ongoing ? Google Adsense (if
ongoing · Google Adsense (if the page doesn't show up, change the encoding to Cyrillic (Windows). To change the encoding, go to View > Encoding in IE6, Win)
"RFC 1, "Host Software", issued
"RFC 1, "Host Software", issued thirty years ago on April 7, 1969 outlined some thoughts and initial experiments. It was a modest and entirely forgettable memo, but it has significance because it was part of a broad initiative whose impact is still with us today." (RFC stands for request for comments. I was wondering about that.)
Interact Lab: Papers (via Vanderwal)
Interact Lab: Papers (via Vanderwal) has papers on:
- Pervasive Environments and Ubiquitous Computing
- Shared Interaction Spaces
- Playing and Learning
- Tangibles & Virtual Environments
- Collaborative Learning
- Theory & Conceptual Frameworks
- Technology Mediated Communication
- Interactive Art
Stack up on printer paper.
Lessons in syntax design. I
Lessons in syntax design. I could have used this last year :)
I am shopping for a
I am shopping for a digital videocamera. Can I efficiently edit digital video on my laptop of 350 Megs RAM and 500 Mhz? Should I buy a videocamera with less pixels instead of more? I don't really want to buy a new computer.
From the new ads on
From the new ads on Easytopicmaps, I came across Data Advantage Group. Any experiences with this anyone?
Ben Hammersley.com - Sporting Gent's
Ben Hammersley.com - Sporting Gent's guide to the Semantic Web Kinda cool presentation.
Ben Hammersley.com: "The answer to
Ben Hammersley.com: "The answer to the problem of false metadata is, in fact, more metadata."
The new Google ads on
The new Google ads on Easy Topic Maps are showing up now. Have a look and see for yourself what you think about their relevancy.
So I got in at
So I got in at work (9.00), filled my 1.5 liter bottle of water, it's 10.30 and it's empty. I've found that filling it up completely works better: if I fill it only halfway I drink half as much (I don't take more refill trips). I am also getting off the train one station earlier and then walking to work (20 mins). Same in the evenings.
Me and the Credit Card
Me and the Credit Card Company Call Center guy:
Me: I have this 29$ charge on my bill for not paying on time. But I never received the previous bill.
CCCCC guy: Just a moment please.
12 minutes of happy music. I hang in there.
CCCCC guy: This is what happened: long explanation of how it's really my fault.
Me: OK. I do think $29 is a bit steep. If you could remove that charge that would be great. If not, I'd like to cancel this card now.
Pause.
CCCCC guy: Well, we can do that as a one time courtesy. Long explanation of how it really was my fault.
Me: Thanks.
I'm learning.
Jon's Radio: "What open source
Jon's Radio: "What open source projects often lack is not the engine, but the steering wheel." So true.
Even though I have a
Even though I have a computer with the basic system requirements, Six Degrees slows my system down to an unusable crawl after I install it. And there's no way to turn it off: if I tell it to be inactive it still eats up memory. This is the second time this happens - I don't think it's a coincidence. And I'm pissed off: I want this software. I need it. But it wastes my time every time I try to use it (and that for a program that calls itself "timefreeing technology"). Arg.
I wait for the day
I wait for the day when bloggers stop linking to articles about blogging on the NYTimes, and the NYTimes starts linking to blog posts.
Ubiquity PR and the search for the final IA tool
Information architects have long felt left out by the software development tool makers. Companies like Rational (recently purchased by IBM) base their tools on a process that is optimized for complex software development but doesn't really address the needs of information architects. We end up using a variety of tools like Word, Excell or Visio that are just generic enough to be frustrating. Keeping large and complex deliverables up to date is a challenge: make a change in the content inventory and you also need to update the sitemap. And why can't the sitemap be automatically generated from the content inventory? And exported as, say, a requirements document?
The search for the all encompassing tool is nicely illustrated by this case study. It describes how an information architect team at Razorfish used GoLive to manage their deliverables. From the article: "[...] documents tend to end up separate and independent from one another. They are often owned by different people, reside in different locations, and are created in different formats. It is not uncommon that, by the end of a project, updating something as simple as a navigation label requires updating half a dozen documents or more".
This dream goes beyond providing a central tool to manage information architecture deliverables. IBM has been working on a modelling methodology and toolset called OVID that will let you model everything (from audience analysis to use cases to interface widgets) in a UML-like visual language. When you are done modelling, click a button and a prototype of the software gets automatically generated - or that's the dream, anyway. It is the ultimate abstraction, bringing with it all the complications abstractions bring to software development. Still, the dream is hard to resist, so we keep looking for tools focussed on information architects' needs.
Enter Ubiquity RP. I interviewed Victor Hsu at Axure software, who are developing a tool that provides a central modelling and documentation environment for information architects called Ubiquity RP. Ubiquity lets you document requirements from user needs to wireframes, and automatically exports documentation and prototypes.
Ubiquity is based around a 5 step process.
In the last step you can generate a specification document and a working prototype.
Q: Who are you targeting with this product?
Victor Hsu: Our target users are people who are responsible for the functional design of web applications. Their responsibiities includes understanding user and stakeholder needs, defining how a system will be used, designing the visual interfaces, and communicating the design to clients, users, stakeholders, and development. To put it in terms of work product, we are targeting users who create prototypes, functional specifications, or proposals for web applications.
Q: Small companies?
We are finding that both small and large companies are interested in Ubiquity RP. The types of companies we are targeting include companies with internal IT organizations developing intranets and extranets, web design and development consulting firms, and web application product companies.
Q: Information architects?
Many of our target users have Information Architect titles, but others are Business Analaysts, Project Managers, Product Managers, Developers, and Consultants.
Q: Why did you develop it?
From a very grand perspective... We are after the Holy Grail of software development, the ability to create complete applications through code reuse and code automation without programming. We believe that for this to be achieved, it has to start with strong information architecture.
From a more practical perspective... We began developing the solution to help resolve many of the inefficiencies and frustrations that development faces when functional requirements are poorly defined or communicated. We quickly realized that there was an equivalently urgent need to better elicit and communicate requirements to users and stakeholders. Since we were unable to find a good solution to these problems, we saw an opportunity to create a tool that would make it possible to elicit and communicate quality functional requirements more efficiently and to make that process repeatable.
Q: What is the development roadmap for the product like?
Our first product is Ubiquity RP, "real-time prototypes, specifications, and proposals." The next release of the Standard Edition of Ubiquity RP is scheduled for Q2 2003. It will include enhancements to the diagramming and drawing functionality. The tools available in the Standard Edition will be Site Flow (currently Sitemap), Wireframe (currently Page Design), and Generate Specification and Prototype. This is intended for users who are primarily interested in prototyping.
The Professional Edition will be released shortly after in Q3 2003. This edition is designed for users who will be creating specifications or proposals in addition to prototypes. It will include all the tools in the Standard Edition plus Vision, Needs, potentially Use Cases, and enhanced features in Site Flow and Wireframe. We intend to do one release of each edition per year.
In addition, an Enterprise Edition is expected to be introduced in 2005 which will provide a more collaborative environment for teams to work together on a centralized design. Future product lines that we are considering include a product for managing the requirements that are produced from Ubiquity RP, and a product that leverages the designs from Ubiquity RP to lay the groundwork for development.
Q: What is your background? You mention information architects on your site - are you involved in that community?
My background has been primarily along the lines of project management and software development. In each role, I have assumed some information architect responsibilites and have worked closely with product managers and designers to produce specifications and prototypes. I am not currently as active in the IA community as I would like to be.
My involvement with the IA community thus far includes joining and beginning to contribute to several mailing lists for IA professionals. I have also been in contact with several thought leaders in the community who have been very supportive of our efforts. We are investigating opportunities for Axure to become more involved with the IA community. I was particulary interested in the concept of building a knowledge base of information architecture resources maintained by the community that is suggested on the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture website (www.aifia.org).
Q: I tried the product, and I like the general idea. But I am worried I won't be able to also keep using my current tools. What are the plans for making the product work nice within my toolset? Or is it meant to be the only product I use?
We chose to develop our own suite of tools rather than try to integrate several existing tools for many reasons. Primarily, the tools on the market were not treating the designs (site flow diagrams and wireframes) as web application design data. For example, a rectangle in a Visio diagram labeled "Page 1" is a rectangle with a label. In Ubiquity, a page element in a diagram is a page object with specific data associated with it including a wireframe representation and user-defined page attributes.
In addition, it was particulary important to us to tightly integrate needs, siteflow, wireframes, etc. such that we could implement traceability in the future. I'm excited to see the day when a user can see an automatically generated diagram tracing needs to use cases to site flow to ui elements and eventually to code! I don't think use of our tools will replace the use of the Visio's and Dreamweaver's of the world for designing web applications. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses. But we are going to do our best to consolidate the strengths into our tools.
Down the road, we see potential integrations with diagramming tools like Visio, HTML tools like Dreamweaver, analyst tools like Rose, requirements management tools like Requisite Pro and DOORS, and development tools like Visual Studio and WebSphere Studio Application Developer.
Q: I always like tools like this to be customizable as much as possible. Do you plan some kind of scripting environment, where I can script importing or exporting and such? How about the stencils ('libraries')? Can I create my own? Can I share them? Are there plans for functionality like that? Any other plans for letting users customize the app to their needs?
The document format for Ubiquity RP is entirely XML based so a user with an understanding of the schema would be able to script pretty much anything they wanted to manipulate the document. We are planning some changes to the format so we are not recommending that any users do this at this time, but it will certainly be an option in the future.We would like to develop the framework such that custom tools built by 3rd parties can be added to the suite. A person could build their own Needs Manager and plug it into Ubiquity RP for example.
Customizable stencils are slated for the next release. You will be able to create your own. There are also plans to allow users to share stencils as well as elements in what we are calling the repository, which contains reusable diagram or wireframe elements.
For example, if you have designed a stock ticker that you would like to reuse across multiple pages or designs you will be able to do so.
Along the lines of a central knowledge base of IA resources, I would love to see a central repository of Ubiquity RP stencils and design elements that our users could share.
Q: Are there examples of real life projects (not just showcases) being done with Ubiquity? If so, what are the lessons learnt that might guide future development?
Several companies have already used or are using Ubiquity RP for real life projects. We have learned that the application can be used for several different purposes and that users value different aspects of the product.
For example, one IT organization primarily uses the prototyping aspects to quickly validate the requirements for the numerous development requests that they receive from other departments. On the other hand, a consulting company that is using Ubiquity RP values the documentation produced for the purpose of presenting high level proposals to potential clients.
This has impacted our plan for packaging and developing the product. The Standard Edition will be focused on prototyping. A common request for enhancing the prototyping capabilities has been to enhance the diagramming functionality for both the Sitemap and Workflow tools which we are addressing in the next release. The Professional Edition will be focused on creating proposals and specifications in addition to the prototypes. This places a greater emphasis on the types of documents and the formatting of the documents that Ubiquity RP can produce.
Q: Why 'Ubiquity'?
Ubiquity is a play on the word "ubiquitous", meaning existing everywhere. We want our solutions to be accessible, usable, and effective for anyone that is responsible for designing a web application whether they are amateurs or experts, technical or non-technical, in small or in large organizations.
I know you didn't ask, but RP stands for Real-time Prototyping. We very much want to accelerate the process of prototyping to make multiple iterations of prototyping prior to development more feasible for time and budget constrained projects.
Q: On the website it says "If you are interested in guiding future development, please email us at contactus@axure.com." - how does that work?
When people contact us expressing interest in guiding development, it opens up a dialogue to begin discussing their needs, our plans, and how we can make them meet.
Some inquirers have asked for specific features to be added to the next release and others have a greater interest in discussing our long-term goals and mission. Having that on our website has given us the opportunity to speak with people who see the potential in our solution and are excited to see it grow. We've been very happy with the response we've received.
Q: So, did you develop the axure site using ubiquity?
Yes we did! The tricky part was trying to design Ubiquity with Ubiquity :)
If you want to try out Ubiquity, you can download a 30 day trial version for free.
Storing Hierarchical Data in a
Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database explains why the standard (and fairly elegant) way of doing this (just give each element a parentid element and you're done) is inefficient and slow for large datasets. Via Urbansheep (a Russian blog).
From email conversations with various
From email conversations with various people, it seems that getting mod_rewrite to work on Apache on a Windows box is near impossible if you are not endowed with special sysadmin powers. Which means that if you want to develop rewrite code locally, you need a linux box or something. Can someone please tell me this is not true? I refuse to believe. I am not such a techie that I want to get linux box in my little NYC appartment - let alone learn to administer it. I really just want to do rewrite code, and I don't particularly want to do it on my live server.
For once I want to
For once I want to see ads but they don't show. I opened a Google Adsense account for Easy Topic Maps to see how targeted the ads would be for such a specific site. (If you search for topicmaps for example you do get pretty targeted ads on Google). No ads showing up yet though. Will wait.
Should labels be grammatically consistent?
There is a common information architecture myth that says: �Within a labeling system, labels should be grammatically consistent�. If one label uses a verb or is phrased as a question, all the labels should do the same.
Nonsense!
In the Bearbook 2, Peter and Lou write: �Within a specific labeling system, consider choosing a single syntactical approach and sticking with it.� (p. 94) Note the word �consider�.
Like in a game of whisper telephone, subtle guidelines easily get misunderstood. In this review of the first bearbook (1), the author writes: �Labels should be grammatically consistent; if some labels are nouns and others are verbs, readers will be confused.� Next we get people like Marcia Yudkin writing (PDF): �The words and phrases [for labels] should be grammatically parallel�, and gives a rather bad example: �What We Do, Who We Are, Our Portfolio, Contact Us� should, according to her, become: �What We Do, How We Do It, Who We Are, How to Reach Us�.
Recently, I was on a project where we had decided, during the analysis phase, to use labels with verbs. The entire IA was based on activities, so it seemed to make sense.
We soon ran into trouble though: using verbs throughout became harder and harder (sometimes it just didn�t make sense), and during usability tests, people had a hard time finding the right links. Making matters worse, convincing people that using verbs throughout in the labels wasn�t the right approach had become politically difficult.
I asked the SIGIA-L list for help, and soon learned I wasn�t the first person to struggle with this. Cynthia Ramlo wrote: �I worked on an application where this approach, during the analysis phase, had been agreed upon. It was very difficult to implement and it was not clear what verb would be associated with common actions (view, see, look, peruse).�
Donna had experienced this too: �I too have in the past tried the consistent grammatical structure - starting with verbs for tasks/actions. However, I always get to the point where it looks silly or the verbs start repeating, and I drop back to a combination of nouns & verbs.�
Peter Merholz also chipped in: �I've dealt with this on a number of projects in the past. My original inclination was that all labels (particular if there kin labels, such as items available in global navigation) should share grammatical structure -- if one is an action label, all should be action labels.
[�]
For me, the lesson was, verb, noun, action, thing, whatever, it kind of doesn't matter. What matters more is that you utilize words that are likely rattling around in your visitors' heads, words that resonate with them.� Amen.
Livia Labate expanded on that with some thoughts on labeling for international users: �One problem I can see depends on whether your target audience is a native speaker of English or if English is a second/third language. I just finished a course on the Semantics of the English language (so I could create better labels!) and my conclusion is (as Cynthia mentioned) that nouns (and adverbs) are more easily learned than verbs [�]�.
Going back to our earlier example, is �How we do it� truly a better label than �Portfolio�? Of course not! Keeping an eye on grammatical consistency can help when developing labels. But people look for certain key words, and if they don�t see them in your label, you are in trouble. Using labels that work for users is much more important than grammatical consistency in the labeling system.
(1) I couldn�t find my copy of the first bearbook, so I�m not sure what is said about labels in there. Anyone?
Interview: a specialized consultancy
I recently came along Travel UCD, a usability consultancy specialized in a very specific market (travel and hospitality web design). I was intrigued: it makes sense to specialize in a market like this because you can reuse a lot of specific knowledge, but I didn't know of other usability consultants specializing like this. I wondered how it was working out for Alex, and whether it could be a model for others. Alex has an academic background is in user interface design & development, a degree in Applied Computing and has worked within the travel, IT or web industry since 1995.
Q: Hi Alex, thanks for doing this interview. When did you start the company, and how did you come up with the idea of limiting your offerings to such a specific market?
Alex: I started in April 2002. At that time I had just been employed as head of web design & development for a leading consortium of hotel chains in Europe. With my expertise in creating hotel reservation websites for both B2C & B2B marketplaces, and prior experience as a Managing Director of a UK based tour operator, it seemed natural to continue within this sector with Travel UCD. A large amount of the design work that is undertaken on travel websites involves having an understanding of travel & reservation technology - not the normal realm of a web designer or usability consultant. It seemed like there was a market for this.
Q: You are offering some reports with best practices for download; some free, others for payment, similar to what the NNGroup does. What is the thinking behind offering these? Do they sell well? Do they lead to potential clients contacting you?
The NNGroup model was an inspiration, but our reports address specific design questions common to many online travel websites - much more niche than the NNGroup. A useful part of the reports is that we include all tasks and observations from our usability testing. Designers working on similar websites can take the same tasks and repeat the usability testing on their sites and compare results.
We started the reports project for three main reasons. First, it demonstrates to clients and potential clients the kind of knowledge that a specialist usability consultant can bring to a project. Usability is still an alien term for many project and product managers and I wanted to have something tangible that I could demonstrate. Much of my work (prototypes, designs etc) is for future projects - or projects that are not public - so I can't show this work to potential clients for contractual reasons.
Second, and this is important, it defines our intellectual property in a public location. As I work in one specific sector I may be working for clients who compete with each other in some way. By publishing the reports I can clearly demonstrate the key intellectual property that Travel UCD know prior to a project starting.
Third, it provides some revenue from sales. The free report has had about 6000 downloads since July 2002. The 2 recent reports, available for US$150 each, haven't quite sold that many, but enough to cover the research and promotion costs. Most of the household names in online travel from all corners of the globe have purchased their copies as well as a few travel technology providers.
Q: How do your organize your research? Do you wait for client engagements to pay for testing? Or do you organize tests outside of client work? How do you store your data? (video, ...?) Do you revisit earlier tests for more insights later?
The research for the reports is conducted proactively. I choose topics that I know are of keen interest to travel website designers & product managers. These questions may have come up at industry conferences or from previously unanswered design questions from earlier projects.
I begin by looking at the main design approaches to a particular issue. I then evaluate statistically how many travel websites apply the design in the alternative ways. Following that I then take a sample of 4 or 5 websites who all use different approaches and then conduct usability testing with 12 users on these 4 or 5 sites. Although not statistically significant, I believe that by tying my observations from the testing with the statistical analysis and my own experience, I can devise guidelines that define best industry practice.
At this stage I have not revisited earlier tests as there are so many areas left to study!
Q: So what do you think is the best site in this category you have seen, from a usability point of view?
I tend to look at travel websites on a product by product basis rather than as a whole site. For example I may say that a certain site has a good hotel reservation booking process whereas another site may have a well designed flight section. At this time I don't have an all round firm favourite. In my opinion even the major online travel websites that everyone knows and uses demonstrate usability flaws that impact on the user experience.
This leaves some space in the market for a well designed website to acquire greater market share using usability as the core of their strategy much like Google has for search engines. In the travel industry this would probably be an existing company not a new entrant as the success of travel websites is not solely defined by design; underlying technology and having a large range of well priced products and inventory are equally important.
Q: What would your advice be for someone wanting to set up a usability consultancy?
Ensure you have a potential client list before you set up as finding them afterwards is much harder.
Thanks Alex! I am looking forward to seeing how your company flourishes. I also wonder wether this could be a model for other people wanting to start a usability consultancy. I can imagine a usability consultant specialized in, say, human resource intranets. Or gambling sites. Lots of possibilities there.
The AIFIA | Job Board
The AIFIA | Job Board goes live, and the IAWiki lists similar job boards out there.
AIfIA is doing a follow
AIfIA is doing a follow up IA salary survey. Go now: Salaries and Benefits for Information Architects.
Yannis Tzitzikas is a name
Yannis Tzitzikas is a name you will be hearing more from if you're interested in where faceted classification is going. Beyond Ranganathan, I can tell you that. He has a bunch of fascinating papers on his site, and send me another one (not available from his site), called An Algebraic Approach for Specifying ompound Terms in Faceted Taxonomies (PDF, 200K), which talks about how to impose limits on the combinations you can make in a faceted classification scheme. I have to study it: I'm not sure if this also solves the problem of dependent facets (where one facet is only applicable if certain topics of another facet have been selected).
Bullfighter %u2014 Stripping The Bull Out
Bullfighter %u2014 Stripping The Bull Out Of Business || A consulting jargon fighter from Deloitte Consulting: "Bullfighter is software that runs in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, within Microsoft Office 2000 or XP. It works a lot like the spelling and grammar checker in those applications, but focuses on jargon and readability."
37signals ? 37express: Quick, Affordable,
37signals » 37express: Quick, Affordable, Single-Page Redesigns In Only One Week. People seem to be coming up with all kinds of client-focused services lately. Good.
Google Expands Contextual Ad Placement
Google Expands Contextual Ad Placement Program To Small Sites: "Google has expanded its contextual ads program to allow many more content sites to carry its paid listings. The new Google AdSense program allows site owners to sign-up for the program in a self-serve manner, similar to becoming an Amazon affiliate."
peterme.com: That Tricky Word, "Design":
peterme.com: That Tricky Word, "Design": "In the next iteration of the Adaptive Path website, we will not refer to our work as "user experience design," and are in fact moving away from the word "design" altogether."
PortalsMag.com: IBM: A Portal Epiphany:
PortalsMag.com: IBM: A Portal Epiphany: "I'd say portals have been predominately infrastructure but IBM is recognizing that going forward, the differentiators will come increasingly from the user experience end."
Simon Willison: Missing the point:
Simon Willison: Missing the point: "The problem isn't the quality of the browser, it's the quality of the web sites themselves. IE for Windows has a ridiculously loose HTML parser that will interpret and display just about any garbage you care to throw at it. [...] The only way a competing browser could render those sites in exactly the same way as IE would be for it to reverse engineer the IE rendering engine in its entirety, which kind of eliminates the point of having a different browser in the first place."
No. The point of having a different browser isn't to force people to code according to standards. The point is to avoid a monopoly situation. Safari should not try to emulate IE's rendering, but it should strive to be as forgiving of the HTML that is currently out there as possible, and make that it's development priority.
Evangelism is War (via Simon):
Evangelism is War (via Simon): "This book focuses on technical evangelism as it was practiced at Microsoft from 1990 through 2000. In this decade, we may have lost a few skirmishes, but we won every battle."
Ontario Ministry of Energy: very
Ontario Ministry of Energy: very nice illustration of the use of accesskeys (use alt + the underlined letter to jump to a menu item, then click enter to select it).
Since you can Use basic
Since you can Use basic HTML files to navigate notes on the iPod, hasn't anyone found a way to synch their RSS aggregator stuff and send it to the iPod for reading on the train?
Joel on Software: "Here's the
Joel on Software: "Here's the thing: the very best candidates have come to realize that they have a choice of where to work, and when they apply for a job, they are applying because there's something intriguing about that particular job, not because they'll take any work that comes along. And you can see it in their cover letters. For example, if I were to see something like "I'm happy where I am, but I've always wanted to move to New York and if Fog Creek is anything like you describe it on your website, it sounds like a great place" you would sound a lot more desirable than someone who writes, "You will find that I am a very hard worker."
PHP question: on my local
PHP question: on my local server (poorbuthappy.localhost), I want a file to include "C:somepathincludes.php". On the live server, I want the same file to include "/home/www/includes.php". This used to work fine when I used relative paths: include ("../../includes.php") in the file doing the including. The includes file is OUTSIDE of the web accessible directory tree. Now my web server has set up path /home/www/" for the includes file and "/pedro/path/" for the file doing the including. This is a problem. I can't use relative paths anymore.
One solution would be to detect which URL I am on before including, but isn't there a better way?
I can't seem to get
I can't seem to get Apache rewrite module working on my local Windows computer. Apache works, PHP works, MySQL works. Mod-rewrite doesn't. My Apache config file has the following lines uncommented:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
and
AddModule mod_rewrite.c
and in the virtualhost directive in the config file I have
RewriteEngine on
But it doesn't work! Help! I run Windows XP and Apache 1.3.27. Any tips appreciated.
Even Usability Net's questionnaire is
Even Usability Net's questionnaire is a joke: "Sorry, you haven't filled in the entire questionnaire.... Please use your
browser's BACK function to return to the questionnaire and complete it." Say what?
Amazon.com is getting into the
Amazon.com is getting into the services business and is offering its technology and tools to retailers. Mmm...
Why don't emails in mailing
Why don't emails in mailing lists with public archives have a URL in the footer to the archived version of that particular email?
After reading Simon (in short:
After reading Simon (in short: M$ is stopping development on IE as a standalone browser, we'll be stuck with it for at least 5 more years), I have come to peace with what I felt was my falling behind on HTML development. Basic table layouts + CSS for styling will be with us for many more years, and I find that reassuring. There is too much other stuff to learn.
(Dutch) AIfIA in het Nederlands
(Dutch) AIfIA in het Nederlands | Nieuws is naar mijn weten het enige Nederlandstalige blog over informatie architectuur. Stuur het rond!
Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals
Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals by Steve Pavlina (via Joel)
IP to Country: "The IP-to-Country
IP to Country: "The IP-to-Country Database is about 98% accurate on country recognition." Pretty darn good, with dynamic IPs and all. Free too.
Cover Pages: Darwin Information Typing
Cover Pages: Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA XML): kindof a mix between topicmaps and the holy grail of technical writing: content reuse, "DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways." The FAQ is useful:
"Q: What is a topic?
A: A topic is a chunk of information organized around a single subject. Structurally, it is a title followed by text and images, optionally organized into sections. Topics can be of many different types, the most common being concepts, tasks, and reference."
Note this is different from the definition of a topic in Topicmaps. This format is for technical writing and content reuse, not for ontology modeling and merging.
Sometimes Victor's writing truly kicks
Sometimes Victor's writing truly kicks ass. (I mean that in a good way.)
IndyJunior Flash Mapping Module: very
IndyJunior Flash Mapping Module: very cool: feed it an XML file and it will show your travels on a map. Too bad I don't travel much these days.
Joi Ito's Web: Attention Concentration
Joi Ito's Web: Attention Concentration and becoming a place
I fixed my RSS file,
I fixed my RSS file, I took the RSS 0.91 spec and did the MT code myself.