Blessed be the blog

Chris Norton, July 21st 2006, 10:37AM

A while ago the Web was in the grip of robots. Take two of the classic web searches (no, not those two, this is a family blog) - consumer electronics and celebrities. I'd be searching for a USB powered keyboard warmer and the latest pictures of Brian Blessed, and all I'd get was a hundred price comparison websites and some generic celeb-pic site with only a couple of fuzzy pics of Brian and a hundred links trying to sell me junk I didn't need, USB powered mouse-mat warmers? Useless!

These searches are bound to still have Google spit a lot of the old rubbish back at me, but nowadays the blogging explosion means that quite a lot of information on the web is now back to being produced by real, living, breathing people. Amidst the auto-generated pap, I'll typically be able to read someone slagging off the latest USB powered keyboard warmer (and saying that Apple are about to come out with one that'll revolutionise PC interface heating), and a few reviews of Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes.

The web is being repopulated by real content, now that it's finally possible for totally non-technical types and geeks alike to get involved. As of this week, India can get involved too - now that the Indian government has lifted its recent blogging ban, that's another billion people to contribute some real content to our web. Now, considering I was lying in the last paragraph and can find hardly anything about Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, I'm hoping at least a few of the billion can get writing about this important matter. Real content! Let's go!

Tags: blogging, content, users, worldwideweb
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Welcome to Userville

Chris Norton, May 16th 2006, 5:45PM

Working in IT is only marginally less stressful than working at CTU, a recent poll suggests. Well colour me surprised - bet if you did a similar poll of carribean beach-bar barmen they'd be moaning about the hazards of falling coconuts, and you'd probably find toy testers losing sleep over the incorrect rendering of Barbie's eyebrows.

A good deal of this terrible stress is brought upon us IT types by the dreaded Users. As someone said in the poll - 'I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don't even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers. It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is.' Well whenever I hear this kind of thing, I'm on the user's side, because computers are the most ridiculously designed things in the world (aside from that new rendering of Barbie's eyebrows, of course).

I used to work in a public library and had to help people who'd never used PCs get on the internet. Why do you have to double click those icons to start 'the internet', then only single click everything else? What recycled products does the recycle bin churn out? Why can't I turn it on and off as I please, instead of waiting for all sorts of odd stuff to happen? Who is that paperclip and what does he want from me?

Us lot have been using these interfaces that are completely unrelated to real life for years, but most normal people haven't, and are not interested in tinkering and learning about them like we are. We shouldn't moan about them, we should moan about the design of these systems in the first place. I should be able to talk to this thing as if I was Captain Picard by now, instead of tapping away like someone in a typing pool in the thirties.

Computer, end blog!

Tags: browsing, control, pcs, users
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