SitePoint Blogs » PHP.)

Just when you think you’re headed in the right direction, something comes along that makes you seriously think about that path.

Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping:

“The rise of Ajax and rich internet applications has thrown the limitations of traditional wireframing into painful relief. When you leave the world of page-based interactions, how do you document all but the simplest interactions? Flowcharts and diagrams don’t work. Prototyping saves the day by focusing on the application and conveying its ‘magic.’ Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client’s current solution or application. Sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling.

‘Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!”

(Via A List Apart.)

These were issues that came up today. As the project moves forward, we will again visit them.

Simplicity vs. Features: A False Dichotomy?:

“All other things being equal, the simplest solution is probably the best. That’s the basic understanding of what Ockham’s razor tells us, an adage named for 14th century English logician, William of Ockham. In other words: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Ockham’s razor as it informs design decisions in software and web application development can perhaps be best embodied by the 37signals Getting Real approach, which counsels developers to underdo the competition. ‘Do less than your competitors to beat them,’ says the company in their book Getting Real. ‘Instead of oneupping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.’

37signals explains that, among other things, less means ‘less features’ and ‘less options/preferences.’ The idea is that simplicity will yield technology that is easier to use and more elegant. But Northwestern Professor and former Apple Vice President Don Norman disagrees. Writing for the Association for Computer Machinery’s Interactions magazine, Norman argues that simplicity is not the answer and does not necessarily lead to better design.

‘Simplicity is not the goal. We do not wish to give up the power and flexibility of our technologies,’ writes Norman. ‘The garage door opener may be simple, but it hardly does anything. If my cellphone only had one button it certainly would be simple, but, umm, all I could do would be to turn it on or off: I wouldn’t be able to make a phone call.’

People actually want more features and functionality. They also want ease of use, he says, but there is a popular false dichotomy that equates simplicity with ease of use, and features with capability. Norman lays out the following, which he says is an implicit assumption:

• Features ==> Capability
• Simplicity ==> Ease of use

‘These two statements translate into simple logic,’ says Norman. ‘Everyone wants more capability, so therefore they want more features. Everyone wants ease of use, so therefore they want simplicity.’ But Norman argues that this is false logic. ‘The arrow goes left to right: this says nothing about the right to left direction. So extra capability does not require more features. Similarly, ease of use does not require simplicity.’

People very likely do want more capability and easier to use products, but to deliver those things doesn’t require that designers succumb to feature creep or make simplicity a design rule. Norman lays out some design rules to create better products that are easier to use but don’t sacrifice capability in the name of simplicity.

• Modularization - Break up big, complicated tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.
• Mapping - The relationship between actions and the results they bring about should be clear.
• Cohesive conceptual models - People should understand what they’re supposed to do, what doing it makes happen, and what’s expected of them. ‘See any Apple product,’ says Norman.

‘The argument is not between adding features and simplicity, between adding capability and usability,’ Norman writes. ‘The real issue is about design: designing things that have the power required for the job while maintaining understandability, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment.’”

(Via SitePoint Blogs.)

For the Best SEO, Google Says Think Text:

“Even though a recent Google gadget has provided us a potential glimpse at Google’s future video indexing technology, and even though both Google and Yahoo! are working with Adobe to get better at indexing the textual content within Flash movie files, for proper search optimization, thinking about your text is still king. According to Adam Lasnik, who is a Search Evangelist at Google, webmasters really need to focus on their text content to make their sites visible to Google and accessible to all users.

Beet.tv has a short video up with Lasnik, in which the Googler talks about SEO and accessibility. Lasnik spends much of the video talking about Google’s efforts working with Adobe to index Flash content, and says that even though Google is making strides in indexing rich media content like Flash, videos, and photos, webmasters need to think about text as the ‘primary means of communicating.’

Andy Plesser of Beet.tv says the key takeaway from what Lasnik says is that rich media publishers should always use descriptive text around their rich content.

This isn’t ground breaking stuff — anyone interested in building accessible web sites should already be concerned with making sure their text content and descriptive tags are up to snuff — but it is short and worth the watch. And if you’ll recall, last month we called the announcement that Google was working with Adobe to index Flash content a PR disaster for the company, so Lasnik’s video is perhaps a small salve on that public relations wound.

The video is embedded below.”

(Via SitePoint Blogs.)