The interface for Chef Watson, I.B.M.'s artificial-intelligence cooking app, is simple and welcoming, a minimalist canvas of four empty text fields and four dove-gray circles.
Trying to blog at first made David Karp feel bad: that big, empty text box seemed to demand a lot of carefully constructed words, an intimidating sight for a nonwriter.
Deployed by people who see an empty text box in front of them and can't think what to say, they pluck some hackneyed expression from the recesses of their mind and start typing.
By Alexandra Kleeman The interface for Chef Watson, I.B.M.'s artificial-intelligence cooking app, is simple and welcoming, a minimalist canvas of four empty text fields and four dove-gray circles.
You need to actually click inside that empty text box before you can really start searching.
There, they can view and respond, with comments showing up overlaid on the piece of media rather than in empty text boxes.
With the change its testing, replies start with an empty text box, with just a little "In reply to Josh Constine and others" in grey text up above with the "others" linked.
While the home page has long been absent of much besides the company's logo and an empty text box begging you to search the endless web, by bringing the feed to the home page on mobile and desktop, the company's "there when you need it" approach to search may be shifting to allow it to serve users with something to explore.
Is there any empty text box that isn't taken as an invitation to spew hate and lame jokes?
When I looked at the LinkedIn Update e-mails I'd so quickly swiped away, I saw many more people I could congratulate, some with empty text boxes to fill, but none showing their full profile or even enough details to write a meaningful message.
And thanks to technology that allows teenagers and others to vent their fleeting anxieties and rages into empty text boxes and have those thoughts transmitted to thousands of people in an instant, it's easier than ever for someone to make something that legally counts as a threat.
