In one case, people were asked to buy a CD or DVD of their choice.
By studying the mouse movements, the researchers were able to predict what their second choice would have been.
Things are a bit slow around here as I'm moving to a new server. I've also been playing a bit of Diablo II. Several aspects warrant mention: the multiplayer implementation does some really nice mixing of client and server side functionality. It seems designed to be resistant to connectivity blips. There's an interesting diagnostic for connectivity issues -- the gravity test. Items dropped require server confirmation to hit the ground. It's *net-physics*.
From a cognitive perspective, there are a lot of animations whose speeds are controlled by the players status. Humans are very capable of picking up very small variances in animation rates and seems underutilized in non-game UIs.
2:20:46 PM
8/28/2001
In a compelling use of frame (unlike referenced below), Google has now added a navigation layer to usenet threads... a bit ASCII artish for my taste, but generally a nice improvement.
2:51:21 PM
8/27/2001
Ack! I'm enjoying Exit Strategy but YIL's attempt to render collaborative hypertext to a 1995 frames layout is insufferable. The footnotes will have to wait until the source is really open and a real presentation layer can be crafted. Visit memes.net for a real collaborative system (warts and all).
11:40:54 PM
8/22/2001
Finally got around to playing with XEmacs for windoze. Flashback! My first project is bringing it up to speed with its competitor, Homesite, by adding the critical features of line numbers, ftp editing/upload (this could be a major improvement), and left-side directory listing.
Natively, it has key features that HSite lacks: split screen editing, lynx (?), and of course LISP. It's extremely akward that ctrl-x is used so centrally as a shortcut modifier. I wonder if Windows copy was assigned to this key maliciously.
If you use IE, you may have noticed a particularly pesky type of popup window lately that doesn't respond to ctrl-W and is modal. Webreference provides the scoop. If you design applications for IE, this one is key to know about (and there's an equivalent in Mozilla!).
8:31:34 AM
8/8/2001
DHTML Spotting: SGI has an inline popup search box, reducing the amount of real estate required for the search option but preventing the need to wait for another page load to be able to search (like the $^#$% mozilla.org site). It even works in Mozilla.
10:30:35 AM
The folks over at inXight are offering up some original content. They've got a little way to go on the presentation (no permalinks, essay split over two pages) but this weeks content is a fun read:
The human brain has been under development for billions of years. Of course, the same can be said for pond scum, so we shouldn't let our crown of creation status go to our head.
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