peterme.com		Thoughts, links, and essays from Peter Merholz
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Home Archives Archives before June 13, 2001 RSS Feed Adaptive Path (my company!) About peterme Coordinates Most of the Time Oakland, CA Interests Current American history around the time of the Revolution, figuring out how to marry top-down task-based information architecture processes with bottom-up document-based ones, finding a good dentist in San Francisco Oakland Perennial Designing the user experience (interaction design, information architecture, user research, etc.), cognitive science, ice cream, films and film theory, girls, commuter bicycling, coffee, travel, theoretical physics for laypeople, single malt scotch, fresh salmon nigiri, hanging out, comics formalism, applied complexity theory, Krispy Kreme donuts. surf Click to see where I wander. Wish list Show me you love me by buying me things. Spyonme Track updates of this page with Spyonit. Clickee here. Essays [Editor's note: peterme.com began as a site of self-published essays, a la Stating The Obvious. This evolved (or devolved) towards link lists and shorter thoughtpieces. These essays are getting a tad old, but have some good ideas.] Reader Favorites Interface Design Recommended Reading List Whose "My" Is It Anyway? Frames: Information Vs. Application Subjects Interface Design Web Development Movie Reviews Travel		All glowy and white. Posted on 01/09/2002. Went to Macworld today. My first ever, I think. Oh wait--I believe I once worked a MacWorld when I was employed by Voyager. Anyway, it's been a long time. Saw the new iMac--it's nice and all, though I kind of don't 'get' it. Not that I didn't feel techno-lust... gimmegimmegimme an iBook with an iPod and a digital camera. It was interesting to fiddle with iPhoto--they've done a good job on doing basic photo stuff. I particularly like the scaling interface (I think I'm still more a sucker for a true Zooming User Interface, but that doesn't seem quite ready for prime time). I was surprised by it's blatant task-orientation... This lozenge bar is the main interface element. For the longest time software avoided being explicit about tasks, I guess for fear of being too constraining. Now, as the tools are getting simpler, the interface design becomes more obvious. You see it in the Start menu of Windows XP, too... I also visited the OmniGroup's booth, mostly out of curiosity about OmniGraffle, a diagramming program that could pose a threat to Visio as the information-architecture-tool-of-choice. It's definitely a version 1.0 right now, but the guys we talked to were cognizant of what needed to be improved. Clicking around the OmniGroup site, I found some licensing copy that would make the Cluetrain kids very happy... (for each, you'll find it by scrolling down). OmniWeb Licensing information OmniWeb 4 for Mac OS X can be used for free, but occasionally you might get little flashes of guilt while you use it. If this overwhelms you, why not buy a license at our web store? OmniOutliner Licensed Version Once you are addicted, you'll doubtlessly want to spend less than $25 to buy a license. Buying a license enables you to add new items to and edit existing items in documents with more than twenty items. Click here to buy, and in the process help pull America out of this pesky recession. We guarantee we'll turn around and spend the money you give us! OmniGraffle Licensed Version Once you've used OmniGraffle for a while, we bet you'll want to edit documents with more than twenty items, and then you can buy a license to fully enable the app, and help get us that much closer to being feelthy steenking rich. Well, OK, maybe not rich, but successful enough to write some more apps you'll love. And, hey, right now Graffle's about half the cost of some other visualization tools. Also, we're a small company, like those juice guys, so when you buy an app from us it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy, like if you ate some sweaters. Mmmm... sweaters. 1 comment so far. Add a comment. Previous entry: "Tsssss! Getcher Brand Right Here!" Next entry: "Special to the kids on SIGIA-L." Comments: COMMENT #1 that was good for a laugh - thanks! let's hear it for indie software companies! Posted by evan @ 01/10/2002 12:13 PM PST [link to this comment] Add A New Comment: Name E-Mail (optional) Homepage (optional) Comments Now with a bigger box for text entry! Whee! All contents of peterme.com are © 1998 - 2002 Peter Merholz.