Daniel Hardy

Features that sink

PC World has a great article highlighting several applications that were better before the manufacture added more features.

The ideas laid out in this article are something I often consider. How many features are too many features? Perhaps more importantly, if you reach the mysterious boiling point what should you do?

The first concept has no definitive solution as is often the case in the development world. Each and every product will have its own point where the application should stop growing. One sure way to elevate this point is to ensure that you have a strong usability and interaction design team working with you. This will hopefully allow you to maximize the experience for a broader range of users.

The second concept is a tricky one. Often an organization has scores of developers working on an application and if there is no more features to add there maybe no more use for the developers. The easiest solution is to roll the developers onto new projects. Interestingly this maybe a great solution to the first question. If the marketplace has room for the features you wish to build then perhaps you application should be divided into two. One for the novice to intermediate user and one for the expert power user.

This is where web-based applications have a great advantage. Because web applications store information about users it becomes easier to have two separate but seamless application views. Advanced uses will see one set of features and interactions while the novice user will see a different set. Either way the data they are working with can remain the same. The application will determine at which point the user starts seeing the advanced view. Generally a decent starting point is to allow the user to choose a more advanced option or base it off of the amount of data the user is working with.

Given enough time every application will experience feature bloat. How the application handles it can make the difference between a great application or just another bloated piece of software that is difficult to use.

Mystery of fonts

I read a simple and sweet post today by Seth Godin and realized why I will never be a graphic designer. The gist of what he was saying is that most of the time a decent font will suffice but it will never compare to a GREAT font. To me fonts are like music, their are those who can make great music and their are those who can enjoy great music. I fall into the latter group. I feel that I can tell when the perfect font is being used but unfortunately couldn’t tell why it is perfect. In the same way I can tell when a song has all the components of being successful but I can’t tell you what those components are.

Know your peers

A List Apart had a great article today about “who” is in the world of user experience design. The article and corresponding PDF are a worth while read for anyone in the industry.

Design Corporation Wide

Here is a great dollars and cents look at design. Sam Lucente has created a new view of design at HP and by doing so is saving the company millions. Read more about it in Streamlining HP at FastCompany.com

Screen Shots

Here is a shot of my new computers layout. Nice and clean if you ask me.

ECS 6100SM-M and Ubuntu are friends

Yesterday my wife’s computer finally croaked. We decided that the best option was to build a desktop replacement form scratch. This can be a nerve racking experience as a Linux user because you never know how well every items will work with your distro of choice. I ended up with an ECS 6100SM-M, AMD BE2300 (45watt) processor, 2GB of OZC PC6400 RAM and a Pioneer DVD/R/RW. None of these components are amazing but they all work perfectly with Ubuntu 7.10 and the computer is surprisingly fast. My boot time out of the gate was a brisk 28 seconds and I haven’t even began to tweak the system to improve this time.

VirtualBox’s hidden gem!

Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).

After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.

The power of Apple shows up on Digg.com

Last week Apple announced several new iPods and of course Digg was yet again consumed by the mighty Apple. As I was surfing I noticed that the “Top 10 in All Topics” was displaying a majority of Apple related articles. You know your company has a loyal following when you can occupy a majority of top articles at one of the biggest social media sites in the world by simply announcing a few new products.

Seamless Virtualization in Virtual Box

This last week Innotek released Virtualbox 1.5 which is a major move forward for this free virtualization system. One of the best features is the easy to use implementation of seamless virtualization. It allows the user to integrate their two operating systems in one nice interface. While this is not a new concept as Parallels has been doing it for a while, it is new to a free, cross platform application (to the best of my knowledge).

To get it up and running all I had to do was update my VirtualBox install and then press “Host(Ctrl) + L”. Next thing you know your Windows task bar will appear at the bottom of your desktop(I moved mine to the top). You are now free to access windows applications as if they where a GTK application. There is one thing that doesn’t work smoothly as of yet. It appears that Beryl/Compiz style compositing applications don’t get a long so well with this seamless integration. It is hard to say who is at fault in this case but I am sure it will be resolved in due time. Until then I am happy dealing with the problem or simply turning off Beryl.

Pushing the limits

Every once in a while when I need some creative inspiration I will go out and look for something that is unique or different in music. I have compiled a short list of several acts that push the envelope of their given instrument or genera. I hope you enjoy their talents and unique style as much as I do. In no particular order…
Flutebox: Inspector Gadget Remix

Andy Mckee: Drifting

Jake Shimabukuro: While my guitar gently weeps

Paul Date and inka one: Violin Hip-Hop

Alex Depue:Owner of a Loney Heart & Smooth Criminal