Just wondered what a Mini S would cost. They have a website. They have a ‘configurator’. After 5 minutes of trying they lost me. I do have a fast computer am behind a 3-tier T1 and still the website was useless.
I kind of know what a Mini would cost, sure. But I wonder how many people really endure such a crappy interface. Typical case of broken feedback loop: BMW feels they need a ‘configurator’. Since everybody hacks them together in flash they do so as well. The ‘designers’ present it probably on a local network, and nobody analyses the actual CTR and usage on the site once it is up.
Next new car the same people get the job again. Another 100K down the drain …
Category: internet
Autoblog reviews the Bentley Continental Flying Spur
Nice read if you like cars. The 2 door cousin “Continental GT” is kind a ‘dime a dozen’ car in some parts of LA. The Warner Brothers parking lot for instance. The price tag hovering between 1 and 2 hundret thousand US$ scheds a completely new light on situation in some parts of the economy.
Glad I read the review, so that I can hold of the purchase until they get a navigation system that can compete with a Camry.
shows the most popular pages in wiki pedia.
Right now it is (still) unfiltered and it shows pretty much how the internet really looks like.
Two things become obvious:
1. Lots of ‘smut’ intermixed with technical and current topics.
2. The long tail. First content entry ranking #3 right now is “Pluto” with 0.1%. Or in other words one in a thousand views falls on the most prominent topic right now.
There is of course nothing wrong with flash. Just that I don’t want to do it.
Here are my reasons why I don’t waste any clock cycles on it.
- It’s allot of work to learn a system like flash to do it really right. I don’t invest that kind of time into a format that is owned by one company. I would become
Macromedia’sAdobes bitch if I would do so. - Search engines ignore flash. Since more than seventy percent of all internet traffic get directed by google and friends those sites are simply sit idle.
- Flash content can’t be linked to. The link is to the internet what rails are to railroads. You can not directly link to a item in flash. Or if you can, nobody knows how to do that.
All you can do is to post the link to the start page and then describe how to get where you wanted - Flash navigation can be made unique and creative.Imagine a car maker would make a car with a ‘creative gear box switching interface’. And, only deploy this fancy model in the rental car market.
- I don’t have enough tatoo’s. Flash designers seem to be mostly extroverted sculptors that want to part take in this internet thing. There is nothing wrong with that, as long I don’t have to deal and compete with them.
- money, it costs money, but hardly makes any. Hosting and the dev kit, it all costs money. No problem if you have lots. But there is a whole internet out there that starts
free and easy and might scale nice into something of value. Flash never did that.
Of course sites like youtube, the early flickr or etsy highly use flash and are very sucessful in doing so. Of course flash is here to stay.
Just that I will not deal with it.
What a brilliant concept: Just air some green screen footage. The kids and youTube will do the rest.
Next stop: tracking markers.
Since years I used the ‘bc’ unix command line calculator. Nice for copy paste jobs, better than a push button calculator, since you can see your calculators. Of course pretty stupid otherwise. I am sure there are advanced calculators around. Those that I would always forget how to use. Speaking of, ‘bc’ needs you to set the decimal precision before something like 5 / 3 gives a result as usually expected. Every couple of month I am trying to find a way to set scale = 4 in a default environment etc. Never had any luck.
Today osxhints – which comes up first for most unix searches these days – I found the Google Command Line Calculator
It’s very very nice. Written in ruby which comes with OS X. Commandline, but that’s what I liked.
The internet discovers Candida Höfer.
The internet is a funny place. You can make things that make no sense, and they can exist for a while. YouTube for instance. I love it as a user. By now I have given up to frown about the horrible quality. For most of the youTube content the visual aspect is secondary. Flashvideo has won the format war. For years people were writing about quicktime, windows media and real player. Looking at every move of one of these formats. Predicting this or that. Along came flash video and it was all other. No self respecting internet video site would choose something else. No pundit had seen it coming.
It looks worse than anything, and people don’t care, since it looks good enough. Apple lost this one.
YoutTube is trying to find money now. They turn to Paris Hilton. Maybe Paris’ dad sells a Hotel every Tuesday to come up with youTube’s bandwidth bill? Seriously, it might be a rude awakening for youTube to realize that they are able to recoupe 3% of their operating cost before they start loosing audience since the ads get in the way. iFilm had an alright selection, but they never became a youTube. One of the reasons were rather pesky ads.
The content that youTube will continue to be there. But I still think that youTube is a bit like Napster 1.0: Something that works really really great, but that is built on non existing conditions. Napster 1.0 ignored copyrights, and youTube ignores the fact that bandwidth costs money.
Few weeks ago lots of people wrote that somebody had hacked a MacBook via Wifi.
There were never much details or example code available. But the need for the story was there, so felt the people, and everybody repeated it. It seems as if the hackers installed 3rd wireless soft- and hardware on the Macbook and then hacked this software.
Which renders the whole thing to a non issue.
Of course all computers can be hacked in theory. Including Macs. But as long it did not happen, it did not happen. I am sure lots of people read the first (non true) part of this ‘hack’ story, and will miss this conclusion. Those will argue in a year from now “Mac’s aren’t safe either” based on this misinterpreted news story.
Getting down to the truth becomes increasingly complex it seems. Much of the communication surrounding people has been made with an intention. Truth comes second. Which IS a big deal, since it invalidates the whole reason for communication. It was communication that got us of the trees. If we break it, since it seems not to matter, then we might have trouble getting back up into the trees. “Sabletooth tiger!” “Where?” “Just kidding, want to buy a coconut?”
Boeing had a system for internet on a plane. Now they shut it down. I used it allot on board of transatlantic Lufthansa flights. It worked great. About the only time when I did not mind to pay (around 25 US$) for wifi.
Nobody really knew about this system. None of the US carriers picked it up, and Lufthansa did not do a good job to communicate that you could have internet over the Atlantic.
I wonder what will happen to this. I hope that google buys it. They can afford it. And it would be great PR.
Wifi to they sky!
Both democracy and capitalism work great. As long people make decissions based on reason. If you buy the best product you push efficiency into the system. Same with democracy. The world grew more complex. And I wonder if people kept up with that. Looking at the habbits of the average AOL user I have some serious doubts about that.
Of course there is no alternative to the current system. Still it is worth pointing out, that the current implementation is broken. More than it used to be: The average skill set and education level is declining. Everywhere. In the 80s I made an apprenticementship to become a Maschinenschlosser in Germany. In three and a half years you work and learn basically how to build machines. This was the kind of job most of the male population did aspire to. It’s demands however where non trivial. You not only learned how to build machines, but also knew backgrounds why they were designed in a certain way. If you got a drawing with an error you were able to go back to the construction people and come up with a better solution together. The percentage of people being able to work on this level has declined in the last years. When the housing bubble ‘makes’ you twice as much money as forty hours of labor, why should you try to improve your skills?
When things get made in China for penny’s why should you learn how to make something? Opening boxes and putting things on shelfs, that’s a skillset in demand.