Nick Wade

"An experiment gone wrong"

Ars Technica decided to try blocking content from people using ad blocking software. The point they were trying to make was that they (and their careers, and their families) suffer from the loss of revenue, and so they thought they would make their users suffer.

I have no sympathy for this.

Firstly, you have to be insane to treat your readers this way. They are everything that you have. Without them, you have nothing. How they treat you is irrelevant - any company should treat their users with the utmost respect.

Secondly, if your revenue is dependant on the most fecking annoying model on the planet then it's your fault. Advertising sucks. Let me just repeat that to make it absolutely clear: Advertising sucks. If your users don't want to look at all the fecking annoying banners then at least allow them that. To me it seems a basic human right to choose what it is you look at and don't look at. They chose to come to your site to look at your content. Advertising works by leeching from that value. They didn't come to your site to look at the adverts - remember that.

It is a slippery slope when a company looks at potential revenue as theft. You can do what the recording industry does and treat everyone as criminals, or you can accept that business is not based on absolutes and people will always choose what is easier and benefits them. Why not spend some time considering the value in actually giving people what they want?

Years of shit advertising and lazy companies has lead to this situation. To blame users is astonishing.

What a fail.

HTC has been quoted as saying "People sometimes forget that they don't go in pockets", and that broken screens are quite common on the Nexus One. Apparently it must be kept in a case (provided) and away from tight pockets or handbags with loose items.

Reminds me of when Apple stopped calling laptops laptops as they were suddenly no longer meant to be used on your lap. These machines were getting so hot that they could actually burn you.

To design a laptop that can't go on your lap is bad enough, but a phone that can't go in your pocket is just plain stupid. My iPhone 3G has survived a year and a half in my pocket without any case, and I've worn some very tight jeans. You can take a key to it's screen and it won't even scratch. Surely HTC and Google understand what they are competing with.

It's been described as encompassing the United States' "core beliefs of our democracy - transparency, openness and equality."

Costing $1 billion to make, this carbon neutral solar powered planet loving glass cube encompasses the United States fresh approach to improving their image abroad. Bygone are the days of heavily armed guards and concrete bollards, and hello to the Embassy (Theme?) Park of the future, complete with moat (but no monorail). As suggested on Gizmodo, the only thing missing is an Apple logo on the front. That would win us completely over.

Thanks to a legal agreement between the European Competition Commission and Microsoft, users of Windows will soon be presented with a choice for which browser they want to use. Great news for competition, but what about the users?

For those who are already using WIndows, an automatic download through Windows Update will delete their shortcut to IE and present them with a screen - "An important choice to make: your browser". What? Suddenly and quite intrusively the user must make some sort of informed and life changing decision. Based on what? The next screen presents them with a list of 12 random browsers (of which the first 5 seem to be the most popular). Choose.

How would you choose one browser over another? It's taken me years to understand the subtle differences between them, and I honestly don't think any of this should matter to the sort of user the competition is hoping to pinch through this process. Is any user actually going to take the time to read up on each of the 12 browsers and be capable of making a decision on which browser is best for them?

All of them do the same thing - they allow you to browse the internet.

I suspect many will click the "Select Later" button, some will try out a few names they've heard of like Firefox and Google, and a lot will stick with IE if they were even aware that they were already using it.

None of this is designed to benefit the user - and perhaps deliberately so by Microsoft. But I'm not solely accusing them here. A user shouldn't have to care about any of it. Owning a computer is a never ending experience of what the fuck is going on? It's vastly unfair on people how much they are expected to understand, and yet for however complex any choice may be, the decision is always one click away - "ok", "install", "I agree". The user clicks. Service is resumed again.

The user isn't making an important choice. They don't care. They just want to get on with what they want to do. The browser isn't part of that want, it's just a window to where the important things are.

It's all seems very dot com. The company is about to go public, whilst they've got no-one to continue building the Roadster and aren't looking to start again until after the production of the new Model S, which is being funded by a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy. Launching any car is a gigantic expensive gamble and they haven't yet made profit on the Roadster, which leaves them in rather a delicate position. The Model S is planned for 2012 and could well be amazing: a 4 door saloon with gorgeous looks, seats 7 people, goes 0-60 mph in under 6 seconds, and has a range of 300 miles (don't forget the electric bit), for under $50,000. Hopefully. Either they're about to change the world, or it's going to end up very messy.

I'm breaking a few rules here to share my feelings on the long anticipated iPad. Rules? Well, some unwritten ones on blogging I feel are good practise: never write when angry, don't write about anything the rest of the world is, don't write anything you're likely to change your mind on in the near future... Anyways, I was disappointed by the new iPad, perhaps a little angry. I thought it would be amusing to share my immediate reaction, as this was not the device I hoped it would be. It seems far more like the device Apple wants me to want. It makes a lot of sense to them - every possible aspect is plumbed into their store. They call it "magical". It's going to make them lots of money.

What wasn't so magical for me:

What would have been magical:

So why is acceptable to expect so much from Apple? Well, it's not really. They produce fantastic items at an incredible rate. It's just that everyone else produces such junk. Try naming just one other "slate" device launching this year? They're all pointless. So, Apple has to carry the flame, to actually make things better - and the better they make things, the more I want perfection. This is the wholly unrealistic pursuit of a designer. Anger is a very twisted form of enthusiasm.

I can easily imagine one in the corner of every kitchen. Overpriced food canisters that run out when you need them most, recipes that can only be downloaded from the manufacturers online food store (DRM, of course - £5.99 for a selection of Jamie Oliver dinners including one trial dessert that expires after a week. Not compatible with 1G printers, as these recipes contain new flavours), and everything tasting a bit unusual since you couldn't be bothered to service it. It's exactly what you want.

I think e-newspapers are just a novelty idea. At A3 size, it's mimicking a standard newspaper - but it's also mimicking a dying format. I don't see real gains for anyone else other than the advertisers. Where laptops and e-readers meet is the golden point - something about A5 size that gives the user far greater control. What Apple announces soon will probably be a step in that direction.

Easy guess for no.1 worst. Bing's logo is just plain insulting. This stretched out turd of a font actually made me question if there is any importance to design at all. Alongside Windows 7, it's been backed up by perhaps the most embarrassing advertising campaigns the world has ever seen. Microsoft is a fascinating company to try to understand.

Brand New have an odd bunch for the best - SyFy is a hilariously desperate rebrand of Sci Fi, it's a shame to see Nickelodeon dump their splat, and I find Melbourne just a bit too exotic. See what you think about No.1 - it was long overdue.