the attack of the zombie friends
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it seems that finally my brazilian friends are realizing the piece of shit orkut is, so they’re flying in droves to multiply. sadly becaus of it, i’m receiving dozen of personal mails inviting me for the system.
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so I reached a gray zone: technically it’s not a spam (it’s directed to me, and from known people) but it feels like one. so I can’t throw my rules on them like I do with spam, because it’s a legitimate measure: after all the’re transplanting their contacts from orkut. but receiving a lot of different mails with a “personal message from {insert friend’s name here}”, telling you the same exact sentence all of them is just creepy!
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I don’t want to go there now (let’s see if it reaches critical mass, so I’ll have no choice than comply to gravity), so i created a “multiply” mail folder, with the sole purpose of putting them out of my view. i have a policy against mail folders, because it clutters the app (it’s fairly easy to create, but also to forget - so what’s the use of having it?), it’s not automatic (i have to create a rule for it to be smart), and it will have smart folders feature - like itunes - on tiger, anyway, so why bother?
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i believe everything in the digital world have to be automated, just because it simplifies your life and hell, that’s the ultimate purpose of a computer. so he’d better be good on it.

social niceties
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here in america, people are so polite that you have to use the thank you, i’m sorry and excuse me cards all the time.
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the good thing is that it really unties your karma, and makes you free to new heights. i know a lot of brazilian friends that prefer to die full of pride and regret than to recognize they’re wrong. the past haunts them precisely because they don’t accept it.
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below are some english/portuguese translations, classical and literal, side by side:
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in brazil, thank you is obrigado (or obrigada if you’re a woman). literally, it means i’m indebted to you. to thank means to recognize any good deed. to say obrigado says you admit you owesomething to the person. certainly nothing to be said carelesly. (some say arigato came from our obrigado, but i’m not sure)
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excuse me is com licença (the “ç” reads as “s”, like in french). so, grant me license (because obviously, you are in the way). for me, excuse means there’s something wrong with you to ask for some room, like if you are in an inferior position. although both agree the power is with the other one (hence the asking), in portuguese, you don’t apologize for the asking. in fact, you can ask as if it’s mandatory (dá licença), and you are just excercizing your right.
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i’m sorry is me desculpa. literally, unguilt me. come on, that’s sweeeeet. in english you are just relating your mood, but in portuguese, you are asking for forgiveness, to untie you and let you free again. you not only accept that you are guilty but understand and inform the only person that can set you free is the one you hurt. so, here in america you can say i’m sorry to nearly anything sad that happens to someone (because you are just showing that you are sympathetic to their loss). try to do it in portuguese, and it makes no sense at all - why should you apologize for something that’s is not your responsibility?

back button troubles
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reading at slashdot about usability problems on OS apps, i remembered some nightmare cases from the company i worked with, still in brazil.
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we were building a corporate CMS, the program was getting bloated (impossible marketing promisses, lack of planning) and we reached an impasse: in addiction to the task at hand, some other tools were added - like IM, bookmarks, notes, quick tutorials - and with just a window to navigate, each new task competed for the user’s attention.
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our solution (me and another interface designer, amid a sea of 11~12 programmers) was to divide the window in frames, separating the central tasks (workflow, word processing, programming) from the peripheral ones (messages, dictionary, to-do-list, quick tutorial).
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the problem: we invalidate the back button (back what? the message? back the work at hand? back the action of sending the message? undo?). since it’s the most used feature, we had to find a solution.
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and we did: a small log window on the bottom of the peripheral tasks window, with a history of what you did, and the possibility to return to where you were, and possibly undo some features. the default would be 3 lines, but a multitasker user could change the preferences to 10, 12 lines. with a better back button than the original one, we could drawn the users to our interface and reduce confusion.
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they loved the ideas, both. sadly, they implemented the first one (the frames), but not the second one (the log window). dunno why, everytime i asked for the second feature, they answered it was easy and could be done later. i assume that the mindset of programmers works this way: if it’s hard to do, it has to be important. if it’s easy, it’s probably irrelevant. that is, a subset of loving to do hard mental jobs, is the impression of any easy job as a personal offense to their abilities.
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don’t get me wrong, i love work surrounded by technical people. they are straightforward, they love a new challenge, and if they are in a project with you, they are all to this, with no passive-agressive, competitive sabotages that some artistic people are full of. but if you get this only-hard-work feature unchecked, you soon get trapped in a bloated, neverending project, with a lot of contempt for criticism.
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well, in the end they accomplised the first feature, but never the second one. the back button was still there, confusing users. some months later, we were moving to another floor, but two programmers were busy finishing something “really important” for the client. i asked what it is, and they said “it’s a fullscreen for the system”.
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“why would they need a fullsccreen system, anyway?” (at the time, it was already know that users feel annoyed by fullscreen browsers, and tend to move away, simply. they didn’t know why the fullscreen. i asked some other people around.
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in the end, all the client wanted was to get rid of the back button. it was his solution to the problem, because we failed to offer a complete one.
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and yeah, the users complained later…

the outside, inside
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internet at home. vonage on the way. new project. money from the old project soon. netflix redirected. 50% discount at supermarket (really, they were closing doors), so fridge full of nice food. home the way we like it (minimal & funny). bathtub (in brazil it’s not a commodity as it is here. and damn, it’s therapeutic!)
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when i came here, i asked “to be solid”. and then i made a pact with ganesha. because surely there’s some space for me here, i just wanted the right doors to open. and they did.
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and at the same moment i got solid, my dreams changed, and i remebered what i intentionally forgot (too much to carry, when you have to worry about your basic needs).
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rise and shine, dude.

microsoft sues brazilian official for defamation, and all i can grasp from it is this cute lil’ sig:

(\(\
(^.^)
(’)')

below, my explanation on why tricksters/hackers/shamans are important in the controlled society we’re heading to.
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in portuguese, for my fellow brazilian friends.
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ok que parece que estou babando ovo do douglas rushkoff pela ideia, mas aqui vai minha teoria de pq os tricksters/shamans são importantes:

atualmente, corporate control eh igual a top-down mentality. a gente ri quando vê a maneira idiota dos corporativos em emular nossas modas, porque seus únicos mecanismos sao top-down e a gente, acostumado
intuitivamente ao pensamento networked, percebe com MILHAS de distância o que é real e o que é marketing.
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mas eu por exemplo acabei de cunhar uma expressão, nonlinear matters, que eh o nome da minha “empresa”. tipo, o que faço eh serviço por bottom-up approach. eu tô na america e como eu, tem vários pesquisando este approach. tu acha que eu negaria um cliente fodão? jooorah?
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então, é questão de tempo até as corporacões entenderem a dança, e reagirem de acordo. essa tendência é diretamente relacionada a:
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- popularização de tecnologias que transformam nossas ações em dados (RFID, midias interligadas, etc)
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- data crunching, ou melhor, melhores e melhores inteligências artificiais, para digerir esses dados e tirar conclusões relevantes dali (sem essa de que “inteligência artificial não existe”, elas podem ser apenas idiot savants agora, mas isso é mais do que o necessário para se extrair
padrões de uma montanha de dados)
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daí, entramos num mundo em que nossa cultura underground é subitamente sold out, não da maneira óbvia de hoje (contratos de milhões para nossos porta-vozes, Tv e todo o aparato mass media), mas suavemente sendo controlada pelos homi.

entra o trickster, hacker, shaman, para poluir os dados, dar pistas falsas, reunir dois clusters heterogeneos, etc… como o curupira, que despista o homem branco caçador com suas pernas invertidas, e devolve a selva aos selvagens. got it?
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ou seja, hackers, crackers, virus designers (eles estao erodindo o império de bill gates, e colocando o ruivinho numa sinuca de bico! como detestá-los?), adbusters, spoofers, jammers, etc, eles são mais nossos amigos que pensamos. eles são necessários num futuro próximo.
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faz sentido? well, agora não parece grande coisa (coisa de moleque), mas é disso que precisamos. support your prankster group, art as
crime, crime as art.

thresholds
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ITC is a telephone card that for $5 gives me 5+ hours to call to rio de janeiro. despite the buggy interface - you have to call the local company, type your digits, and then call the phone number - and my inability to automate it on my cell phone, i reached a threshold here.
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i mean, since then, i used to tell my brazilian friends that i wouldn’t be so available by phone because of the expensive bills. but in fact, it hurts my heart to be updated of my friends’ lives being unable to interact. i felt like a ghost.
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now i don’t have the money excuse, it’s plain avoidance, unmasked.