Code (PMS) Blue

A bout with a nasty flu sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray last week, which, beyond the x-ray itself, involved nearly six hours spent alone in a small waiting room. As a working mother of two small children, it is rare that I spend any time alone, so the irony of this brief exercise in imposed isolation was not lost on me. Shelter magazines, long expired, did little to appease my boredom, and so, as my fever pitched and my delirium increased, I was left to ponder things like life and death (my own) and, of course, design — which in the case of the examination room in which I now found myself, evidenced itself in the paucity of anything even remotely resembling design.

I have had several hospital experiences over the past decade, and each has impressed upon me the scarcity of good design in the interest of public health...

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Time, Space and The Microsoft Colonialists

Albert Einstein once wrote that time and space are only modes by which we think — not conditions in which we live — but he might have reconsidered this supposition had he lived to see Microsoft's new foray into weblog development, introduced earlier this week to minimal fanfare.

Microsoft's "Spaces" brings the concept of incipient suburban sprawl to the blogisphere. Its templates are minimal and unappealing, streamlined with the rounded edges that resemble so many computer applications. But what's worse are its implicit editorial expectations: photos and music (segregated, each comprising its own category) let users post their albums of pictures, or songlists, or wishlists as a disenfranchised bar of buttons...

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