This bit of awkward wording on the Netflix website was pointed out to me by a friend. This is a headline on their recommendations page (you need to be logged in and have some movies rated for it to show up). It’s just too weird to not share:

I just got back from Game Developer’s Conference (it was along drive from San Jose to Mountain View) and boy are my legs tired. I’ve been going to GDC for about 6 or 7 years now, and I mainly go to meet up with video game friends old and new (from both LucasArts and from the Indie Game scene).

I’m going to post a quick list of highlights:

• Having a near miss with Richard ‘Lord British’ Garriott (of Ultima fame) while living it up in the VIP pre-party for the IGF awards. Had I known he was there, I would have geeked out a bit. Perhaps next year …
• Playing the new Nintendo 2d Super Mario bros. game. It’s like the old-school NES Super Mario Bros game on steroids. Check out this teaser video.
• Meeting up with the Adobe Shockwave/Director guys, including Tom Higgins, The Habbo Hotel guys, and Darrel Plant who has a bunch of GDC posts himself.
• Meeting all the indie and casual (their term, not mine) game developers at the Minna Mingle. It’s nice to know that there’s people out there who know about and care about my games.
• Seeing the recently-aquired-by-Google SketchUp in action. It works in the same way I think about objects in 3d space, and it’s gotten me excited about 3d world building again.
• There are only two major chapters in a person’s life: Before seeing Bob Saget in person, and after seeing Bob Saget in person. As of Thursday night in the lobby of the San Jose Fairmont, my girlfriend and I are now in that second chapter. Strange, I don’t feel any different.

... and so much more stuff that I can’t even list ehre. Every year the GDC re-energizes me and gets me excited about games again. This year was no different. I can’t wait for next year!

I came up with an idea that I call the secret handshake.

The secret handshake is a property on a user’s online account for services that want to send me email. Here’s how it would work:

• I sign up for an account on a web service -- let’s say a newsletter for an online video game site.
• In addition to a password, I also elect to enter a “secret handshake”. I enter my childhood dog’s name: Magoo.
• Whenever an email is sent to me by the service, it includes the secret handshake (Magoo) in the subject line.
• I know the email is one I requested because it has my secret handshake -- even when it’s a service that rarely sends mail and might not otherwise be spotted among spam.
• I can set up mail filters based on the handshake to higlight them to further make then stand out from spam.

Now, I didn’t think of this for secure services like Paypal, but at first glance it seems like something that could reduce phishing scams.

On the heals of releasing the Shockwave update, Tom Higgins has published the Director Authoring tools for implementing Flash 8 content in Director (and Shockwave). It includes many new features for Flash and Director to communicate and share data. Most interesting to me is the ability to pass images from Director to Flash, have Flash apply it’s new filter effects to it, and pass it back to Director. This includes things like blurs, glows, and more.

Make sure you get the PDF posted there as well, since it explains how to implement the new features.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/downloads.html

Get it here. Read Tom’s announcement over at his blog. Sounds like it’s got some neato stuff.

The hunch engine mentioned in Wired News today sounds just like Variations in Photoshop, which has been included in the program for, oh, at least ten years:

To try it in Photoshop just open and image and choose Image > Adjustments > Variations. It’s not really new, but perhaps this kind of results-oriented UI may finally catch on.

I was in a mildly annoying meeting last week. When I’m talking in a meeting and someone is using a laptop, I can’t help but wonder if they’re listening to me and taking notes, or if they’re not paying attention and instead browsing Craigslist or playing Tetris. It can be difficult. And after this meeting, it hit me -- if I’m wondering about them, its likely that they are wondering the same thing about me when I’m using my laptop. This is a simply a perception issue, so I’m going to try and make my note-taking a bit more transparent. I’ve decided to take notes with pen and paper and avoid using my laptop during meetings whenever possible. I think it will improve communication. And it should be easy since I completed Tetris a few years ago.

With all the hype from the Origami Project, I thought I’d share a bit about my favorite app for tablets and what makes it so great (and one of the only things that makes a TabletPC worth owning, in my opinion).

Alias Sketchbook Pro is a freehand pixel-based paint program specifically designed for pen-based input. it’s designers have perfected the drawing experience for a pen-on-screen device. And on top of it they’ve given it a very clever UI that seamlessly promotes the user from using menus to using gestures. It’s amazing. As a UI designer I carry with me my laptop and a sketchbook, and the new Origami tablets look like a great size to duplicate a sketchbook experience.

So, what makes Alias Sketchbook Pro so good? I can break it down into a few different bits:

• Focused on a single thing: getting the sketch experience right.
• UI optimized for speed and pen-based input

Read the rest of this entry

Gmail has some UI problems. Recently I blogged a bit about the bugs in Yahoo Mail Beta and in that entry I said that even with it’s slowness, Yahoo Mail Beta is still better than Gmail. A few people have chimed in to let me know their own thoughts, and one poster took issue with my Yahoo vs. Gmail comment:

your right about one thing: its antaganizingly slow. horribly slow.

your completely wrong about another: it is in no way shape or form, better than gmail. gmail is a MUCH better online email service. nothing really compares to gmail as of yet even with yahoo’s new offering..

I admit that Gmail does have Yahoo Mail Beta beat in the speed department. But I still feel that Yahoo Mail Beta is better than gmail. Read the rest of this entry

Photoshop has long-ago run out of legit keyboard shortcuts for new commands. But if Adobe wanted to get serious about solving the issue, there’s a lot of illegitimate ones they could use.

Space Modifier

Modifier keys are the keys you hold down before pressing another key to trigger a two-key shortcut. These keys traditionally are SHIFT, CTRL, and ALT.

My solution is to turn the spacebar into a modifier key. So, in the same way you can hit CTRL+T for Free Transform, you could hit SPACE+T for Transform Selection (or whatever you assigned it). Just think of the Spacebar as a really long shift key. Adding this opens up a whole new set of two-key shortcuts, and it doesn’t break any existing shortcut. Read the rest of this entry