I want to listen to this but it is blocked from my office. I have no other means of accessing the Internet except from a library which is closed until the 23rd of this month.

Can I please request you to download this podcast's mp3 file:

http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=160220&comments=on

and upload it somewhere else from where I can download it?

Also, does anyone know if there's an mp3 available for the talk Alan Cooper gave in 1999 just after "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" was first published? The talk had the same title as the book.

Have you ever considered getting a virtual server to install some sort of blocking-circumvention on? They're not very expensive.

"I was interested to hear the 'father of Visual Basic' say 'What I need is a computer that doesn't make me feel bad and a cellphone that doesn't make me feel stupid'."

Father of Visual Basic? does Joel know?

Alan Cooper is the father of Visual Basic. Joel is the father of Visual Basic for Applications. There's no fight about that.

[g, d, r]

In one Dot Net Rocks (DNR) show that Alan Cooper was interviewed, he said, "With my age now, they're beginning to call me the grandfather of Visual Basic."

Then, Carl asks, "The joke is always, 'Who's the mother?' "

Alan replies, "That would be Bill (Gates)."

That was funny.

I half-heartedly listened to about half of it.

You're not missing much.

He doesn't like how complicated the telephone is.

Something called personas to do planning can help.  I missed the definition.

"Planning isn't a waste of time.  There is this in the software industry  that planning doesn't save time. Anyone who doesn't see that is a fool. I would just not work for them.  Or better yet I would ignore them.  If you're good at what you do it is a seller's market in the world of interaction design.  You, my friend, will get job offers by the dozen in the industry. call me."

Jinga

http://efectotequila.com/tmp/

Bur seriously, if you are a tech person and you can't solve that on your own, you have long way to go...

Yes, Personas. They're a part of his technique called Goal-Directed design. They're very similar to what Joel wrote in some of his earlier essays in order to create your product, you imagine your users with a great level of detail and create a persona for each one of them.

You create two or three personas per product before starting to design it.

Someone on another forum just downloaded the file and sent it to me.

Thank you all. Please ignore the request in my OP.

Thank you very much, Masiosare. You are very kind. You may please remove it from your server now.

"He doesn't like how complicated the telephone is."

Really? What's the issue? It seems even pretty dumb people are able to figure out the telephone. And there's always the story each year about how someone's parakeet dialed 911 and saved the owner.

>Really? What's the issue?

You know, those little and complicated buttons to  turn off and on those cellphones. One button turns em on, and also turns em off. I don't know what I'm doing. I just dont get it!

Oh, CELLphones, yes I agree they are impossible to use.

I thought you meant regular phones.