i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

So, I know we've talked about visual representations of browser history before, and tonight, while reading lifehacker (ie, procrastinating for 202), I found two recommendations for firefox plug-ins. I just installed both of them.

The first, History Tree, looks awesome. It displays a simple visual history; it sorts by tabs, and includes backtracking as well as showing how you got from one page to another. I'm definitely going to be using this one.

The  NY Times just ran an article about the federal initiative called Secure Flight - which requires the name on your ID needs to match your airplane ticket - and the problems that can arise when you use several versions of your own name.

I was aware of the initiave, but I didn't realize that you'll also have to provide your date of birth and your gender when you make a reservation! You think the security people are going to try and verify gender?

In the NY Times this morning, there's an article about the importance of comparing new technology to existing and familiar technology, so that people can understand what the new stuff is and how it should be used.

The article states "Humans instinctively sort and classify things. It’s how we make sense of a complex world."

Another quote that I like, this time about the Segway: "...Professor Markman said. “Nobody was quite sure what it was,” he said. “There was no clear analogy, so people had no idea how to use it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/technology/companies/14craigslist.html

Earlier this year, Craigslist, facing bad publicity and legal pressure, changed its "erotic services" category to "adult services". The site now charges $10 for each ad, and manually reviews each ad to ensure guideline compliance. When I originally read this article - and never having used that part of Craigslist (I tend to stick to the PG part) - I wondered if a name change would change anything at all?