Human Factors

I went to Craft 2.0 at The New Dowse today. My personal highlight was to see the launch of World Sweet World, the magazine New Zealand (or maybe the world?) was waiting for. Everyone who loves to create something with their own hands, everyone who likes to break the boundaries of imagination and everyone who lives (or wants to live) a sustainable life, should get a copy. It’s inspiring and offers something for every skill level.

Hannah and Thomas from World Sweet World

My favourite product of the exhibition is Kitty Kat, a cat-shaped cushion from Small Village Productions – the cutest one on display found a new home in Karori!

My new Kitty Kat on my couch

Yesterday’s Dominion Post had an article about dangerous txt-driving. Both Vodaphone’s and Telecom’s spokepeople were interviewed and said there’s no such thing as an automatic reply to incoming text messages. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be surprised that they seem to have no clue what today’s mobile phones are capable of. There’s plenty of auto reply software available that everyone could easily install on a variety of availablemobiles. A quick search on Google revealed the following:

Auto SMS Reply (Windows Mobile)
Private Call & SMS Guard (Nokia/Symbian)
SMS Automated Responder (Nokia Communicator)
I’m busy (Blackberry)

I’m sure there must be heaps more out there! This is just another proof of what lack of competition in the telecommunications sector leads to: no innovation, no drive to be better than the competitor and absolutely no interest in providing customers a good service.

I’ve just arrived back from Wellington’s first Girl Geek Dinner ever at Long Xiang, the Chinese Restaurant in Dixon Street. It was a pretty cool event, a nice mixture of eating, chatting and listening to successful women in geeky jobs – a very useful opportunity to get in contact with others working in similar areas. Unfortunately the food was not very good, even the dessert (ice cream) tasted funny, but the event itself was definitely worth going. On my way there I was wondering if women today really need a guy-free environment to talk – usually I’m not a great fan of too much feminism. But I don’t think that the meeting was focussed only on the feminine side of our geekyness, it was more a nice way of meeting new people, who just happen to be female. A few males were there as well, and I think it’s a bit weird that a boy won the main prize in the raffle, but apart from that Brenda and her helpers can be very proud of the event they organised…

GoodGAze is a tool to predict human visual attention. At CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, the development team is currently showing how it works. Based on neuroscientific algorithms the software can tell you where people will look at on your website, a fast and easy way to optimise it. This could replace resource- and time-consuming eye tracking studies in the future…

screenshot:goodgaze.com