(Duration: 25m 36s)

Recorded August 23, 2006, this inaugural podcast discusses innovative design, the definition of usability, and the role of knowledge. In other words, simple topics to pass the time.

Present for this recording were DeWayne Purdy, Kyle Pero, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, and Nate Bolt.

An Indiana casino finds out what happens when they accidentally make their customer a little too good.

A Microsoft Speech Recognition Demo, gone bad…

“Truly, I learned more useful, practical stuff in that day than anything in the last couple of years. You should see my link-heavy homepages. So, thanks. Even experienced IA chicks can learn stuff!”

Google is looking for feedback on their Sitemap tools. They’ve got the cutest rating scale I’ve seen.

Fascinating facts about games:

• There are 4 gamers to every golfer on the planet
• 1 in 5 people over 50 are gamers
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average journalist makes $47,000 per year. School teachers make $39,000 – $44,000. According to Castronova, the average gold farmer makes $57,000.
• 35% of game players spend more time playing online than they spend at work.

Lately, I’ve been using the act of storing drinking glasses in a kitchen cabinet as an analogy for large information spaces. I use lots of analogies to explain design concepts, but this one has generated more comments than usual.

Josh finds out that the most effective Super Bowl ad was the Disney ad in which athletes tried to perfect their “I’m going to Disneyworld” quote, commonly spoken by a member of the winning team after the big game. (In case you missed the commercial, AOL has a nice collection of the commercials – the winning Disney: NFL commercial was shown in the 2nd quarter).

Amazon is proud that only a million or so orders were late. Jared ruminates on how “almost perfect” isn’t the same as “perfect.”

While the copywriters for the Century House’s web site wanted to convince people to visit the Century House, the words don’t seem all that persuasive.