Month: November 2013

Japan Web Design Is Different

Go on a safari around Japan’s most popular sites and here’s what you can expect to find:
Dense tightly packed text
Tiny low-quality images
More columns than you can count
Bright clashing colors and flashing banners
Overuse of outdated technologies like Flash.
The theories for why this is are numerous.
Risk Avoidance – In general Japanese culture does not encourage risk taking or standing out from the crowd. Once a precedent has been set for things looking or behaving a certain way then everybody follows it, regardless of whether there is a better solution. Even Japanese subcultures conform to their own fashions and rules.
Consumer Behavior – People require a high degree of assurance, by means of lengthy descriptions and technical specifications, before making a purchasing decision – they are not going to be easily swayed by a catchy headline or a pretty image. The adage of “less is more” doesn’t really apply here.
Advertising – Rather than being seen as a tool to enable people Japanese companies often see the web as just another advertising platform to push their message across as loudly as possible. Websites ends up being about the maximal concentration of information into the smallest space akin to a pamphlet rather than an interactive tool.
Urban Landscape – Walk around one of Tokyo’s main hubs like Shibuya and you’re constantly bombarded with bright neon advertisements, noisy pachinko parlors, and crowds of rambunctious salary men or school kids. The same chaotic busyness of the streets seems to have spilled over to the web. Added to this, because physical space comes at a premium in Japan, none of it is wasted and the same goes for negative/white space on a webpage.

The Iron Triangle

the autobody shops in willets point do look pretty mad max.

There are no sidewalks. There are no stoplights or street signs. There are no sewer grates or manhole covers (because there are no sewers). It doesn’t take long before any sense of New York City completely disappears, and you begin to feel like you’ve somehow been transported to a strange apocalyptic world of tin shacks and ramshackle garages.

Nicknamed the Iron Triangle and containing 225 different autobody shops, you can see just how big the literal triangle of Willets Point is on the map below, bordered by 126th Street, Northern Blvd, and Willets Point Blvd.

IE zeroday

i wonder if this could be used to install a real browser.

Researchers have uncovered new, currently unpatched vulnerabilities in multiple versions of Internet Explorer that criminals are actively exploiting to surreptitiously install unusually advanced malware on computers that visit booby-trapped websites.

Leftovers Barter

another entrant in the sharing economy: a barter system for leftovers. it works much better than you’d think.

it’s built on the premise of people who don’t know each other sharing homemade food, with no money exchanged. Picture scaling that up to an entire city, far beyond anyone’s natural circle of trust.

by not charging they are doing an end run around health inspections. we’ll see how long that lasts. i have heard anecdotally that pro chefs are interested in this model because it would allow them to get rid of the parts of a restaurant that they aren’t as good at (getting a space, dealing with people etc) and just focus on the cooking.

Gravity

the most unrealistic elements of the film are the ones that involve flesh-and-blood human beings. Whenever they are trotting out the vapid biographical anecdotes that the screenplay saddles them with, they bring the film back to earth with a bump. But when their mouths are shut, “Gravity” soars off to astonishing new cinematic territory.

agreed, the blather was annoying, but otherwise it was amazing.