An article from Spring 2000 (actually an excerpt from Cooper's wonderful book I think everyone should read, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum) by Alan Cooper on The 14 Principles of Polite Apps (applications, for you non-software folks out there). Two of my favorites are "Polite Software Has Common Sense" and "Polite Software Is Self-Confident." Speaking as an application designer and programmer, those two are really hard to actually implement, especially when an application hasn't been planned as well as it could (or should) have been. It's good to revisit this list, the concepts are important to keep in mind. [via Matt Webb]