the self-discovery adventure of Brett Taylor
No, seriously. Best bundle of software this side of 2012.
Pay more than the current average to get Gratuitous Space Battles and Cave Story+!
Cave Story+ and Super Meat Boy are seriously good games, and each on their own is worth the price of admission. And you get to decide that price! I’m not kidding. Go buy these great video games NOW, even if you don’t have time to play them right now. Support some really good charities while you do.
Do you prefer to talk, text message, or a different communication method?
I’m assuming this is omitting face-to-face, which is always best, but as the next substitute:
Instant Messaging, for sure
I’m not great on the phone. If you call me and I don’t have your number, and I say “hello” and you say “it’s me”, I might not be able to place your voice, and that’ll throw me off for the whole phone call. Ask my girlfriend the first time she called me!
I guess text messages fit into this the same way, but they cost cold, hard, cash money. I have been chatting since dial-up BBS days, and we had live see-everything-you’re-typing-as-you-type-it chat back then. We used to press enter twice to say you were done and it was the other person’s turn.
I also learned bad habits with ICQ: I might send you a few short text messages in quick succession rather than save it into one message. This means my message might have cost me double or triple just because with IM if you were typing big long messages,
> you might type sentence fragments
> so the other person knew you were still there
> and hadn’t been disconnected
> by your younger brother
> picking up the phone in the other room
because back then, IM programs didn’t tell you the other user was actually typing something. You might do something like this even:
> LOL
> yeah I saw that last year
> it’s oldie but a goodie
And that’d be more sensible as one SMS.
I’ve been a big 8bitpeoples fan for a long time. I’ve spent money with the lovely chiptune distributor a few times, but my all time favorite album they’ve published is free: Power Supply by Anamanaguchi, the most kickass chiptune band on the planet. And my favorite track on that album is Fast Turtle [MP3, 5.1MB]. You can buy it on iTunes too, which is awesome, but it’s minus a track for some reason… not sure why.
Anyway, since the album was released in 2007 I’ve listened to the track over 200 times, building this music video story in my head for Fast Turtle, a superhero turtle of the same name.
So after attending Webstock 2010 and getting inspired and hearing some other crazy cool ideas and being encouraged when I shared this one with Chris Winchester, here’s my treatment for my music video for Anamanaguchi’s Fast Turtle. Give it a read and let me know what you think…
I think it’s pretty tight, I just want constructive criticism and advice for the next step, which I have a feeling is storyboarding and funding. I also need some concept art: I have a little already, and have lots of ideas for environment, characters and even specific shots.
Read the treatment and leave helpful comments below!
Just had this one come through the wire:
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, June 23, 2009: Stop Password Masking
Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn’t even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.
This sounds like Nielson kicking up publicity. This is shorter than his normal articles and he hasn’t backed this one up by mentioning his latest rounds of usability tests. He’s often got really good points, but this is one that I have issue with.
Nielson has forgotten that the reason password masking exists is if you type it out but don’t submit the form right away, then it won’t be on the screen for a long length of time for passers-by to ‘shoulder-surf’. The form could be really really long and/or you might be a really slow typist.
Padlocks and deadbolts keep honest people honest. The same goes for password masking.
Not to mention that password masking is visual shorthand reminder for the personal habits of “you should remember what you right in this box, cos even you won’t see it” and “no-one else should see this but you”. If we removed this ‘tell’, what would become of the culture of ‘protect your password’?
Think of where, other than web sites, that password masks get used. ATMs, EFTPOS machines, computer software, the Operating System uses it. Western culture is conditioned to this design pattern, and I speculate that the only people who have trouble remembering passwords are the ones who were born before 1980.
I guess a compromise would be to have the field in plain text when it has focus, switching to a password mask on blur…? Not a difficult solution.
