Tag Archives: Mind Space

China Hearts Wikipedia

Ever since the Chinese government uncensored Wikipedia, people in China have been visiting the site in droves. Explosive growth of the site’s content is a great sign for freedom in China.

“Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.”

World Usability Day

Today is World Usability Day!

Making things easy to use is hard, and it goes unappreciated. People are more likely to complain how something is not working and hard to use than express their appreciation of things that just work.

World Usability Day wants to make the world easier to use. That sounds weird, but I assure you that it’s a good thing.

“Why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?”

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who’s ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to “making life easy”.

French Kissing

Last week France, land of the French Kiss, fell far short of beating the current Guinness World Records holder for Most Kissers At Once.

At the Guinness World Records’ sponsored event, in Paris, 1,188 people showed up for simultaneous kissing.  (I know, you’re thinking, “Best. Date. Ever.”) Unfortunately, they failed to beat Budapest’s impressive 2005 record of 11,570 kissers.kissers.jpg

Some Parisians blame the location chosen for the event: La Defense, a modernist business park on the west edge of Paris.  It’s been suggested that a better known, and perhaps more inspiring spot, would have been the Eiffel Tower.

Gender Bender in NYC

New York City is moving ahead with a proposed change in the rules of birth certificates. After much campaigning from activists who argue that gender is not merely physical, NYC will soon start letting people change their gender on their birth certificates (NYT link, to bypass registration try bugmenot). Reader mkb also points out this article .

Once it’s approved people will no longer have to have sex-change surgery to proclaim what gender they are.

“If approved, the new rule would put New York at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender. A handful of states do not require surgery for such birth certificate changes, but in some of those cases patients are still not allowed to make the change without showing a physiological shift to the opposite gender.”

Thanks, mkb!

The UK, so advanced

In another move that proves its not all about the GDP, the UK is moving forward to regulating energy effeciency. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been working on replacing “ineffecient” goods. This would set minimium standards for 14 energy using products, including commercial lighting. With a competative advantage such as this, the UK stands to make real progress in the environmental, financial and social fields.