xBlog: The visual thinking weblog
2nd December 2000

Flash Access: Unclear on the Concept

“In Christian theology, it doesn’t matter exactly when you accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. As long as you do it before you croak and ask forgiveness for your sins, you’re in like Flynn. This, apparently, is the Macromedia philosophy when it comes to accessibility.”

posted in Accessibility | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

The art of innovation

“Every now and then, someone very young turns, with astonishing creativity, to the task of creating an entirely new way of doing something. Napster founder Shawn Fanning at age 18 reinvented the way music is distributed over the Internet. Bill Gates, at age 19, foresaw a future in what were then known as microcomputers and founded a company he called Microsoft. Innovation, the act of creating change, has a knack for coinciding with youth. This is true in technology, and it is also true in art.”

posted in Art | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

Why we see what we do

“A wholly empirical theory of visual perception: The fundamental problem in vision was stated at the beginning of the 18th C. by George Berkeley, who pointed out that the sources underlying visual stimuli are unknowable in any direct sense. …The central tenet of the theory of vision that has emerged from the work conducted in our laboratory is that this dilemma is solved by having proximal stimuli trigger reflex patterns (i.e., networks of neuronal activity) that have been shaped solely by the past consequences of visually guided behavior.”

posted in Color | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

Professional, But Not Syndicated, Cartoonists

“This is a comprehensive listing of non-syndicated professional cartoonists with web sites — a feature of the Professional Cartoonists Index, the most comprehensive resource for cartoonists on the internet.”

posted in Comics | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

Flash Access: Unclear on the Concept

“In Christian theology, it doesn’t matter exactly when you accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. As long as you do it before you croak and ask forgiveness for your sins, you’re in like Flynn. This, apparently, is the Macromedia philosophy when it comes to accessibility.”

posted in Flash | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

The art of innovation

“Every now and then, someone very young turns, with astonishing creativity, to the task of creating an entirely new way of doing something. Napster founder Shawn Fanning at age 18 reinvented the way music is distributed over the Internet. Bill Gates, at age 19, foresaw a future in what were then known as microcomputers and founded a company he called Microsoft. Innovation, the act of creating change, has a knack for coinciding with youth. This is true in technology, and it is also true in art.”

posted in Technology | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

When Kids Use the Web

“A Naturalistic Comparison of Children’s Navigation Behavior and Subjective Preferences on Two WWW Sites: This paper reports the results of scavenger-hunt usability tests conducted with 16 adolescent children (8 males and 8 females) in two age groups (12 years old and 16 years old), using two general-interest topical Web sites. The tests yield comparison data regarding both search performance and self-reported subjective preferences.”

posted in Usability | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

Why we see what we do

“A wholly empirical theory of visual perception: The fundamental problem in vision was stated at the beginning of the 18th C. by George Berkeley, who pointed out that the sources underlying visual stimuli are unknowable in any direct sense. …The central tenet of the theory of vision that has emerged from the work conducted in our laboratory is that this dilemma is solved by having proximal stimuli trigger reflex patterns (i.e., networks of neuronal activity) that have been shaped solely by the past consequences of visually guided behavior.”

posted in Visual thinking | Permalink | Comments Off

2nd December 2000

When Kids Use the Web

“A Naturalistic Comparison of Children’s Navigation Behavior and Subjective Preferences on Two WWW Sites: This paper reports the results of scavenger-hunt usability tests conducted with 16 adolescent children (8 males and 8 females) in two age groups (12 years old and 16 years old), using two general-interest topical Web sites. The tests yield comparison data regarding both search performance and self-reported subjective preferences.”

posted in Web design | Permalink | Comments Off