Brynn Marie Evans

The “paradox of the active user” is a paradox because users would save time in the long term by learning more about the system. But that’s not how people behave in the real world, so we cannot allow engineers to build products for an idealized rational user when real humans are irrational. We must design for the way users actually behave

British scientists have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and one man, a procedure that could potentially prevent conditions including epilepsy, diabetes and heart failure.

Experts are still trying to determine the effect of the concentric circles on the long squiggly green objects located in the blue area. (Ha!)

This is hilarious! These building blocks are intended to help children learn English, but they are filled with mistranslations (and overly literal) translations of English words. The peacock (turkey) one is pretty funny; as is the secondary planet

animated infographic movie from Good Magazine, visually explaining who possesses nuclear bombs, how many, and what would happen if one fell on New York City.

Here’s some info on how to build a HIT using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Make3D converts your single picture into a 3-D model. It takes a two-dimensional image and creates a three-dimensional “fly around” model, giving the viewers access to the scene’s depth and a range of points of view

“Stanford University today announced the largest increase in its history for its financial aid program for undergraduates.

Under the new program, parents with incomes of less than $100,000 will no longer pay tuition. Parents with incomes of less than $60,000 will not be expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board and other expenses.

The program also eliminates the need for student loans.”

Stanford Director of Athletics, Bob Bowlsby announced Monday that Michele Uhlfelder has decided to pursue other career options, and will step down as head coach of the Stanford lacrosse program, effective immediately.

This is a crazy video from Jeremy Banks showing that whenever he reloads a page, he ’s in a random account. I wonder if he wants to record video for my study? Haha.

Alan (president of SAM Technology) is interviewed about the SAM Test that he has been developing over the past 40 years. When I worked there, we were still doing some of the more basic research but beginning to apply it to the real-life situations he describes.

It looks like CHI2008 will make an effort to be (more) green through the use of local food and biodegradable tableware, sustainable printing of the proceedings, donation of used conference bags to a charity, lots of recycling bins, etc.

From my friend Derek Lomas: he’s bought and tested a $15 computer in India that plugs into your TV, and apparently it works pretty well!

Scroll down a bit and watch the demo video clip under DRAGON. Very cool! They won Best Note at CHI 2008.

Map of social network preferences worldwide.

Amazing maps and visualizations.

This 2.5 minute video is a result of feedback from our fans. We’ve received a number of requests from people who want their friends to use the micro-blogging service Twitter, but can’t seem to explain it well. We hope this video helps.

[With Twitter] “I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online.

And I feel that I have a foretaste of what tomorrow’s network world will bring, when the boundaries have dissolved completely…”

“When an unranked team has the poise to stand up to a top 10 team and win, it’s noteworthy. When a team pulls off the same feat mere days after a midseason coaching change, it’s extraordinary.” Go Stanford!

“Recent evidence suggests that the NSA has been focusing on widespread monitoring of e-mail messages and text messages, recording of Web browsing, and other forms of electronic data-mining, all done without court supervision. Taken together, those activities raise unique privacy and oversight concerns greater than those posed by large-scale monitoring of voice communications.”

How to replace the editor with a computer

Imagine an internet where you (not the site designer) were able to decide how to view and experience web content. E15 is a platform that enables end users to experience this internet, an internet beyond the browser.

An overview presentation on social web and social computing that introduces some of the conceptual model I have been using to do analysis and strategy to vastly improve value for the people using the services and tools as well as the system owners.

These are absolutely the best directions for erasing and donating my old cell phone!

The larger the Web grows, the more important search becomes, right? That’s probably so, and as a note of clarification, he changed his statement slightly to say, “Search, as we know it, is dead.” What he means is that, with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

“A former product lead of Google News is quietly working on a new social search service he started with the help of two other Google refugees. “

PM hits the streets and gets looked at more than ever before, then heads to the shop for first-look details on a futuristic car so efficient it’ll make your jaw drop. The good news? It’s coming next year.

Although the archive of text generated by a persistent conversation (i.e. newsgroup, mailing list, recorded chat, etc.) is searchable, it is not very expressive of the underlying social patterns. In this paper we will discuss the design of graphical interfaces that reveal the social structure of the conversation by visualizing patterns such as bursts of activity, the arrival of new members, or the evolution of conversational topics.

This is an interesting account of online user behaviors as reported by several PEW Internet survey studies over the last few years. Email & web search have highest penetration (+90%). Watching a video with YouTube or Google Video is also pretty common (48%)!

Clay Shirky gives a great talk on “cognitive surplus,” or how much freaking free time people actually have. What do they do in this free time? Well, a whole heck of a lot is spent watching TV…but more and more, people are participating in online communities, producing and sharing information. Social media may be the next Industrial Revolution.

This is a short transcript of Clay Shirky’s speech given at the Web 2.0 expo (2008).

Ed CHi recently found this old article on social bookmarking and social indexing. Could be used ot inform social search.