Sorry Everybody
Sorry Everybody: brilliant. Pictures of people apologizing for the election results. This is what I wanted americans to do after the prison schandals.
Momentshowing: The Videoblog Roundup
Momentshowing: The Videoblog RoundupL Jay gives an overview of videoblogging slowly taking shape. He doesn't discuss the technology, but what people actually do with it. Jay's an advocate for the users, and if videoblogging ever takes off it will be partly because of him.
If you run WordPress, have a look at your admin screen Edit > Comments. I am deleting hundreds of comment spams, and a lot of people are being hit hard. I didn't turn off commenting, just made any comments with over 1 link go into the moderation queue, and added a few words to my filter.
Wordpress moderation features out of the box are pretty good, and if you want more there are plenty of plugins. Right now, I figure trying out plugins will take more time than deleting spam so I'll stick to that.
I discovered this new and interesting blog on anthropology and design and such: TechnoTaste.
Russell Beattie Notebook - I Want Konfabulator Mobile!: Konfabulator lets you script little apps for BOTH Mac's and Windows. Just use Javasript and some XML. Why is it 2005 and is it still so hard to cross-platform script stuff? Python on the desktop exists, and seems to be used a lot. But this stuff should be MUCH easier, so that developer/users (like Adam Curry) can create their own apps relatively easily. FTP, XML_RCP, RSS/XML parsing and all that should be supereasy and out of the box.
A great case study on the design of the new moleskin notebook covers and store display.
Jay on Bloggercon: "I see a lot of serious bloggers here who want to make CASH. See, i can undersatnd but here's where everything starts to get derailed."
Neighbornode: the extensible neighborhood network
Neighbornode: the extensible neighborhood network: "Neighbornodes are group message boards on wireless nodes, placed in residential areas and open to the public. These nodes transmit signal for around 300 feet, so everyone within that range has access to the board and can read and post to it."
So who makes a neighborwiki?
One of the true joys of working with OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office is its strenght in exporting. I can export to MS formats or PDF supereasily. Creating multiple versions of a document is easy, whereas with MS Office it has always been a pain.
OpenOffice isn't perfect (it's slideshow program for example is not as good as Powerpoint), but being open really has advantages.
Jay went to Bloggercon to represent the videoblogging community. We talked on Skype today, and we tried to record it but it didn't work out. We'll figure it out though. A lot of thoughts on videoblogging, audioblogging and such. We'll try a podcast (audio) one of these days. Sure, podcasting when you're promoting vidcasting is a bit inconsistent, but hey, we can live with that!
I can't record a Skype call with Audacity on Windows. According to
this page, there is a setting called "Stereo Mix", but that dropdown is greyed out in my version of Audacity. Any tips? Thanks!
Today is the NYC marathon. Good luck to everyone!
(I wish I could run, not the marathon but just for practice, but every time I train my knees start to hurt, and supposedly there's not much you can do about that.)
BitTorrent consumes a third of the Internet's bandwidth. ( According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic.) Not sure how solid the figures are.
Gizmodo : MOVIE VISION AV Portable MPEG-4 Recorder, 20GB HD
Gizmodo : MOVIE VISION AV Portable MPEG-4 Recorder, 20GB HD: "Apple doesn't think you need a video iPod, but apparently these people do: the Movie Vision AV has a 20GB hard drive for MP3s and video, including MPEG-4 and DivX. Even better, like a lot of the other newer PMPs on the market, it can record video, as well (although only shows about dolphins, due to an error in translation leading to the installation of a 'flipper chip.')
Oh, and it has video output and is less than $500 USD. You'll need to be in Japan to get one, though, because there's no way anyone is going to try to sell a distended iPod in the US without an Apple lawsuit deathwish."
Yes - people DO want to watch movies on small screens and portable devices (your phone for example). Stop resisting.
If I have a database table with posts on a forum that has id, text and userid, how do I do a query that lists userids in order of who has posted the largest amounts of posts? Thanks! I can do basic SQL but this kinda baffles me (it's been a while). Mysql.
Momentshowing: VIDEO: "Fresh in CA": Jay, our videoblogging MAN, travels to Palo Alto for BloggerCon to infiltrate the geek community.
Shirky: Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software: "The user of a piece of social software is not just a collection of individuals, but a group. Individual users take on roles that only make sense in groups: leader, follower, peacemaker, process nazi, and so on. There are also behaviors that can only occur in groups, from consensus building to social climbing. And yet, despite these obvious differences between personal and social behaviors, we have very little design practice that treats the group as an entity to be designed for."
The sitemap-at-the-bottom meme continues to stick its head up every now and then. Now Flickr does it. I have an interest because it is an interesting design pattern and I think I was the first person to research it. If I find some time, I might write about how this design pattern has evolved over the years, on different sites.
Rich Text Editing and Spell Check Come to TypePad: works in Firefox, previews images inline. Looks good. I can't believe it's 2004 and this qualifies as news, but hey, there you go. That's what you get for years without any browser competition.
Better Living Through Software - Personas
Better Living Through Software - Personas: "At Microsoft, we sometimes use 'personas' when designing features and writing specs.
[...]
There is some controversy internally about how useful personas are. Real people always trump imaginary people, so personas become less useful when ready access to customers is available. And it is questionable how successful a product can be without ready access to customers, personas or not. And personas can easily become caricatures or stereotypes that don't really accurately represent anyone. It is a lot easier to do personas wrong than it is to use them in a way that adds value."
One volunteer can get free entry to Steve Krug's web usability workshop and Lou Rosenfelds enterprise IA seminar coming Monday and Tuesday in San Jose.
Jon Udell: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8: his review (especially the excellent show&tell demonstration in Flash) shows how far this stuff has come. Maybe we could use software like this to produce transcripts of podcasts? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be good enough for Google, or for people to have a quick scan of what's been said.
Killer CC App: The Publisher, beta version
Killer CC App: The Publisher, beta version: "Leveraging the Internet Archive's generous offer to host Creative Commons licensed (audio and video) files for free, we recently completed the 0.96 beta version of The Publisher, a desktop, drag-and-drop application that licenses audio and video files, and sends them to the Internet Archive for free hosting.
When you're done uploading, the application gives you a URL where others can download the file. It also is able to tag MP3 files with Creative Commons metadata and publish verification metadata to the Web. A HUGE congratulations to Nathan Yergler, who's done an amazing job with this. Also, a great thanks to Jon Aizen and the folk at the Internet Archive. You can download the Publisher from here -- give it a test run and let us know what you think.
Also note that aside from being downloadable from Internet Archive, these tagged MP3s can flow on to P2P networks, and be identified as Creative Commons licensed (see our Lookup app we recently also updated to 0.96). Morpheus is currently the only file sharing application to identify Creative Commons licensed files."
This is brilliant. As long as you put your video under a creative commons license, you get free hosting from the internet archive, who can handle it. An excellent way to encourage people to CC their content, and an excellent way to host large video. And it looks user friendly, too. I am going to start experimenting with this.
The Best Sourcing of Information Architecture
AIFIA | Editorial: The Best Sourcing of Information Architecture.
One of the hard things as a user, when using a web based tool, is knowing what effect changing certain settings will have. Does anyone have examples of tools that handle this particularly well? Thanks!
Bad news. Julia in the comments: Bush will appoint possibly 3 Supreme Court Justices in the next 4 years. What are americans thinking? Separation of church and governement? Civil liberties? Women's rights? If it only affected them, I'd say they deserve what they get, but it doesn't.
With the right interface, a todo list in RSS could be popular. Basecamp look out!
Anne Galloway: want to find some good books on qualitative research?
Dina on gobal teams. Global teams, small startups. I'm starting to work in circumstances like his now that I am an independent consultant.
A good article on Server side usability. Point your sysadmin to it.
Information Architecture class
I am giving a two hour class about information architecture to students of a post graduate UX course in Belgium. I will post the class online afterwards. My goals with the class are, first, to get them to *see* IA, in other words, to recognize it, and second, to have them do a few exercises to get a feel for the complexity of IA.
So, having said that, any tips? Ideas? Resources? Experiences with getting students to *get* what IA is?
the weblog of Lucas Gonze: "I remember Dave's first tentative audioblogs, because they were so little and so late -- by then Harold had been audioblogging on a daily basis for over a year, IT Conversations had been on the air for over a year, and Webjay had already served up somewhere between five and ten thousand RSS feeds with audio enclosures."
Happy Cog Studios: Work: Amnesty International USA
Happy Cog Studios: Work: Amnesty International USA: a nice one-page overview of the changes made during a redesign.
Interconnected: "One eskimo speaking to another eskimo. The first eskimo says, "You'll never guess what. Those social software people have three hundred words for 'friend'."
Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee
Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee says Victor an he's right. Maria confirmed this to me last week. It's because expresso is brewn from seeds that are more burned, and the more you burn them the stronger they taste, but also the less cafeine they contain. Bring it on!
I know this is a dumb question, but if you give a talk or class at a conference, do you generally get to go for free?
When you search for "books about x" at Google, you now get some guesses from Google's search in a book.
Genuine Microsoft Software
You can now get Photostory 3 for free at Microsoft if you let them check your Windows copy. I like Photostory, it's based on solid research, although 2 was a bit crippled. Go get it!
Protect your right to vote
Print out this card, take your videocamera, especially if you're in a swing state. Protect your right to vote. (via Russ)
Lucas Gonze is starting a new techie mailing list about syndication of audio and video. If you're into video/audio/podcasting, check it out.
I edited this little movie (14 Megs, Quicktime) to get ready for election day. Have a look. I had a bunch of self shot footage to work into it from my travels, but my editing program wouldn't accept those (drivers), so darn! So I just kept what I had. The source videos come from http://www.internetvetsfortruth.org, so go there to see all the original videos that I cut up...
Never Forget: Internets Vets for Truth
Never Forget: Internets Vets for Truth has a collection of classic video related to these elections. Check it out, and tell your friends who *can* vote to make sure to do so next week.
New Zealand News - World - War has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives: Lancet study
New Zealand News - World - War has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives: Lancet study: "The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war suggests that at least 100,000 civilians have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003.
More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, researchers say."
I'll probably be doing a bit more politcal tinted blogging than usual the next few days. Go vote if you can!
On the latest scripting news podcast, Adam Curry and Dave Winer are talking about podcasting and video. Apple's Steve Jobs recently said there was no use for a video iPod, because there's no video content. Of course, we videobloggers know better.
The biggest problem with videoblogging is, I think, a good viewing environment. Everything else is in place. So bring it on, the video iPod.
Gizmodo : Anoso Elio 20GB Photo Player
Gizmodo : Anoso Elio 20GB Photo Player: "The 20GB player doesn't have TV-out abilities like Apple's new iPod Photo, but it does better it in at least two ways. First, it has a built-in SD card slot for copying photos and data over from other devices"
Brilliant. This stuff might be useful for storing pictures while traveling. Reads your cards, stores your pictures AND you can see them. Nice.
Colombians Rock the Vote! | Colombia Guide
Colombians Rock the Vote!: I am creating a last minute voting guide specifically for Colombians. But I know nothing. If you haven't registered already, is it too late?
What is some good software to create an audio radio show for podcasting? Windows. I'm looking for something that lets me EASILY talk, mix in other channels and music an such and export as mp3. Recommendations?