A source of corruption and environmental degradation. Rod Harbinson reports.

A gesture of love and solidarity from estates and communities in East London to Grenfell and their local community.

Increasingly when I see designers defaulting to more Ul controls and form elements in software interface designs, I encourage them to consider the implications of intent-driven instructions. Here's why...

For years l've used this image of Adobe Illustrator's user interface evolution to highlight the continuous march of "more features, more Ul" that drives nearly every software company's releases. The end result for end users is more functions they don't know about and don't use. Not great.

So what's the alternative? Perhaps something like Christian Cantrell's Photoshop assistant demos. In this series of videos, Christian uses natural language instructions connected to Photoshop's APIs to do things like mask the subject of a series of photos, blur the background in images, create layers and more. All without needing to know how and without clicking a bunch of windows, icons, menus, and pointers (WIMP).

Intent-driven instructions to mask the subject of multiple images in Photoshop:

Intent-driven instructions to mask the blur the backgrounds of multiple images in Photoshop:

Intent-driven instructions to create layers and objects in Photoshop:

While these kinds of interactions won't immediately replace conventional graphical user interface controls, it's pretty clear they enable a new way of control software with hundreds of features... just tell it what you want to do.

New technology companies often have grand ambitions. And for good reasons - ambitious plans help recruit talent, raise capital, and set the bar high. But progress toward these high-level goals relies on identifying and excelling at much lower-level use cases.

It's very common for new technology companies to aspire being "the platform for... the Internet of things, AI analytics, mobile testing, etc." Being a platform means you capture a lot of uses cases or to put it more simply... people use your service for a lot of different things. And more use equals more value.

But vision is not the same as strategy. Vision is about the end goal. It paints a picture of the future state you're aiming for. It’s what you want to achieve. Strategy, on the other hand, is how you get there.

When you use a broad vision as a strategy, you end up having a hard time making decisions and rationalizing a never-ending set of opinions. With a strategy like “we’ll be the platform for the Internet of things”, everyone has an opinion on how things on the Internet should work -which one do we listen to?

Consider instead a specific market for the Internet of things, like home automation, and an even more specific use case for home automation like "controlling the temperature in your house". It's much easier to evaluate decisions about what a good experience for controlling the temperature in your house is than for "we’ll be the platform for the Internet of things”.

But if you focus on such a narrow use case, how will you ever build a big business? I'm not suggesting abandoning the big vision instead I'm advocating for having a strategy based on solving concrete uses cases to get there. Let's look at another example: Yelp.

Today, Yelp is used for recommendations for all kinds of services: skydiving training, auto body shops, tea parlors, and more. But it didn't start that way. Yes, Yelp likely started with the ambitious vision of being a platform for all service recommendations. But it first launched in San Francisco with restaurant reviews. A very specific market and very specific use case.

Why start with restaurants? A good starting use case is the one with the most acute pain. In the context of services, people need to eat three times a day. They get their hair cut once a month and maybe need a plumber once a year. So where should Yelp start? Probably restaurants.

When solving for a specific use case, it's important to build with the bigger vision in mind and not paint yourself into a corner of only being useful for one thing. But you definitely have to be great at solving each use case your platform supports. How else will you convince people to adopt your solution? Once you can demonstrate clear value for a specific use case, you can tackle more (likely adjacent ones).

This way of scaling ensures your solution is actually good at addressing a concrete problem people have not just an abstract vision. When you hear "What's your platform for? Well... you can use it for pretty much anything." in a sales pitch, that's a warning sign.

When you instead address specific use cases well, you learn what parts of your platform matter the most by identifying patterns and doubling down on them. It's only from solving highly specific use cases that you actually get to a platform that can be broadly used for many different things. And why Amazon started by only selling books on the Web.

In her How to Use AI to Build Accessible Products presentation at Smashing Conf New York, Carie Fisher discussed using AI coding tools to test and suggest fixes for accessibility issues in Web pages. Here's my notes on her talk.

• AI is everywhere. You can use it to write content, code, create images, and more. It impacts how everyone will work.
• But ultimately, AI is just a tool but it might not always be the right one. We need to find the tasks where it has the potential to add value.
• Over 1 billion people on the planet identify as having a disability. Accessible code allows them to access digital experiences and helps companies be complaint with emerging laws requiring accessible Web pages and apps. Businesses also get SEO, brand, and more benefits from accessible code.
• AI tools like Github Copilot can find accessibility issues in seconds consistently, especially compared to the manual checks currently being done by humans. AI can also spot patterns across a codebase and suggest solutions.
• Existing AI coding tools like Github Copilot are already better than Linters for finding accessibility issues.
• AI can suggest and implement code fixes for accessibility issues. It can also be added to CI/CD pipelines to check for accessibility issues at the point of each commit. AI can also serve as an accessibility mentor for developers by providing real-time suggestions.
• More complex accessibility issues especially those that need user context may go unfound when just using AI. Sometimes AI output can be incomplete or hallucinate solutions that are not correct. As a result, we can't over rely on just AI to solve all accessibility problems. We still need human review today.
• To improve AI accessibility, provide expanded prompts that reference or include specifications. Code reviews can double check accessibility suggestions from AI-based systems. Regularly test and refine your AI-based solutions to improve outcomes.
• Combing AI and human processes and values can help build a culture of accessibility.

Tblisi won’t disappoint the architectural buff, with its massive art deco buildings, and ornate hanging balconies

Lamborghini’s much awaited SUV shifts from practical SUV to beast mode sports car with the flip of a switch

The BMW Z4 is effortlessly fast, and easy to ride

Get a taste of India while sauntering around the iconic New York City

Lanham, MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 2024.

Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2023]

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge , 2024.

Cincinnati : University of Cincinnati Press, 2021.

Cham : Springer, [2024]

Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2024]

Cham, Switzerland : Springer Nature, 2024.

Malayalam director Vinayan’s latest film is a celebration of the life of social reformer Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker

Kantara’s OTT release on Amazon Prime Video leaves viewers disappointed after makers replace ‘Varaha Roopam’ song following court order in case filed by Kerala band Thaikkudam Bridge

Samantha Ruth Prabhu opens up on being all grace and poise for ‘Shaakuntalam’ to being covered in bruises while filming action sequences for ‘Citadel’

Shriya Saran and Sharman Joshi’s Telugu-Hindi film ‘Music School’ directed by Paparao Biyyala will recreate three iconic songs from ‘The Sound of Music’

TheWriter of two of the best period dramas in the recent history of Malayalam cinema, Gopan Chidambaram talks speaks about how Thuramukham, a play written by his father in 1968, was adapted to the screen and why he often gravitates towards historical tales

Meet Anurag Reddy, Sharath Chandra and Chandru Manoharan, the men behind Telugu films ‘Mem Famous’ and ‘Writer Padmabhushan’

Music composer Hesham Abdul Wahab, debuting in Telugu cinema with director Shiva Nirvana’s ‘Kushi’ starring Vijay Deverakonda and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, talks about his fluid work space. He is also working on Nani’s and Sharwanand’s films

Director Vivek Athreya opens up on his writing techniques, the art of listening and how films of K Vishwanath, Mani Ratnam, Krishna Vamsi and Mysskin influenced him in his formative years

Director Ram Abbaraju’s ‘Samajavaragamana’ offers plenty of laughs that override the film’s shortcomings. Sree Vishnu and Naresh are a riot

Designed for enterprises and businesses, the offering includes ASUS ExpertBook range of six laptops, the ASUSPRO ExperCenter range of three desktops, as well as two ‘All in Ones’

The feature will work for Gmail users on the web, on Android, and on iOS

Zenbook 14 (UX425) is priced at ₹82,990; VivoBook Ultra K15 (K513) at ₹42,990; VivoBook Ultra 15 (X513) at ₹43,990; VivoBook Ultra 14 (X413) at ₹59,990

This special notebook isn’t space, but giving you more display to work with

Projected to reach $18.97 bn by end-2025

Shailendra Katyal, Managing Director, Lenovo India, on the company’s services-led transformation

Also launches Vivobooks starting ₹75,000 and will be sold across online channels beginning December 14.

Laptop is ‘crafted with US military-grade certification’ for mobility

The laptop will be equipped with all-day battery life

A well-powered enterprise laptop that delivers performance and features in the right form factor  

Starting at ₹14,990, Optiemus to focus on students in tier-2,3 cities

On January 31st the Centre cut import duties on certain mechanical components such as battery covers, camera lenses, back covers to zero, from the earlier 7 per cent import duty on these components.

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Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2007]

New York : Thames & Hudson in association with Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2002.

Bruxelles : CFC-Editions, [2017]

London : Pan Books Ltd : William Heinemann Ltd, 1986.

Dublin : Nonsuch, 2009.

Tokyo ; Rutland, Vermont ; Singapore : Tuttle Publishing, 2020.

London : William Collins, 2021.

Paris : Éditions 10/18, [2014]