smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Yet another reminder that Gizmodo is little more than a haven for jackasses:

“CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn’t help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn’t stop.”

Powering off a few static-display panels? Mildly amusing. Lets be honest.

Repeatedly killing off actual presentations, interrupting interactive sessions and generally wasting everyone else’s time, to then brag about not really being sorry at all? Just plain stupid.

It’s always funny until you’re the one at the receiving end. I doubt the Gizmodo team would have found it quite as comical if one of their party was ejected from CES, then another, then another.. the organisers just not able to stop.

Seth on dumbing down products:

The thing is, when you dumb stuff down, you know what you get?
Dumb customers.

This is very true — to a point. Sure, one person can be smart, forward thinking, adventurous and a potential zealot for the cause. One person can cope with far more than we might naturally expect.

But a group of people can be dumb, staunchly conservative, quick to assume, easily scared and in some cases, downright dangerous. That may sound like a harsh critique, but I assure you that isn’t the case. It’s part of a group instinct, something that ensures longevity and safety.

And no matter what business or service you provide, some won’t care about the mechanics, or features. They just want product A to fit need B. How that happens is entirely irrelevant.

“Dumbing down” a product or service doesn’t work, Seth is bang on there. However, neither is pitching it with an Einstein-like intellect. Balance the delivery and temper it with an understanding of your target market, or audience.

When you know what customers want and how they think or react as a group, you’ll know how best to deliver.

MacHeist have released this year’s bundle:

“Last year’s bundle caused a frenzy in the Mac community, selling over 16,000 copies in a week. This year, we’re setting our sights a little higher, with a larger bundle, a two week sale, and what we believe to be a stronger collection of apps. Simply put, this is the best Mac software deal in history.”

I see some neat stuff here, even as a newly minted part-time Mac user I can recognise a few sweet deals in the mix that make it a tempting offer. Then there are the claims that a percentage will go to charity — always a crowd pleaser.

However, interest is tainted by previous antics in which much tom-foolery, claim, counter-claim and questions of ethics occurred, leading one to wonder just how much of a ‘deal’ this really is.

My partner on the vagaries of speculative fiction:

“Yes, it’s hard to guess by looking at a person whether they’re in the speculative fiction section for sci-fi or fantasy. Seriously, though, it’s like expecting all black people to be gangsta rappers, all Asians to be grocers, or all Arabs to be terrorists.”

She has a wonderful way of viewing the world and it’s fundamental truths.

I would like to take a moment of your time, should you be a Windows Mobile user, as you should immediately check out Pointui:

“Take back control of your device with Pointui Home. No need to fumble for a stylus any more as Home is designed with generously sized controls.”

It is pitched as “the definitive user interface for mobile devices” — Microsoft, take note. This is what windows mobile should be capable of, right out of the box.

It’s still early days, however navigation already follows a pattern and you end up where you expected to go. And the UI is quite simply, outstanding.

This (freeware, no less) interface is no instant iPhone killer, for certain, but after little more than 5 minutes of use I simply cannot imagine ever returning to the cludgy stylus-and-menu structure that has haunted Windows Mobile for years.

If you want to free your windows mobile device, this is the answer.

Seth Godin on lessons de musique:

“The biggest opportunity for the music business is to combine permission with subscription. The possibilities are endless.”

There is so much understanding packed into this I hardly know where to begin.

Whilst labels fight to retain a business they have profiteered from for years, artists are embracing this ideal directly, forging new partnerships with the consumer and fan alike. It’s a level of intimacy the big labels have only ever dreamed of achieving.

Translation? Lables have to evolve, grow and most importantly adapt to new technologies and mediums.. or face eventual extinction.

Jeff Atwood has a great piece on the relentless pace of programming change:

“It’s no longer unique for something to be new, no longer interesting when something is shiny. Eventually, you grow weary of shiny new things.”

The Magpie Effect — no sooner do we finally get a chance to check out some new programming platform, it’s already obsolete and out-of-favour.

Why should anyone invest time and energy developing in the latest craze, when even it’s biggest proponents and drum beaters change their minds on the current framework flavour every other week?!

There in, gentle readers, is the moral of the story and why it’s a rare thing indeed to see such technologies embraced by a wider audience or why they seldom seem to gain much long-term traction, despite the hype.

The pace of change is such that both platform and programmer alike become their own worst enemy, dooming the platform before it has any real chance of taking wing.

A conspirational hat wearer believes Rands in Repose is Garbage:

“I really don’t know how to approach this; I thought it was sarcasm until I read the rest of the article. Is it supposed to be profound?”

Profound? No.

Is it an interesting insight into “data on data”, that is, taking an existing data set and performing statistical analysis on it? Yes.

Indeed I’ve noticed the article cropping up in discussion already — along with some fascinating patterns regarding twitter usage.

Rands in Repose is a smart read as it’s author takes the time to break often-complex concepts down to a level the lay-person can grasp, not because it’s pitched as some esoteric Mecca.

Once again Jessica Hagy finds the mark:

“Please, give the writers whatever they want.”

Could not agree more, lest we suffer more reality show tomfoolery.

Joen, a smart chap whom I read quite diligently perhaps passes the comment of the week:

Usability is not a Jackson Pollock painting.

Whilst Joen argues that Wordpress is the single best blogging platform out there, and to be fair his comments are true to an extent, it does suffer mix of legacy design elements with an assortment of new css-slicing techniques that result in a UI challenged (at best) product.

The interface is, quite frankly, shocking. Traversing the UI isn’t a fun process — and the less spoken of the template engine and it’s propensity to mix structure and presentation, the better. It’s not uncommon to hear the phrase “it should not be this hard” within the community.

The demo Joen points to is a classic example of why the Wordpress developers just don’t seem to “get” the idea of smart UI design — repeated vertical scrolling just to post and or edit an entry isn’t the bastion of great design.

The community has attempted to help out in the past and received little more than passing interest — amusingly whilst there is now some hint of ’shuttle’ in the 2.3.x releases, it’s at best a passing shadow of what could have been. Without a solid commitment to get it right, Wordpress will always be an ungainly and navigationally challenged beast.

Whilst Habari may have been a haven for ex-Wordpress developers, it’s yet to really gain any traction. One wonders what would have been if the same creative and design flair had been welcomed by the Wordpress project team instead of the litany of excuses reasons why it’s always just too hard.

Shawn Blanc takes a fresh look at an increasingly popular herb and notes:

“And Shaun Inman’s Mint is a website analytics program for those kinds of people: The people who highly appreciate spectacular (and tasty) things.”

I’ve often wondered quite why folks are so wrapped up in this web statistics product. Sure, I’ve been aware for a while now that it’s a good application. But there are many good statistics applications out there. What makes this any different to the rest?

Mr Blanc answers that question in spades, tracing the progress of the tasty snack that has become an addictive narcotic for an increasing number of users. And it’s reviews like this that really make me — as a prospective customer — salivate at the thought of what it might do for my appetite in turn.