About jmswisher RSS feed
Who am I?
Janet is a technical writer in Austin, Texas.
My Posts
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Contributing to Rails: Step-by-Step « A Fresh Cup.
Nicely written procedure by and for programmers.
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Language Log » Mixed cardboard only: a subtle case of nerdview.
Nice word for the technical expert’s perspective: nerdview.
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InfoVis Keynote: Command Post of the Future - information aesthetics.
Interesting description of usability testing on a military system: “Jake noted that his users were extremely smart and resourceful, which ironically made testing tricky. Given simple tasks, users were too good at figuring out even hard-to-use software. To get around this, users were given extremely difficult test tasks, so that they had no extra brain energy to solve interface problems.”
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Language Log » Trademark Insanity.
I’m beginning to think that non-arbitrary trademarks (those that are real words or phrases, as opposed to artificial creations such as “Google” and “Viagra”), should be abolished lest greedy corporations enclose too much of our linguistic commons.
This would also inhibit lazy corporations who simply can’t be bothered to come up with a name that isn’t merely a description.
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