ongoing ? Perfect Tool: Dandelion
ongoing · Perfect Tool: Dandelion Killer: "So from time to time I'll write up an example of a tool that comes close to the Platonic ideal: it does what it does as well as what it does can be done. I'll use a very inclusive definition of %u201Ctool%u201D: hardware, software, you name it. Suggestions are welcome. Today we start with the humble Dandelion Killer."
ongoing ? On the Goodness
ongoing · On the Goodness of Unicode: excellent brief introduction to Unicode for developers, but useful for IA's as well, even if you are not a techie.
Simon Willison: XmlWriter: Generating XML
Simon Willison: XmlWriter: Generating XML from PHP: Simon produced the extremely useful looking XML writer class.
Visual SourceSafe isn't really great
Visual SourceSafe isn't really great for versioning with documents (as opposed to code). When I create a new doc, I have to create the doc locally, close it, put it in sourcesafe, check it out and open it again locally. Annoying. When I want to edit a doc I have to close it if I have it open, open Sourcesafe, browse to the right directory, check it out, open the document again and then edit it. And then not forget to check it in again.
BBC NEWS | Technology |
BBC NEWS | Technology | Where spam comes from: "e-mail addresses posted on websites or in newsgroups attract the most spam."
Good news for IA's. Corporations
Good news for IA's.
Corporations seek better search results | CNET News.com: "Ford Motor got a crash course in the science of search analytics two years ago during a high-profile product recall.
When the carmaker announced that it was replacing Firestone tires on all of its vehicles, consumers stampeded the corporate Web site in search of information that went beyond the typical product sheet. Over the following days and months, Ford and search partner Ask Jeeves not only fielded thousands of searches a day; they recorded and analyzed the queries on the fly in hopes of improving the service, a practice that continues today.
"The Ask Jeeves reports are used in two ways," according to Joyce Mueller, a consumer e-marketing manager at Ford. "First: to evaluate the site design and understand what content people are having trouble finding...Second: to learn what people are looking for. Currently, the majority of our searches are not for our main vehicles, but for other information such as the SVT (Special Vehicles Team). This helps us prioritize enhancements to the site."
In the field of customer intelligence, search analytics is poised to become a star. Examining search queries is now the preferred way for corporations to analyze Web site activity, to make sites more responsive and profitable."
O'Reilly Network: Request for help
O'Reilly Network: Request for help from a Geek Volunteer [April 26, 2003]: "Over the years, we've donated books to many nonprofits and schools in developing countries. Last October, I received an email from Sudhakar Chandra, a self-described "geek volunteer," that got me thinking about how O'Reilly and other companies could do a better job of supporting the good works of people like Sudhakar. His email was a compelling reminder that books are a rare and precious resource in many parts of the world."
Judge: File-swapping tools are legal:
Judge: File-swapping tools are legal: "In an almost complete reversal of previous victories for the record labels and movie studios, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast--parent of the Morpheus software--and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software. The ruling does not directly affect Kazaa, software distributed by Sharman Networks, which has also been targeted by the entertainment industry."
BBC NEWS | Technology |
BBC NEWS | Technology | Gadgets go back to basics: "As a backlash towards simplicity manifests itself throughout the electronics world, experts will call on designers to develop technology that works well in the real world."
Microsoft Research seeks better search
Microsoft Research seeks better search | CNET News.com: "A prototype application called "Stuff I've Seen," for instance, will store every screen that has popped up on a given computer monitor for a year. Another prototype called "Ask MSR" allows users to pose queries using the natural flow of language, asking "Where is Saddam Hussein?" for example."
Dented Reality Australia: Information Architecture,
Dented Reality Australia: Information Architecture, Usability, Web Development by Beau Lebens.
SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Search vs.
SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Search vs. Browse - the debate continues. Good stuff from Jared Spool.
peterme.com: Who is Wired Magazine's
peterme.com: Who is Wired Magazine's Audience? - Wired is Tired.
"headshot" is a good query
"headshot" is a good query if you are looking for some images for personas - mind the rights issues of course.
If only I had had
If only I had had these Patterns for XML Documents when designing XFML.
This has been hovering on
This has been hovering on the border of my consciousness for months, and it sounds kinda stupid, but I just realized what's wrong with Automatic Classification and the general approach to classification, and how to fix it. It is, ironically, because of the (largely unconscious) worldview inherent in the heritage of the library sciences. I'm gonna try to write it down clearly - or I'll probably come to my senses later.
Easy News Topics - RSS2.0
Easy News Topics - RSS2.0 Module: "This specification defines the Easy News Topics (ENT) Module for the RSS2.0 syndication format. ENT is intended to be a very simple standard for describing how topic information can be introduced into an RSS2.0 news feed." (thanks Eric Scheid)
I was setting up Microsoft
I was setting up Microsoft Money with the hope and expectation I would be able to import my bank statement details from my online (US) bank account. Turns out I need to actually type in every transaction! Did I miss something? I was using Money 2000 - maybe the new version does that? I'll buy it if it does, but if I have to type in everything, forget about it. Anyone know how this works?
FacetMap: "FacetMap continues to bring
FacetMap: "FacetMap continues to bring you innovations in faceted classification. There's a certain type of facet which almost everyone would like to use, but which no one has offered -- until now. The new Spectrum facet type allows your users to navigate numerical data, by specifying their own range of numbers instead of picking from a list of arbitrarily predefined ranges." Nifty.
Information Architecture: You Do It,
Information Architecture: You Do It, You Just Don't Know It (a reminder link for myself)
Tanya's list of resources that
Tanya's list of resources that argue for and suggest best practices in URI construction.
On Semantics and Markup: "When
On Semantics and Markup: "When you get an ASN.1 message, you can unpack it and you get the data items and their types. So you know: This is a fraction with 2 digits of precision, this is a 17-character string, this is a non-negative integer, and so on. But, you don't get labels.
XML, on the other hand, tells you: this is called price, this is called Bill-To, and this is called quantity-shipped, but (by default) tells you nothing about data types.
To oversimplify, XML is winning and ASN.1 is losing. There are a variety of reasons for this, but one of them is that it seems to be more important to know what something is called than what data type it is. This result is not obvious from first principles, and has to count as something of a surprise in the big picture."
Interview: Lou Rosenfeld and Steve
Interview: Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Krug on UX: "Lou: Well, I'll admit that I have plenty of trepidation, because Steve seems like the kind of guy who snores.
Steve: How did you know? It's true, as Melanie can tell you. But my real drawback as a roommate would be the fact that I tend to stay up all night watching old movies and infomercials. And since I suspect that Lou is fairly neat, I think we'd have the potential for a real Felix/Oscar thing. (I'd rather think of us as more like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the old Road movies, like The Road to Morocco ("...like Web- ster's Dic- tion- ary, we're Moroc- co bounnnddddd.")"
Search Workshop Submissions (CHI -
Search Workshop Submissions (CHI - via Lou) Happy printing!
I stayed away from eZ
I stayed away from eZ publish (PHP cms) because of the installation nightmares. With eZ publish 3 released those seem to have been addressed, so I am going to take another look.
Patterns vs. evolutionary design: stop
Patterns vs. evolutionary design: stop overengineering (PDF): "When I first began learning patterns, they represented a flexible, sophisticated and even elegant way of doing object-oriented design that I very much wanted to master. After thoroughly studying the patterns, I used them to improve systems I'd already built and to formulate designs for systems I was about to build. Since the results of these efforts were promising, I was sure I was on the right path. But over time, the power of patterns led me to lose sight of simpler ways of writing code. After learning that there were two or three different ways to do a calculation, I'd immediately race toward implementing the Strategy pattern, when, in fact, a simple conditional expression would have been a perfectly sufficient solution." (more goodies here)
EServer TC Library: "The EServer
EServer TC Library: "The EServer TC Library is a experiment into community-based libraries -- part web portal, part library index -- for professional, scientific and technical communicators."
I will be speaking at
I will be speaking at the 'Society for Technical Communication Belgian Chapter on metadata, topicmaps and such.
(via Catalogablog) AskDCMI: Q&A about
(via Catalogablog) AskDCMI: Q&A about Dublin Core.
I am adding directories to
I am adding directories to SourceSafe, and I have to doubleclick the directory (open it) in the dialog window to add it. If not, I add the parent directory, recursively. I have done this twice this morning and once yesterday, and everytime I only realize this after about 10 minutes of pumping unneeded stuff in there. Little interface glitch, pisses me off.
Jeremy Zawodny's blog: Yahoo Gets
Jeremy Zawodny's blog: Yahoo Gets Slashdotted: "Yahoo got slashdotted today. It was because of Michael Radwin's PHPCon 2002 talk on Yahoo adopting PHP. The funny thing is that it held up just fine--served by a single FreeBSD server running Apache. [...] The fact that public.yahoo.com was serving static files, no PHP or anything fancy, meant that the CPU had time to spare. During the peak of traffic, the CPU was still over 50% idle much of the time."
Jeremy Zawodny's blog: "Wow. I
Jeremy Zawodny's blog: "Wow. I spent much of the day without phone, computer, network, etc. I was up at Inktomi (now "Yahoo! WebSearch" I think) headquarters learning about lots of cool stuff I cannot repeat with out being killed.
However, I did learn that Inktomi's search system knows, uhm... "stuff" about blogs. And I got the chance to see what some of their tools told me about my blog. Neat stuff."
I'm probably late with this,
I'm probably late with this, but here goes: For great justice: All your base + war in iraq. The original was better but the image of Bush with the robot voice is powerful.
Big Dead Place: (via Mike)
Big Dead Place: (via Mike) "If you almost die or something, either at a field camp or by industrial havoc in town, people will be quite fascinated. Restrictions on 'complaining' or on 'acting all badass' may be safely discarded, within reason."
The Register: "Although it took
The Register: "Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank to flood Google with Moore's alternative, neutered definition."
I need to set up
I need to set up an environment for developing Taxomita (which is not open source) with a distributed team. I need bugtracking, CVS, and minimal maintenance and cost. I would like something that is easily administered (adding developers, giving permissions, ...) Something like SourceCast maybe, although it's hard to figure out exactly what they offer - very confusing site. Other options? Ideas? Tips? I really need advice! The situation is: I have limited time and limited budget, but I want a development effort that is not open source (I am the dictator) but is distributed. And I do not want to spend my weekends administering a system.
Clasificaciones Facetadas y Metadatos (y
Clasificaciones Facetadas y Metadatos (y II): XFML (Spanish article about XFML)
Simon Willison is building an
Simon Willison is building an RSS aggregator and this seemingly simple project is bringing up a bunch of problems with widely varying RSS feeds.
I am trying to set
I am trying to set up a development process for Taxomita and wondering if I should open source it?
A Day In The Life
A Day In The Life Of BBCi Search: where we learn that:
- "an editorial and taxonomy team at the BBC constantly monitor the searches gaining high volume in order to match the correct content to them"
- "40% of the searches on the service were specifically and unequivocally looking for UK based information [...] 50% of searches were not geographically or culturally focussed on the UK at all. "
- "users were most likely to attempt to use advanced search between 6am and 9am in the morning, and between 3pm and 10pm in the evening, when around 5% of searches showed some attempt to use advanced search. Notably at the peak time for site usage, over the lunch period, users were only half as likely to use advanced techniques - around 2.5% of searches. [...] 1 in 5 attempts to use advanced search fail"
- "When a search is made on the BBCi site, effectively just two pieces of information are passed to the search technology - the search query itself, and the referring page. With these two pieces of information search is able to provide results that are contextualised in places where this is appropriate - for example, different top results for the search term 'china' depending on whether you are on the BBC News site, or on the Antiques site."
- "1 in 12 [search terms] feature incorrect spellings"
- "URLs made up around 3% of searches, and questions just over 0.5% of searches."
- "I found that 36% of searches consisted of just one word and 35% of searches used just two words. [...] 16% contained 3 words, 7% contained 4 words, 3% contained 5 words, and the remaining 3% consisted of six or more words."
- "Overall, this gives us a picture of where the focus of our users is at different times of the day. This is for 'educational' types of searches in the early afternoon. By 4pm the attention of BBCi users has switched to the areas of the site devoted to entertaining them. By the evening, the audience seems divided between two - between children looking for educational material, and adults looking for informative material."
I happen to have received
I happen to have received two emails in one day from people upset with my sites. One is political: "I just clicked on your Guide to war link and I have to tell you this is the last time I will be visiting your site. [followed by a long political rant]".
The other one is also political, but in a different way: "Your site, specifically the portion entitled SoWhatsWrongWithTopicMaps, has led our organization to what I hope is an "unintended" consequence, namely, the possible cessation of work on implememting a well-constructed topic map. [... some ranting] If this has been your intent - to disrupt - you and your site have succeeded. If it is not your intent, I would urge you to consider modifying your content."
I am often surprised by how seriously people take the opinions I post online. Often they are really offended (for example, about this page).
Even my girlfriend has felt offended by some of the opinions I have posted about Colombia. I tried to tell her these are opinions, nothing more, and I may have changed my mind since, but she says many people consider what they read on a website as somehow written by an authority.