"Why don't you arrange separate planes for terrorists?"

"So you claim." Brilliant as always (although I thought Ali G was funnier in England, where class is a bigger deal than race. I figure Borat came out of Sasha working in the US where immigration is a major theme).

Tagged.com was always a bit spammy, now they send emails with the subject line "Peter, please respond to your alerts...". Not friendly at all, pushy if anything. Tagged is like the pushy friend of an acquaintance that you'd rather not invite to your parties.

Does Google not index Unicode chars?

Some CSS tricks for smoothly resizing images away from their native sizes, from Flickr.

I didn't know you could do video chat in Gmail.

I made a Google moderator page where you can ask questions and vote on questions of others about IA. I'm gonna try to discuss the questions on this blog then, and perhaps others can do the same on their blogs. Go check out some IA questions.

Rocketboom, the original daily videblog, is still going strong and hiring developers in New York. Send a resume to jobs at. It's a fun team, so if you're looking to work at a startup, check it out.

• Expert knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and (unobtrusive) javascript
• Proficient in PHP, Ruby, MySQL, and building and working with web services 
• At least 1 year of experience working with an MVC framework (we mostly use Merb) and 4 years of web programming experience 
• Versed in open source software development and experienced with version control 
• Graphic design and system administration skills a plus 
• Strong analytical and logical skills to creatively solve complex problems 
• Enjoys working with a small team 
• Passionate about technology and life in general 
• Excited to show us some code they have written!
  

Luke Wroblewski's Modern Web Form Design webinar is this Thursday, November 13, 1-2pm EST. 

I tried to install disqus but no luck, got some strange errors.

Belgian usability day

I was going to speak at the Belgian usability day event in Brussels this Thursday, but I had to cancel unfortunately. The talk was an evolved and adjusted version of the global social networks talk I gave at the IA Summit in Amsterdam. I'm gonna post the slides anyway, perhaps someone will be interested in them. Meanwhile, registration is free, and seats are limited, so hurry if you plan on coming. Joannes Vandermeulen and Audrey Benoit will also give talks, the program sounds pretty good.

Cyworld is leaving the US.

Cyworld is leaving the US.

Indian cooking :)

A good explanation of money and inflation and deflation.

We all say we should do lots of user research, and then nobody does. Why is that? Donna has some good thoughts. I do think there's more to it than that though, it's just one of those things that's in plain sight but few people talk about. Why don't we all do loads of user research? Perhaps it's really not that important? Or perhaps our understanding of research is just flawed?

Anders writes a good review of the Balsamiq mockup tool.

Mobuzz, one of the early videoblogging companies based in Spain, is in trouble. Help them out!

Congrats to all my US citizen friends with your new president.

Cloudtest is an easy way to do loadtesting. It runs on EC2 itself, just say how many users (100s of 1000s) you want to visit your website, and it will simulate that. Pretty cool (and useful), loadtesting was always kinda hard to do properly and realistically.

Another good one :)

Google now tracks comments and authors on forum pages and shows them in the search results?

I was pretty surprised to see this in Google the other day:

See that "34 posts - 12 authors - Last post: 2 Sep"? Google added that. The site (mine) is a forum. Google is now (it seems) keeping track of updates to forum pages, how many comments ("posts") there are and even how many different authors.

What do you think?

Your Gmail account is now an OpenID. Cool.

How boy scouts use merit mechanisms.

Real estate in NYC being advertised in Euro.

Here's a startup idea: a web-accessible API to postal services around the world. In other words, you can tie into this API to send a postcard or a letter through the postal service in any country, for example. Halfbaked ideas - you ask, I deliver!

Chris: "What if someone paid you thousands of dollars to design a user interface for just one person?" Good stuff.

Incredible.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW_wQgWviZ8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1]

Gordon Ramsey consulting

Consultants love Gordon Ramsey's "Kitchen nightmares" show. In it, he visits a restaurant that is doing badly, pinpoints the problems (expensive menu, bad food, no leadership, no communication), and tries to fix it. And he shouts a lot at them too. It always makes me think of my consulting practice, other consultants seem to agree. I love his focus on getting the basics right, his honesty and his passion.

Patrick Kennedy wrote a smart blogpost about it, and Ruth Ellison gave a great presentation around the same idea:

The PHP guys are going to use / as a namespace separator, instead of the old ::

Bad decision because they forgot a criterion: semantic clearness. / already means a bunch of things, whereas :: doesn't. class::function is clearer than class/function for that reason, I would think. But I'm probably wrong.

You can now do deeplinking in Youtube videos, something that was possible years ago with Google video.

Exactly!

I might have mentioned this before but I just love this design.

I dislike services that let me check the "remember me" box and then forget me after 2 weeks. Two weeks does not a relationship make, my friends! And don't tell me it's about security.

Is there a reliable way to block anonymous proxy servers? I especially want to stop people from signing up anonymously - can I disable javascript and then require it for the signup or something. (Browsing the site anonymously isn't so much a problem).

Twitter's fine, Facebook is very well designed and popular, but I personally still like my blog to write down my thoughts. Granted, it's not as great at conversations, but it's alright. And it's mine, not owned by whoever will buy Twitter or Facebook.

Why it's also important to talk to people who are not your customers.

I like this: how to boil milk (and why).

A strangely evil photo gets photoshopped into an internet meme. What can I say, it's funny.

Simon seems to think Javascript might be the next language supported by Google appengine..

I don't know, if I was a long term investor I'd think it's a good time to start buying about now...

Democrats, please vote. Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.

Interesting. If you hve content behind a paywall, Google has a first click free program. Users get to see the first page for free, and you get your page indexed in the search results. Pretty cool.

PHP on Google appengine?

Google published the roadmap for app engine, and in the next few months, they will add "support for a new runtime language". Could it be PHP? There have been rumors about conversations with Zend...

Node is looking for an Arabic speaking interaction designer in Barcelona.

The tiny red line

I like the tiny red line in Google's calendar that indicates where in the day you are right now.

Todo lists are the new blogging platforms: everyone with some ambition but (apparently) little imagination wants to build one.

Vlogeurope, the European meetup of videobloggers, ended yesterday.

Hey, I totally forgot I had a Google profile!