Is email the new Pilates?

Students at the Minnesota State University, Mankato, now have the option to check emails, do homework, watch TV, or surf the net while exercising.

This is part of the latest technology upgrade on campus: computer equipped exercise equipment.

It's easier to work out with something in front of you to keep you entertained," said freshman Cassie Pap.

Campus officials, planning a renovation of the recreation building, hit on a high-tech solution as a way to encourage students to exercise, and asked the school's technology staff to help out. When they went looking for exercise equipment with computer capabilities, they couldn't find it, so they set up adjustable stands next to 40 pieces of exercise equipment. Each stand has a computer, a keyboard and mouse.

Kent Kalm, a professor in the university's human performance department, says that it will take time for students to get better at multitasking. "I can't run and type at the same time," says fourth year student Jessie Nelson, "I'd probably fall over."

Not everyone thinks it's a great idea. Stephanie Maks has worked with CEOs and other busy people in her 20 years as a personal trainer. In the past she has to take people's mobiles away from them to get them to concentrate on the exercise they're doing.

It seems to have caught on at Minnesota though - the computer equipped machines are now so popular that students have to book places in advance. Personally, I think it's a great idea. There are only so many times you can watch Eastenders from the treadmill without wishing for something not quite so relentlessly depressing. And if it does make some people forget what they're doing and accidentally fall off the equipment during their workout, well, going to the gym is grim, we could all use a little extra entertainment.

For the full story, see Wired News.

Who runs the internet?

World Summit on the Information Society
Next week sees the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, in Tunisia (WSIS). The summit looks at the progress that's been made since the last WSIS in Geneva in 2003.

A plan of action was created at that meeting, laying the groundwork for a series of practical steps that could be taken to build "an inclusive information society", for example "an internet link in every village in the world by 2015”.

Response to the summit was mixed, with the development community feeling that the actions set were unambitious, and disappointment that no funding was allocated for implementation.

Internet Governance
In the run up to the summit, the US's unilateral control over the internet's domain name system has been attacked.

In theory, internet governance refers to the making and enforcement of collective policies for the global internet community. Many of these policies are technical, but they also have social and political consequences.

In 1998 the US government subcontracted these functions to a not-for-profit organisation with international participation, called Icann – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Icann operates under an understanding with the US Department of Commerce, which, to some, looks like American control of the internet. Icann was due to gain its independence from the Department of Commerce by September 2006. However, in July the US said it would "maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file".

America's determination to remain the ultimate purveyor of the internet has angered other countries such as China, Iran, Brazil and several African nations. There have also been threats to create a system of new internets if the US doesn’t relinquish its control.

Special preparatory meetings to address the internet governance issue are under way ahead of the summit's official start on Wednesday.

Freedom of Expression
Another important item on the agenda will be how to ensure freedom of expression online. Some critics say that Tunisia's own record of censorship make it unsuitable as a venue for such an event.

"This summit is a masquerade," says Julien Pain, who runs the Internet Freedom Desk at the Paris-based group Reporters without Borders.

"Organising a summit about the internet in a country that is so repressive of internet freedom is ridiculous."

Mr Pain calls the situation for internet users and bloggers in Tunisia "scary". He says many websites are blocked by the Tunisian authorities, and many sources of information are banned. “If you're a blogger in Tunisia, and you want to criticise online, there's no way your website will be accessible in Tunisia. As soon as the censors find your blog, they will ban it, and they will block access to your website.”

The Tunisian government defends its record. It says it only censors online postings that are deemed an incitement to violence, or racial hatred.

Tunisia is also a symbolic choice, according to Robert Shaw, who serves as Internet Strategy and Policy Adviser to the ITU. "Africa right now represents only about 3% of the world's internet users," he said. "It's still extremely unrepresented. So having this in a developing economy is very, very important."

Virtual Property Ladder?

A gamer who spent £13,700 on an island that only exists in a computer game has recouped his investment, according to the developers of the game.

The 23 year old, known as Deathifier, made the money back in less than a year. He made money by selling land to build virtual homes as well as taxing other gamers to hunt or mine on the island.

Deathifier bought an island which exists within the large multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Project Entropia. Project Entropia offers gamers the chance to buy and sell virtual items using real cash. In the words of the game creators, Project Entropia is "a virtual universe with a real cash economy. It is set on the distant colony of Calypso, the first habitable planet mankind has ever found. The players take the roles of colonizers that strive to build a new world together, under the threat from various enemies that wants to destroy the colony." Players must collaborate in a real-world fashion, to establish their own economy and build their society.

The game is free to download and there are no subscription fees. The Entropia economy works by allowing gamers to exchange real money for Project Entropia Dollars, (PED). The exchange rate is 10 PEDs to 1 US dollar), and players can earn cash by accumulating PEDs via the acquisition of goods, buildings and land.

Last month, another of Entropia's virtual properties - a virtual space station - sold at auction for £57,000. (Original story on BBC.)

The 10 Worst Jobs in Science

So you thought your job was underpaid, unappreciated and generally tedious? Well think again. http://www.popsci.com/ last month released its 3rd annual roll of honour of the Worst Jobs in Science (by John Galvin).

You're a what??

Imagine explaining it in the pub "So what do you do for a living?" "Well, actually, I'm an Orangutan Pee Collector...." Just what exactly do you say to that?

But there really is such a job, and if you took the bull by the horns and applied for it, you might find yourself trekking into the Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo, Indonesia, searching for likely groups of the endangered primates. Once spotted, techniques involve suspending plastic sheets between the trees, and, er, waiting for nature to take its course. Or for greater precision, you can follow the animals around with a bag on a pole... (niiice)

The animals, which are vulnerable to extinction, only reproduce about once every eight years, so DNA extracted from the urine can be used to analyse fertility, weight gain and loss, and stress levels, all of which can be used to help understand the reproduction patterns of great apes.

Oddly enough, this job only came in at number 10 on the list.

My grandfather wasn't a monkey!

You wouldn't think the job of a teacher in Kansas would be that bad, would you? Apparently, if you're a biology teacher, it can be harder than you think.

In 1999, a group of religious fundamentalists won election to the Kansas State Board of Education and tried to introduce creationism into the state's classrooms. More temperate forces prevailed in subsequent elections, but anti-evolutionists gained the majority again last November, promoting the theory of Intelligent Design (ID).

ID is the idea that complex elements of the natural world - the human eye, say - cannot be explained by evolutionary theory and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer - that is, God.

"The evolution debate is consuming almost everything we do," says Brad Williamson, a 30-year science veteran at suburban Olathe East High School and a past president of the National Association of Biology Teachers. "It's politicized the classroom. Parents will say their child can't be in class during any discussion of evolution, and students will say things like 'My grandfather wasn't a monkey!'"

This job came in at number 3. Don't apply to become a biology teacher in Kansas unless you know what you're letting yourself in for!

Hmmm, maybe my job's not really that bad after all. Time to go and get a coffee from the machine and check the football scores online I think...

Read the whole article, and find out what the other 8 jobs are, at Popular Science.

World Usability Day

3rd November is World Usability Day.

We've all been irritated by things like milk cartons that seem un-openable, CDs that come in plastic wrapping which is physically impossible to remove, and the old chestnut, gadgets that are dwarfed by the manual that you need to read to use them.

Irritating....

But of course usability can also be a problem on the web. This can range from anything to sites where poor colours and/or layout means you spend 10 minutes looking for the 'Next' button. Text that is far too small to read, even for users with 20-20 vision. Online forms which, if you make a mistake, delete all the information you've entered and take you right back to the beginning. And of course, e-commerce sites where you click 'Enlarge Image' to have a better look at what you're trying to buy, only to have a brand new window open - with exactly the same size image as before.... the list goes on.

Web Usability

That's a fairly light-hearted selection of irritating usability problems, but World Usability Day aims to bring to light some of the issues that make day to day tasks far harder than they need to be for some users. Finding the web an easy place to access is one of these tasks. Imagine how annoying it would be if you wanted to go online and search for holidays (say) only to give up after an hour because half the sites you had been to were unreadable by you?

The web should be a comfortable place to use for as many people as possible. It shouldn't be a place where only techies feel at home, and the rest of the world feels too nervous to venture, in case they 'get it wrong'. Neither should we put up with over complicated, too visual sites, where the usability is seriously impaired by the fact that the font is only 2mm high and you have to wait 4 minute for the Flash introduction to finish - these are fine in their place, but not when you're doing your online banking. Ease of use should be a requirement, rather than a bonus.

World Usability Stories

Check out the World Usability Page for more information and some more stories about the frustrations of unusable items in a supposedly modern world (including the man who paid $3,000 dollars not to be able to listen to music in his truck and the dutch urinal with a fly painted on it to give the gents something to aim at)

Related Articles

If you're interested also, have a look at these articles on the BBC website, 'The secret of making things work' by Max Gadney, Head of Design for the BBC News website, and 'Why easy to use is not enough', by usability expert, Tom Stewart.

Comments

If you have any comments on any usability issues, drop us a line, or you can email stories to the World Usability Day website team at usabilitystories@gmail.com.