From McGazz (who also has some great music to listen to on his website): “As I was getting myself a cup of tea in work this morning, I overheard a colleague talking about a problem at the tanning salon his wife runs. Each cubicle has […]
Epson messes up my day
My Epson Stylus Photo R1800’s been running low on ink in a couple of cartridges for a few days now. I’ve been putting off ordering them until this weekend. Now I find that when the printer believes a cartridge has reached 0%, it won’t print […]
Disaffordances and engineering obedience
Image based on Don Norman‘s famous teapot, and the Obey Giant face Last month I asked, in response to some criticism, whether there was a better term than ‘architectures of control’ for the loose category of stuff discussed on this site. The response was great […]
Review: We Know What You Want by Martin Howard
A couple of weeks ago, Martin Howard sent me details of his blog, How They Change Your Mind and book, We Know What You Want: How They Change Your Mind, published last year by Disinformation. You can review the blog for yourselves – it has […]
How do I fix this?
How do I fix this? It’s been like this for over 3 weeks now (the “22 days”) and is clearly a problem that many bloggers are having. I’ve submitted a ‘link count error’ ticket and tried various things but to no avail, yet.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who’s got in touch over the last few weeks with examples and interesting angles on the areas discussed on this site, and my apologies for having not yet replied to everyone. The response to the sudden increase in eyeballs and linkage (even […]
Speed control designed to help the user
Something with an interesting ‘forcing function’ story has been right in front of me all this time: the QWERTY keyboard, developed by Christopher Sholes and then Remington, with the intention of controlling the user’s behaviour. Until typists became proficient with the QWERTY system, the non-alphabetical […]
Architectures of control in nature
Images from Herman von Bon Herman von Bon of the Soekershof Walkabout Maze & Botanical Gardens in South Africa lets me know about a pollination tactic used by some types of carrion flower, whereby they attract certain insects (by smell, and presumably markings), swallow them […]
‘Secret alarm becomes dance track’
The Mosquito sound has been mixed (sort of) into a dance track: “…the sound is being used in a dance track, Buzzin’, with secret melodies only young ears can hear. … Simon Morris from Compound Security said: “Following the success of the ringtone, a lot […]
‘Fair use, Xbox hacking, and how far will Linux users go to get a cheap PC?’
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, in ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blog, asks whether it is ‘ethical’ for users to install GNU/Linux on an Xbox, or in general, to use hardware they have bought in whatever way they wish. “First, is it ethical to hack an Xbox or any other […]
Another phone business model designed to frustrate the customer
In a similar vein to a recent mention of a Verizon trick which attempts to force the user to use an expensive data service to check e-mail, rather than the free built-in WiFi, Uninnovate discusses the (Sprint) LG Fusic which not only disables on-phone features […]
Countercontrol: blind pilots
In a recent post, I discussed a Spiked article by Josie Appleton which included the following quote: “Police in Weston-super-Mare have been shining bright halogen lights from helicopters on to youths gathered in parks and other public places. The light temporarily blinds them, and is […]