Digital Parsimony

Does this remind you of anything? It’s almost like taking out that brand new HP/Dell/Sony/Toshiba laptop from its packaging. The first thing to do was format it and get rid of all the garbage it comes with.

There are of course a suite of applications pre-installed that you’ll have whether you want them or not. Many apps are mostly unwanted, like the ubiquitous Lets Golf 2. Some apps will be wanted by some, like NFL Mobile and Best Buy, and some are actually quite useful, like Quickoffice and Verizons Backup Assistant. Thankfully its not quite the onslaught of crapware weve seen with devices like the Charge or more recently the Incredible 2, and we had no problem uninstalling most of them. That said, if youre feeling noncommittal you can use the customized applications list to create a group of the apps you actually use and set the phone to display only those, hiding the whole big mess.

via Droid X2 review — Engadget.

I take representing digital culture in film very seriously in lieu of having grown up in a world of very badly researched user interface greeble. I cringed during the part in Hackers (1995) when a screen saver with extruded “equations” is used to signify that the hacker has reached some sort of neural flow or ambiguous destination. I cringed for Swordfish and Jurassic Park as well. I cheered when Trinity in The Matrix used nmap and ssh (and so did you).

via jtnimoy – Tron Legacy (2010).

I’m so glad I’m not alone.

Thought this was a rather neat list.

Top companies from the “Specialty Retailers”, “General Merchandisers”, and “Food and Drug Stores” industries in the Fortune 500, listed in alphabetical order.

via Fonts In Use – The Typographic Monotony of American Retail.

People generally leave reviews to vent their frustrations if an app doesn’t work for them or because they failed to read the description and it’s missing a feature they had hoped would be there. There are those good hearted souls who do take the time to leave positive reviews on products they love, but they seem to be outnumbered by those who would rather leave 1 star and emoji poop in the subject line.

via Why I Don’t Do Sales On The App Store « carpeaqua by Justin Williams.

I think what would really help is a better rating system for comments, similar to Amazon. It would also be great if my friends from Ping or Twitter/Game Center had promoted reviews which show up first.

Ever wonder why everything just looks a little bit better on a Mac? That’s because Apple OS X uses a different font rendering technology than Windows. That can easily be changed though, and there’s a little program that can do it with ease.

Now before I open up this can of worms, people each have their preference, and we can argue for days about which one is better. Personally, I like the way the OS X looks. GDI++, a Japanese application, does just that. It takes just about 5mb of memory and sits in your task tray, rendering everything on your system in GDI++ instead of ClearType (the typical windows font rendering tool). And when you disable it, it just puts everything back to the way it was. It’s really easy to activate, and gets rid of jaggy fonts. Read the rest of this article »

 As I went over to my TV to turn it on, I noticed that I was surrounded by five seperate remotes, each of which has an infinite amount of buttons. Which of these do I even use? I just want to watch TV!

To do that, I have to first turn on the TV using one remote, then the cable box with another, then the sound system with the third. Eventually when all my devices come on and I can hear that screachy kid on American Idol loud and clear, I’ve forgotten how to switch the channel. I look down only to see about 50 tiny buttons, none of which point me in the right direction.

That reminded me of a post I saw on Gizmodo today. I think that manufacturers need to pay a bit more attention to simplicity. If I only use 10 buttons on a remote frequently, make them large and easy to use, the rest you can hide behind a bezel or put them in a less-convenient place.

Value the importance of using less to accomplish more. If you can combine the play, pause, and select buttons into just one, do so. Why do we still have seperate buttons for fast forwarding and skipping to the next chapter? Press the button to go to the next chapter, and hold it to fast forward. For example, here’s the remote for an Apple TV: