Phone Whores

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In case you are not familiar with a term that I just made up, a phone whore is a woman who goes to the airport with no magazines, laptops, books, puzzles or other means to entertain her. All she has is a phone, and she’s going to use it, no matter how many people are annoyed.

The phone whore is motivated by the desire to talk with people. The phone asshole (male variety) is motivated by the need to have everyone on the flight know he’s negotiating important business deals and that he has staff members that must receive his wisdom.

— Scott Adams

 

Fictional passwords: Western concept of Self

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John Burdett’s second novel, Bangkok Tattoo, was as good as his first (Bangkok 8). Both stories are set in (you guessed it) Bangkok, where Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep solves bizarre murders. Sonchai is a devout Buddhist and the plot is laced with Eastern religion. I especially liked this description of the Western concept of Self:

“…a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging, there is no center at all, everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the environment, your thoughts depend on whatever junk floats in from the media, your emotions are largely from the reptilian end of your DNA, your intellect is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator, and even your best side is a superficial piece of social programming that will fall apart just as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy starts to fail and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor.”

Ouch. The wannabe geek in me also enjoyed this password to a CIA online database:

AQ82860136574X-Halifax nineteen [lowercase] Oklahoma twenty-2 BLUE WHALE [all uppercase] Amerika stop 783

Won’t even fit on a Post-It note.

Tips on linking

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  • Traditionally, links are underlined as well, but that approach is often unnecessary and falling out of favor to reduce visual clutter.
  • Links lack affordance, which means their visual properties don’t suggest how they are used and are understood only through experience.
  • Link text should indicate the result of clicking on the link.
  • Use different colors for visited and unvisited links.
  • Don’t use color for text that isn’t a link because users may assume that it is a link.
  • Always show either an underline (for any link text) or a button frame (for command link text only) on hover to reinforce visually that the text is a link.
  • Don’t underlined text that isn’t a link because users will assume that it is a link.
  • Use background colors that contrast with the link colors.
  • Use link text that is the most relevant part of the text and are large enough to be easy to click.
  • Don’t provide an infotip [in HTML, a title element] that is merely a restatement of the link text.
  • If a link requires further explanation, provide the explanation in either a separate text control or an infotip, but not both.
  • Place optional supplemental graphics that indicates the target of a link to the right of the text and use an infotip to explain its meaning.
  • Link to specific content rather than general content.
  • Use a link only if the linked material is relevant, helpful, and not redundant.
  • Link only on the first occurrence of the link text.
  • Don’t add “Click here” to the link text. It isn’t necessary because a link implies clicking. Also, “Click here” and “here” alone are poor link text because they convey no information about the link when read by a screen reader.
  • Start the link with an imperative verb and clearly describe the action that the link performs.
  • Don’t use ending punctuation except for question marks.

The Long Tail

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I tend to rate non-fiction books by highlighters consumed. And if I really like the work, I post excerpts here so I can find them long after I’ve loaned the book to someone that really didn’t want to read it in the first place and promptly lost it.

I’m sure I’ll be boring people with references to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, for many weeks. I’ve posted some of my favorite segments after the jump. And here’s one to get you started:

News was the first industry to really feel the impact of the Internet, and we’ve now had an entire generation grow up with the expectation of being able to have on-demand news on any subject at any time for free. This may be good for news junkies, but it’s been hell on the news business. (Pg. 185)

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