northtemple (+ comments)

Nothing like getting halfway th...

Nothing like getting halfway through a project and discovering that what you thought were the “core requirements” were actually peripheral.

I am/have learned a lot of these the hard way it seems…

Great article. Very enjoyable read.

comment by Daniel Sellers to Design Lesson:Shovel Smart, Soon, and Often

It's not just Grandma!...

It’s not just Grandma!

comment by Ted to This is a good reminder when de...

jQuery: I'm a fan....

jQuery: I’m a fan.

comment by American Yak to Hot and graceful jQuery dropcaps

This is a good reminder when de...

This is a good reminder when designing interfaces, no? Cartoon from the New Yorker.

Via Chris Willis, who hasn’t updated his site in ages.

I couldn't agree more....

I couldn’t agree more.

comment by Rick Moore to A person who works six hours a ...

Here's a fun little information...

Here’s a fun little information graphic outlining our current economic situation from Mint.com.

Well now I just feel guilty for...

Well now I just feel guilty for even reading this at work.

Thanks for sharing Jason.

comment by Mike Metcalf to A person who works six hours a ...

According to Net Applications, ...

According to Net Applications, IE just dropped below 70%. What a beautiful new year.

comment by Wade Shearer to In the month of November, Firef...

Great article. I like this bloc...

Great article. I like this block of the article.

Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book called “Outliers,” made a statement as profound as it was accurate: “Control of attention is the ultimate individual power,” he wrote. “People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them.”

comment by Nathan Philpot to A person who works six hours a ...

Great quote! For some reason th...

Great quote! For some reason that really grabs me.

comment by Steven Montgomery to A person who works six hours a ...

A person who works six hours a ...

"A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s ‘multi-tasking’ all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption.

It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention." ~ Mike Elgan, in Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control

The Making of LittleBigPlanet t...

(flash video content)

The Making of LittleBigPlanet, the uncontrollably cute game for Playstation 3.

House Industries redesigned ...

House Industries redesigned.

Here's a great recap of the acc...

Here’s a great recap of the accessibility advancements made in 2008 written by a high-level IBM engineer.

Of course this also says a lot ...

Of course this also says a lot about having the right tools. With a good snowblower you have no inconvenience dealing with the packing from people walking on the snow – sometimes even having the car drive over it once will not deter your more powerful tool. (Of course, a good snowblower like that can’t be operated by those who lack the skills for the more complex machine.)

Lesson 2 still applies, but the initial path may be different between a shovel and a snowblower.

comment by David to Design Lesson:Shovel Smart, Soon, and Often

Just take the easy way out and ...

Just take the easy way out and get a snow blower!

comment by dal to Design Lesson:Shovel Smart, Soon, and Often

Apparently Santa likes this alb...

Apparently Santa likes this album as well. He accidently left his copy at my house while visiting Thursday.

comment by Wade Shearer to You'd do yourself right to pick...

from here on out, any comments ...

from here on out, any comments correcting spelling or grammar will be deleted and the authors will be publicly lambasted. thanks.

comment by Jason Lynes to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

Just noticed that a lot of this...

Just noticed that a lot of this relates to the quote Tadd just posted from Elder Oaks. Good, Better, Best.

comment by Ted Boren to Design Lesson:Shovel Smart, Soon, and Often

Design Lesson:Shovel Smart, Soon, and Often

Here in Northtemple Land, as in many parts of the United States, we’ve received slightly more than our fair share of precipitation in the last week. I have a long driveway to deal with and no snow blower (something I may need to remedy this year with Grandma’s Christmas check). The combination of heavy snow and a long driveway has resulted in an inordinate amount of time spent outside, with nothing to do but shovel and think.

What I’ve learned: Shovel smart, shovel soon, and shovel often. And what’s more, I think this applies to design as well as driveways, and maybe to any problem-solving effort.

Is it possibe mouseMove in java...

Is it possibe mouseMove in javascript and keypress both the check at once.

comment by gautam to JavaScript and screen readers

The church office building isn'...

The church office building isn’t that exciting, but I know of at least 3 people who, upon seeing the salt lake print mentioned above, said they’d buy a similar one of the Nauvoo temple.

comment by Jacob to If anyone is interested, I'm th...

Make sure that the essential ne...

"Make sure that the essential needs are met, but do not go overboard in creating so many good things to do that the essential ones are not accomplished. . . . Remember, don’t magnify the work to be done—simplify it." ~ Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Good, Better, Best, October, 2007

And once they can see better an...

And once they can see better and make more money… they can afford to buy more and higher quality stuff. But that’s really not the point; mostly it’s to Do Good, eh?

comment by Ted Boren to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

Aaron is right on, especially t...

Aaron is right on, especially the point that any additional vendors would have to offer significantly improved coverage to justify the monetary and UX costs. But it’s not out of the question; they’re evaluating that stuff all the time.

comment by Ted Boren to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

"Lots of money to loose there."...

“Lots of money to loose there.”

“lose” not “loose”

Signed,

The annoying grammar and spelling correcter

comment by Christian to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

In this case, I don't really th...

In this case, I don’t really think there is any competition with opticians and lens makers. If there were, this wouldn’t be an issue. What is going on here is non-consumption. You have a billion people in the world who can benefit, there’s no way that they can afford Armani frames and polycarbonate lenses. These opticians and lens makers are not in this arena, so there’s no way that they can get shoved out.

You could look at it another way also, there’s lots of money to be made for a billion people who couldn’t see to work, but now they can.

comment by John Dilworth to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

"populace" not "populous" Si...

“populace” not “populous”

Signed,

The annoying grammar and spelling correcter

comment by Christian to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

I could use glasses like that r...

I could use glasses like that right now. Too bad I don’t live in India.

comment by Christian to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

I love it when someone can chan...

I love it when someone can change the world with something so simple.

Still there is a huge liability there. Great idea, but this means opticians and lens makers get shoved out of the nonprofit arena. Lots of money to loose there.

comment by dal to Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

Dr. Josh Silver, professor of p...

Dr. Josh Silver, professor of physics at Oxford University designed a pair of spectacles where the optical power can be tuned individually by the wearer, eliminating the need for the optician and the whole process of lens grinding. He hopes to bring 20/20 vision to 1 million people in India next year, and has a bigger goal to offer perfect vision to 1 billion of the worlds poorest by the year 2020.

His presentation on the topic and results of their initial study can be found at the Affordable Vision Correction conference web site. It appears that there were a variety of potential solutions presented there, Josh Silver’s brilliant solution being one of them.

This time Ted can respond with ...

This time Ted can respond with more detail (or correct me), but when adding additional mapping solutions there are a number of things to consider.

1 – Cost. We aren’t using the free accounts that they provide to the general public. We have contracts with the mapping solutions we use and so any additional service requires more money (tithing dollars). When the large majority of people won’t change from the default map, additional options become iffy as we don’t know if people will use them, but probably still have to pay for the potential (guessing here).

2 – Interface issues. 2.1 would be that the more services we add the more complex the choosing a service interface gets, and thus adding confusion to the user as to why are there all these choices. 2.2 would be that each of those services has different interfaces in the mapping controls and such. Again adding confusion to the users. Both of the above aren’t a big deal to the advanced user, but this is for the general populous who needs simplicity.

3 – Filesize. Each additional mapping service requires additional code (sometimes significant) which equals more download time. We need to keep in mind that everyone doesn’t have a nice fat pipe to download from.

4 – Coverage. As Ted alluded to above, we have multiple services mainly because they have coverage in different areas. Google may be better in Brazil and Microsoft may be better in Japan (just throwing out the concept not facts). Not that Yahoo (or any other service) isn’t better in a given area then others, but it’s the return on investment. Do we need to add all of the above issues (interface, download times etc) because provider X is better in 2% of the world (again fake numbers).

Those are just some quick thoughts from someone who was only casually acquainted with the project. I’m not sure that the above are the actual reasons, but they are ones I remember being in the discussions for at some point.

Ted can come in and correct, add to, or say I’m totally off base.

comment by Aaron Barker to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Karl, my thoughts exactly. I al...

Karl, my thoughts exactly. I almost suggested adding Yahoo Maps in “just because.” It almost sounds though like Aaron knows a reason why they didn’t include it . . . for display at least.

On my Mexican food blog I include a Yahoo Map direction finder where the visitor only has to enter their starting address, click “Get Directions” and they get directions to the restaurant without having to enter the restaurant’s address. The blogger tool is already run by Google. Example:

http://ocmexfood.blogspot.com/2008/11/gabbis-new-desserts-3.html

Active Link

comment by Christian to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

"Just curious what the new lang...

“Just curious what the new language selection standard is, if you can divulge?”

There was a lot of research that went into this. I’ll write up an article and share all the details. Nothing to hide, happy to share.

comment by Aaron Barker to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Maybe you could arrange a swap?...

Maybe you could arrange a swap?

comment by Ted to If anyone is interested, I'm th...

I will let Aaron comment on the...

I will let Aaron comment on the specifics of the new standard if he sees fit, but it has to do with how the languages are displayed and ordered in the dropdown, what’s selected by default, the use of the icon, etc. As to map vendors, the team periodically reviews the coverage offered by various providers. If there was a compelling reason, they could add a third vendor or swap one out if it no longer added value. (On the back-end we actually use a number of other providers for address matching, but Google and Microsoft are the two choices for map display, regardless of which service was used to match the address.)

comment by Ted Boren to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Just curious what the new langu...

Just curious what the new language selection standard is, if you can divulge? Would there be any case where Yahoo! Maps covers something MS or Google don’t? Yahoo! would be a potential third service provider to add, but I don’t know if it is worth it. Awesome work!

comment by Karl to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Thanks Nathan. It's fixed....

Thanks Nathan. It’s fixed.

comment by Ty Hatch to How can pixels look old?...

I was directed here by an acqua...

I was directed here by an acquaintance and wanted to find out what this was about. I noticed that your “completed” link has an ‘herf’ attribute instead of an ‘href’ attribute which breaks your page a little, but I was able to extract the URL nonetheless. Just wanted to let you know about that.

comment by Nathan Lane to How can pixels look old?...

Where We Do What We Do is a col...

Where We Do What We Do is a collection of agency and personal workspaces to inspire and perhaps motivate you to do a makeover of your own space during the holiday break.

As a former Microsoft employee,...

As a former Microsoft employee, I have to say that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that logic applied to anybody other than… Microsoft! For me it’s strictly practical. Sometimes Google has better data, sometimes Microsoft does. Folks who decide on an ideological basis to “never use Company X, just on principle” are simply shooting themselves in the foot. I like your approach of mixing things up. It gives you a better chance of really finding out what works best, instead of relying just on what’s hip or established.

comment by Ted Boren to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Yes, in the â€œWorship With Usâ...

Yes, in the “Worship With Us” section. And sometimes I get a little antsy when it looks like Google is taking over the world, especially when many of their services are copies of other company’s existing services. I do use Google services for some things but I like to mix it up a little and use things from other companies too and think that’s a healthy attitude for everyone to take.

comment by Christian to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

Good editorial catch. I assume ...

Good editorial catch. I assume you’re referring to the “Worship With Us” section. I’ll pass it on. The Microsoft option has been there since we released last summer. Switching between map providers and between satellite and road views can make a huge difference in map quality in some areas.

comment by Ted Boren to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...

I'm totally game for one....

I’m totally game for one.

comment by Cameron Moll to If anyone is interested, I'm th...

Technically speaking, the first...

Technically speaking, the first “The” in the name of the Church is supposed to be capitalized. And I like the fact that there’s at least one other option in addition to Google maps to use.

comment by Christian to LDS Maps is now live in 16 lang...