A few days ago, while on my morning run, I passed a condo development just as all its fire alarms went off. (With several civilians outside wearing orange safety vests, it was apparently a planned […]
Author: Peter Sheerin
Peter Sheerin is best known for the decade he spent as the Technical Editor of CADENCE magazine, where he was the acknowledged expert in Computer-Aided Design hardware and software. He has a long-standing passion for improving usability of software, hardware, and everyday objects that is always interwoven in his articles.
Peter is available for freelance technical writing and product reviews, and is exploring career opportunities in interaction design. His pet personal project is exploring the best ways to harmonize visual, tactile, and audible symbols for improving the effectiveness of alerting systems.
Interest Based Ad symbol
A group I had never heard of before, the Future of Privacy Forum, recently designed an icon for use on targeted online advertising. This symbol, and its design process is intriguing because it is far […]
When Disaster Symbols Become an Oxymoron
I came across a new collection of disaster mapping symbols, the “Disaster Response Map Symbols” from the Portuguese chapter of the Association of Volunteer Emergency Response Teams. At first I was excited that someone had […]
Preparedness Month: Everyday Tools for Odd Occurrances
An interesting experience earlier this after noon changed what I was going to write about for my Monday Preparedness post. My treatise on what frequencies to monitor (for hams an non-hams alike) will wait for […]
What’s the Frequency, Kenwood?
Among the last changes I’m making to my Red Cross communications response guide for San Mateo County is the final touches on a recommended list of frequencies for programming into our team’s amateur radios. Because […]
Celebrating Blogger’s Anniversary by Switching to WordPress
OK, the dust has settled, and I have ported all of my content from the old static version of the site to the new WordPress-driven one. My hard-core standards compliance pages remain at a variation […]
Preparedness Month: Water For a Week
I’m experimenting with themed postings for different days of the week. In honor of National Preparedness Month, and thinking it will be a good way to start off each week, I’m allocating Mondays to preparedness […]
What’s wrong with the San Mateo County OES SMS alert system
San Mateo County has this fairly useful SMS service called SMCalert, but today’s message is a great example of why government agencys need to become smarter in their use of this technology: 1 of 2 […]
Pardon the Dust—Switching from Blogger to WordPress
My long-term hate-hate relationship with Blogger is over. I never really fully bought into the concept anyway; I had simply found its ability to publish to a plain-text file that I then wove into my […]
Sell-By or Use-By Dates Too Confusing
During my usual Monday volunteering at the local Red Cross, I was involved in a conversation about the dates printed on the food and drinks we keep in order to feed the victims of local […]