From: Gleanings
To: the old hood
Subject: Gleanings: Brought to You from the Glamourous Excelsior
I moved over the weekend, thus the period of silence. I'm now a resident of the sleepy excelsior district.
IA MATTERS
Making Tips Work
EYECANDY
I never thought I'd say this, but "cool splash page man"
APROPOS OF NOTHING
What happens when you keep getting instant messages from strangers? Well, you hook it up to an artificial intelligence, of course.
the news storythe webpage
NEWS
from tracy: maybe this will get europe more online.
Internet Access with Nopay
the message seeks a medium (from tomalak)
NewMedia: Ideas As Objects.
Scott McCloud. Yet, even though my profession (cartooning) grew out of paper and ink, I'm not a print loyalist. I'm prepared to switch as soon as print's strengths are improved upon by other technologies, and that threshold is approaching fast.
Useit.Com: From February 1995; The Future of Hypertext
Wired News: How Barbie.com Got All Dolled Up.
Their job began about 10 months ago. Every two weeks, the diverse group of
computer-savvy girls from Los Angeles, New Jersey, and San Francisco received
screenshots through email from Cheskin Research, Mattel's partner in the
project.
FEEDBACK
a friend writes:
> I feel it is my professional obligation to mention that my friend
> the IA put an apple tart recipe in her IA newsletter and forgot
> to mention in the ingredients list that there are apples in it.
it's true. takes 8 or so apples.
From: Gleanings
To: newsy buggers
Subject: Gleanings: music and linking and auto-censors oh my
Today is a heavy news day. go figure. (MP3 fiends scroll down)
NEWS
auto censors don't know jack.. or cock
from Newmedia:
"Every cell phone user will want to read both of Harry Bruinius's
stories on hotly contested studies that suggest a link between cell
phone use and brain cancer, and the lawsuits and warning labels that
have ensued "
read article
read article
I like visionaries spouting off about the future. do you?
Amazon is going to sell cars. what tab does that go on?
Amazon to Put New-Car Service Into Gear
Amazon.com Plans to Offer Cars Online
from ZDnet, but for mike:
Has 'Survivor' Missed the Boat?
from webmonkey:
"Hey! We have a new article on Webmonkey! And it's got something for
everyone: Not only is there a blow-by-blow of the major MP3 players
(Napster, Macster, Gnutella, and Scour Exchange), but there's also
fiery, FezGuy commentary about the future of the whole file-sharing
phenom! Click click click!
Has the taste we've given you left that monkey on your back itching for
more hot MP3 action? Visit Webmonkey's Audio/MP3 collection for all your
how-to needs:
And get the latest news about Napster, MP3, and Internet audio by
riffling through Wired News' "MP3 Rocks the Web" collection:
EYECANDY
Jezebel... www.jezebel.com
They have very beautiful ecards.
From: Gleanings
To: bored stiffs
Subject: Gleanings: lame but here
Today was the all time record slow news day. Luckily I found the Journal of Conceptual Modeling... that should keep the IA's on the list busy. The rest of you can bake pie.
IA MATTERS
the journal of conceptual modeling
NEWS
Gnutella, Napster ... What's the Difference?
APROPOS OF NOTHING
ecards that didn't make the cut
(may have racy content and porn ads)
* SURVIVAL EXPOSED!
Nine nutbags try to survive in paradise. An AtomFilms original.
How to make an apple tart, French style. easy and tasty.
250g flour
1g egg
80g sugar
125g butter
pinch salt
break egg into mixing bowl, add sugar and salt, mix vigorously with a fork or whisk until white (but not foamy) then progressively add flour. when spoon doesn't work, use hands to mix. when all flour is all there, crumble with your hands until mixture is like coarse sand (make sure all large chunks are well broken up into a fine mixture).
cut butter into small pieces,then add to mixture. work into a homogenous mixture.
rest one hour in the refrigerator
take out, then work a little to soften, and then roll out and line shallow tart dish (9 in).
peel apples (tart-tasting. Jonathan, roma but never red delicious--about 5) and quarter, removing core. slice each quarter in half, then half again, making thin slices. layer these slices in a circular spiral pattern. Sprinkle lightly with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.
bake for about 30 minutes at about 400 When apples are soft and crust is nice and brown, it's probably done.
From: Gleanings
To: faithful listeners
Subject: Gleanings: Other People's Gleans 2
IA MATTERS
from Andi:
globalization UI issues
interview with every IA's favorite comic artist, Scott McCloud
EVENT
Conference from Creative Good (Mark Hurst) in San Francisco.
NEWS
from Muffy:
I see London, I see Uranus
from Tracy:
wap
from Vic:
what do you get when you cross a goat with a spider?
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Sixteen-year-old high school sophomore Becky Atherton, believed
to be the last remaining American who did not hate Microsoft,
announced today that she was "tired of being different" and would
now hate Microsoft just like everyone else.
LINK-O-RAMA
On CHI-WEB a call was put out for favorite CHI and web design resources here it is (it's a bit short, but that makes it manageable for this list)
http://argus-acia.com/index.html
http://Flazoom.com
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/
http://is.twi.tudelft.nl/hci/
http://stc.org/pics/idsig/
http://usableweb.com/
http://websitesthatsuck.com/index.html
http://websitesthatwork.iab.com
http://wsupsy.psy.twsu.edu/surl/
http://www.acm.org/
http://www.acm.org/dl/proc_bysig_list.html#SIGCHI
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/hci-sites/
http://www.alistapart.com
http://www.asis.org/
http://www.asktog.com
http://www.baychi.org/
http://www.bogieland.com/infodesign/
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~cspgpjw/hci.html
http://www.contenu.nu/200006.html#usabilityislikelove
http://www.contenu.nu/resources.html
http://www.electricseed.com/joeclark/usability.html
http://www.foruse.com
http://www.goodexperience.com
http://www.hcibib.org/
http://www.hcirn.com/
http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/aslab/groups/um/hci/
http://www.info-architects.net/
http://www.jnd.org
http://www.lynda.com/
http://www.sandia.gov/itg/index.html
http://www.system-concepts.com
http://www.uidesign.net
http://www.uie.com
http://www.usableweb.com
http://www.useit.com
http://www.webmonkey.com
http://www.webreview.com
"If you take your problem to an architect you will get a building for a solution"
Herb Caen?
Excuse the ramble...
Andi --fellow IA-- and I were chatting and we hit yet another one of those moments when we start to say, "oh those stupid users" then we stop.. and say, "no it's our job to make it easy". I have a lot of these with IAs.
Even if users are dumb, they aren't dumb. They need our help to do the things they wish to do: we need to create systems (programs websites etc) that actually work for them rather than show off our prowess for cleverness. It's easy to make fun of or villianize the user as a lazy clueless burden... but it's quite more effective to sympathize and try to create a systrem that meets the user's needs and understanding of how the world works (much as we may wish to force them to learn our quite cooler and smarter systems 8sarcasm*). Too often our best work is the work that looks obvious, and it is underappreciated. We struggle to acheive obviousness. It should be valued. For once the desing is obvious, we are sucesses. When is the last time you opened software and knew jusat what to do; or visted a webiste for the first time and knew what do do? That time was the last time you saw the skilled craft of a IA/Interface designer. And that was the time you breezed along, not noticing what happened. Woo hoo! (can being under appreciated be a form of appreciation?)
Same for one's client. often it becomes us against them: designer vs. biz dev, usability vs. marketing, client vs. design team... which never helps the project. It's quite more important to understand the needs of the business, express the needs of the user, and design a system that meets both. Here the IA's moment of triumph is when the user seemlessly does the thing that they want to do which also makes the company money. Like buying a CD by their favorite artist they didn't even know was out...
more from another POV. Whose Fault Is It Anyway?
Newsletter sample articles from the usability professional association. cool.
From: Gleanings
To: read-herrings
Subject: Gleanings: for girls with glasses and men who make passes
IA MATTERS
read these books.
and one from biggerhand.com
"because sometimes it's good to remember that things should be fun.
and that fun and usability are NOT polar opposites."
NEWS
j*sus f*cking chr*st. what the h*ll is happening in our society?
from tomalak:
SJ Mercury: Online companies violate our privacy because we let them.
Dan Gillmor. They lobby for what's hilariously called self-regulation, and
create utterly toothless privacy-watchdog organizations that barely even bark
at the worst violations. We are not people to these businesses. We are data,
and we are fair game.
Xerox PARC: Free Riding on Gnutella
APROPOS OF NOTHING
this will make you happy, esp if you are from the midwest
http://web.0sil8.com/
FEEDBACK:
a friend writes regarding http://www.usps.gov/stories/spw :
"Wow... I'm speechless.
Okay, new web phenom here? This is the second time this week I've looked at a Flash cartoon that went on so long that I just closed out the window & gave up - it would be nice if people would start giving some indication of the LENGTH of these things instead of just leaving you at the mercy of their Flash movie."
lately I've been really facinated with Fitt's law's and principals. Especially the other day when I was on egreetings and kept hitting the last page link rather than the next arrow because they were located too closely together.
From: Gleanings
To: glean-team
Subject: Gleanings:less real but more fun
APROPOS OF NOTHING
I am in love with this site. With its well thought out icons, strange
photodisk testimonials and clever personalization and stickiness ploys it is more successful as a fake site than many real e.coms.
Goodwill. Globally.
more on fake websites
NY Times: Wacky, Fake Web Sites Grab Attention.
The trend is meant to capitalize on the growing use of and fascination with
the Internet as well as to take advantage of the capabilities of the Web to
produce content at a low cost that appears to be genuine. In other words, on
the World Wide Web, it can always be April Fool's Day.
this has to be seen to be believed.
super postal worker.
EYECANDY
(flashcandy)
http://www.graffiti.org/figm/index2.htm
http://www.lorenhaynes.com/
I quite like the design and navigation of this webshop.
http://www.entercomm.com/
NEWS
domain squatters are starting to lose...
Yahoo! Wins 40 Domain Names (AP)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/446029.asp
from Tomalak
Salon: Don't call us.
In five years writing about the Net, I've seen a lot of ridiculous endeavors -- like publicists who fax over press releases and then request that, if you don't plan to write about "Making Merry with Shari's Berries!" you fax back an explanation of why you passed on that hot story tip.
from webmonkey
Friday, 18 August 2000
Levi's and Phillips have banded together to create the first commercially available line of e-clothing! They're starting out with jackets that come with built-in MP3 players and cellphones, and cost between $600 and $900 (so reasonable!). Some people are concerned about the possible health risks of having so much technology constantly radiating your body, but I just want to know what the coats look like. I mean, unless they're really cute, you probably won't wear them enough to worry about anything but the wrath of the fashion police, right?
Read all about it at Wired News
and more
Industry Standard: Hello, And Welcome to Our Redesign!
Q&A with Alex Weil, designer at Charlex. What I tried to do was raise the
quality of the Web site to match the brand and culture it created through
the phone. The first thing we did was add its well-known slogan to the top of
the Web site. "Hello, and welcome to Moviefone!" can also be downloaded as an
audio file.
Adweek: From July 3, 2000; Sneak Previews
So I was reading up on cellphones on ZDNet and had a survey pop-up in one of those annoying JavaScript popup windows. It wasn't banner sized, so I let it load. It was in invitation to take a survey on internet usage. Why not, I think.
I follow a link to find out if I was eligible (I didn't want to take some long survey only to find out I wasn't eligible) It loaded the rules page and at the bottom of this there was a message: use your back button to return to the survey. There was no back button. Whoever coded the pop-up had loaded it with no toolbar. brilliant.
So I got back to the survey with a right-click, said yeah, I'll take it. the first question:
1. Have you used or visited in the past 12 months:
A. A community feature/site on any Web site?
B. A community feature/site on ZDNet?
I'm a web professional, and I have no idea what they are talking about. I guess simply typing this 'blog might be considered a community feature.
Hello comunity.
Toward the end of the survey, they ask what I do professionally. There is no place for any sort of design. They have marketer, programmer, etc, but not even graphic designer much less interface/interaction/information design.
sigh
From: Gleanings
To: they might be gleanings
Subject: Gleanings: now with less content!
EYECANDY
limn.com has been a nightmare for users.. this is half apology, but mostly
something very different.
turn on your speakers: their background music is by they might be giants.
APROPOS OF NOTHING
NEWS
Cellphone are for people communicating with people, not Proctor and gamble or the NBA...
from tomaak:
SJ Mercury: Forget the hype, e-books still hard on the eyes.
E-book technology is just not ready. It's too hard to read on the screen.
Think of this as the opposite of what's going on with the music industry and
Napster: With Napster, the public is clamoring for file-sharing technology but
the big companies are trying to ignore it.
In their dreams
Sony claims to be an Internet company. It isn’t yet
I've revealed my sources...
IA MATTERS
want to know
the shape of the web? (and that means more than .com)
narrative scenarios as a design tool
APROPOS OF NOTHING
from the devotimator folks
Amazon smartly asks the advice of their customers
NEWS
coke goes online (anyone else saying :why online?)
FEEDBACK
a friend writes:
"I'm curious how "HTML" pages that are containers for badly written and completely unnecessary JavaScript (or worse, Flash) and gratuitously incompatible with browsers that disable scripting can even rate as "functional". If I were shopping for a Web design house and saw www.marchfirst.com I'd say "You people don't know what you're doing" just as security drags me out the door kicking and screaming.
<NOSCRIPT> needs to be federally mandated."
this is so right in so many ways:
We're writing to ask for your help. Over the last few months, we've
tested several new navigational systems for Amazon.com, looking for a
way to make it easier for you to get around our store. (By
"navigational system," I'm talking about the tabs at the top of our home page.)
We think we've found a winner--feedback from hundreds of customers in
our testing has already been very positive. But we wouldn't want to
make such a change to how our store works without first consulting
you to see what you thought. So we'd sure appreciate it if you could
take a few minutes to check it out. Just stop by:
http://www.amazon.com/new-navigation
Then please drop us a line telling us what you think. E-mail your
comments to newtabs@amazon.com.
Many thanks for helping us make Amazon.com the best store it can be.
Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
PS: We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. However, if you'd
rather not receive future notices of this sort from Amazon.com,
please visit your Amazon.com Subscriptions page and sign in using
your e-mail address and password:
http://www.amazon.com/subscriptions"
Please note that this message was sent to the following e-mail
address:
cwodtke@eleganthack.com
Found a new resource: author of the Yale style manual.
All the cool kids are doing it: personas
the sh*tty internet logo of the week museum
which reminds me of the swoosh collector
a website where you can design your own shoes: interesting web-ap
a story for all designers: what about the websites that we never born
apropos of nothing
what if Lincoln had used PowerPoint?
biggerhand.com has taken over my job as idle surfer...
he writes
"ok, i give. this is brilliant
of course the funniest thing is that it's terribly designed.
(if you glean it, i found the link on kottke.org. he also links to untickalot"
also terribly funny.
Idle question: what is it designers have against capital letters?
he also sends this hot new palm ap (check out even if you don't have a palm... this may get you to buy one!)
and an article on how to build for PDA's
Hey, more on my favorite lawsuit, IAM vs. Razorfish!
from Tomalak:
Darwin: Scaredy Pants.
At what point does careful consideration verge on utter paralysis? How many
times can someone steal your lunch money before you starve to death? I'm
thinking about those questions because I've been researching the Internet
initiatives of Levi Strauss.
Apropos of nothing:
from dsharp
"Japanese Seizure Robots!
THIS IS AWFUL, I KNOW YOU WILL LOVE IT!
As if the flashing colors weren't enough, this site takes MIDI music to the
heights of artistry.
Prepare yourself, then click here:
and
Business 2.0: From January 1, 2000; 501 Blues
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/ebusiness/2000/01/01/10399
and again from Darwin mag (I never heard of these guys before, and they are great!)
Darwin: Get Real.
David Weinberger. Combine fear and aggression and you end up with companies
literally afraid to speak like human beings. It's easier, after all, to plan
an attack than to communicate on the fly and--gasp!--listen.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080100/contact.html
they get it: quite a while on the Jupiter site, there was a terrific article on relanches and the dangers that lie with them (such as massive user bailout at the horror of trying to learn something new, no matter how much "better" it was) One of the ways to mitigate this was to inform user of an upcoming redesign and solicit feedback on it. Amazon did it for their new navigation. Alta vista does it here
redesigns are in the air: adobe.com
from newmedia.com "BROADBAND Walkthrough: Adobe.com
(Thursday, 3 August 00) Adobe completely sheds its old corporate image
with a dramatic redesign of its Web site. Aimed at fostering a sense
of community, the site features expert QuickTime tutorials, interviews
with noteworthy designers, online galleries, forums, and a free
virtual portfolio area. By Jeff Burger."
Speaking of Jupiter, and their research compatriots, I'm reading "how to lie with statistics" that appears to have been written in the 30s and makes quite entertaining light reading.
also found this
Salon: From September 2, 1999; Jupiter shoots for the moon
and
Boston Globe: Fortunetelling.
Ideas, visibility, and marketing drive that image. Forrester's researchers are
paid based on a complicated formula that considers their involvement in
closing sales and appearances in the media.
lately the CHI-WEB list has been talking about exercises in pointlessness (sites that are pure marketing tools and provide no value to user)
included were
http://www.eu.levi.com/LEJ/
http://www.myautogarage.com
here is a resource to make your life saner: standard banner sizes
the wonderful world of web-aps. this will keep IA's in business for years to
come
great conversation started by peterme on the CHI-WEB list
"What does a conceptual model look like"
Finally, something to show the client!
http://www.usability.com/tug_3_Product_Stages.htm
Conceptual design: the cornerstone of usability.
huh?
DESIGN MATTERS
There seems to be a revival of mocking jakob neilson (well, if you're gonna
demand fame, you gotta take your lumps.) Biggerhand.com sends this new
repository of all thing mocking jakob.
http://www.untickalock.com/jakob/index.html
By the way, apparently the infamous useit.com is about to undergo a makeover.
Don norman says his and jakob's sites have been redesigned and are being
user-tested as we speak. I'm waiting with baited breath...
but you can make it up to him: his birthday is coming up (thanks Mike!)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/wishlist/26JQ6PQQHD3T8/103-3658829-8248653
Honestly his latest alertbox
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000806.html
is much more inflammatory, bashing non-standard design and insisting (come on jakob!) that reputation managers will replace brand. Quite well working, much like a bad cup of coffee will get your blood running even before the caffeine hits the bloodstream.
Now that we're done beating on Jakob, check this out:
http://www.patricklynch.net/viz/viz020100.html
great article that explains why print has cause designers to design their
pages upside down...
It also helps explain a phenomenon I've seen in user testing I call "land
and scroll" Users come to a page and -before it's even finished loading, as
soon as they have anything vaguely resembling a page-- they scroll. I've
seen a quick up-down 'getting the lay of the land" and an instant permanent
scroll, pushing the global nav and any banner navigation down. hmmm
While we're at it, why not demystify another hero: Tufte!
Don Norman takes him down a peg on the CHI-WEB list
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0008a&L=chi-web#30
APROPOS OF NOTHING
hey! Mexican wrestler game!
http://www.sbermprod.com/guest/wrestling.html#
plus lucha swag http://www.luchaswag.com/
don't know what I'm talking about? http://www.firstcut.com/9807/n1.html
(thanks Tracy!)
IA MATTERS
creating trust in cyberspace
iacandy
a bunch of truly beautiful odd new visualizations.. information design and IA are one.
plumbdesign thesaurus/
and the story behind it
www.thinkmap.com
more
http://inxight.com/
more
smartmoney
from
http://www.smartmoney.com/intro/tools/
more
http://www.artandculture.com
hey, anyone going to any of these?
BRAND
The Evolution of Brand Strategy
The Changing Roles of Identity and Navigation Design
Uncanny
The Art & Design of Shawn Wolfe
Published by Houston
Best known as the man behind Beatkit, the ubiquitous "brand
without a product," Wolfe was deconstructing consumerism and
brand fetishism since before he knew that's what he was doing.
See the cover image at:
http://www.emigre.com/CBUN.html
NEWS
Did you think that you can stop worrying about downloads?
Fast Company: Why the Long Wait?
Latency, says Reed, directly affects the quality of users' experience on the
Net. Although ISPs aren't blind to this issue, too few of them agree that
latency is the defining metric of their networks' performance.
Napster cannot be killed.
Industry Standard: It's Not Dead Yet.
Kevin Werbach. Rather than delaying a resolution of the major issues
surrounding online music distribution, the Napster injunction has accelerated
it. The injunction raised the stakes and also brought Napster tremendous
mainstream publicity.
yeah, these guys are the victims. sure.
Wired News: States: Labels Fixed CD Prices.
Thirty states filed suit Tuesday against the five biggest record companies and
two music retailing giants, accusing them of conspiring to fix CDs prices --
an act that the states say cost consumers millions of dollars.
the war between design and usability
USABILITY VS DESIGN
DESIGN MATTERS
A little while ago I asked what designers have against capitalization. Mike
of biggerhand.com has been kind enough to let me share his response to me
with you.
me: "What "do* designers have against capitalization?"
mike: "they get used like exclamation marks: Too Often And For Emphasis!!!!!
(usually the emphasis is that the copy sucks, but we'll build around
it with exclamation marks, or "bangs" in marketinguese, and caps.)
in the event of cap & bang bloat i usually strip them all out and get
the client to put them back in. they generally put back about 25% of
what I took out.
In one particularly dire situation I talked marketing down by telling
them that caps added significant overhead in k-count. We then came to
the compromise that we would capitalize the first word of every
sentence and the CEO's name. To give them a "warm fuzzy" I agreed to
capitalize the first word in every paragraph too.
I like making people happy! (<--bang)"
NEWS BITES
from tomalak
Business 2.0: Five Questions With Mike Mulligan, CEO of MapQuest.
And while they've got a brand that people know, it's a brand that's not
relevant online. It's like Brillo. Everybody recognizes the brand Brillo,
butit doesn't do you any good online. And everybody recognizes the brand Rand
McNally, but it doesn't do them any good online.
and for more on Rand Mcnally's struggle to play catch-up (also one of gleanings favorite
topics)
Business 2.0: World to Privacy Sites: Now or Never.
Looming legislation threatens to make many of their current functions
obsolete, and recent high-profile embarrassments have forced many of the
sites
to reconsider their entire raison d'être.
Business 2.0: The Perfect PR App.
The other day, I received a routine press release. It wasn't time sensitive.
It wasn't interesting. There was absolutely no way I or anyone else here
would've written about the contents of the release. Yet, it came in a FedEx
envelope sent via the highest, and most expensive, priority.
Computerworld: States formally object to proposed settlement between Toysmart and the FTC.
The objection was submitted by Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly,
who said in the filing that the effort to sell the customer data "is a breach of
Toysmart's promise and constitutes deception pursuant to the Consumer
Protection Act of Massachusetts"...
HCI Resources: Bibliographies and Publications
Article on making Flash user friendly:Flazoom.com - Making Sure Usability 'Fitts' Flash
Kristiina Karvonen has written several papers on creating trust in cyberspace from an HCI viewpoint. check it out!
Finally, someone comes up with a radical new conceptual model
great article that explains why print has caused designers to design their pages upside down...
It also helps explain a phenomenon I've seen in user testing I call "land and scroll" Users come to a page and --before it's even finished loading, as soon as they have anything vaguely resembling a page-- they scroll. I've seen a quick up-down "getting the lay of the land" and a permanent scroll-to-content, pusing the global nav, banners and logo off the screen. hmmm
hacker or careless employee? Tonight the PhotoWorks home page had a guitar playing dinosaur instead of their "step 2" on the homepage.
Followed a link from the redoubtable victor lombardi, and it lead to the fine home of the Gallery of Regrettable food which I reviewed in my first web job ever in... er... a while ago. (where did I leave my memory pills?) 1996? Anyhow, nice to see it's alive and thriving. Check it out, it's a good source of giggles.
My AltaVista : --The New AltaVista -- lets users try out and give feedback on the new altavista interface rather than launcing it on unsuspecting users, resulting in massive bailout and tons of CS complaints (most people hate change, even change for the better) There was a good Jupiter research report on this a while ago, with many tasty numbers, but you'll have to pay for it!
I want to first point out that this has nothing to do with IA.
So You've Decided to be Evil
Refound 50 cups of coffee | swoosh no more. One of life's little pleasures is rediscovering a URL you thought you'd lost. Here a brave soul collects every logo featuring a swoosh. It's rather disturbing how many there are