John, I'll fight you for that job.

Here is a referral report for useit.com during August 2002 (5 months ago).

I don't know how good these stats are because I can't find any references to webword.com !

This is odd because on August 18 2002 you posted a useit.com link that generated 21 comments. So either the clickthroughs don't appear in this report, or everyone made comments about the link without actually reading the article!

There was a discusssion on joelonsoftware at the same time that generated 64 comments and does appear in the referral report.

You have posted 22 items that link to useit.com since August 2001.

From a quick comparison of the useit.com report and the corresponding webword report, it would appear that useit.com had about 190,000 referrals in Aug 2002 whilst webword.com had about 125,000.

How long will it be until webword overtakes useit in the referrals race? Perhaps useit.com isn't quite as popular as everyone assumes it is?

PS. When will the webword usage stats be published again? They stopped appearing after the server move.

Posted by: Mac on January 28, 2003 03:28 AM

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Jacko misses the elegance of voice I/O in Star Trek. *Most* ship systems are operated by manual control -- key-entry control consoles and monitors, but most systems can be operated by voice too. We see only a handful of tasks operated purely by voice.

The voice command, "Computer, locate Commander Data," is entirely useful for voice I/O. If I need to know where Commander Data is _right_now_ I want to ask the computer _right_now_ instead of walking over to a computer and punching a bunch of keys. It's a simple voice request that the computer is preprogrammed to handle.

There are a few instances where voice I/O is used in lieu of keyboard commands. That's fine too. Star Fleet officers can choose what will be the most productive way to interact with the computer. Most often when these voice I/O commands are used it is when the person is lying down, is physically impaired, or is in a thoughtful contemplative mood and doesn't want to be confined to sitting in front of a console. In several cases, voice commands were used when the person didn't know how to operate the manual interface.

There are plenty of times I'd rather not have to touch the keyboard or mouse to interact with my computer. I'd happily ask it things like:

"What's the weather forecast today?"

"What's today's news?" (then hearing titles from my favorite news source)

"Computer, read that last news article to me."

"Increase font" (when visually reading)

"Page down" (when visually reading)

Posted by: Whopper on January 28, 2003 11:51 AM

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