Mar
17
This prototype of a Microsoft iPad-alternative looks surprisingly useful and well-designed. This video is dated before Apple’s announcement, so it’s not a iPad clone.
Given this video and their pretty decent IE9 preview release, can we conclude that Microsoft is not really going extinct after all?
Feb
25
Oct
25
At Cleverbot.com you can talk to a computer program. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very clever yet:
User: Do you know the difference between white and black?
Cleverbot: Yes I know the difference.
User: Tell me.
Cleverbot: I have ears.
User: That’s not a very good answer.
Cleverbot: Yes. You think I am christina : I lied.
User: My my, the turing test is still way off for you, now isn’t it?
Cleverbot: The cuisine is more sweet than Biblical.
User: You call yourself clever?
Cleverbot: Hell yes I do.
User: Because a point about the turing test implies a reply about cuisine and the bible?
Cleverbot: What the heck?
User: Ok, simple things then.
Cleverbot: Like?
User: Nice weather, hey?
Cleverbot: Very nice!
User: Has it been this nice for a long time?
Cleverbot: About 7 years.
User: 7 years of nice weather - wow. You are one lucky bot!
Cleverbot: We don’t have ‘food’, only Mars bars.
Cleverbot (To myself): I love Mars bars.
Oct
13
How can you change a computer’s user interface to work with touch technology, like your iPhone? I think this video has part of the answer:
Sep
29
I’m not really an Apple hater, but I immensely enjoyed this rant:
“I admit it: I’m a bigot. A hopeless bigot at that: I know my particular prejudice is absurd, but I just can’t control it. It’s Apple. I don’t like Apple products. And the better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them. I blame the customers. Awful people. Awful. Stop showing me your iPhone. Stop stroking your Macbook. Stop telling me to get one.
Seriously, stop it. I don’t care if Mac stuff is better. I don’t care if Mac stuff is cool. I don’t care if every Mac product comes equipped a magic button on the side that causes it to piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead and make holographic unicorns dance inside your head. I’m not buying one, so shut up and go home. Go back to your house. I know, you’ve got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There’s a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute MONSTER.”
More (highly recommended 
)
Sep
17
Apr
22
Apr
19
Stephen Anderson talks about creating seductive interactions and how to create passionate users. Highly recommended.
Apr
15
Kwabena Boahen from Stanford University has come up with an ingenious way to model a brain with a computer chip.
Apr
4
Mar
15
Feb
24
Feb
24
If you’re developing a website, or a web application, you sometimes need to know which web browser you’re dealing with. So how do you know?
That’s what the user agent string is for, but it has become a complete mess, as described in this hilarious article.
Nov
14
I love this warning sign in fake German:
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
Source: Wikipedia
Nov
10
Sep
25
Sep
8
Behold the Curta calculator, the most popular analogue pocket calculator in its day, originally designed in a concentration camp as a present for the Führer.
Image credit: Rick Furr
Here’s a movie on how it works:
More on Dark Roasted Blend, or try one yourself with this online simulator.
Aug
28
Jun
26
This is a screenshot of a computer booting inside your web browser. Imagine the possibilities
link so you can try it yourself.
Jun
23
PicLens is quite possibly the most shiny Firefox add-on I’ve ever seen. Oh, and it’s quite cool too
Jun
11
I found this wonderful introduction to programming C-64 demos. Ah, those were the days
* = $0801
lda #$00
tax
tay
jsr $1000 ; initialize musicmainloop: lda $d012 ; load $d012
cmp #$80 ; is it equal to #$80?
bne mainloop ; if not, keep checkinginc $d020 ; inc border colour
jsr $1003 ; jump to music play routine
dec $d020 ; dec border colour
jmp mainloop ; keep looping
Jun
8
May
18
How to crack a password? Bruce Scheier, of Wired Magazine, has some inside info on how to do it.
“According to Eric Thompson of AccessData, a typical password consists of a root plus an appendage. A root isn’t necessarily a dictionary word, but it’s something pronounceable. An appendage is either a suffix (90 percent of the time) or a prefix (10 percent of the time).
So the first attack PRTK performs is to test a dictionary of about 1,000 common passwords, things like “letmein,” “password1,” “123456″ and so on. Then it tests them each with about 100 common suffix appendages: “1,” “4u,” “69,” “abc,” “!” and so on. Believe it or not, it recovers about 24 percent of all passwords with these 100,000 combinations.“
But wait, there’s more.
May
8
This is what happens when you let a developer design your user interface:
This one is even worse:
May
7
Apr
25
Apr
11
A nice tutorial that shows how to trim down Windows XP to the bare essentials. Might come in handy sometime.
Apr
3
Jan
25
Someone named Paul has put a nice photoset on Flickr: Understanding art for geeks
Jan
23
I like this adoption of the Magritte classic:
Buy the t-shirt at Threadless T-shirts.
Dec
21
Dec
21
An apparently famous letter from Bill Gates to computer hobbyists, dated February 1976. Interesting, especially in hind-sight.
Dec
11
If you, like me, have never programmed in Ruby - but are fluent in PHP, then take a look at this comparison of Rails inspired frameworks.
Dec
3
A team of Swiss scientists have created a working software model of one of the brain’s most complex parts, the neocortical column.
In theory this opens the door to a complete software model of the human brain.
MIT’s Technology Review has the complete story.
Nov
28
Smashing magazine has a write up of these user interfaces of the future. Not yet ready for prime time, but interesting nonetheless.
Nov
21
Rainbow tables are an elegant way to restore ‘forgotten’ passwords (cough). Basically, it helps computing the reverse of an MD5-hash.
Wikipedia tries to explain it, but I found this nice write-up much more accessible. Bad graphics though
