Alex Jones: Web Technologist, Barbecue Acolyte, Information Junkie, Austinite

Accessorizing Your Eyeballs

Matt Haughey provides a very interesting write up on ordering glasses online instead of at the local optometrist / giant chain store in his article Adventures in $40 eyeglasses. I love the idea of having more than one pair of glasses from which to choose each morning, while paying significantly less than I would for a single pair from my optometrist.

Now, I’m more than happy to pay for a good optometrist, but frames and lenses are commodities in all but the rarest instances, and those instances are out of my spending range. Plus, I really don’t like having a designer’s signature scrawled on my clothing, much less my glasses, so selling me on the brand doesn’t work. That said, I spent more on my current set of glasses than I ever had previously because they really feel right, but they aren’t practical to wear some days. Having a second set of glasses would be nice to have around when I know that I will be more active during the day. Hell, just the ability to get an inexpensive pair or two of prescription sunglasses would encourage me to leave my contacts in their solution in order to wear my glasses.

Matt also posted a link to Glassy Eyes, a blog about ordering glasses online - sounds dull, but it’s very useful. I’ll post back when I take the plunge.

Posted in General & Tagged: clothing, contacts, ecommerce, glasses, money

How it Works

People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Steve Jobs in The Guts of a New Machine

Posted in Design, Design & UI, Quotes & Toasts & Tagged: Design, user experience

Recent Links: November 26 to November 29

Posted in Quick Links

Straight Talk on Accessibility

If we can make the effort to care about cross-browser compatibility then we can make the effort to care about cross-person compatibility.

Jonathan Snook

That is one of the simplest, yet most effective points ever made about Accessibility in the realm of Web development. If you are in the least bit involved in any aspect of Web design or development, you should read What does Accessibility mean? It’s long, but well worth your time.

If you’re a believer, Jonathon provides a couple more rounds of ammunition, including a concise breakdown of the accessibility lawsuit (PDF) against Target.com. If you are unsure, or feel that accessibility isn’t important, you’ll learn a lot from his post.

This is important. I recently agreed to join the advisory board for AIR Interactive & Access U to lend my efforts to this extremely important cause. Every site on the Web should be accessible to all visitors. Yes, a balance must be struck, but right now the balance is tipped in the wrong direction. The effort to implement sites properly, ensuring everyone can access them is small.

Read the article. Think about how you work. Change what should be changed.

Posted in Web Development & Tagged: accessibility, air, web design, Web Development

Recent Links: November 20 to November 23

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Recent Links: November 17 to November 20

Posted in Quick Links

XMas07

Most folks can ignore this post, but as I promised to get a list together, I decided it was easier to post here than e-mail it out.

Here are the some things I’d like for Christmas:

X-ish

• OS X Leopard
• LaCie 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Other Schtuff

• “Hungry” hat
• Victorinox Swiss Army Tinker Pocket Knife (Black) I just found my pocket knife after 6 months!
• Flickr Pro Account Subscription
• Henckels Twin Signature 7-Inch Santoku
• Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points
• The Sandman Vol. 1
• The Sandman Vol. 2
• The Sandman Vol. 3
• Acrobots
• Polarity (Newly Added)
• 1 Dot Grid Book (Newly Added)
• 1 Action Book (Newly Added)
• Neverlate Executive Alarm Clock - Out of stock at the moment, but I am more than happy to wait for it to ship, even if it doesn’t arrive until after Christmas.

Posted in General

Recent Links: November 14 to November 17

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Satisfying UI Design is Often Illogical

Scott Stevenson provides a very interesting essay, Satisfying UI Design is Often Illogical, discussing the impact and need for UI changes and the expectations of and reactions by the market to those changes. The entire piece is well worth a read by anyone interested in design and user experience, with many valuable insights. One of my favorites though is encapsulated in a single line: “The real goal is user satisfaction, and some of that is really illogical and messy.”

Posted in Design & UI & Tagged: Design, OS X, software, ui, user experience, web design

Intelligent Curves

The study, to be published this week, shows that men who admire women with hourglass figures do so because they are more intelligent and therefore produce more intelligent children than waif-like women or those of “apple-shaped” proportions.

As noted in the Telegraph article, Another reason why men like curves, a test of 16,000 women and girls showed that those “with a greater difference between their waist and hip measurements scored significantly higher in [cognitive] tests, as did their children.” Oh, and apparently they live longer.

Curves are good.

Posted in General & Tagged: attraction, intelligence, relationships, reproduction, science, sex