brian's blog

I spent most of last week down in Los Angeles to spread the word about the cool products we're building (MSN TV, Soapbox, etc) with studio partners. It was pretty trippy being in the headquarters & at the lots of some of the biggest players in the Hollywood universe.

What was actually weirder, though, was realizing that this world actually exists. You see so much of it (the entertainment industry, the lifestyle) on TV & in the movies, yet those are medium for fictional stories. So, though it sounds strange, it never before seemed to me that it was real. For instance, we drove by a boutique home furnishing store with 30 or 40 paparazzi milling around outside, and knew an A-lister must have been inside.

Anyway, I had fun, and got to play wannabe Important Person for a few days, staying at a nice hotel, going out to some top bars, and eating at some great restaurants. Also got to cruise around in a red convertible Mustang. (I guess not owning a car & renting frequently with Avis has finally paid off.)

Here was the view of Santa Monica from my hotel:

And of the Pacific Ocean:

At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft shill, with the final release of IE7, I'm now switching from Firefox on my PC. Why? With most other features equal between the two browsers, there's only one relatively minor reason: The little "edge" beside each tab that, when clicked, opens a new tab.

I open new tabs frequently, and don't use keyboard shortcuts, so this saves me a whole second of clicking.

Moral of the story: Little things really matter in UI design. And for a UI designer, it's extremely difficult figuring out which little thing will matter most.

Okay. I'm getting a little sick of seeing these two dancing fools all over the web lately:

I ran those numbers through a mortgage calculator: In order to get a 30 year, $510,000 mortgage for under $1698 a month, you'd have to have a 1.25% interest rate - which no sane lender would ever give you. So, it's probably safe to conclude that this is a negative amortization loan, where you end up owing more each month because your monthly payment doesn't even cover interest.

A predatory mortgage broker with deceptive advertising on the Internet is hardly shocking - at least, not until you consider who actually owns LowerMyBills.com. Experian, one of the big three credit report agencies, acquired LowerMyBills.com last year.

So now you can ruin your credit and financial standing with a crippling mortgage arranged by Experian and pay them to find out just how bad you've got it! Brilliant!