Corporate Anthems, Security, and a new Fitts’ UI tool.

From the “Let’s all sing a long” Dept.

I was trolling through the web—NO, I was NOT surfing for porn!—and I found this site that catalogues the 20 Best Corporate Anthems. Too Funny! Actually, I have to wonder: “What were these people thinking?”

My personal theory is that there was a bit of “Keeping up with the Jones’s” happening here.

For Example:

Company A: “Let’s make a theme song.”

Company A creates a simple theme song.

Company B: “I hear that Company A made a theme song. We can do better right?”

So, much like the cold war that ensued at Club379 (and still continues today between Kevin and I), companies began making the crap that you’ll listen too if thou are brave of heart.

From the “noitpyrcnE dna ytiruceS” Dept.

That’s “Security and Encryption” backwards if you haven’t gotten it yet.

Salon.com has a great article on message encpryption and OpenSource developers. It highlights the GnuPG movement, an OpenSource project with design goals similar to the now defunct PrettyGoodPrivacy.

I find it interesting, because Phil Zimmermann [inventor of PGP] gave some interesting commentary for the low uptake and use of encryption: “Ease of use is critical. E-mail encryption is used by only a small segment of the population of e-mail users largely because of ease-of-use issues.“

While GnuGP works, it requires command-line use; not difficult for me, but time consuming for those not comfortable on the command-line.

Eric S. Raymond, president and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, says in the article, “Much of the open-source community is still weak at end-user UI. Most hackers have not yet assimilated the knowledge or the attitude necessary to serve [normal] end-users like these.“

Got to love developers. I suppose that’s why I work in the field that I do.

From the “I Love Fitts’ Law” Dept.

I downloaded this great little UI Enhancement program for my Mac. It’s called MaxMenus, and it’s created by a company called Proteron.

What MaxMenus does is that it glues contextual menus (like the ones you see when you “right-click” your mouse) to the four corners of the screen. This is one of the only times I’ve seen Fitts’ Law applied properly in Human Computer Interface Design.

I won’t ruminate on the advantages of this, but for those who know about Fitts’ Law, they’ll understand why I’m so excited.