This is splorp.

January 4, 2001

Untitled

It’s one thing to post a bunch of random thoughts and commentary on this site with the hope that someone out there will find them vaguely amusing or even partially useful. It’s an entirely different situation when you realize that people actually do read those same ramblings, and then feel compelled enough to comment on them. That amazes me. In a good way.Following up on yesterday’s post about the Microsoft house of the future, Garrett Vreeland shares his concern for the safety of others:

“i won’t look further. you can’t make me. the dining room was enough.i visualize that when your microsoft house (c) reboots itself, the murphy beds close up in the wall, suffocating the occupants.of course, the Microsoft House NT Option Pack 1 will not fix the problem, just allow manual release of the murphy beds.I’d prefer judy jetson in a bikini showing me my atomic dishwasher. what’s scary is that some marketing hacks in microsoft actually believe this is a grand sweeping view of the future.”

Ellen Odehnal chimed in as well:

“Since you asked about the Microsoft Home, here’s my favorite quote from it: “When your home is connected like this you’ll see some big changes in your day-to-day life.”Uh huh, like an inability to communicate other than clicks and grunts. Plus, I would estimate there would be a sharp increase in the amount of overall ennui and angst in that household since they’re forced to put up with shoddy MS products… but that’s just me…”

And after asking for an explanation as to why half keyboards would be useful, the technically circumambient Joe Clark obliged with the following:

“Half a keyboard is better than other input systems for:* one-handed users* systems too small to support a hardware keyboard* systems too small, or too stupidly-designed, to support an onscreen KB (which never manage to include word prediction, which is more than half the battle)Most people already know how to type. Edgar’s system “leverages,” as the marketing types say, that capacity. I used it years ago and wrote a story http://www.joeclark.org/halfqwerty.html (but I may have flubbed the URL). It is a niche solution to a problem no one has particularly solved.”

That first bullet point alone made me blush with embarrassment. Some things just aren’t that obvious when you have two usable hands to work with and take for granted. I now understand this product. It’s industrial design and implementation are fascinating me to the point of brain fatigue. I might just have to pick one of these up to play with.

This item was posted by Grant Hutchinson.

Categories:

• Uncategorized

Leave a comment or send a trackback from your own site.