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Most likely, you’ve seen The Polar Express. The animation technique used in it resulted in animation that is said to result in the Uncanny Valley effect. The Uncanny Valley theory says that while human-acting robots/animations or other non-human reenactments can very closely mimic the actions of a human, they cannot truly portray the emotion of the human face. The resulting coldness or unemotionality evokes a strange feeling in observers, who will find the character to be insensitive, unmoving, or sometimes…

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You can cut the split opinions with a knife. Many think that the Kindle Fire will be “an iPad Killer”, many think it’s a disappointment out of the gate (personally, I hate the phrase “* killer”). Both sides are missing the mark(et). The Kindle isn’t a competitor tot he iPad. It’s not intended to be. It’s a content play – CEO Jeff Bezos himself stated it well, saying the Kindle Fire isn’t a tablet, it’s a service. The Kindle Fire…

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It’s often said that Apple is a front runner in design and technology, and when you think about it they are only a front runner in the psychology of how we interact with the device and technology itself, not the sociology of how more than one individual interacts with their technology, or even moreso, how media produced on one iOS device can be shared with family and friends. This is really exemplified when you take a picture, and you try…

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At the BUILD conference during the week of Sept. 12th, 2011, Microsoft stated many things; of course, they also didn’t state many things. Among the things that they stated was that WinRT was their vision of Windows apps in the future. By it’s very name, you can tell a lot about it – stay with me for a second. So what didn’t Microsoft say at BUILD? They didn’t say much about Win32. More importantly, when people were declaring “the desktop” dead on…

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Something struck me during the initial Windows 8 sessions on Tuesday at BUILD, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Later during Jensen Harris’ wonderful user interface session, as I sat there in the audience using my iPad (yes, with a physical keyboard), I realized what it was. My iPad, sitting there in portrait mode, camera on the top staring me in the face, pointed it out. Almost everything up on the stage, and shown that day…

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The other day I posted about a scam involving Facebook credential grifting. Last week was a great one for scam intel… I also got a scam trying to steal Chase credentials that simultaneously evolved into a scam to steal Wells Fargo credentials. I like to describe current spam – especially phishing scams, but it works for most spam, with a hook, line, and sinker metaphor. The email hooks the victim visually, the line (a link to an illegitimate site) lures…

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My name is Wes Miller. Until this afternoon, I had over 1400 Twitter followers, a little over 1000 people I was following, and 21,666 status updates. I say until this afternoon because my account has been suspended. Without any warning. Without any email or explanation to follow. Without any response other than a hollow echo from an automated Zendesk responder at Twitter. I’m disappointed. I’ve used Twitter for over three years. During that time I’ve been vocal about many things….

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Starting yesterday, I began receiving several emails with the subject “<firstname> <lastname> wants to be friends on Facebook.” I knew pretty much as soon as I saw the subject that it was spam. Not because the names were people that I had never heard of, but because I turn off all notification emails from Facebook and Twitter (you should too). Here is one example of the spam I received yesterday. I received probably 5 or 6 of them yesterday, to…

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Twice in the last month I had to ride my bicycle from a VW repair shop in Bothell to my house. It’s about 4-5 miles, maybe half of it on a cycle/running trail and half on relatively busy roads. Yesterday I decided on a whim to ride all the way to work from my house, a total of 10.5 miles. I’ve noticed something as I’ve been riding. Garbage. Sure, we’ve all seen litter on the side of the road. But…

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