Monthly Archive for March, 2009

Reading Kevin Fox’s response to Doug Bowman, the designer whose post about leaving Google I linked to last week, I was struck by his closing statement:

Even when data-driven analysis is used to determine which design will be more profitable, at Google this is highly tempered against the impact to the user. Google could easily increase their revenue in the short term with just a few poor decisions, but they don’t. This philosophy of ‘put the user first and the money will follow’ is so ingrained into the Google culture that many designers and engineers for whom this is their first corporate job don’t even realize that this is unusual, and that is awesome.

I didn’t fully realize until reading this statement that the root of most of my job-related frustration over the past two years is directly related to this user-first philosophy, which causes me to butt heads constantly with workers and managers who follow a different path.

Last night was a late one, and I woke up this morning having not seen the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. Getting ahold of the episode was a time consuming hassle, and in the meantime I was effectively barred from the entire internet, for fear that someone might have posted a spoiler on in my Facebook or Twitter feed, on email, in an IM away message, or on a web site.

BSG is the only long-running television show I’ve watched that has ended at a relative high point. Most other shows end or are cancelled well past their expiration dates. Watching the BSG finale unspoiled was important to me, and it was worth it. This show is deep, powerful, affecting. It is something I have been watching and analyzing and enjoying for over five years. Every week we talk about the latest episode at work. For a while I held and attended BSG watching parties each Friday. The end of the show feels like losing a friend.

I have decided, at least for now, to accept the finale as it is without deep analysis and nitpicking. The show is now complete, and there will be time to go back and analyze its entire run in light of where we ended up. All I will say about it now is that the episode’s ending cracked me up. As my roommate can attest, I was laughing hysterically through the last 5 minutes or so, and for a good five minutes thereafter. Not at all the emotion I expected at the conclusion of such a dark and deep story.

Now that I am BSG-full, and hopefully will wake up tomorrow morning well-rested, I can once again rejoin the (newly sunny) Earth!

This Microsoft concept video envisions a future where pervasive computing devices surround us. It shows how interactive, data-rich environments can complement our lives rather than intruding into them. My vision of pervasive computing was always human-centered, in computing devices that we take with us. Google and others live in a network-centric world in which all data lives in a vast and inscrutable cloud. This Microsoft video is notable because it offers a hybrid approach, where data is delivered on demand from the internet, but most interactions are fundamentally physical — you “take” data with you from a meeting table onto a handheld device, you “share” data by bringing devices (and people) together.