Thursday, May 24, 2012

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU STARED AT AN HOURGLASS WHILE WAITING FOR SOMETHING?  Computer icons based on dated technologies.

11 comments:

  1. Watts9:34 AM

    Saw a real-life example of this on my twitter feed last week, courtesy of @mcgeesorg (Niall is his elementary-school-aged son):

    Me: "Do you know what a floppy disk is?" Niall: "No." Me: "It's about this big, plastic, and looks like a 'Save' button." Niall: "Oh! Yes."

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  2. Also, the answer to the title of the post is: Last time I played Boggle (real-life, shake-up-the-cube Boggle, not some online facsimile)

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  3. Craig Pearlman10:27 AM

    This, actually, has been something the developer community has been thinking of for some time now. Think this is why Apple's given up the hourglass for the Beach Ball of Death and added in auto-save. The real problem is that we don't have a good set of universally-acceptable replacements. GUIs, traditionally, are based on the manipulation of real-world objects. Things that people already recognize.

    We could go on thinking of them as symbols that represent a function. Something tells me a number of kids these days probably think of it that way. The problem is that Grandma also needs to be able to use it, too.

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  4. gtv200010:43 AM

    I bought a USB-wired ethernet adapter the other day.  In the box came a 3.5" driver disk.  Really?  What was I supposed to do with that?  I guess they figure anybody still using wired ethernet has a 3.5" drive.

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  5. KCosmo's neighbor11:29 AM

    We actually have a real hourglass sitting next to our computer at home...it's the only way I can get the kids to limit their computer time (30 minutes on school days). Needless to say, my younger daughter conveniently forgets to flip it over until someone figures out she's been sitting there for a while (it's 15 minutes per side).

    As for the phone handset--totally making a comeback. My 20-year-old nephew asked for one for Chanukah--and I happily obliged. He said it's easier for long phone conversations. I guess the stiff neck hasn't set in yet.

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  6. isaac_spaceman1:19 PM

    Yeah, why is my pointer an old-fashioned arrowhead?  We haven't used arrows as a primary way of pointing at things for, like, ever.  Why have an arrow?  When we try to signify things today, we generally do not point with guns, or bombs.  "Which way is Market Street?"  "Pardon me while I shift my warhead in that general direction."  And, anyway, arrows haven't been really important in warfare since I would guess the seventeenth century.  Even those devoted anachronists who use arrows today go with the ones where the arrowhead is flush with the shaft, not the medieval/Native American-style ones. 

    Also, the hand pointer for clickable links will be confusingly obsolete as soon as we implement our neurotech interface.  In the future all icons will just be thought bubbles onto which you can project whatever abstract concept you want. 

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  7. Watts2:50 PM

    isaac, you sound like me when I rail against librarians saying I shouldn't use the word "journal" or "catalog" in instruction sessions.

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  8. Squid3:00 PM

    I don't want to know what they'd think about the fact that my computer plays a needle scratching across a record when it hits a critical error...

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  9. Joseph Finn5:14 PM

    Squid: That you're awesome?

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  10. spacewoman9:01 PM

    I almost always forget not to call my iPod my Walkman.  That's right.

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  11. Carrie9:31 PM

    Last time I watched "The Wizard of Oz" and was stared as the last grains of sand fell in the hourglass ...and ding dong!

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