“Remember remember the fifth of November
 Gunpowder, treason and plot.
 I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
 Should ever be forgot”

Personal computer have changed so drastically since 90s, with LCD screens, laser mice, dvd-rws, usb disks and wireless cards etc. but there has been no innovation going on regarding keyboards. Keyboards are basically what they used to be 15 years ago, and the role they play in making up the user experience is too important to be ignored.So, here is a proposal for new keyboards: Keyboards shouldn’t have a fixed layout. That’s basically it. Buttons of the keyboard should have digital displays, enabling the user to change the layout of the keyboard on the fly. With predefined schemes, when my father is using the keyboard, he would change it to “Turkish F” layout, and I would use the “Turkish Q” or change to Dvorak if I’d like. Moreover, when I load Photoshop, the buttons would automatically turn into shortcut buttons, making it utterly more productive. Look at the symbols we use frequently while programming: !+-();=?{}<>$. On the traditional keyboard, almost all of these symbols require the combination of pressing two keys at once. I’m very suprised that there is no “programmer keyboard” or “programming keyboard” on the market since the traditional keyboard is so unproductive and unergonomic to write code. The time has come…

Sometimes we face obstacles that block our way, things that slow down our progress in achieving what we want. Yet what people see as obstacles, can be, just the opposite in fact. Richard Feynman describes his love for teaching in his book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr.Feynman!” and criticizes the view of teaching as an interruption to doing research:

…I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever….They have every opportunity to do something, and they’re not getting any ideas….Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from students. Nothing!

When I received my free Ubuntu 6.06 LTS CD by mail, I wasn’t planning to install Ubuntu at all. Eventhough I support the open source movement, I’m still not a big fan of linux as an end user. I thought maybe that could change, just maybe Linux had evolved by now. And believe me, it had been a very, very long time since I tried a new linux distro. Fedora was installed on my machine and I didn’t even remember the password to login to the system. Heck, it was time to install Ubuntu. Dadada ….

In an interview, Fried, creator of Ruby on Rails, talks about the power of small teams and small businesses. He has some advice for software projects as well:

List all the features you’d like on your product and cut them in half. Then, cut that list in half.

I think it’s pretty funny, true as well. As we bloat software with more features, it becomes complicated and creates usability problems for users. The product becomes difficult to learn and use. Less is more approach is becoming an important methodology in software design.

I believe the internet is going to replace word of mouth. I still rely on others’ opinions and expertise, however I do this via searching the internet. The problem is that Google’s clever searching algorithms still can’t compete with the enormous amount of information present. What we really need is to augment Google’s searching technology with the wisdom of the crowds. Who would have believed that the Wikipedia idea could actually work in reality? But it does, and works really well. Now take a look at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, people are still better than computers at performing simple tasks such as categorizing images. Why not try the same approach for reorganizing search results? Who can judge better than you whether that site has the information that you need or not…

Showing top posters on the front page, thus creating a competition probably increases user contribution to that site. But do I, as a reader, care about who the top posters are? Does it deserve to be on the front page, or even belong there?

On one side it degrades the quality of your site, while it increases user contribution on the other one. So which side weighs heavier?

It really depends on your goals and preferences. When I was running a gaming forum, showing quick reply forms or displaying post counts were positive motivators for increasing the number of posts made. However, the tradeoff made was regarding to the post quality. To increase their post counts, people made unnecessary posts and the quick reply form promoted making quick posts of poor quality. Since quality was more valuable than quantity, I always removed post counts.

You know the nasty tricks marketers make, like placing fundamental needs such as water, bread etc. at the end of the store, or putting escalators to only one end of a shopping mall. The idea is to make you walk around to increase your consumption.

I noticed a trend towards creating more social environments at the restaurants in Kanyon. I guess that is a managerial decision by the mall itself, it’s less likely that all the owners of cafes and restaurants collectively followed a new trend. Maybe the concept of Wagamama was influential in making this decision, who knows… Most restaurants have seating arrangements such that you have to sit in a big table, next to other customers. It’s a bit uncomfortable at first, but I believe this is a more civilized manner. It is beneficial for the cafe owners as well, since they can fit in more customers to a limited space.

I love shopping malls. Who doesn’t? In today’s busy world, being able to find all the shops in one place is certainly a time and effort saver. Kanyon, a new shopping mall in Turkey certainly deserves some publicity here.

The architectural design is astonishing, as the name suggests the design resembles a canyon. If we look at the previous shopping malls in this neighborhood, Akmerkez stands out by being the oldest one. The circular shape of Akmerkez is a brilliant way to design a shopping mall, because MetroCity’s rectangular design helps you realize the design flaw and appreciate the difference between the two approaches.

• People who go after their dreams is something to talk about. Barış Akkırış, at the age of 28, quits his big corporate job to go on a journey around the world. He shares the details of the journey that lasted 9.5 months on his blog as well. I’m sure that it was a priceless experience and I feel very, very envious!
• The experience of using an Apple with a 30” screen is tempting for everyone with an interest in computers. I need to stay away from these Apple stores for a while, in order to continue enjoying products of other brands. Apple products are so impressive in their design and very appealing to the eye as well.