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Humane computing

Oxford Libraries Web Access: baby steps

2008-10-25 by spike Leave a Comment

The Oxford Bodeian Library‘s collection is one of the main tangible things that makes Oxford a world-class research institution.  The troves of primary sources, obscure titles, and first editions make it a mecca for historical and literary research. This is a promise which I don’t think the Oxford Libraries live up to in practice, because … [Read more…]

Posted in: Fail, Humane computing, Praise, User experience Tagged: books, humane, library, oriel, oxford, search

Outlook Send-Mail Infinite Loop

2008-08-30 by spike Leave a Comment

Maybe Microsoft should move its headquarters to 1 Infinite Loop. This morning, while trying to send out some mail in Microsoft’s Outlook 2007, I noticed that after nearly 10 minutes, the message I tried to send was still sitting in my Outbox.  When I clicked “Send/Receive,” like ya do, Outlook decided to get stuck in … [Read more…]

Posted in: Email, Fail, Humane computing, User experience Tagged: bug, infinite loop, Microsoft, Outlook

Inhumane URLs (and why Oxford University fails, again.)

2008-07-15 by spike Leave a Comment

Uniform Resource Locators, commonly known as URLs are the address system for finding things on the internet.  Unfortunately, they’re often not very humane.  Can you imagine having to type this lovely example into your browser (much less trying to remember it!) http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000100000020200502000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes Yikes! (This, by the way, is the URL of our new physics paper) … [Read more…]

Posted in: Fail, Humane computing, User experience Tagged: domain names, Fail, humane, university of oxford, url

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