Show Notes: Episode 179

  • Interpreting user feedback: Communication is the key to every good relationship

    Understanding your users and interpreting their feedback is critical to any website. It’s especially important to be able to communicate with your audience in the Web 2.0 world where interaction is key.

    Often user feedback is seen in harsh binary terms – users like things or dislike things. However, in reality feedback is much more nuanced. Especially on sites like Digg and Pownce where tens of thousands of people are offering their feedback every week, it takes careful consideration to make use of feedback in positive ways. We’ll look at some of the ways to interpret feedback and especially how to react to information you’re receiving from your audience.

    1) Getting input from your audience is critical
    2) There are several types of user feedback and your response to each must be appropriate
    a) Implicit feedback
    b) Gut reaction feedback, love it or hate it
    c) Extended feedback
    d) Expert feedback

  • The Ghosts of Computers Past: An (Emulated) Trip Down Memory Lane
    Zak Greant
    Associate, Foo Associates

    Most geeks have a soft spot for their first PC, be it a Sinclair ZX81, a Commodore 64 or an Apple ][e. While chances are good that your first machine has gone on to the Happy Hacking Grounds, you can temporarily possess your modern PC with the ghost of your old machine using one of the many hundreds of freely available emulators.

    While many people fire up an emulator for nostalgia’s sake or to try and complete that game that we never did manage to finish back in 1984, there is also an important learning component to emulators. Many of the emulated machines are simple by modern standards and provide an excellent playground to learn about the fundaments of computer design. Additionally, a lot of interesting and innovative programming was done on these early machines – some of it still bears study.

    On the show, we demo’d two emulators: Roland Lieger’s Commodore 64 emulator for Mac OS X – called Power 64, and MDK, the emulator of Donald Knuth’s mythical MIX computer.

    We also briefly chatted about the uncertain legal status of emulators, highlighting some of the major points of the debate.

    To search for your favourite old machine, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emulators – they list hundreds of available emulators.

    Show Notes RELATED WEBSITE LINKS (to be used on web)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emulators (Comprehensive listing of emulators)
    http://www.infinite-loop.at/Power64 (Power64 website)
    http://www.gnu.org/software/mdk (GNU MDK website)

    michealgeist.ca