I suppose this has an audience of one.

This one is for Dan Pasco.

riffing on a notion given to me by Chris Hanson.

Silverback is a new application, by Clearleft, that allows website (and regular old desktop software) developers to perform some usability testing by linking a video screen capture with a iSight capture. All you do is fire up Silverback, then sit your user down and have them interact with your application (or website). Silverback will record both video streams and audio from the mic.

In a trial use I ran it on Moneydance and immediately noticed some areas our UI could be improved for real usability gains. The reason for this of course is that I was able to see the face of the user (me) and figure out pretty quickly where I was having trouble or getting frustrated.

Of course the entire concept of this application assumes you have a bunch of users you can have sit down at your mac and make use your applications. This might not be as readily feasible for most indie developers, but I suspect a good amount of us will benefit from this sort of real world feedback.

Technology aside what really impresses me is Clearleft’s promise to donate 10% of the profits from Silverback to The Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund. I’m glad to see more and more developers are starting to see charity as an inextricable part of being a good citizen, a citizen both of the nebulous Mac indie dev community but also of the world at large.

Several Lemurs were found where they don’t belong.

The discovery was made in the Torotorofotsy wetlands of east central Madagascar, more than 400 km (240 miles) north of the isolated pockets of bamboo forest where the rest of the known populations of the species live.

This is exciting, at least to me and other lemur fans in the audience, as the 30 to 40 individuals in the newly discovered territory add the possibility of introducing genetic diversity to the exiting populations (100 individuals) of the Greater Bamboo Lemurs (Prolemur simus) living in the southeastern parts of the island. This would massively curb the effects of interbreeding in a small population, and as such increases the viability of the species existence over time.

Greater Bamboo Lemurs (along with a few other lemurs) are particularly awesome because they consume massive amounts of Giant Bamboo, but suffer no deleterious effects from the cyanide in the bamboo.