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Tag Archives: usability

The “Friedrich principles” for bioinformatics software

I’ve just come back from Biohackathon 2012 in Toyama, an annual event, traditionally hosted in Japan, where users of semantic web technologies (such as RDF and SPARQL) in biology and bioinformatics come together to work on projects. This was a nice event with an open and productive atmosphere, and I got a lot out of […]

Posted 13 September 2012 † johan § Bioinformatics § Computer science § Software development ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

The aesthetics of technology

Different technologies have different kinds of aesthetics, and they affect us in various ways, whether we are particularly fascinated with technology or not. The easiest technologies to understand on an intuitive-emotional basis seem to be those that involve physical processes. Objects rotating, moving, being lifted and displaced, compressed, crushed. Gases and liquids being sent around […]

Posted 18 May 2010 † johan § Philosophy § Software development ‡ Comments (2) ° Also tagged: , , , ,

The future of the web browser

The web browser, it is safe to say, has gone from humble origins to being the single most widely used piece of desktop software (based on my own usage, but I don’t think I’m untypical). This development continues today. The battles being fought and the tactical decisions being made here reach a very large audience […]

Posted 06 August 2009 † johan § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , ,

Two new-ish search engines

Recently, while reading about methods for manipulating RDF, I discovered the search engine PowerSet. More recently, Wolfram Research’s Wolfram Alpha launched. There’s been no shortage of new search engines in the past year or so – Cuil is one that was much publicized but ended up remarkably useless – but these two still impress me. PowerSet […]

Posted 26 May 2009 † johan § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged: ,