Why does Facebook use bad grammar?

Posted on December 29th, 2006 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..

I logged into facebook today to be greeted by this message: Christopher xxx changed their profile picture. Changed their profile picture? Did he suddenly develop multiple personalities? Has he asexually divided into multiple people? Last I checked, he was a single person. The pronoun “their” should never be used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun when it can be avoided. In this scenario, facebook already has our gender. It would be quite simple to add a database lookup to use the appropriate pronoun. This is one of those really simple grammar mistakes that are so easily avoided. This is in the same league as using “good” as an adverb.

Come on guys, you can do gooder than that.

5 comments.

Four features I love in Vista

Posted on December 29th, 2006 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..

 Since it’s generally accepted that I’m a kool-aid drinking fanboy, I’d like to share a few of my favorite features of Vista, and why I will never go back to XP.

 

1. Wordwheel

While most people don’t know it by this name, “wordwheel” is the feature in Vista that allows you to “search as you type”. The place I love this most is in the start menu.

 

2. Flip 3D

Dude, it’s just plain cool.

 

3. Accurate file copy estimation

Something that was completely redone in the shell was the file copy engine. The file copy progress bar now has an accurate estimate of time remaining, and even tells you the transfer speed! The screenshot below shows a transfer from one harddrive to another, at 20.5 MB/s.

 

 

4. Network map

Vista has a ton of new features for networking. One great one is the one-click repair/diagnose buttons. I really wish it told me what it was doing, but it’s quite nice that it usually works when DHCP/DNS settings get borked. In addition, it displays a nice network map showing the general topology of your network. Below is a screenshot of my desktop-router-modem-internet:

0 comments.

How to Feel Useful

Posted on December 9th, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc., Programming.

Programming was hard for me to learn because I couldn’t do anything useful with it. When I started learning to program, my book/tutorial would usually start off with the same old stuff–learning how to write functions, loops, variables, and maybe some way of outputting text to the screen.

Needless to say, when all you can do is calculate the number of prime numbers less than n, or play tic-tac-toe with a user, programming is not going to be very interesting. Thus, if you want to teach people who have never programmed before how to program…

You should offer immediately useful/interesting ways to use programming knowledge.

Now, not everyone needs immediate gratification. However, nowadays, there’s really no reason not to provide it. So here are 5 things I wish I had been given when starting programming that would’ve made things a lot easier:

(more…)

4 comments.

Constructive vs. Incremental Design

Posted on December 6th, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc., Product Design, UI Design.

Incremental design involves updating features on an already designed product. Consider Joel on Software’s critique of Vista’s shutdown, or an article reviewing buggy features in a new software product. This sort of design allows for improvements on a current product, but of course this is restricted by the limitations of the preexisting design.

In order to make more than incremental progress, one must design constructively, by creating a new system. The web browser and the spreadsheet, for instance, were not examples of creating a better word processor; they involved a smart designer thinking about a problem in a new way.

In some ways incremental design is best accomplished through constructive design as well. If you start with the initial assumptions of the product (i.e. it must have a way of being turned off, it must have a menu, it must use buttons), then you’re stuck with the initial limitations. Incremental design is better when the designer can think without being absolutely fixed to any narrow paradigms.

0 comments.