Yes, that is ironic

“We used to hustle on over the border for health care… And I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now?” — Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, admitting that her family used to go to Canada for medical treatment when she was a child; Canada has a single payer system, which Palin opposes. (Time, March [...]

New Hyrax site up and running

I finally managed to get the Hyrax International LLC web site up and running — it’s really amazing what you can do with WordPress and a few plugins. Not at all like “back in the day” when we hand-coded this stuff in Perl and HTML1.0.
I still need to look into the “right” e-commerce solution, but [...]

Future shock

Ok, I’ll admit it — I think the iPad is going to be a huge success. Not because it has some whiz-bang feature or gizmo that makes it better than any of the competitors. No, I think it will succeed because it’s completely different. Apple is trying to solve a problem that’s been plaguing “the [...]

Brit’s have their priorities sorted

“Drinking problem solved,” reads the headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Soon Britons will be able to get smashed at the pub while their pint glasses won’t.” Apparently, in the face of a horrendous number (87,000) of alcohol related injuries, many of which stem from shattered pint beer glasses, the government has found a solution.
No officials [...]

Do it!

Fill out the survey! It’s only 6 questions long! It’s worth it and you could win an iPod Shuffle! And seriously, it will be very valuable.

Virtual file management with dropbox

Wouldn’t it be nice if your files magically followed you from one computer to another? Even to your phone? Across different operating systems, like from a Mac to your PC?
If this sounds like something you want to try, give dropbox a go. Dropbox creates a virtual folder on each of your computers — anything you [...]

Evernote

Have you discovered Evernote yet? I’ve become very impressed with this simple catch-all for ideas, notes, events, even your favorite wine. Essentially, it can capture just about any content, including web pages, PDF files, documents, text clippings, photos, and email messages. The real power of Evernote is, at least for me, twofold:

It’s cross platform, working [...]

Live longer (and make better presentations)

Want to live to a happy old age? And pick up a few tips on how to make better presentations while you’re doing it? This is a great post from Presentation Zen that gives us a few tips on both (and thanks to the embedded TEDx videocast). Take a look, it’s worth the 20 minutes [...]

The tablet’s out of the bag

So it looks like the Apple Tablet is for real, not just completely unsubstantiated collective wishful thinking from thousands of Apple fans (which can be pretty powerful in and of itself). And if the slip-up is true, we’ll have all the fun details later this week — and they do sound tantalizing.

The real unemployment rate

The figure we most often hear is 10% unemployment. But that’s not the whole truth — it’s a politically spun figure that minimizes the real story. According to BBC America, we might actually be looking at unemployment closer to 17% if factoring in the “lost workforce,” or those people that have decided to drop out [...]

You cannot not communicate

“You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.”—Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication
This, according to 52 Weeks of UX. Stated another way, “This is the first rule of UX. Everything a designer does affects [...]

On climate change (yea, you should care)

It always amazes me when people don’t care about important issues. I can understand that many people don’t know if climate change is something they can or can’t affect. But burying our heads in the sand won’t make an issue go away. Investigate further or, if you aren’t willing to, then let the experts decide.
Here’s [...]