Yes?

Speaking of onscreen buttons, here’s a scary dialog box that Adobe InDesign presented to me a few days ago. “Remove all your applications, destroy your data, and publish your bank account information on the webs? Would you like to answer yes?”

Add to Cart buttons

Here’s a nice study from Get Elastic of how different companies design their Add to Cart buttons, all linked to their actual shopping carts. There’s even statistics. Of the 111 “shopping cart” buttons, 58% use the phrase “Add to Cart” while the rest is a mishmash. This is

Space Commander Helmet

There has been quite a bit of interest this weekend in my research on the Zenith Space Command remote controls. If this is your first time here, welcome! But if you really love remote controls, here is something for you. New reader Phil spotted this great auction on eBay where

Button Psych: Deal or No Deal

I love Deal or No Deal. I grew up watching game shows and I love this one. It perfectly counters probability analysis against classic human greed and then crystallizes that tension into whether or not you push a button. As I’ve written about before, the button on Deal or

The OK button, origins

So where did the OK button come from? It first appeared widespread on Mac OS 1.0, but it really started before that during the development of the Apple Lisa. From folklore.org… When the software required confirmation from the user, it displayed a small window called a “dialog box”

The OK button

OK, that was easy. I may have finally figured out which is my favorite button. The OK button. It’s universal, ubiquitous, friendly, decisive, connected. It’s on your screen, it’s in your pocket. It’s everywhere. It’s you and the machine having a casual conversation. “How’s

Push-button starting all the rage

A few faithful readers pointed me to this New York Times article about push-button starting at the New York International Auto Show. Bye-bye car keys? Cars of course did not start out requiring keys. In the beginning, you just pushed the starter button to engage the system. As always, vandals

1991: "Push-button Death"

J.G. Ballard wrote “Push-button Death” in 1991 for an anthology on Vietnam and was republished in A User’s Guide to the Millennium. Was there a Gulf War? … After the arcade video-game of the bombing campaign, the ‘100 hours’ of ground fighting, filtered through the military and TV censors,

Zenith Space Command, the first 20 years

You have to love this damn Internet we have here. The answers are out there. Granted, you can’t simply Google anything to answer all the obscure questions, like which exact models of remote controls came out fifty years ago, but what you can do is find the people who

Zenith Space Command, unboxing a mystery

Ever since the remote control’s co-inventor Robert Adler passed away a few weeks ago, I’ve wanted to own one of the first remote controls. After trolling through eBay every now and then, I finally have in my hands a piece of the history of the button. But there’