...and report form Microsoft's last MIX conference
User experience (UX) is more than just visual design, information architecture, interaction design (what most experience design folks used to call it), UI development. There's a fifth role: User Research (it puts the U in UX!)
From Jason
OMG clips from new Nevermore album Page contains clips of Warrel Dane breathlessly telling us about the new album and then playing audio of the album into a microphone.
Warrel Dane has a delightful speaking voice.
StartupSchool 2009 event starts in about an hour right here: Speaker list:
I'm the fellow with the spear. Taken a couple weeks ago in Monterey Park, CA.
I'm going to appear on a panel of speakers tonight at USC's ACM general meeting, to talk about careers in computer science. In my case success is directly proportional to amount of star trek TNG watched.
edit: Whoops: it's in MHP 105 @ 7PM
This past weekend I was a judge at a weekend long programming competition at USC. It was very kind of the ACM to ask me to do it and I definitely had a lot of fun. Here was the situation: something on the order of 10 teams of students were assigned the theme of "Change in your Pocket" on Friday evening, and had until Sunday evening to make a mobile phone application. Nearly all of the teams had no prior experience whatsoever with iPhone or Android development, so the fact that they had anything working at all on Sunday evening that was more than the most trivial application is extremely impressive. Hopefully this fact alone inspires people reading this - if these kids can put together what they did in 48 hours, there's nothing stopping you from making an awesome mobile app.
I don't want to post exactly what they came up with quite yet because many of the teams plan on doing a legit App Store release, so I'll wait for that to happen. But suffice it to say it gives me faith in humanity after seeing abject shit like this for so long.
I ran into an exec from another LA startup over there who was a very nice fellow and he said some things that make me want to punch the web in the face. I mentioned how this amazing talk by David Heinemeier Hansson at startup school was full of all kinds of great old fashioned advice like "your company should make money" and "there was a time when $1,000,000 was a lot of money." He responded by saying that 37signals is a lifestyle company. I said I hesitate to call a >= $30,000,000 business a lifestyle company. He said they're not going to get VC funding with their attitude.
Somehow this perverse notion that getting funding is a signifier for success has got itself into web businesses. It is as if the lifecycle of the web company is supposed to be 1. idea 2. launch 3. get funding 4. DONE. As if getting people to actually buy what you make is secondary.
Here are some pics from the Hackathon event.
And here's one of me being a judgmental prick whilst drinking redbull.
Anyways. Hooray humanity!
You are Paul FUCKING Atreides, and the SPICE must FLOW, motherfucker.
A breath of fresh air. Check it out here.
Often in writing web applications, one is in the position of having to validate and parse something like:
One wishes to, in addition to verifying that the text represents a valid "jumble of emails", extract a list of the addresses:
Below I provide a javascript routine that does exactly this. Perhaps you will find it useful.
One of the reasons this task is not straightforward is because emails can come in a few formats. Let's (briefly) consider the W3C specification:
mailbox = addr-spec OR phrase route-addr
group = phrase ":" [#mailbox]";" (where "#mailbox" means one or more 'mailbox' tokens)
In other words an "email address" can appear as one of the "mailbox" types: either an addr-spec (Address Specification), e.g. "john@smith.com", a phrase route-addr (Phrase Route Address Specification), e.g. "John Smith <john@smith.com>", OR it can appear as a group, e.g.:
The W3C spec of course breaks down each of the above keywords like "phrase", "addr-spec", and "route-addr" into totally unambiguous terms which the interested reader can check out. I think what appears in most people's minds when they think of "email address" however is the mailbox types, Address Specification and Phrase Route Specification.
The problem we would like to solve is: given some arbitrary sequence of Address Specification and Phrase Route Specification email addresses, do two things:
For example, given the text string:
OR
OR
turn it into:
In the file linked below is the javascript for you to do exactly this. It is composed of the following two functions:
If it's a valid jumble of emails (meaning some sequence of Address or Phrase Route Specification emails separated by either whitespace, a comma, or a semicolon) returns true. Else, returns false.
Assuming 'aString' is a "valid jumble of emails", extract and returns them as a list of Address Specification emails.
The javascript is tested to work in IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.
Perhaps you remember a movie from a long, long time ago called "The Wizard of Speed and Time"? If not, and like me you have an inexplicable desire to make references to obscure, obscure, funny, films, and you're into nostalgia like a crazy person, you should check it out, if at least to have something interesting to say to your friends instead of staring awkwardly at the ground while you pray for the moon to crash into the earth or something just so you'll have something to talk about. Created lovingly by a special effects technician named Mike Jittlov, over a period of about 5 years (!!) (and expanded from this short film) he uses stop motion to make himself appear to do things like appearing to walk on walls, and, uh, run really fast. The tone of the movie is like a mix between Disney and Monty Python.
Anyhow it's basically about how the creative spirit is awesome and hollywood producers are a bunch of assholes.
What brought this to my attention recently is having come across one of Jittlov's more recent works, "Darth Vadar's Psychic Hotline," which is basically Darth Vadar as Miss Cleo. You must be a giant Star Wars dork to enjoy this. Here's the short. Enjoy!
Just saw this sketch comedy show in the chicago land area by a group called The Comic Thread, and the show was called "God? Dammit!" At the end of the thing Jesus had a barmitzvah. Anyways, they usually put on a string of shows every summer, so if you ever have the occasion, I highly recommend it.
I bumped into this girl there whom I've met like twice and she had this look on her face like "....who the hell are you?" Perhaps all the hair on my face creates a mystifying effect upon the mind. I'm like a freakin' shadow
