The photographic camera is one of the great inventions of the 19th century, and is quite a simple idea: take a light sensitive surface, put a lens in front of it, add the ability to control exposure time and aperture, and you’re all set. And for more than a century, that’s what cameras were all … Read more
So we had to ship some parcels overseas, and we were given these forms to fill at the post office. Not surprisingly, the form had four copies, and asked for a lot of shipping and customs information. what was surprising, however, was the incredibly poor functional design of the form’s layout. Most obviously silly was … Read more
See this product which I found at a hardware superstore. Looks useful enough for organizing stray cables in the home. But it has another unexpected function. As you see in the close up, this device has an added benefit beyond storing extra cord length, and the packaging clearly states it: Helps prevent children. You don’t … Read more
A friend pointed me at this image, which seems to have gone viral online: Now, this is pretty hilarious as a joke, but there are some serious comments it brings to mind. First, the “normal” laundry instructions use icons instead of words, but unless you’re a laundry expert these convey no universally obvious meaning … Read more
People who design forms never cease to amaze. This was very obvious in the era of paper forms. You’d get forms with fields that are patently too small for their content; like this snippet from one I recently filled: Name ______________________________ E-mail ___________ Cellular: _____________________________________________ What were they thinking?? Many email addresses won’t fit on … Read more
We’ve discussed Engrish before… it’s always hilarious, but this one beats them all. Read it through! This is from a very nice flannel shirt imported by Azouri Clothing Ltd, and manufactured in China. The amazing part is that in addition to mangling the spelling and grammar, as in “You can’t using bleash”, which is fairly … Read more
One gripe I have with the help systems in many consumer software applications: they’re written with the assumption that we users are all clueless newbies. Take the Microsoft Office tools: they have many advanced and powerful capabilities; it is both interesting and useful to know what exactly they do. But the Help system only gives … Read more
Engrish is all around us; here is a recent sighting that made my day. This is from the box of a Teac Media Systems slim multimedia keyboard, model TK-5108. One can’t help but wonder whether this item is noble by birth, being descended from a long line of aristocratic peripherals, or is its praise the … Read more
A picture is worth a thousand words – when it is a good picture. There is a huge gap in effectiveness between the best and the worst illustrations you see in technical and scientific publications. The trick is to convey the essence of what’s being shown, whether it is a machine, a building or an … Read more
A few days ago I was at the IEC history of computing museum where they also exhibited their progress in map making – from old blueprints and paper maps to modern CAD and GIS software. They had there an old 1960’s map that caught my eye – a 1:50,000 topographic map by the Israel Survey … Read more
