weblog October 29, 2002   if you (like me) see this channel as the greatest medium ever invented to tell stories you might want to check out the Center for Digital Storytelling. if instead you are simply looking for a site that has turned digital storytelling into a form of art move over to Derek Powazek's The Fray. Posted by fabio sergio | 10:08 AM | permalink ............ October 28, 2002   i just realized this page has not been updated for the longest time. what a weblog huh? thing is i've been way busy lately. it's only when i have to deal with users that i start to wonder why we put ourselves through all the pain involved. this time we tested with “professional” users, which meant availability after 7 PM and getting done at around 11:00 PM. couple that with waking up at 6:30 and you start to get the picture. driving back home from Milano (about 40 minutes) put to good use all the caffeine i had taken advantage of to keep awake while users showed us our wrongs. well, whatever. usability is as usability does. so many things to talk about it's no use to try and follow any logical order. yes folks, it's link bonanza time. finally Microsoft, together with UK mobile operator Orange, has commercially released the first Microsoft OS-based smartphone. all of this just as Symbian announced it has added Samsung to its list of licensees. OS wars are alive and well. if you care to read first impressions on Microsoft's smartphone OS take a look at the review published by infoSync. as a side note: why a phone gets smart when you make it behave more like a computer is beyond me. but then again i am not a good judge i guess. talking about wars, we seem to be undergoing the cyclical resurgence of animosities towards usability and user-centered design practices in general. while Usability Must Die definitely leads the pack even someone from the Information Architecture field has decided to speak out against our blindness to the needs of our own clients. even though i somewhat subscribe to this point of view i can't help but think that truth lies somewhere in the middle, as usual, and extremes are only useful to indulge in navel gazing. on a more positive side Christina Wodkte's new book, "Information Architecture. Blueprints for the Web" is finally out. if you happen to look carefully at page 180 you should recognize a friendly face. yes, Michael the executive from Miramax happens to be yours truly. what can i say? the book is great. go buy it. speaking about print and articles i have also been granted the pleasure to see some of my (useless) words printed this week. the article is titled "In medium stat virtus" and tries to identify some of the reasons why a few dot-coms have managed to weather the storm and are still alive and well. the article was published on Equilibri, a tri-monthly publication by the italian Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei that promotes researches in the field of sustainable development. yes, it's in italian. sorry. lately one of my daily stops has been the Smart Mobs weblog. i am still waiting for the Smart Mobs book to arrive and experiencing one of those "border of the empire" moments. every so often there are things brewing somewhere else (read: in the US) and we have to wait forever to develop our own opinion about what's already being discussed elsewhere. there goes the global village i guess. sorry, digressing. Peter Merholz and others have been commenting on the book, focusing specifically on mobile-related aspects, which always seem to be the most fascinating. the blurring boundaries between what's considered private and what's perceived as public are inherent qualities of a tool that's used in public but is profoundly private in nature. this split-personality drives a powerful mixture of achieving differentiation in a social context where users usually want to be considered "members". would there be a market for custom ring-tones if no-one except the owner could hear them? over, out. Posted by fabio sergio | 11:07 AM | permalink ............ October 08, 2002   fascinatingly scary article on the NewScientist. "Radio emerges from the electronic soup". "A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver." Bill Joy was right.The future doesn't need us. wait though. we might still be useful. as data conductors, yes, wires: "Exchange emails through handshake" "A device attached to a PDA can send and receive weak electrical signals through people, with human bodies as communications circuits." oh well. whatever. "The sun will explode in less than six years" anyway. Posted by fabio sergio | 9:24 AM | permalink ............ October 03, 2002   Heather Hamilton is posting again. welcome back. talking about great voices on the net Paul Ford's East River Unconsecration is, as usual, worth every moment spent reading it. his quote of "Benjamin Franklin on Business Ethics" resonates with what i've been feeling lately and made me think. long and hard. Posted by fabio sergio | 10:13 AM | permalink ............ Not bored yet? Visit freegorifero's weblog archives for more useless words.

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