Month: December 2007

New York Times Employees Say Renzo Forgot the Bike Parking

New York Times Employees Say Renzo Forgot the Bike Parking: There was just one problem. While the Times and developer Forest City Ratner were promoting their new Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper as a “technologically advanced and environmentally sensitive” exemplar of green construction, a lack of bike parking and policies hostile towards cyclists were discouraging employees from commuting to work by the city’s most environmentally-friendly mode of urban transport.
[I have a similar problem in my current location… there’s no way to bring a bike into the building, leaving a bike outside all the time is a poor idea. Sad. So little thought to the simple things that improve everyone’s life.]
Source: StreetsBlog

iPhone on Rails – Creating an iPhone optimised version of your Rails site using iUI and Rails 2

iPhone on Rails – Creating an iPhone optimised version of your Rails site using iUI and Rails 2: After upgrading trawlr.com to Rails 2 I thought I’d make use of some of the new features and attempt to create an iPhone version of the site. With Rails 2 you can create a mime type specifically for the iPhone and then use that format in a respond_to block (along with views such as index.iphone.erb). [IPhone therefore I am. Actually not yet… but I’ll get there.]
Source:

adaptive path » blog » Todd Wilkens » Why usability is a path to failure

adaptive path » blog » Todd Wilkens » Why usability is a path to failure: Recently, I’m even coming to believe that focusing on usability is actually a path to failure. Usability is too low level, too focused on minutia. It can’t compel people to be interested in interacting with your product or service. It can’t make you compelling or really differentiate you from other organizations. Or put another way, there’s only so far you can get by streamlining the shopping cart on your website. [Interesting but overly simplistic. Lots of interesting comments.]

E-junkie Shopping Cart for selling downloads & tangible goods

E-junkie Shopping Cart for selling downloads & tangible goods: E-junkie provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList and other websites using PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, 2CheckOut and ClickBank.

For merchants selling downloads, we automate and secure the digital delivery of files and codes. If you are selling tangible goods, we automate the shipping calculation and inventory management. Our shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT, packaging and shipping cost calculato [Looks nice.]

Creative work won’t be directly paid for in the future.

Scripting News for 11/30/2007: Creative work won’t be directly paid for in the future. And we’re already in that future. Read my essays from the 90s to see how angry this made me. Now the anger has subsided, as a software writer, and it will subside for the Hollywood writers too. This may be the moment when the system breaks. It looks more and more like that.[An interesting piece at an interesting time for me (and some others who have become important to me this last year.)]
Source: Dave’s WordPress Blog