15/04/09
Posted in Internet, Politics | 3 Comments » ![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.ganyet.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter4.png)
Tweet This Post
I’m reading about the ongoing Pirate Bay trial, the recent appointment of González-Sinde as the new Spanish minister of culture (and her particular views about p2p) and the bill against p2p rejected by the French parliament.
What do they all have in common? P2p? Piracy? File sharing? Not really. At the heart of the debates lays the ignorance of governments about the digital medium and their stubbornness in dealing with it as if it were the physical world.
Is in the physical world, where everybody agrees that culture exchange is necessary for the common progress, that no one seems to have any problem at all with information sharing.
For that matter institutions have been providing us with information exchange networks called libraries.
In such a network anyone can borrow information, be books, DVDs or CDs, and no one is considered a thief for sharing them with members of his immediate network.
Are goverments who build libraries and create networks around them liable of piracy? Or, on the other hand, this is something necessary to give equal opportunities to everybody granting people access to culture?
Dear governments, copyright institutions, judges and other XIX century nostalgics, here’s a tip that should help you understand digital information: think of libraries. Bigger, larger and ultra-efficient libraries
When you deal with information exchange online think of the internet as the biggest library mankind has created, an analogy that has been around since the first days of the web and not too difficult to understand.
And if you’re happy with people borrowing from libraries I don’t see why shouldn’t you be even happier with people doing the same in a larger library and in a much more efficient way.
11/04/09
Posted in Blogosphere, Design, Interface, Typography, Usability, Wordpress | No Comments » Tweet This Post
Finally it’s gone live! The fourth design iteration in my blog.
Basically the highlights are:
- Readability: dark text over white background. Graphics and color gone.
- Helvetica, helvetica, helvetica: as much as I love Lucida Grande I found Helvetica to render pages on IE closer to the original than Lucida (blame the usual MSuspects).
- Large fonts: let’s face it, we don’t read blogs. We read feeds and if by chance we land on a blog we skim over the headlines. So I decided to make them really big to make your life easier
- Twitter and Facebook killed the blogging star? No problem. I integrated both of them in the blog. Twitter on the homepage and both in the lifestream section.
- Tweet this: as a Twitter lover (aren’t we all) I usually tweet blog posts I like. Here it can’t get any easier with the Tweet this post link in the header of each post. Look for the birdie.
- My Web 2.0 persona in my blog: Last.fm, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, my shared items on Google and del.icio.us are all shared in the lifestream section.
- Related posts: under each post you’ll find a list of 3 posts related to the one you’re reading. It’s impressive how the automated selection algorithm gets it right (courtesy of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin).
- Categories and tags navigation: at the bottom of each page you’ll find the blog categories. Not 2.0 enough? Click on tags and a nice tagclould will appear to satisfy the folksonomist in you.
Hope you like it.
20/02/09
Posted in Apple, Design, Quotations, Why didn't I think of that? | No Comments » Tweet This Post
Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
02/11/08
Posted in Mac OS | 10 Comments » Tweet This Post
A while ago, in some get-rich-with-your-blog post, I read about how popular top 10 lists were and how they boost traffic in your blog. Well, it has taken me a while but it’s time to make big euros with mine by posting my top 10 fave apps for the Mac. Another reason would be that I promised too long ago my dear colleague Stellios , new to the Mac world, I would do it.
Out of the many apps I chose those that will help you with your productivity and won’t cost you a fortune. In my case I use all these on a daily basis.
Read the rest of this entry »
28/09/08
Posted in Blogosphere, Interface, Usability, Why didn't I think of that?, Wordpress | No Comments » Tweet This Post
When I read the title “How WordPress Has Changed My Life” by Matt Mullenweg in my reader, I thought I was gonna find a marketing talk about how creating the renowned blogging platform WordPress made Matt a better and richer person. Hoping to learn something for myself I bookmarked it for later review.
But the video has little to do with Matt’s wonderful life. It features Glenda Watson Hyatt, the “left thumb blogger” (she can only type with one thumb) telling a lesson on usability and accessibility.
Read the rest of this entry »
