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Something that’s stuck with me in social software design is the importance of selecting verbs. This notion appeals to the linguist in me, but I truly believe that it’s a really significant step in the process of design. In Jyri Engestrom’s superb, and in some ways canonical, work on social objects, defining verbs is one [...]
I really like the recent blog post by Tom Taylor, titled “you’ve either shipped or you haven’t“: You’ve either shipped, or you haven’t. You’ve either poured weeks, months or even years of your life into bringing a product or a service into the world, or you haven’t. If you have, you’ll know what I’m talking [...]
The Guardian editorial this morning (“In praise of … the rule of three”) reminded me of a memorable lesson I had at school about linguistic devices used in political speeches. (It was probably this kind of lesson which prompted me to later do a degree in Linguistics.) Here’s a quick list of the patterns I [...]
Thanks to Flickr member fryder2 for reminding me of this photo of a board game, which I took at a museum in Montreal in 2008, and which now takes on a slightly more topical meaning – especially as the game was branded BP…
I don’t have an ‘e-book’ (like the Kindle). I don’t have an iPad (even though I’d like one). But I do have an iPhone. And even though it’s perhaps not the best device for it, I do like reading the occasional book on it – mainly during my commute to work. The thing that reading books on [...]
The new iPhone announced this week does sound very nice and all, and the new gyroscope might have some fun uses, but I think it’s still missing one crucial sensor: a thermometer. Why is this important? Because temperature is something that has a big impact on our lives, and that people talk about a lot, and yet [...]
I’ve had my iPhone for a little while now. Mainly I use it for communication (SMS, e-mail, Twitter) and for reading whilst on the move (Guardian, Google Reader, Instapaper). Occasionally, however, I’ll play a game, and Words With Friends has proved to have the best form of gameplay. Words With Friends is pretty simple. It’s [...]
If there’s one thing that’s starting to annoy me in this election build-up, it’s the constant speculation over who-would-do-what if there’s a hung parliament. If you watch the press conferences of any of the three main political parties, you’ll see journalist after journalist asking more-or-less the same question [...]
I visited Chester Zoo recently. It’s a great zoo with loads of really well designed enclosures and lots of lovely animals. At the exit of the relatively-new Realm of the Red Ape enclosure (which houses the orangutangs), was this interesting badge vending-machine exhibit, titled ‘Home or Away?’ [...]
I bumped into a couple of Daleks on the way to work this morning. These are, of course, two of the ‘New Paradigm Daleks’ introduced in last week’s episode of the new series, Victory of the Daleks [...]
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