Twitter journalism

On the Mumbai attacks:
"Stopping updates related to operations (Police requesting not to update the situation in real time as an operation is being undertaken)."

http://twitter.com/BreakingNewz

Or use search.twitter.com. Query "near:mumbai" will give everything that's being twittered in the Mumbai area.

Schizo... The New XBOX360 Experience

As a user I think it sucks. After the installation of the New Experience you can create an avatar, but I hate the style: It's all round and fluffy and Wii-like. Now I have a round, fluffy, colorful avatar and I'm playing Gears of War 2 (read: guns with chainsaws, blood and gore). It just doesn't match. The overviews are spread out over different screens. I haven't found out yet the use of the Wii avatars, except for dressing it. The XBOX360 is now more a home entertainment system. But I don't use it for that: it's a very noisy machine.
To me it's just a noisy console that I use to play cool games, online, with friends!
Nope: I don't like the kiddie style New Experience. It's not for me.

As a user experience designer I think it's a great step! It's easier to use now. Where it was first not difficult, but still quite complex to set it up as a media centre, download content or view gamer profile information, it's now much more intuitive to use. As far as I've used it I have not seen any new functionality: it looks like they just replaced the existing interface with this user friendly one.
There are no more PC like elements like lists and scroll bars, instead there's a smooth, simple 3D interface. I think it's a real example of how to change from functional oriented design to user oriented design.
Very well done.

I'm in ur bankz, stealin ur money

Economic news in LOLspeak: LOLfed.com

Why no Pie?

Pie menu's are often used in games, but not on the interwebs. Draw your own conclusions, do the test :)

Pie vs drop down menu's
(Firefox 3 is required)

Schools kill creativity

I just saw Ken Robinson's TED presentation Schools kill creativity. The title says enough. It very much reminded me of a situation in my own life, years ago:

After my first year at the Academy For Digital Communication (ADC) I decided to do something else, because (for some reason) I was not sure if this was what I wanted to do. So the following year I attended the Amsterdam teacher education institute (PABO).

For exactly the same reason that Ken Robinson talks about in his TED presentation, I knew after 3 months of PABO that I could never be a school teacher and realised I wanted to go back to the ADC.

Here's the reason why:
Right after the start of the year I was already teaching a class of 4-5 year old kids. Every friday afternoon they'd have 2 hours of free play time; they could go and draw, play a board game, clay, Lego etc. At the end of one particular friday afternoon of free playing 4 kids were missing in action. Some kids told me they were on the hallway so I took a look and there they were: 1 kid stripped down to his underwear while 3 others were examining him. They were not making any noise, they were not being bad: they were just playing. Since free play time was over I called them back in class and the day continued normally... Until my mentor told me that I had to go talk to the kids, explain to them that this was inappropriate behavior and that they could not do that game again.

I refused. I refused because I could not explain to those kids why that (playing) was "wrong" behavior.

This is the exact reason that I decided to stop teachers education. There were more situations where I had to correct kids for what was considered "inappropriate" behavior, but this one really stuck with me.
It made me realise that the current school system tries very hard to teach children what is and what is not important or appropriate behavior, and by doing so kill their creativity. Ken Robinson's insightful presentation was an eye opener to me and I'm glad that I did not take part in this crime against humanity! :)

Soon enough I realised (again) that things like internet, media, communication and tech have my interest because they're such a big part of our lives. So I returned to and finished the ADC. The work that I do today feels more or less like a hobby that got out of hand.
I now wonder: Would that be because when I was young we had no internet, so we could not be told what we could, or could not do with it??? Is that why the internet is so interesting to so many of us? Because we look at it without prejudice?