quicktime video of mac os user change

on the Snapz Pro X web page you can see a video (made with Snapz Pro X) of the Mac user change screen. it rotates a cube-link image from the desktop of the first user to the desktop of the second one. there are a lot of other interesting video captures on this web site. they are there to illustrate the capabilities of the screen capture program but they are interesting in themselves.

learnin is phun

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

you can download this game and play yourself. it is a physics sandbox where you can easily create objects (2d), endow them with properties and they react and respond. the video shows lots of examples of building and setting properties for different objects and how they work together afterward. there is also a link to the game you can download at college humor.com. oops. too bad, windows only.

informational movement from Ocean's Eleven and some type

In this animated video using text and part of the script from the movie "Ocean's Eleven," movement of the text objects on the page also gives an idea of the caper they are discussing. The object of this animation is to entertain but part of what it accomplishes is also some visual ideas of the space they are talking about.

I know the video won't show in the aggreator so here is a link to the video on You'Tube.

defrag hard drive - good use of movement to provide information

this screen shot of a hard drive optimization (Norton Systemworks defragmentation tool), is the first good example I have found of movement that exists to contain information. it's interesting that it's also a very old idea.

link to the iraq war map

The Iraq war fatalities ma is here.

and here is a good critical assessment of the information value of the map from my friend Andrew Gilmartin:

The one element I don't like is that there is no direct representation of deaths over time per region. I understand that this information visual is an animated one and so is intended to be "watched" rather
than "seen" but, being old and gray, I like my information visuals to have a conclusion or a summary and this one does not. So, while each death is marked by a dot and the density of dots does indirectly
represents deaths over time but where deaths are geographically close together then the dots overlap and so the density is less than what it should be. What constituents a region is hard to define; place names
are important for orientation but they might not accurately reflect regionalism. I am sure there is some math that could be used to cluster deaths.

Inspiration for interface design

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Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path slideshow on where interface design inspiration comes from. some of the text is too small to read but it's still worth looking at.

Star Wars Sweded

Sweding the classic. Take a break from that frantic writing and have a laugh. The dogfight is awesome.

1:47. I don't know how to get the video to show in the aggregator but it's on my blog page at viacamp. maybe a link to youtube?

Interaction-Design.org HCI encyclopedia

this is a web site dedicated to collecting terms of interaction design, complete with an online citation maker. there is an invitation to write entries for terms that you suggest. so if you get some good info under your belt you may be able to have it published here.

Jacob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics

here are 10general principles for usability on useit.com.

and as long as I'm at it, here is a blog discussion linking the 10 heuristics to real life zen haiku