timoni.org

Timoni Grone is a web designer in San Francisco. This is her blog.

Read more about her here, or follow her on Twitter, Flickr, or other places around the internet.

Posts about technology
August 25th, 2009
Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.

Douglas Adams on How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet, via @kevinmarks

Wow! Douglas Adams wrote this paragraph ten years ago, and it exactly summarizes why I find it extremely odd/uncomfortable that Twitter is being treated like a news source (and positioning itself as a news source, if their homepage redesign is any indication). Sure, you might found out the news from Twitter, but it’s just a bunch of people talking. There’s no journalist code of ethics involved.

technology internet douglasadams
August 10th, 2009
Translation party You should stay.

Translation party

You should stay.

technology humour music
There are a couple of coffee shops in San Francisco, for example—and I won’t name them only because I don’t want to encourage crowds—where there is silence because everyone is engrossed in their laptops. You can walk into these places and 30 or 40 pairs of eyes are illuminated by screen lighting. There is no conversation, not even recognition of other human life forms. Perhaps the most bizarre sight is a table for four, with four dedicated souls ignoring each other and having eyes only for their homework, gossip sites, or IM.

Should Starbucks ban laptops?, in CNET

There’s a general assumption in articles like these that it would be better—not just financially beneficial to coffee shops, but flat-out better, say, for humanity—if folks socialized more, and typed less, in coffee shops. This assumes a few things.

  • That people go to places like coffee shops because they want to talk and meet other people and not, for example, enjoy a pleasant cup of steaming brew while musing, daydreaming, or thinking deeply in a place designed for relaxing imbibition.
  • That when folks are on their computers, they’re not socializing.
  • That there is something wrong with sitting silently but comfortably in a group of similarly-engaged companions if that activity involves one’s laptop (quiet study groups, or people reading books, appear to be above criticism).
  • That it is better to talk to the people around you than to be silent and engrossed in an activity.
  • That choosing one’s computer over contact with strangers is bad.
  • That one should reasonably expect a coffee shop to be a lively and social place.
  • That working on a laptop excludes the possibility of conversation, with friends or with strangers.

I think that most folks who have worked on laptops in coffee shops for any period of time would know most, if not all, of these assumptions aren’t true. The coffee shops that I have known and loved best, the ones with the strongest community, are those that allow people to comfortably do whatever it is they’d like to do at that coffee shop.

society technology coffee
July 22nd, 2009
aliceisms: ‘scuse the language, but I kind of feel the same. Actually, the variety of malware and recently-discovered vulnerabilities has been increasing (job security for me?), and the only solution I can see to protect the normal user is education. What’s an 0-day?

aliceisms:

‘scuse the language, but I kind of feel the same. Actually, the variety of malware and recently-discovered vulnerabilities has been increasing (job security for me?), and the only solution I can see to protect the normal user is education.

What’s an 0-day?

technology
July 15th, 2009
TechCrunch plans to release illegally obtained documents about Twitter

So some guy calling himself “Hacker Croll” stole hundreds of confidential documents from the Twitter founders, and he sent copies to TechCrunch. That blog’s founder, Mike Arrington, says the documents include people who interviewed at Twitter, floorplans, and security passcodes.

So of course once Mike (a former lawyer) saw this was some heavy illegally-gotten shit, he stopped reading, right?

Nope! He and his team read the docs all night. And MIKE PLANS TO PUBLISH SOME OF THEM.

I’ve never liked TechCrunch, but before now it was mostly personal preference or distaste. Now it’s major. IF YOU EVER, EVER, EVER READ OR LINK TO TECHCRUNCH, YOU ARE NOW SUPPORTING A SITE THAT UTTERLY DISRESPECTS ALL PRIVACY AND RULE OF LAW. THEY ARE SCUM.

—nickdouglas

Oh come on. This is the a ridiculous tempest in a teapot. If anyone believes this is rare, unique, or even remotely unorthodox, you may as well stop reading the news. How do you think we learned about yellowcake, or the pentagon papers, or that Apple is planning a tablet PC? Someone, somewhere, broke a law to learn these things or leak these things. This is how news WORKS. Do you think Steve Jobs like forgot to get a factory to sign an NDA or just called up the China Times and said “hey we’re gonna build a tablet PC. Don’t tell anyone I told you?” Do you think that however the WaPo learned about Cheney’s plans for an assassin squad was LEGAL? The shit was TOP SECRET. Someone broke the law to tell them. The only difference here is that Arrington is being on the up and up of where he got the info, and letting us judge the motivations of the hacker as well. And to call them illegally-obtained documents is disingenuous. Arrington didn’t break any laws. They landed in his inbox. — rickwebb

That said, Mike no longer gets to question why people spit in his face. —lauraglu

Agree with rickwebb & lauraglu, although for my money, Techcrunch is doing the best it can to be open and it’s laudable they’ve decided to only publish the “newsworthy stories.” They’re not being slimy, but they’re certainly being treated as if they are. People really like to hate Techcrunch.
internet technology society
June 3rd, 2009

Thanks to digital technology, designers can squeeze so many functions into such tiny containers that there is more computing power in a basic cellphone…than at NASA’s headquarters when it began in 1958. That is why the appearance of most digital products bears no relation to what they do.

Take the iPod Shuffle. How could you be expected to guess what that tiny metal box does by looking at it? There are no clues to suggest that it might play music. Like most other digital devices, the Shuffle is (literally) an inscrutable box of tricks. Apple’s designers conceived the latest model as a subtle joke on the demise of “form follows …” It is so small, half the size of its predecessor, that they could make it in the same shape as one of those pins that clip on to clothing. This means the Shuffle’s form does reflect one of its functions, albeit the very minor one of attaching itself to a jacket, but gives no hint as to its more important role of storing and playing hundreds of songs.

[ The Demise of ‘Form Follows Function’, in the New York Times ]

Most conceptual or fantastic ‘designs of the future’ have heralded this change for quite some time—generations, in fact. There seems to be a general assumption that, as humanity prospers and has time to focus on the creation of beautiful objects, designs will be streamlined. Forms will be functional, but cleverly so: designs will move from intuitive to intuiting. There are tons of examples of this:

  • zeppelins
  • the classic UFO ‘saucer’ design
  • Eve from Wall-E
  • lightsabers
  • the Destination Moon spaceship
  • the crazy flying fish ships from this 19th-century drawing
  • The Star Trek Next Generation communicator pins
  • Stephenson’s New Matter bolt, chord & sphere

Broadly speaking, it’s only in dystopian futures or societies (Terminator, Brazil, War of the Worlds, Alien, Blade Runner, Metropolis, Ghost in the Shell) that future objects are primarily functional. And usually they’re a visual indication of turmoil, indicating humanity hasn’t yet reached that state of happy utopian resource-sharing philosophical bliss that results in skylines like this.

society technology current events
June 1st, 2009

I (still) really don’t get tumblarity

So many questions.

  • Can somebody explain the big number? What is the context? If Tumblarity is a point-based rating system, how many points could one possibly get? To what do I compare my number?
  • Why did my Tumblarity go down by half since yesterday, or up by half the day before? Is this based on reblogs? Likes? How many people follow me? All of these things?
  • If Tumblarity is indeed based on all of these things, what are the ratios?
  • Why I can’t see all of my liked posts and reblogged posts in a list?
  • Why isn’t any of this explained on this page or in this introductory blog post?

—Timoni

technology internet webdesign
May 27th, 2009
[ This is not the correct way to to reblog. ] 506 reblogs at last count, and not a single direct link to the source of this photo.  Folks, the point of a reblog is easy attribution and sourcing. Link to posts in blogs, not the blog itself. Give dates, times and locations, if they’re available. The steps from one reblog to another don’t matter so much as the original post. Here’s the source post of this fantastic photo, if you’re curious. It’s an interior shot of a villa near Gordes, in France.

[ This is not the correct way to to reblog. ]

506 reblogs at last count, and not a single direct link to the source of this photo.  Folks, the point of a reblog is easy attribution and sourcing. Link to posts in blogs, not the blog itself. Give dates, times and locations, if they’re available. The steps from one reblog to another don’t matter so much as the original post.

Here’s the source post of this fantastic photo, if you’re curious. It’s an interior shot of a villa near Gordes, in France.

photos technology
May 22nd, 2009

The problem with the design of AA.com, however, lies less in our competency (or lack thereof, as you pointed out in your post) and more with the culture and processes employed here at American Airlines.

…

But—and I guess here’s the thing I most wanted to get across—simply doing a home page redesign is a piece of cake. You want a redesign? I’ve got six of them in my archives. It only takes a few hours to put together a really good-looking one, as you demonstrated in your post. But doing the design isn’t the hard part, and I think that’s what a lot of outsiders don’t really get, probably because many of them actually do belong to small, just-get-it-done organizations. But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome, and not many, I’ll bet, are jumping on this same bandwagon. They know what it’s like.

[ Mr X, Lead IA Guy at American Airlines, from Dear Dustin Curtis ]

It strikes me that websites may be a good visual indicator of the internal workings and philsophy of a company. It certainly shows more about a company’s processes and values than, say, their letterhead or offices.

Also, Mr. X makes an excellent point about redesigns on large sites. They are a _huge_ pain.

technology design interaction design
May 15th, 2009
benw: From the front page of Amazon.com: Wireless Reading Just Got Bigger Hmm. … Really? What were they think… oh! The wireless Amazon Kindle for ‘wireless reading’! Now carry books wherever you go! “Wireless” was a poor word choice on Amazon’s part. The awesome thing about the Kindle is not so much the wires or lack of them (you still have to plug it in to charge it, anyway), but that you can download the book you want, anytime.  There’s no wait, and you don’t have to go to a bookstore or pay for shipping, either! Finish one book and you can download the next at three in the morning! On a bus! In China! Without internet! That’s the concept Amazon is trying to push with the repeated use of the word “wireless,” because “wireless” can mean either “something without wires” or “something transmitted through the air with energy”. The latter is the less obvious meaning, but the only one that makes sense in Amazon’s marketing here.  Unfortunately for them, it’s easy to misinterpret—and, clearly, easy to mock.

benw:

From the front page of Amazon.com:

Wireless Reading Just Got Bigger

Hmm.

…

Really? What were they think… oh!

  • The wireless Amazon Kindle for ‘wireless reading’! Now carry books wherever you go!

“Wireless” was a poor word choice on Amazon’s part. The awesome thing about the Kindle is not so much the wires or lack of them (you still have to plug it in to charge it, anyway), but that you can download the book you want, anytime.  There’s no wait, and you don’t have to go to a bookstore or pay for shipping, either! Finish one book and you can download the next at three in the morning! On a bus! In China! Without internet!

That’s the concept Amazon is trying to push with the repeated use of the word “wireless,” because “wireless” can mean either “something without wires” or “something transmitted through the air with energy”. The latter is the less obvious meaning, but the only one that makes sense in Amazon’s marketing here.  Unfortunately for them, it’s easy to misinterpret—and, clearly, easy to mock.

technology marketing gadgets

Save the Date

letsmeetinsf:

San Francisco Meetup Thursday June 11th with a special guest from the East Coast. Location is not set yet but we’re aiming for walking distance to the Moscone Center and the nearby BART. Any suggestions?

Sweet! I’ve been wanting to meet Marco.

—Timoni

technology
May 12th, 2009

if i replied to these folks on twitter, you wouldn’t see it.

Twitter recently made some changes to their @-replies that mean you wouldn’t see my replies to any of the above folks unless you were following them as well. Why did they change this from a user setting to a mandatory filter? From the Twitter blog:

[R]eceiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable.

Strongly put, but wrong, Twitter.  Exploring one-sided conversations is my primary way of finding new, interesting followers and overhearing fascinating conversations I otherwise wouldn’t be privvy to. “One-sided fragments” aren’t undesirable to me or other Twitter users that previously opted in to see all followees’ @-replies; it’s the jam & cake to my regular Twitter stream.

Biz said they’ve been studying users’ “usage patterns and feedback”, and I have no doubt they’ve done their homework. I suspect this decision was similar to Netflix’s earlier move to eliminate user profiles back in September. It’s an honest mistake: if only a small number of users use a feature, it’s reasonable to think they may not miss it when it’s gone. But Netflix reversed their decision once they realized how important the feature was to a small number of users, citing listened to the “well-reasoned, sincere responses of loyal members who very much value this feature.” Diplomatically put, and incidentally the reason my roommate and I didn’t cancel our Netflix account.

At this point, only a few hours after the changes, there’s been a lot of negative feedback from the Twitterverse.  A lot. The fact that the official blog post has been rewritten from its earlier breezier (and more condescending) tone indicates that Twitter underestimated the reaction they’d receive.

It’s an easy fix: change things back, Twitter. If you’d like to do us one better, take a tip from Troy’s Twitter Script and give us inline context for @-replies. Here’s a visual example of how it easily removes the whole “one-sided [conversation] fragments” without removing functionality:

Lovely.

—Timoni

technology internet society
I wanted to write something longer about the intro video to geekadvancement.com, but Marco’s already done a great job. Here’s my favorite excerpt: While some people in [the video] are really geeks, most aren’t, and the inclusion of some is baffling. Being a popular user of a “new media” site, or being a “new media” celebrity, doesn’t make you a geek. There’s absolutely no connection whatsoever. This video tarnishes true geek culture with new-media celebrities because — surprise — it was made by new-media people, many of whom try to be cool by saying that they’re geeks (which, in addition to being far from the truth, is guaranteed to insult and frustrate actual geeks). Being a good user of computers and internet-based services stopped being a geek-exclusive behavior a very long time ago. Geek culture isn’t something that a Twitter celebrity suddenly enters because Twitter was written by programmers and runs on servers. and from a later post: Geeks haven’t gone away, and they haven’t become cool. People haven’t stopped being cruel to them, and they haven’t magically overcome their problems. Most of the people in that video would never give an actual geek the time of day. A bunch of people incorrectly suggesting that they’ve suffered the same fate as a continually repressed group — repressed, sometimes, by the kind of people in this video — is offensive at best, and it degrades the reality of being a geek, the worst of which these people (with a small number of exceptions) will never experience or understand. Nicely put. Being a social outcast really, really, really sucks, and there can be long-term emotional ramifications that are difficult to address. On another note, I’m fascinated that Shira Lazar’s video has a tinge of the exclusivity and snottiness I mainly associated with seventh grade homeroom (the year that Gayle, Lisa and Carla  decided I couldn’t sit near them. Heyo! No, I didn’t forget).  Public ostrasism isn’t for the faint at heart, and the fact that Lazar spent so much time dictating and publicizing the boundaries of her percieved social group indicates that nothing like that has ever happened to her.

I wanted to write something longer about the intro video to geekadvancement.com, but Marco’s already done a great job. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

While some people in [the video] are really geeks, most aren’t, and the inclusion of some is baffling. Being a popular user of a “new media” site, or being a “new media” celebrity, doesn’t make you a geek. There’s absolutely no connection whatsoever. This video tarnishes true geek culture with new-media celebrities because — surprise — it was made by new-media people, many of whom try to be cool by saying that they’re geeks (which, in addition to being far from the truth, is guaranteed to insult and frustrate actual geeks).

Being a good user of computers and internet-based services stopped being a geek-exclusive behavior a very long time ago. Geek culture isn’t something that a Twitter celebrity suddenly enters because Twitter was written by programmers and runs on servers.

and from a later post:

Geeks haven’t gone away, and they haven’t become cool. People haven’t stopped being cruel to them, and they haven’t magically overcome their problems. Most of the people in that video would never give an actual geek the time of day.

A bunch of people incorrectly suggesting that they’ve suffered the same fate as a continually repressed group — repressed, sometimes, by the kind of people in this video — is offensive at best, and it degrades the reality of being a geek, the worst of which these people (with a small number of exceptions) will never experience or understand.

Nicely put. Being a social outcast really, really, really sucks, and there can be long-term emotional ramifications that are difficult to address.

On another note, I’m fascinated that Shira Lazar’s video has a tinge of the exclusivity and snottiness I mainly associated with seventh grade homeroom (the year that Gayle, Lisa and Carla  decided I couldn’t sit near them. Heyo! No, I didn’t forget).  Public ostrasism isn’t for the faint at heart, and the fact that Lazar spent so much time dictating and publicizing the boundaries of her percieved social group indicates that nothing like that has ever happened to her.

society technology
May 1st, 2009
shelbot: ak47:biccchi:kanmei:onom: One Person Band » Yanko Design

shelbot:

ak47:biccchi:kanmei:onom: One Person Band » Yanko Design

technology music
March 11th, 2009
A few weeks ago I was tagged to show a screenshot of my desktop. For one reason or another, it’s abnormally tidy. The above screenshot is a much more accurate version. During the workday, I want quick access to the gobs of PSDs and screenshots I’m constantly making. They’re usually all for the same project, so there isn’t much of a need to organize, and I like being able to thoughtlessly click on the same icon—the desktop—no matter what project I’m working on. When I’m done, everything is cleaned up and put in folders. People sometimes make fun of my big desktop icons, but they’re very handy for this particular type of organization, as is the plain desktop image.

A few weeks ago I was tagged to show a screenshot of my desktop. For one reason or another, it’s abnormally tidy. The above screenshot is a much more accurate version.

During the workday, I want quick access to the gobs of PSDs and screenshots I’m constantly making. They’re usually all for the same project, so there isn’t much of a need to organize, and I like being able to thoughtlessly click on the same icon—the desktop—no matter what project I’m working on. When I’m done, everything is cleaned up and put in folders.

People sometimes make fun of my big desktop icons, but they’re very handy for this particular type of organization, as is the plain desktop image.

screenshot technology
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