Alynda Wheat in this week’s Entertainment Weekly‘s Tonight’s Best TV: Friday Night Lights NBC, if you don’t renew this show, I swear I’ll take every n, b, and c out of this column! A d if you etwork astards thi k I’m joki g, you just try me.
Author Archives: paulschreiber
Sam Shaber as 13-year-old Scottish boy
Enric Teller shared a video of Sam Shaber goofing off at my most recent house concert.
MoveOn’s mail merge could use a little help
On March 23, 2007, I received an email from MoveOn titled “Rep. Pelosi does the right thing on Iraq.” It began like this: Dear MoveOn member, We’re one step closer in the fight to end the war. Today the Iraq Accountability Act passed Congress. For the first time, Congress passed a real deadline to end …
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Design roundup: PC Financial, Canada Post
My favourite Canadian bank, PC Financial added a brilliantly designed feature to their ATMs: No more addition mistakes. Enter checks one at a time, and let the ATM do the math. So smart! Why didn’t anyone think of that before? Wells Fargo does this now, too — they scan the checks and read the amount …
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AmEx can’t sort
This is from my American Express blue online statement. Apparently "24, 25, 26, 25" is descending order. Sigh.
The lawyers win, again
My new Trek bike came with not one, not two, but three warning stickers. They difficult to read, state only the obvious, help no one, and leave an annoying, gooey mess when you remove them. I wonder if bikes in other countries have to be covered with crap like this.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your bicycles
Paris is about to get what could be the world’s largest Yellow Bike Program(ish): On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance …
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US border crossings worse than middle east
In the Seattle Times, Floyd McKay laments the unfriendly US border: In a reputable international survey, 39 percent said the U.S. was the world’s worst in terms of being traveler-friendly, including document processing and “having immigration officials who are respectful toward foreign visitors.” The Middle East and South Asia were “next worst,” at 16 percent. …
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Understanding user needs…in Africa
Jakob Nielsen, look out. Parker Mitchell has a few things to say about the importance of understanding user needs: In particular, we will propose that the efforts of people in this room ensure that technology development efforts better incorporate the functional, economic and social/culture realities of prospective users. In my case the “users†are rural …
Wendy Seltzer v. the NFL
Wendy Seltzer, a former EFF attorney and current professor at Brooklyn Law School, posted a clip of the NFL’s copyright notice to YouTube as an example of fair use. Pursuant to the DMCA, the NFL’s bots find the clip and send YouTube a takedown notice. Wendy then sent a counter-notification and YouTube reposted the clip. …