Google User Experience

Eric Albert points to an interview of Marissa Mayer about Google’s UI design. Google does user testing every ten days, and it shows. Mayer also mentions that Google’s text-only ads outperform graphic ad banners. It’s too bad that ad middle-men like FastClick only offer the standard graphic ads. It would be a win-win-win if smaller sites like ATPM could run text ads.

Google Marissa Mayer

Lazy vs. Strict

A short paper by Philip Wadler (via Lambda).

Lazy, or call-by-need, languages schedule work dynamically by building closures, and shun side effects; strict, or call-by-value languages avoid the overhead of closures and may exploit side effects. Each style has complementary advantages and complimentary adherents.

The gap between the lazy and strict camps has two dimensions, which we shall name style and models. Recent developments suggest that along both dimensions the gap is shrinking. We list some commercial applications of each kind of language, and examine each dimension of difference in turn.

The Fifty-first State?

James Fallows, writing for The Atlantic, assumes that we go to war with Iraq and win. What next?

Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilities of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders—and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?