Life of Andrew

My Opinion is More Important Than Yours

Well, the article about cell phone tachistoscopes that I was asked for my comment is online at Technology Review. Here is the paragraph the mentions me:

Tachistoscope-inspired text readers have long been available over the Internet. New Zealand-based software developer Andrew Stephens released his, Word Up, three years ago. While Stephens has always believed the idea “could work well on a portable display,” he found its use “quite trippy.”

I must say it was nice of the author to link to WordUp, the applet has had many more users in the last 24 hours than it usually gets in a week. Unfortunately, what I actually said was sort of lost in the general flow of the article.

I was asked if I thought the idea was a good one (which I mostly did, having had similar ideas in the past) and whether I thought this style of reading would suit today’s teens, who are supposedly more used to flickering images. My reply was that a traditional reader application (like a web browser) is pretty feasible on todays cell phones and probably more useful. Also, I mentioned that instead of teens, most of the email that WordUp generates is from people in their 50s and 60s who remember using real tachistoscope when they were first popular. Sadly, none of these comments made the article, in fact the “quite trippy” quote above was taken directly from the old version of my web site, and was not included in the comments I sent to the writer!

Still, I can’t complain about my first brush with fame, and I have seen a lot more people visiting my site. I updated the WordUp webpage slightly in anticipation of the influx, so it looks a little more professional than the last version but it could still look better. Mental note to self: its time to get rid of the grass…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.