Tag Archives: nerdery

NRC

January 18, 2010 – 10:18 pm

I really like the iPhone app of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad (iTunes Link). Makes it easy to download and read your daily e-paper, even if you have not subscribed to the paper-version.

The user interface in general is a bit clunky and could use some polish. Navigating the daily paper’s sections takes too many clicks. Fortunately there also are some very nice touches: When you rotate the iPhone while in the reading screen a little lock appears. Tapping it locks the screen’s orientation. Good for reading in bed.

The reading screen is probably the place where you’ll spend most of your time while using this app and it’s there that the bad design decisions are most obvious.

Article view of the NRC iPhone app

110 of 480 pixels of screen height are obscured by user interface chrome. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is quite obtrusive when you have to look at it for a longer time.

The menu above the text is a breadcrumb that takes you back to the section overview. The lower menu lets you in- and decrease the text size and takes you to the next and previous articles of a section. This lower menu is completely redundant: the app also lets you resize the text by using the pinching gesture and you can flip to the previous and next articles by using the swiping gesture.

So let’s get rid of it:

Sans redundant lower menu

The upper menu is pretty “in your face”. I know that I am reading “NRC Handelsblad”, I do not need to be reminded all the time. Why not make the upper bar a bit transparent?

Transparent upper menu bar.

And why not have the upper bar disappear completely when the user double-taps the reading pane?

Chrome-less reading pane.

Voilá: A chrome-less reader, nothing to distract you from the content. Need the menu back? Just double-tap again.

Next wish on my list: tilt scrolling á la Instapaper.

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intellectually toxic

January 17, 2010 – 5:44 pm

Achewood — Which online community has the most intellectually toxic commenting culture?

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Painting Render Crash

January 14, 2010 – 9:09 pm

by James Theophane
(via Curved White)

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bff

January 14, 2010 – 9:09 am

Very interesting interview with an anonymous Facebook employee. Facebook saves all your deleted data forever. Their engineers are some kind of super-humans. At the beginning of the interview there’s this nugget about friendship:

Employee: That’s right. How do you think we know who your best friends are? But that’s public knowledge; we’ve explicitly stated that we record that. If you look in your type-ahead search, and you press “A,” or just one letter, a list of your best friends shows up. It’s no longer organized alphabetically, but by the person you interact with most, your “best friends,” or at least those whom we have concluded you are best friends with.

Rumpus: In other words, the person you stalk the most.

Employee: No, it’s more than just that. It’s also messages, file posts, photos you’re tagged in with them, as well as your viewing of their profile and all of that. Essentially, we judge how good of a friend they are to you.

Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee – The Rumpus.net.

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3D

January 8, 2010 – 3:13 pm

LAS VEGAS – JANUARY 05: CES attendees wear 3D glasses while looking at a 3D video display by Sensio during a press event at the Venetian for the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show January 5, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology tradeshow, runs from January 7-10 and is expected to feature 2,500 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to about 110,000 attendees. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

(from blogs.wsj.com)

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