On the changes to the keyboard on the most recent Sony Vaio laptops:

The computer keyboard isn’t a place where radical UI design changes are desirable. To extend the marketing metaphor, it’s like the typeface of a book. You’re stuck with the same old alphabet, in the same configuration, and your job is to preserve its usefulness while investing the work with with a certain character. The smart choice is to design something good and stick with it.

But Sony does not. The changes to the chiclet keys in the Vaio Z, however slight, show that it can’t even refine its own winning ideas. It’s as if Sony was using Helvetica before almost everyone else, then switched to Arial when the world followed suit.

Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right?

(Via Lukas Mathis, who excerpted the same quote.)

(via Lukas Mathis.)

While the magazine is not something you can pick up in a store, Google is saying that it intends to publish all of the articles from the magazine on the Think Quarterly website and you can download PDF and EPUB copies of the first issue that you can then read on your iOS/Android tablets.

The thing that’s interesting about Think Quarterly to my mind is that, for a company that is roundly regarded as not having much taste when it comes to design, the magazine looks fantastic.¹ The layout is clean but with touches of visual flair here and there that encourage you to continue reading and, perhaps more importantly, assist in understanding the material.

All of which makes the website pretty disappointing. To be clear, the site is not ugly. And it’s not obviously a Google site. Definitely, it has style. No, the problem with the website is the way that the articles are displayed. Which is to say that you are able to read them and… that’s about it. Compare the lead story — an interview with Guy Laurence, the CEO of Vodafone UK — as it’s presented in the magazine with how it’s presented on the website.

Again, it’s not that the presentation is horrible. It’s just that it has no oomph. There is none of the flair that accompanies the article as it’s presented in the magazine. What’s more, while you might at first think that the layout really isn’t that bad, when it’s repeated for article after article after article, it begins to get a little stale. More to the point, it evidences a complete lack of imagination for the design of the site. Kudos to Google for putting well-written content up there to be sure, but it’s a sad reflection on where we are with web design that this would be considered a pretty good magazine website.

It’s tempting to say that one shouldn’t be surprised that Google has not put the same amount of attention to detail into the website as it has to the magazine (particularly when it has no financial incentive to do so). This is fine if Think Quarterly were the only publication afflicted with this problem. Unfortunately, it’s not. See here, here, here, here, here, here and here (and so it doesn’t look like I’m just picking on magazines: here, here, here, here and here). This isn’t a case of Think Quarterly’s designers lacking imagination. It’s a case of web designers in general lacking imagination. It’s a fundamental inability, more than 20 years after the web first started and over a decade since the Internet went mainstream, to create layouts and designs that match the quality of those in print.

I am not a hater. There is great work being done — some of it by Google, some of it by people who are not magazines and some of it by magazines that only exist on the web. It’s 2011. We can stop being the poor cousin. We just need to release our imaginations.²

It’s probably good that I waited a couple of months, though, because there’s a few new ones that have snuck in just in time. Let’s see what I’m listening to this year and how many sentences I can end with a preposition.

The Brainy Gamer Podcast

http://feeds.feedburner.com/brainygamerpodcast
Hands down, still the best video game podcast I’ve ever listened to. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the schedule other than Michael puts one out when he’s got someone to talk to and something to say. This is a formula that results in a few podcasts throughout the year but my God they’re good.

Downloadable Content

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/padlc/
There hasn’t been a podcast since June 2009 and, given that there were only 8 podcasts in 2009 alone, it’s tempting to write this one off to the dead pool. The only reason not to? It’s just so good and I have faith.

Dungeons & Dragons Podcast

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml
I subscribe to this podcast solely to be able to listen to the Penny Arcade guys (and whoever they have with them at the time) play D&D. If you have even a remote interest in roleplaying or board games, you must listen to it. So funny.

Front Page

http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/frontpage.xml
The New York Times recently started making this into more of a ‘value added’ podcast by adding things like short interviews with reporters to the podcast. I’m not sure it really does add any extra value but for a quick wrap-up of what’s going on, I rate it highly.

The Japan Considered Podcast

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JapanConsideredPodcast
I’m still subscribed but there hasn’t been a new podcast since February 2009. I think it’s gone.

JapanesePod101.com

http://www.japanesepod101.com/wp-feed-audio.php
I’m still listening to Peter, Naomi and the rest of the crew over at Japanese Pod. I no longer bothering with the newbie and beginner lessons but the intermediate podcasts are still at a level I find challenging.

New Yorker: Comment

http://feeds.newyorker.com/services/rssfeeds/comment_podcast.xml
If you believe liberals are sanctimonious blow-hards, this podcast is not for you.

New Yorker: The Political Scene

http://feeds.newyorker.com/services/rss/feed/campaign_trail.xml
Dorothy Wickenden leads the best weekly discussion of US politics that brings together the depth and analysis for which the New Yorker is renowned. There are occasions where I wish they’d dwell on an issue for a little bit longer but it’s probably for the best that they don’t. Whereas I eventually tired of the Slate Political Podcast, this one is still going strong.

NHK English News

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/english.xml
This is one that I’m sure I’ve been listening to for ages. Why I didn’t have it on last year’s list, I’m not sure. It’s obviously an incredibly Japan-centric news show but if that’s what you’re looking for, I haven’t found better.

Slate’s Spoiler Specials

http://www.slate.com/podcast/id/2144834/
I am so far behind in the movies that I’ve seen that this has now blown out to 16 podcasts that I have yet to listen to. I can only imagine how much more awesome I’d find this if I didn’t listen to everything about 8 months after the world had move on.

The Pipeline

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thepipelineshow
This is one of the news ones that I just started listening to. Dan Benjamin of the Talk Show fame (see below) spends about 30 minutes interviewing a designer or web developer. If you’re interested in design and the web, this is a great podcast. Dan has had a crackerjack line-up of guests so far and my only concern is that he’s going to run out of awesome people to interview every week.

The Talk Show

http://thetalkshow.net/index.xml
Here’s another one that I think is gone (this is becoming something of a theme). I keep it in iTunes for the same reason as the others, though: when there’s a new episode I’m listening to it immediately.

アクセス

http://www.tbsradio.jp/ac/index.xml
I still don’t understand what ガガンボン means and I still don’t understand most of what’s being said but it’s my goal in life to one day be able to answer both those questions.

東京slow style

http://www.tokyoslowstyle.jp/podcast.xml
Here’s a new one that I started listening to this year. It’s a recording of a radio show in Japan. We don’t have so many of these in Australia — at least not aimed at younger people — but in Japan they seem a lot more popular. If you’re familiar with Triple J’s Hack, it’s kind of like that, only just about an interesting place or business in Tokyo.

37signals Podcast

http://feeds.feedburner.com/37signals_podcast
I think there’s a real danger this is just not going to have the legs to keep my interest for the next 12 months — you can only listen to the 37signals message so many times before it becomes repetitive — but it’s only been a month or two and I’m still listening!

So that’s who’s on there but who fell off the list?

• GWJ Conference Call I had the same problem with the GWJ guys that I seem to have with almost all gaming-related podcasts: after a while they just become too repetitive. I think it’s no coincidence the ones that remain on my iPod are the ones without a schedule that release a show only when there’s a show worth releasing.
• Slate Magazine Daily Podcast Sacrilege! Yes, I’ve stopped listening to John, David and Emily. After the election was over I’m afraid it felt like the same discussions were being had each week and it was just going around in circles. The other Slate podcasts, although fun to listen to, weren’t the reason I was sticking around.
• University of Sydney Podcasts As interesting as these often were, I just couldn’t justify the time. When I thought about the 2 hours that you could sink into one of these, that’s a lot of Japanese study I could be doing instead.

OK, Andrew. You didn’t answer my call last year. Don’t let me down now!