Link Banana

I’m not sure why, but this bit of idle technological speculation caught my eye. Jonathan Hedley wants to know why all modern mice seem to use a clearly inferior design.

Matrix found that the best place for the ball was up front as far as possible between the users thumb and forefinger. The forefinger can be controlled very precisely — much more so than the wrist and forearm. Matrix found that users would move their wrist and arm to move the cursor are large distance, but for fine control relied on the thumb and forefinger.

.. It simply seems that designers and manufacturers have, over the years, forgotten about the benefit of putting the sensor up front, or have placed precision and control further down their list of priorities. I hope that this isn’t the case: that newer research has shown that the current placement is the correct placement, or that something else has changed over time. But if that’s not the case, then I hope that some design team will rediscover either the principle, or the findings — so that we can continue to strengthen the connection between the user and the computer.

(via Big Contrarian)

This may be the greatest thing I’ve seen today.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

He goes on — and on and on — to personally make just about every gripe that every other user of Microsoft software has.

(via BBGadgets)

I’m probably not the only one a little surprised to learn that the United States has the lowest rate of software piracy of any country. I suppose it has a lot to do with the fact that the country has no visible market in pirated software, so all the theft is essentially pro-bono.

As someone who’s been yelling at his computer a lot lately (for general age and slowness reasons), I can’t resist sharing this brief story from The Onion:

CAMBRIDGE, MA—After multiple attempts to get the thing to do the thing, 38-year-old freelance writer Joe Garvin gave up Saturday, citing the fact that his stupid computer was too dumb to print something as simple as a travel itinerary. The computer, a PowerBook something with some kind of core that does this every single time, reportedly refused to just tell the printer to print even after Garvin spent a full 10 minutes yelling at it. “Why won’t you just help me out here?” Garvin asked his computer after it started beeping at him just to rub it in. “I checked your nums lock already, and that’s not it. What is the matter with you? I hate you.” Although the computer will likely go on being retarded forever, Garvin refused to call tech support to resolve the problem, claiming they’re all “Wha, wha, wha,” and saying a bunch of stuff he doesn’t even know what.

I feel like I’m on a “future of technology” kick after the last post, but this is too cool to pass up. It’s pretty much the best idea for a mouse I’ve ever seen, though it’s not likely to be commercially available anytime soon.

(via Engadget)