Category Archives: Design

The Heat in the Kitchen? It’s Bad Design Being Set on Fire

Currently at my mother’s UK flat and frankly horrified at some of the kitchen appliance design I’m seeing here. There’s a Credaplan Microwave (which thankfully doesn’t seem to exist anymore) which sports an interface a succession of PhDs have not been able to fathom. Then there’s a brand new Indesit WIDL146 washing machine which looks… Read More »

Catering to the Uncommitted Diner

Here’s an idea for restaurants. It’s hard for us walk-in customers to get a good sense of what the restaurant’s food is like and whether it’s worth staying. Silly, really, because the people best positioned to help on this are sitting all around us actually eating the stuff: the other customers. So why not encourage… Read More »

The TiddlyWiki Report, Part IV: Jeremy Ruston

This week’s WSJ.com/AWSJ column is about the TiddlyWiki (here, when it appears Friday), which I reckon is a wonderful tool and a quiet but major leap forward for interfaces, outliners and general coolness. I had a chance to chat with some of the folk most closely involved in TiddlyWikis, but sadly couldn’t use much of… Read More »

The TiddlyWiki Report, Part III: Alan Hecht

This week’s WSJ.com/AWSJ column is about the TiddlyWiki (here, when it appears Friday), which I reckon is a wonderful tool and a quiet but major leap forward for interfaces, outliners and general coolness. I had a chance to chat with some of the folk most closely involved in TiddlyWikis, but sadly couldn’t use much of… Read More »

Wikipedia Via Wi-Fi

I enjoyed reading this piece, somewhat belatedly, from Oliver Starr’s Mobile Weblog, where he describes a future where Wikipedia is no longer confined to the webpage but could be all around us: Location Using your phone, as if it was a PC mouse, you uncover snippets of information from the world around you. You click… Read More »