Dori Smith has just one thing about Ray Ozzie.

Yeah, it's right on...

The Singularity Project intends to build a prototype 'dependable' operating system. From the technical report:Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this ( Read more... )

NewsCloud is an interesting news navigation system based on keyword frequency. However, the UI is a bit opaque and I suspect most people won't find it compelling enough to do more than click around a bit.

(Hat-tip Flutterby.)

Steven Berlin Johnson has an article in Discover about software to cut through the data smog:Strategies for dealing with infomania-a term coined by those researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry-involve variations of pulling the plug. Some people detox by retreating to a cabin with old-fashioned print on paper for a week once a year (Bill Gates ( Read more... )

Jakob Nielsen asks if WYSIWYG user interfaces are finally over?Unfortunately, we've now reached the limits of the current GUI paradigm. Displaying commands in menus, toolbars, and dialog boxes works with a limited number of elements. But Microsoft Word 2003 has 1,500 commands, and users typically have no clue where to find most of them ( Read more... )

"A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware."

Hang 'em high, say I! Hang 'em high!

Need to know more about spyware? Wired News has a link-rich primer.Meanwhile, back at the ranch ( Read more... )

Dan Bricklin asks "What if VisiCalc had been patented?He seems a bit conflicted here: First arguing that the fact Visicalc was never patented did not hold back innovation on spreadsheets. And then admitting he does apply for the damned things himself from time to time ( Read more... )

So everyone is making a big deal about Apple switching their CPU supplier. Out in the regular world people are concerned about wars and genocide and mishandling holy books and who really is Deep Throat. But here in the Net all anyone wants to talk about is Jobs walking out on longtime partner Motorola/IBM to do the two-time-tango with Microsoft on ( Read more... )

Craig Mazin at The Artful Writer tells the story of why he switched from one screenwriting software program to another in Dear Final Draft: GOODBYEI hear this kind of story all the time. It all comes down to 'listening to the customer' and any software company that cannot do so is setting itself up for failure. (Yes, this also applies to everything ( Read more... )