racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

If you’re seeing that big, “BANDWIDTH EXCEEDED” text on my header instead of the usualy image of a handsome man standing along Katipunan Avenue contemplating the future, that means this site has exceeded its 10 gigabyte bandwidth allocation for the month.  My stats are not exactly going through the roof, but they’re comparable to last month’s.  This month’s excess must have been due to my posting of some video files on my gallery–popular video files at that (read: showbiz-related).

Okay, I’ll put up some keywords here: Pinoy Big Brother.

Will post updates and analyses later.  Am presently busy as a bee.

Here’s an interesting look at computing history from Guidebookgallery: a re-publication from a 1989 article of IEEE Spectrum: Of Mice and Menus: Designing the User-Friendly Interface.

Over three decades of work by diverse engineers and researchers intent on
learning how best to interact with a computer come together in the windows and
icons used today

Ah, the merits of a good user interface.

Yes, to date, standard Apple mice still have only one button (save for the Mighty Mouse).

(via DIGG)

Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software and author of Joel on Software, explores an interesting usability concept in his most recent blog re-design.  He is now using his blog’s left column as an intro for first-time users.  He says he was inspired by Jakob Nielsen’s post on weblog usability.

The trouble [with having “a lot of links and little graphic blobs and other bits and pieces of
the flotsam and jetsam that bloggers like to put in their marginalia
that links to other stuff”] was that new users would land on my site, having followed a
link from somewhere, and they would have absolutely no idea what was
going on. They were on some kind of site, there was this guy, Joel, he
was saying things, so what? The home page, like the home page of many
blogs, wasn’t really serving first-time visitors.

Great, especially for those whose blog traffic comes mostly from new uniques, such as referrals from the search engines.

Will try this sometime.

Tech recipes has an interesting post on blogging evil, or more specifically, how to spread malice through the blogosphere (and forums) without being caught.

Or at least lessening the likelihood of getting caught.  This guy
who was spreading the (evil) word was eventually caught, and with
evidence against him to boot!

Although safely blogging evil is relatively easily done,
the consequences if you  get caught are very high. The disgruntled
employee that I was hired to find will never work in his area of
expertise again. He may have been great at hiding his tracks; however,
his one slip up has him blackballed from his beloved profession.

Sweet.

(via Blogherald)

Darren Rowse of problogger fame and Andy Wibbels of Easy Bake Weblogs have come up with an e-book entitled Six Figure Blogging, based on the six-week online class they held, which included phone-calls.

Check out Anton’s post at Pinoy.tech.blog.

If you are just starting with blogging and you want to jumpstart your
learning, then this is for you. Otherwise, if you have been blogging
for more than a year, you might have learned some of the topics already
from blogs, other blog/ seo experts, and ebooks/ reading resources.

IMHO, it’s always great to
keep an open mind and get to learn something
new.  I’d very much like to know what these guys had written
(learn from the experts, so they say), even if I’d been blogging for
quite some time now.  If the US$ 200 plus price tag isn’t too
high, I think it would be worth it, if in exchange you’ll get to learn
a thing or two or three on how to improve your pro-blogging revenues.