If anything about current interaction design can be called “glamorous,“ it’s creating Web applications. After all, when was the last time you heard someone rave about the interaction design of a product that wasn’t on the Web? (Okay, besides the iPod.) All the cool, innovative new projects are online.
A new approach? WTF? This shit isn’t new. Get real! Yay buzzwords!. Yes, it’s cool. It’s been cool for years.
Here’s something else that is cool: BAM.
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars.”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
It may not be rigorous, but I agree: kudos. I’ll bet there are a whole lot of JavaScripters out there wetting themselves.
as simple as possible, but no simpler
I also think it bears noting that Google is pulling out all the stops to build rich web apps, no matter how weirdly they have to hack the browser to make them go. And I strongly believe that this is a trend that is here to stay — XHTML Strict/CSS/etc be damned. At the end of the day, what really matters to users is compelling apps that let them get their work done quickly.
Imagine now if SVG [1], [2]was used! That would be heavenly. Will we ever see the day?
- Google Maps’ JavaScript source. It’s obfuscated, so you’re going to have to run it through some kind of lint-like utility for JavaScript (Simon Willison suggests prettyprinter.de) as well as some variable renaming.
- map.search.ch’s JavaScript source. maps.search.ch
is the spiritual predecessor to Google Maps, having many of the same
features. Unlike the JavaScript for Google Maps, this isn’t obfuscated
— in fact, it’s pretty nicely laid out.
Synectics, an expert on innovation and change, counts 17 ways. I’ll name the top ten and encourage you to get the book yourself.
- See it coming and quickly change the subject.
- Ignore it. Dead silence intimidates all but the most enthusiastic.
- Feign interest but do nothing about it. This at least prevents the originator from taking it elsewhere.
- Scorn it. “You’re joking, of course.” Make sure to get your comment in before the idea is fully explained.
- Laugh it off. “Ho, ho, ho, that’s a good one, Joe. You must have been awake all night thinking that up.”
- Praise it to death. By the time you have expounded its merits for five minutes everyone else will hate it.
- Mention that it has never been tried before. If the idea is genuinely original, this is certain to be true. Alternatively, say, “If the idea’s so wonderful, why hasn’t someone else already tried it?”
- Say, “Oh, we’ve tried that before”–even if it’s not true. Particularly effective with newcomers. It makes them realize what complete outsiders they are.
- Come up with a competitive idea. This can be a dangerous tactic, however, as you might still be left with an idea to follow up.
- Stall it with any of the following: “We’re not ready for it yet, but in the fullness of time…” — “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but right now…” — “Let’s wait until the new organization has settled down…”
MindTouch is birthed by Aaron Fulkerson and Steve Bjorg.
After living for years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Tara and I return to Minnesota, which is where we met many years earlier. We moved to Maplewood, Minnesota and lived there for the next year. I began work on MindTouch seriously at this point and was working out of the basement of a little townhouse in a dodgy neighborhood. My office space had no windows. This made for interesting meetings with contractors.
Tara Candace Boone took my hand in marraige in the courtyard of Louis XVI in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
While being interviewed for a job a lovely young lady approached me, yes during the interview, and introduced herself as Tara Boone. We shook hands. She smiled coyly. A week later she saw me again and demanded we go out that night. Tara Candace Boone later became my wife.
I graduated from Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill California.
I started my very first profitable business in the 4th grade. I remember my teacher was Mrs. Morgan. She was rather avant-garde. Anyhow, I learned with the proper marketing and salesmanship one could sell damn near anything. I mixed high-gluten flour, water, food coloring, and different spices together for flavoring and sold Edible Glue Gunk (or as I called it: EGG) to children in my elementary school, Burnett. I enjoyed success initially, but decided to ‘open source’ my recipe. Sales suffered after that. I guess I was into open source and free knowledge even back then. By the way, I believe this was the same year I wrote my first line of code on an old Apple computer. Anyhow, I suppose many of my EGG sales were attributable to the popularity of that slime stuff they call Gak back then. Hey, mine was edible man! Talk about product differentiation.
Aaron Fulkerson 
