Blog of Much Holding

Wade says goodbye to Walt Disney World’s adult playground and remembers the island’s founder, Merriweather Adam Pleasure.

Enjoy. [youtube]UvRyBRVpJGw[/youtube]

In one of the episodes coming up in 2010, according to blog Lying in the Gutters, we’ll see the return of a familiar face:   Yup, that’s Tom Baker. Who he will be playing (pun unintentional) is unknown.

Hooray! This looks much better than the last one… And LOTS of Dungeons and Dragons references appear to be headed our way… [youtube]Oj2VU_8l6gs[/youtube]  

Wow, I enjoyed the finale for Doctor Who‘s 4th series. K-9! Davros! The Doctor’s soul, revealed! Donna’s tragic fate! The (hopefully final) Dalek episode! Bad Wolf Bay! Now, I have to figure out what to do until we get to…

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Holy cow, what a great episode! The Doctor regenerating! The Earth stolen! The bees… buzzing! The Judoon… talking that Judoon-way that they do! Oh, and the reunion scene between the Doctor and Rose! Sigh… And I still think Donna is…

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I wonder if the universe does not revolve around me sometimes. Here I am, on vacation in San Antonio, TX for a week, and THIS is posted on-line: [youtube]kST-4agoLKg[/youtube] I’m off to buy a model of the Sombreroprise right now…

The details are here. And the release date? The day after my birthday. Looks like I’m finally going to be getting a blu-ray player…

Two days of driving later, I am now firmly ensconced in a suite with the wife and brood in San Antonio, Texas. I will continue my semi-normal sporadic postings momentarily. For the two people who normally read my blog, my apologizes.

Hooray! More scenes! More action! More Ledger!

First off, to my old friend John Champion (who told me last week he had not even seen the third series) – DON’T READ THIS. OK, for everyone else, this page has almost a scene-by-scene preview of Saturday’s episode.

This set of blueprints (yes, I know, blueprints for fictional equipment and spaceships are uber-geeky but hey, I gotta be me) will be coming out this fall. I’m on the waiting list. Sigh.

Many nuWho fans have already seen this, but I showed it to my wife the other day (who I think is even more obsessed with Doctor Who than I am) and thought it would be appropriate to embed here to…

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I’m thinking that Donna is going to be revealed as something other than a “temp” that the Doctor just happened to meet twice (the end of this last week’s episode certainly laid the groundwork/telegraphed such a reveal). So here’s who…

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EW published a list of the “New Classics” – the top 100 movies from the last 25 years – and the editors’ selections were… well, really bad. Here’s their top 10:  1. Pulp Fiction (1994) 2. The Lord of the Rings…

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By Michael Arrington

Nika Smith wrote a post on the Google blog today showing the evolution of Google chat before it launched in early 2006. Google does extensive testing of new products using employees as guinea pigs (see our post on the pre-launch evolution of Gmail) as well as outsiders brought in to test software and interfaces in their usability lab.

I had a chance to see the lab a few weeks ago. It’s a small room with a large flat screen monitor, along with a desk and computer. It also has a number of discrete cameras (and a microphone) that keep an eye on the user herself as well as the screen. Around the corner is a second room where Google employees can watch people interact with the software real time. The room has a couch and a chair along with two screens and speakers to monitor the lab. See the image to the right.

The Gmail Labs team took us through some of the pre-launch iterations of Gmail chat that were tested in the lab. Most of these weren’t included in the Google post, so I’ve added them below. All of these were eventually abandoned as the team moved towards the much more low profile chat window at the bottom right of the Gmail screen we see today.

[Editor’s note: Nothing so far on why gmail continues to suffer from serious security issues. But maybe that’s seen as a security issue and not a usability issue?

Try telling that to someone who left their gmail account running on one computer, then logged on to the same gmail account on a different computer with no idea their private email was on show to all the world on the first one. Any Googletastic insights into why this bizarre oversight continues to exist welcome – editor@usabilitynews.com.]