Why Last.FM started to annoy me…
Posted June 18, 2009 – 9:05 pm in: Interaction Design
Last.FM introduced two new features which make you want to listen to something else.
The first one is ‘Are you still listening?’- For a non registered user, not interacting with Last.FM interface for 45 minutes will pause the music and display the ‘Inactivity bear’ icon prompting you to click ‘resume’ if you want to continue listening. The Last.FM forum is already full of people complaining about this nonsense. Many people use their computer as a media center and do not interact with the keyboard at all while listening. The reason behind this is that Last.FM pays for every song played on the user’s computer so the bear doesn’t really care about whether the music is falling on deaf ears as he says, he is just worried about his money. The other feature is an advertisement which shows before the radio starts playing your station. The advertisement playing these days has a very loud hard rock guitar and the volume control has been deliberately disabled which is outrageous! Last.FM used to be a great service but with these new tactics I am not sure how much longer users will bear it.
Annette Messenger at Hayward Gallery
Posted June 11, 2009 – 10:00 pm in: Art
Annette Messenger is a French artist who was born in 1943. I have seen her latest exhibition in Hayward Gallery on May 2009. My favorite piece was her inflatable sculpture which you can see in the picture. Various forms were sewed one to another and inflated automatically by a machine. It was interesting to see how these forms behaved slightly different after each time they were inflated. In another room, Messenger created a wave made from fabric, generated by fans which were sequenced to blow one after the other. There were also some illustration drawn on photographs of faces which looked very dramatic.
GoCar- GPS guided tours
Posted May 14, 2009 – 11:14 pm in: Services
If you are a tourist, visiting a new place, you can now drop your map and take a ride on GoCar yellow 3 wheelers… A human voice will tell you where to go as well as information about what is around you and some jokes… This service is currently available in Barcelona, Lisbon, Miami, San Diego and San Francisco. The price starts from 35 Euros for one hour up to 99 Euros for a whole day. GoCar has agreements with some locations to allow you to drive there for free. You will need a credit card and a drivers license to get a GoCar. This seems like a really useful service when you don’t know the city you are in.
‘Offf’ festival 2009- ‘Fail Gracefully’
Posted May 12, 2009 – 10:19 pm in: Design
‘Offf’ is a design festival focusing on Graphic Design, Motion Graphics and Interactive Design. This year, the festival took place in Oeiras, Portugal and lasted 3 days. Some of the highlights were Stefan Sagmeister, who came on stage wearing a dress and helped us to understand how to become happier , Karsten Schmidt’s amazing digital animation for Audi and Nokia, Pes’ ‘Human Skateboard’ Stop-Motion animation, Chris Milk’s video clips for the Chemical Brothers and the collaboration between Amit Pitaru and James Paterson which connected beautifully between dance and animation.
‘Fresh Gordon’
Posted April 26, 2009 – 3:29 pm in: food
How would Gordon Ramsay react if a team would cook using pre-packed food in Hell’s Kitchen? He would probably use the F word, many times…
I have never liked the way Gordon is bullying people in his show, shouting at them when the food is not meeting his expectations.
“Using fresh ingredients is the only way to guarantee a great taste and I can’t understand how on earth people can ignore fresh food.” said Ramsey in an interview for Channel 4.
The reality is that Foxtrot Oscar in Chelsea and 3 other pubs owned by Ramsay, serves pre-packed food from his factory in Wandsworth. The food is sold with a mark-up of 586 per cent. When you pay £11.25 for fish cakes , you expect it to be fresh so this is pretty much the same as lying to your customers. It might be a good lesson to Gordon, to feel how is it like to be bullied for not meeting your customers expectations.
Does anyone understand what this ‘CAPTCHA’ is saying?
Posted April 20, 2009 – 11:02 pm in: Interaction Design
‘CAPTCHA’ is an interface element, designed to distinguish between human and a computer programme. A typical ‘CAPTCHA’ will ask the user to type in a word displayed in a distorted form. While I completely understand the fight against SPAM, some of these ‘CAPTCHAS’ are even getting difficult for humans to decipher. Trying to create a new account for Gmail will present you with a middle-heavyweight ‘CAPTCHA’ challenge which you can see in this post’s photo.
3 Comments | Tags: captha, challenge, gmailLa Crêperie de Hampstead
Posted April 20, 2009 – 10:31 pm in: food
This crepe kiosk is quite a rare find in posh Hampstead. The crepes are great and it might be the best place to eat crepes in London. Now here is the challenge: try to get a smile from the staff… They work in a small booth and I can’t blame them for being impatient while having to serve a usually very long queue of people. I thought that Nutella and Banana is the deal until I tried the chocolate and banana and was enlightened by the power of crepe. They also serve savory crepes which makes the choice a bit harder. There is also a second branch in South Kensington, where you can order crepe and sit next to a table.
77 Hampstead High Street ,London NW3 1RE
The day I stopped watching ‘Lost’ (Lost.S05E13)
Posted April 18, 2009 – 8:07 pm in: TV
There used to be times when I really liked watching ‘Lost’. This Television series follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island. The main message, in my opinion, is the way people deal with being ‘lost’. Some of us need religion to establish the framework for our existence while others try to work out the logic.
On the second and third seasons, I really liked the flashbacks to the characters’ past. My favorite episode was “The 23rd Psalm” when the Nigerian militia tries to force Mr. Eko’s brother, Yemi, to kill a man. Yemi can’t do it and Mr. Eko as a child, saves the life of his brother by shooting the man instead of him. Read more>>
Google Street View is here to stay.
Posted April 14, 2009 – 10:53 pm in: Services
Google street view is a revolutionary service which enables you to see panoramic photos of streets in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (and the list is growing as this article is being written…)
Many people has raised their concerns over Google Street view, mainly because of privacy issues. Some embarrassing photos, captured by this service included a woman urinating next to a car, a man vomiting and individuals entering a sex shop. Read more>>
A Banana story
Posted April 7, 2009 – 9:57 pm in: Art
I’ve come a long way from the sunny shores of my native land. Plucked, packed, snap, frozen…
Shipped away to a place where my colour is so foreign. Yet, I have become so commonplace.
Once exotic, I am now ubiquitous… Overlooked, underrated.
Yes, you can think about what it means to have me in your hand now, here, off-season but not too hard for I taste good of that I am proud.
I am a banana so eat me!