Pleasure and Pain

Measuring the impact of new technology on human experience

Pleasure and Pain: photos by Whitney G. Hess

Entries from June 2008

The user experience of a staircase

June 22nd, 2008 · 5 comments so far

As I was going over the Triboro Bridge on the way to JFK on Friday, I saw a metal staircase high above the traffic that construction workers use to access the top of the bridge tower. Seeing it from a distance made me appreciate for the first time that a staircase is great design. It’s [...]

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Plurk You

June 20th, 2008 · 5 comments so far

I’ve been wanting to write about Plurk for a while. Everyone seemed to be so enamored with it when it first launched, but maybe that was because Twitter was experiencing serious downtime and people were pissed off — not because it was anything actually worth being excited about.
The first time I logged on, I had [...]

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Links from 6/9/2008 to 6/16/2008

June 16th, 2008 · No comments yet

Adobe TV - CooperCooper's tips and tricks on using Fireworks
the PIXEL IMPLOSION!Bobby Anderson's visual design/icon portfolio
Patterns for Designing a Reputation System » Yahoo! User Interface BlogBy Christian Crumlish @mediajunkie
Screencast: Finder Window Icon Trick @ Dan Rubin?s SuperfluousBanterNever knew you could add "quick links" to the Finder window
Mark Zuckerberg - Dickipedia - A Wiki of DicksAbsolute hilarity

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Tim Russert dead, so says Twitter

June 13th, 2008 · 6 comments so far

Tim Russert is dead at 58 from an apparent heart attack. And I found out via Twitter.
Before it was on CNN. Before it was on the New York Times. Before I could Google it anywhere, Tim Russert’s death was reported on Twitter.
This is the power of word-of-mouth.
If you page back in the Summize logs, you [...]

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Bluefly don’t bother me

June 13th, 2008 · 1 comment so far

It’s been hot in NYC lately. Very hot. So it’s time to buy some more dresses. But being the busy woman that I am, I don’t have a ton of time to go shopping. I decided to check out a few websites to see if anything caught my eye. I’ve never shopped at Bluefly.com, but [...]

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