Category: links and ideas

“Consider a driver on a typical North American highway. The progress of the vehicle is dependent on a series of visual judgements made by the driver concerning the relative speed of other vehicles, and any manoeuvres necessary to complete the journey. At the same time, he or she is bombarded with other information: traffic lights, road signs, turn signals, advertising hoardings, petrol prices, shop signs, local time and temperature and so on. Yet most people consider the process so routine that they play music to keep from getting bored. Even music videos, which saturate the visual field with distractions and come with a soundtrack, now have to be embellished by textual pop-ups. This remarkable ability to absorb and interpret visual information is the basis of industrial society and is becoming even more important in the information age. It is not a natural human attribute but a relatively new learned skill.”

from An Introduction to Visual Culture.

ghostboy’s latest post comes after a chat about design and how much should we give in to the “client”‘s taste instead of our own view. it’s tricky – specially when there’s not much time to get together and share ideas.
i know a very successful person in the informatics world who had a degree in computer science and then did another one in economy – to understand what the clients where demanding, to know their language, he says. i wonder if sometimes we (the design rookies) are just too unexperienced to understand what people have in mind in the first place. or too stubborn to go with it. :|

my apologies and late congratulations:
* rita, for your bday. lots of hugs and kisses! :)
* paulo, for the visao’s photojournalism prize. another one, eh? :P

* meetup is introducing fees in their service.
i don’t really blame them – they had a great idea, and they’re not making the most of it, money-wise. they’ve helped thousands of stay-at-home moms and other enthusiasts with a common passion get offline and share their thoughts, organize riots and actually “make something” out of their ideas. still, they know the risks and what’s at stake here.
personally, i think they’ll loose a big share of their groups. i won’t pay $9 a month (that’s more than what i pay to keep this site) and i won’t make the knitters in my group pay for the monthly meeting! – that’s just absurd! if it’s pay or leave, then it’s leave.

* did you know you can costumize your google news‘s page? instead of britney spears pregnancy, i can generate a page with photography or blog related news. :) neat!

and now, in english” (as heard in a famous answer machine):
* n.a.d.d. (nerd attention deficiency disorder) or a.d.t (attention deficit trait).

if you browse with multiple tabs open and juggle tasks at the same time, you might suffer from it too. i sure do. :| i have several tabs open, plus notepad, secure shell, messenger, skype, feedreader, itunes… and all the mess in my desk too… *sigh*
no wonder i have so much work on the to-do list.
(via ghostboy)