New Architect: You Are Here:
New Architect: You Are Here: "Go to Google Images and type in "rose," and you get about 197,000 hits - with everything ranging from the flower to people named Rose to a Rose Garden seating chart. "If you see one or two that you like, and you want to see something similar, there's no way to tell the search engine to do that," says Michael Crandall, vice president of business development for VIMA Technology." Um, "more like this"?
Here's what I want in
Here's what I want in m digital camera:
- 20 Gigs of storage (if iPod can do it my camera should too). Use lots of RAM to store pictures temporarily until they are saved on the harddrive. That should store 'bout 5000 high res pictures, which is a nice number - enough for a two week holiday for example. And firewire of course.
- No delay when making a picture. Figure it out hardware people! How can you do decent photography when there's a split second delay after clicking the button?
- A great UI. Most digital photography UI's are plain horrible. It's as if user centered design never happened.
- multiple lenses. If I want to snap on a zoomlens I should be able to.
- a pricetag < $700 for the basic model.
facetedclassification: "For example, the number
facetedclassification: "For example, the number one book on Amazon right now is "8 Minutes in the Morning". The Subject of that book is "fitness" or "losing weight". That's an important facet. But there are other values in other facets, like Price ($10.47), rating (4.5 stars), edition (hardcover only), and so on. These are attributes of the book itself, but not of the book's subject. They are other headings under which you could file "8 Minutes in the Morning".
[...]
A better example would be a piece of furniture, like a chair at a chair store. It has facets, certainly, like size, softness, price, and whether it
has a refrigerator in its arm. But what's the subject matter of the chair? At this point, it seems awkward to classify the chair with things called "subjects"."
iPod's IA (via PeterM) Facets
iPod's IA (via PeterM) Facets indeed. Yet, the iPod's interface doesn't let you combine facets, and there is a strange distinction between playlists and browsing by artist/album/genre. I haven't looked into it too much though. Yesterday, I had an experience: I needed music in a room, turned to the cd player, and realized my music wasn't on that. It was on the laptop. 2003.
There's something wrong if Matt
There's something wrong if Matt Jones is afraid to redesign his website.
Plain English Campaign: Free guides:
Plain English Campaign: Free guides: How to write in plain English: "It's not 'cat sat on the mat or 'Peter and Jane' writing."
(via Mike): Showcase of Japanese
(via Mike): Showcase of Japanese Keitai Culture: pictures of people using their cellphones.
Let-Me-Stay-For-A-Day.com: "I am travelling the
Let-Me-Stay-For-A-Day.com: "I am travelling the world to visit most of the people who invite me over and I write about this all in my daily reports on this website." Simple and clever.
On why different cultures classify
On why different cultures classify differently. Not sure if I agree with it all but interesting stuff.
Rogue Semiotics: What the XFML?:
Rogue Semiotics: What the XFML?: "Taxomita [...] Something else to go on the server. It will, of course, require PHP and MySQL, so that's more gubbins to install and learn. Stop it, world, stop it now." Sorry. The poorbuthappy.com homepageclearly states "can't ... stop ...".
Today I am ripping a
Today I am ripping a whole bunch of my CD's and then I will put them on my girlfriends' iPod. Then I'll borrow it and go to the gym. I wish I knew of a way to grab the audio of the Stanford CHI seminars as mp3s so I could listen to them in the gym. That would be amazing. Any ideas?
Ben Hammersley.com: Taxomita - faceted
Ben Hammersley.com: Taxomita - faceted metadata hot loving
Pepys' Diary: "In the morning
Pepys' Diary: "In the morning before I went forth old East brought me a dozen of bottles of sack, and I gave him a shilling for his pains. Then I went to Mr. Sheply who was drawing of sack in the wine cellar to send to other places as a gift from my Lord,1 and told me that my Lord had given him order to give me the dozen of bottles. Thence I went to the Temple to speak with Mr. Calthropp about the 60l. due to my Lord, but missed of him, he being abroad. Then I went to Mr. Crew's and borrowed 10l. of Mr. Andrewes for my own use, and so went to my office, where there was nothing to do. Then I walked a great while in Westminster Hall, where I heard that Lambert was coming up to London; that my Lord Fairfax was in the head of the Irish brigade, but it was not certain what he would declare for." Posed to go on for 10 years: blogging from the death.
LazyWeb I invoke thee. It's
LazyWeb I invoke thee.
It's 2003. Can we finally have a simple XML format for exchanging the basic blog/discussion board information. Just get the basic stuff in there, and then make sure as many as possible tools support both import and export. This is easy stuff! If I was developing a discussion or blogging tool, I'd write it myself and implement it. It could have elements like:
(gbde)
// generic blog and discussion exchange format
(item type='post' id='19863')
// type could be post or comment or thread for example
// item can have a parentid attribute as well
(author id='157')
// if author has been defined before in this xml doc you only need to give the id
(ip)(/ip)
(email)(/email)
(name)(/name)
(homepage)(/homepage)
// and a bunch more of identifying fields
(/author)
(content)
(title)(/title)
(text format='plain')(/text)
// Multiple text elements allowed
// format can be plain, html, or a url to a page defining the format
(/content)
(item/)
(/gbde)
Getting support for this wouldn't be hard either. Exporting this stuff is easy in most systems, importing sligthly harder (but not much). Most systems should be able to code good support for the standard in a day or two.
Adoption of technology: How the
Adoption of technology: How the Ashaninka from Peru created a Website
How low can Dow go?:
How low can Dow go?: "In a stunning example of corporate insensibility, Dow Chemical, the worlds largest chemical company, and new owners of Union Carbide is to sue survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. While the site of the disaster lies covered in toxic waste and survivors struggle with continuing ill health and deadly pollution from the site, Dow has decided to add to their woes with a Indian lawsuit."
FOAP - Feel Of A
FOAP - Feel Of A Place: the Lazyweb is like a collective brainstorm. The incentive is that hey, somebody might just build this.
LazyWeb.org - the first real
LazyWeb.org - the first real reason to get Trackback going.
Taming the Task of Checking
Taming the Task of Checking for Terrorists' Names: "[...] Take, for instance, the name "Abd al-Rahman," which can be a given name or a surname, depending on its culture of origin. When transliterated from the Arabic into Latin characters, the name has three parts, the first two of which are prefixes for Rahman, meaning "slave of" or "servant of."
But when an English speaker hears the name, it tends to sound like "Abdurrahman." A person writing it down based simply on how it sounds could easily spell it as one word and in a way that shares few characters with the transliterated version.
In some databases, "Abd" or "al" might be stored in fields for first or middle names, or the name could be written as "Abdurrahman" or "Abdurahman" all in one field, or "Abdul Rahman" in two fields. There are endless variations, even assuming no typos."
All Clones Are Not the
All Clones Are Not the Same: (NYTimes) "Words are not always content with scientists' definitions of them. What percentage of Americans actually think of a tomato as a fruit rather than a vegetable? How often are bison called buffalo? In general, we can live with that sort of confusion - but when it comes to a politically charged issue like cloning, we can't." About two different types of activities that are both called "cloning".
EContent Magazine, November 2002 |
EContent Magazine, November 2002 | Auto-Categorization: Coming to a Library or Intranet Near You!: "[...] companies still won't pay for humans to categorize their content, but they are more likely to pay anywhere from 250K to 750K for software that frequently does a less effective job."
IntelligentKM Feature: "For many large
IntelligentKM Feature: "For many large intranets automatic classification is the only feasible choice. The volume of Web-page content on the IBM.com portal alone is now as large as the entire Internet was in 1994."
Standards Target Categorization: "The fact
Standards Target Categorization: "The fact that wide use of RDF could make some categorization products irrelevant could also account for this hesitancy [to adopt RDF standards in metadata products for enterprise environments]."
Project: Shutterbug | Art Dec
Project: Shutterbug | Art Dec Lou. Speaks to the frustrated anthropologist in me. I read a research paper once on the difference between western tourists and Indian tourists. Westerners go and stare at stuff, being "amazed" or "impressed" at the glory of it all. For Indians, the visiting of the place is more important - this is why westerners are often confused by their lack of "amazement" or "appreciation" of a place. I'm not explaining it well, but the paper was cool...
Paula Thornton: ROI = Really
Paula Thornton: ROI = Really Obtuse Indicators: "[...] reality can't be modeled financially." Right on!
Sovjet Design Process
Unspoken Secrets of Webdesign number One: Forget about Phases.
You know all the nicely done phase 1 - discovery, phase 2 - design - and-so-on things webdesign companies have? The Sovjet Design Process. Burocratic. It is done because it ensures some level of quality, but it isn't how brilliant websites are designed. The main motivators behind Sovjet Design Process are fear and restriction. Fear of working with people who don't have a clue what's going on, which means they have to be guided through a strict process in order to deliver some kind of results. The result in this case is mediocracy. Mediocracy is better than bad design, by the way.
Sovjet Design Process is not how brilliant websites are built. The best design teams are able to work through things jumping from a business goal to an interface widget and back to an information architecture while discussing a technical detail. Everybody is a specialist in one field, and a generalist in most others, and more importantly, there is an appropriate mix of skills. The programmers understand basic marketing. Teams like this require a high level of trust to run smoothly, trust between each other and trust from the people they work for. Where is the study of excellent design teams and what makes them that way?
My order for a laptop
My order for a laptop (Win) firewire card (to use with the iPod) was cancelled at Amazon. Anyone know where to find one for a reasonable price (60$ or something)?
2002
I'm getting ready for new years eve festivities and I have an hour to kill - what better time to do an overview of 2002 as I remember it.
What I did in 2002:
- Quit my job in February
- Moved to NYC
- Wrote XFML in the summer
- Got together with my lovely girlfriend
- Got a new job, and appartment and a visa in NYC
It's been a fantastic year.
The rest of the world watched as the USA prepared for the first unprovoked war started by a western country since, and my history may be failing me here, WW2. That's despite signing a bunch of treaties that should prevent this stuff. Within the US, there has been a very strong swing to the right. The country keeps up its efforts to destabilize the middle east (effectively creating the next generation of anti-US terrorists). People here seem clueless or don't care. Fairly, dare I say it, fascist acts like the Homeland Security Bill are accepted without much comment or protest.
Again, I'm not much of a political person, but if you've had even a little but of European history, this is scary stuff. If you've read 1984, it's even scarier. Newspeak abounds.
Let me tell you about my aunties in Belgium. They are conservative, non political at all. In Europe, we have always respected the US because they bailed us out in WW2, and got us going economically in the decades after that. Respect. When I visited Belgium, I saw four of my aunts. Each and every one of them commented on the direction the U.S. is taking as being a really fucked up (my words) thing. That is a dramatic swing in what they think of the US. Americans don't realize their leaders are antagonizing moderate, conservative people like my aunties all over the world. Europe. Asia.
Don't mess with my aunties, USA. Let me assure you, you can't handle them.
Lawrence Lessig: "Where is the
Lawrence Lessig: "Where is the political party that demands respect for principles that I thought were fundamental."
Outboard brain: documentary filmmakers: Fred
Outboard brain: documentary filmmakers:
Fred Wiseman (my favourite so far), Nick Broomfield (my second favourite), Jon Alpert, Errol Morris
The keyboard of my laptop
The keyboard of my laptop is fucked. I plugged in a keyboard, and now when I type on the plugged in keyboard things work fine, but when I type on my laptop keyboard I get numbers for certain letters. Here goes: " get n40bers f6r certa5n 3etters."
I'm running Win XP on a Compaq Presario 700. I have 2 accounts on my laptop, the problem doesn't occur on the other account (in Win XP you can have multiple logins, each with its own desktop preferences and such). I couldn't find any tips on the compaq site... anyone has an idea?
White Xmas! We went to
White Xmas! We went to see Frida (the movie) yesterday and afterwards went to Lincoln center (New York City, USA) in the middle of a snowstorm. It was fantastic - the spectacle of the snow flying around between the tops of the building, illuminated by the lights was even better than the tree. White Christmas indeed - the whitest in NYC since 1909.
My cable internet company is
My cable internet company is screwing me (charging things I didn't order) but since they're a monopoly I can't change. If I get this wireless router, can I then let everyone in the building know they can use my wireless access point? And how much is a wireless card for my laptop (Compaq)?
AIFIA | AIfIA Finishes its
AIFIA | AIfIA Finishes its First Month with 200 Members, International Flavor: "The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, which launched in early November, already sports a membership of over 200 people from five continents engaged in the emerging field of information architecture. Recent additions to AIfIA's leadership council are similarly global, hailing from Australia, Belgium (that's me), Chile, Denmark, and the US."
CityDesk: Desktop Content Management: why
CityDesk: Desktop Content Management: why do they have this, like, really blurry screenshot?
Digital Web Magazine - Features:
Digital Web Magazine - Features: The Psychology of Navigation: "A typical user, faced with a typical, freshly loaded Web page - her eyes bouncing around the page - takes in all the options available." No they don't. At least not when they're looking for something - they'll click the first likely link.
destinationKM.com: Building ''I'' Schools: "Pioneering
destinationKM.com: Building ''I'' Schools: "Pioneering university programs in information science." Information architecture should be thaught there. Is it?
The Register: "Microsoft Corp is
The Register: "Microsoft Corp is believed to have trained its acquisition crosshairs on Macromedia Inc."
Faceted Classification Schemes / By
Faceted Classification Schemes / By B. C. Vickery. (thanks Michael): reprint (sounds like photocopy) of this hard to find book.
Bias makes ambigious metadata more useful, not less.
A comment on Christina's blog made me think: "And for metadata to be useful, it has to be honest." After reading lots of Lakoff, that just didn't sound right. Thinking about it some more, I think bias is:
1. unavoidable with ambigious metadata (unambigious metadata are things like publication date, author. Ambigious metadata are things like topics or ratings, and can be a lot more useful.) There is always bias. Unbiased categorization is not possible.
2. a value-add. I find it more valuable if a friend that I know (whose biases I am familiar with) recommends me something than if a stranger does the same. Bias ads value to metadata. Or maybe that should be: Known bias increases the value of ambigious metadata.
That's not really what I wanted to say though. More known bias means more valuable ambigious metadata. That's more like it, although I feel I'm still missing something. It's not just that knowing bias is good in a we-can't-avoid-it-so-lets-know-it kind of way, it's that bias in itself is good - it ads personality and flavour to metadata.
Is this something librarians have known all along?
Better Living Through Software: "It
Better Living Through Software: "It became a mission of mine to discover why only Germans seemed to be able to crack the Chinese auto market, but I only found more mysteries."
Metacrap: there are indeed real
Metacrap: there are indeed real and often unrecognized reasons why metadata hasn't taken off.
People are lazy and stupid are bad analysis (is that a plural?) of these reasons: people aren't lazy, they are just not interested in tagging metadata to stuff if they don't see an advantage to it: what's in it for the authors?.
People lie is an obvious one. Know thyself is where it gets good, another good one that isn't understood by many people starting out in the metadata world is that schemas aren't neutral. The conclusion (implicit metadata, like Google's analysis of links, is more useful) surely has some truth to it. Interesting. Maybe the whole idea of having people tag their stuff with metadata is deeply flawed?
I'm growing somewhat dissatisfied with
I'm growing somewhat dissatisfied with MT's rebuild times... :(
I'm compiling a list of
I'm compiling a list of small independent software developers who actually live of their product. I would really appreciate any pointers to more.
- movabletype.org (I'm not sure they live of their software)
- Fogcreek
- Userland