Thursday, April 10, 2008

Synthetic head

Synthetic girl watches the cursor.

I've been notified about this page a couple of times now. I didn't think it worked in my browser, but it turns out the site simply has neglected to show a flash-file-download progress bar, so I thought nothing was happening, and left the site prematurely.

I wonder why they used a model who's been partying all night?
Or perhaps they just wanted to avoid artificially over-white eye-whites, and overdid it a little.

Update:
Ian S points to Ms Dewey. Good fun, although it's against my sensibilities that the main page does not tell you anything about what the site actually is for.
Damn talented and pretty actress too. Named Janina Gavankar. I want her on a cracker.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I wonder why they used a model who's been partying all night?"

Just think how many people visit that page. She has a lot of cursor watching to do. Some strain in the eyes is the least you can expect.

Realism is popular these days.

Alex said...

I thought the whole point of these mouse tracking tools were to help you find your cursor in all the clutter. There were times in the older days when I'd have two pairs of googley eyes on my desktop and I could triangulate to where the pointer was. Now I find it easier just to move to the top right, or bottom left, my screens are not at the same height and the cursor can get stuck in the wrong edge if I'm not paying attention.

Anonymous said...

Another site that uses the person inside the monitor idea is msdewey.com which is a search engine. It's fun to open it and not type anything in, as the actress has some great expressions of boredom.

Ian S

Anonymous said...

If you monitor becomes dirty, there's a now an easy way to clean it. Just go to this site:

http://dl.cleanthescreen.com/screenclean.swf

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It's one of the few things where I think Mac OS X is lame compared to Windoze. Windows has had bigger cursors available for decades. Especially when the Mac cursor is prepared for text, it can be nigh invisible, since it's just a single row of pixels.

Alex said...

It is nice that the mouse pointer changes with context, but it does make it hard to ses at times.

If the user options don't give you the cursor you want, have you thought about using the accessibility settings? With failing monitors and tired eyes I have turned on the high contrast modes and outsized cursors.

When I read your comment about the Mac cursor being "|" shaped I first thought you meant the text cursor, but then I watched what my mouse was doing, and saw what you meant. Those text cursors are still a pain on XP.

Alex said...

I want her on a cracker.

You mean like a Ritz cracker, or like you pull at Christmas? Theres an interesting image!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I want her on anything, anywhere, right now.

She reminds me of the spanish actress on My Name Is Earl. Ahhhhhhhh.

Ah, I can enlarge the cursor in the accesibility settings. But it only gets pixellated up! Lazy.

Alex said...

Lazy, but accessible.

I think the feeling would be, if you have such an impairing sight disorder, you care more about functionality than aesthetics.

Nadine Velazquez?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

That's the one. She is incredibly fit. And sweet and talented too.