antoin@eire.com

This article on the UK Design Museum site tells the story of the British motorway and general road signage system, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. It begins:

Determined to illustrate the haphazard state of British road signage at the turn of the 1960s, the graphic designer Herbert Spencer drove from central London to the recently opened Heathrow London Airport and photographed each of the road signs that he came across along the way.

Perhaps it is time for someone to do something similar for the drive from Naas via the M50 ring-road to the Airport. It would certainly be an interesting project to do over a few Sunday mornings.

A well-thought out set of research on the topic, involving Stanford and Microsoft. Not just idle curiousity, related to a project I’m currently working on.

This is a good article about why video conference does and doesn’t work.

A boards.ie poster says that he lost his parcel when the courier company left package in the bin. Now, this points at a big problem with home delivery. You aren’t always home to receive. But imagine if your courier (or tesco delivery guy or whatver) could let himself or herself in, under controlled, observed conditions? Would that make life easier?

The design of the new Sherry FitzGerald website is something I had a hand in with Image Now. It has a nice distinctive look. There are a couple of UI and search engine niceties that have to be looked at, but I think it’s looking pretty good.

My forthcoming book will even be available in Tesco!

There is an article in today’s Irish Times about OOXML in which I am quoted. I was asked for a comment on this in the afternoon yesterday. A number of people have asked me about the position I took this morning. Basically, the slightly longer story is that the reason we are abstaining is because there was not a large enough majority in favour of voting for conditional approval (there was a simple majority, but not the two thirds majority we had agreed would be required). The other people voting wanted to express approval without any reservations whatsoever.

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A&C Black are publishing my first book. It’s all done now, pretty much ready for the printer, so I feel I can mention it a bit. Every so often I get the feeling that I have left something important out of it.

Michael Dell is using Ubuntu on his desktop computer according to an email from him to Martin Varsavsky. Michael obviously didn’t tell Martin this to indulge in idle banter, and I’m sure he wasn’t too surprised to see it on Martin’s blog.

Dell is sending out a clear signal to Microsoft. We don’t need you anymore. The desktop operating system and the standard productivity applications are becoming a commodity. Give us a better deal.

Tom met Steve Jobs and talked about Freedom vs Simplicity. This is something Umberto Eco wrote on the topic quite a while ago.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. (more…)