In spec-writing, focus rules.
[Aquarionics] Journal - Mindless Coding.: "Adding the namespace suddenly made RSS a scary thing because I, as a developer that has to try to understand this crap, now have a potentially infinite number of tags, all of which somebody, /somewhere/ will want me to support. It also means that RSS, far from doing one thing well (which it did), can now do an infinite number of things, many of them identical, at the whim of some tinpot developer. Or, because I don't trust single people to come up with perfect standards alone, Badly."
I very much agree with this sentiment. RSS development definitely got out of hand. Then again, it's been a great, public try out of what to do and what not to do when writing specs or defining formats. Simplicity still rules. Or let me restate that: focus rules.
On a related note: I just dropped some more non-essential elements from the XFML spec. Release is, as they say, imminent.
Jonathon Delacour: "I noticed that
Jonathon Delacour: "I noticed that Phil Ringnalda had added the (blue and white) RDF button to his weblog, presumably to differentiate his RDF feed from his RSS feed (which uses the traditional orange and white XML button). Once I'd created the ESF button for Nicholas Avenell, I made an RSS2 button. However, Dave Winer stated quite definitely that RSS feeds (including RSS 2.0) should use the XML button. Since he hasn't, as far as I'm aware, objected to Phil's RDF button, it seems clear that Dave's concern is that any RSS feed uses the XML button. [...] *all* RSS feeds are supposed to use the XML button and other XML-based feeds can have a separate button with the name of the format."
Thanks Jonathon! 
The Morning News - Roundtable:
The Morning News - Roundtable: Writing on the Web. Somewhat older but intelligent talk on writing for the web, and that's hard to find.
Paolo Valdemarin Weblog "The main
Paolo Valdemarin Weblog "The main reason I like it is that I'm not much a big topics fan. I mean, I think that having to organize everything I post is additional work and I didn't think it was worth the effort. With LiveTopic it's so easy that you get a topics-based organization of your work almost without efforts."
Livetopics (for Radio) looks interesting.
Score Brownie Points: "Give us
Score Brownie Points: "Give us $47 once every two months. We mail something to you. You take it home to your woman. You take all the credit. What do we mail? All you really need to know is that it's girly stuff you wouldn't be caught dead buying." Gotta be kidding...
If anyone wants to design
If anyone wants to design a nicer XFML Core compatible" icon, feel free. My Design Powers have Failed me Again!
The Google Appliance has the
The Google Appliance has the ability to augment the search with a thesaurus to offer the user the option of adding "personal safety restraint devices" when they searched for "seatbelt". This functionality works similarly to Google's spelling corrections.
Game Studies 0102: Sims, BattleBots,
Game Studies 0102: Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata, God and Go. By Celia Pearce: "So the actual process of playing SimCity is really closer to gardening. In either case, your mental model of the simulation is constantly evolving."
Checkershadow Illusion: an optical illustion
Checkershadow Illusion: an optical illustion I hadn't seen (and I thought I'd seen them all).
Discussion on standards for distributed
Discussion on standards for distributed information architecture at ia/.
DonnaM: When is card sorting
DonnaM: When is card sorting useful. I like how Donna publishes her real-life IA experiences. I'll try to do the same.
The book is finished. My
The book is finished. My editor went on her honeymoon - now it's just waiting for the designers to do their crazy job.
The whole distributed information architecture
The whole distributed information architecture meme seems to be taking off. Sharing categories! But also, and even more powerful, sharing indexing efforts!
Cloudmark has reduced my incoming
Cloudmark has reduced my incoming spam from about 20-40 a day to almost 0. Zero spam! Easy setup, no funny rules to enter, it just works. Spam gets filtered automatically to a special spam folder, and it's a lot more reliable than the spam filters Yahoo! or Hotmail use. Recommended, especially because you can still sign up for the beta for free.
I'm trying to find a
I'm trying to find a good and free XML/DTD editor that can validate XML against a DTD?
You have to like a
You have to like a company that invites you to visit all their competitors
Kevin Kelly -- Chapter 2:
Kevin Kelly -- Chapter 2: Hive Mind: "[...] Thus, there is nothing to be found in a beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you can search a bee forever with cyclotron and fluoroscope, and you will never find the hive. "
Will Lowe sounds like a
Will Lowe sounds like a modern day Hari Seldon: What is the dimensionality of Human Space? (PDF).
A Framework of Guidance for
A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections
Collections principle 1: A good digital collection is created according to an explicit collection development policy that has been agreed upon and documented before digitization begins.
Collections principle 2: Collections should be described so that a user can discover important characteristics of the collection, including scope, format, restrictions on access, ownership, and any information significant for determining the collection's authenticity, integrity and interpretation.
Collections principle 3: A collection should be sustainable over time. In particular, digital collections built with special funding should have a plan for their continued usability beyond the funded period.
Collections principle 4: A good collection is broadly available and avoids unnecessary impediments to use. Collections should be accessible to persons with disabilities, and usable effectively in conjunction with adaptive technologies.
Collections principle 5: A good collection respects intellectual property rights. Collection managers should maintain a consistent record of rightsholders and permissions granted for all applicable materials.
Collections principle 6: A good collection provides some measurement of use. Counts should be aggregated by period and maintained over time so that comparison can be made.
Collections principle 7: A good collection fits into the larger context of significant related national and international digital library initiatives. For example, collections of content useful for education in science, math and/or engineering should be usable in the NSDL.
The paper goes on with a number of object principles and more.
Usability in India (post on
Usability in India (post on CHI list). Aaron Marcus made a great point that I've been thinking about: we need cultural dimensions (in Geert Hofstede style) relevant to the web. Looking it his website by the way, Aaron seems a year or two, three ahead of the curve on a lot of the thinking relevant to IA and webdesign as it relates to cultures. He wrote a good introductory article, making the point that yes, Hofstede's dimensions *are* relevant for the web. Yet they need to be adjusted, and more research is needed.
One thing I'm gonna try to look at the following years is cultural diversity on intranets. I am going to work on a lot of large intranets, and have audiences all over the world, so that is a great opportunity to do that type of research. And try to develop intranets that are sensitive to cultural differences that may exist between countries but also between job roles. Trompenaars (in one of his books, forgot which one) did some work on how Hofstede's dimensions get reflected in job descriptions: how cultures of laywers are different than cultures of HR people for example.
On a related note, I had a chat with a niece of mine - she's an accountant - and was talking about how different managers came in with new methods and how they got received. Culture! I'm happy I took that ethnography course, it will be useful me thinks.
DonnaM: I can't evaluate my
DonnaM: I can't evaluate my work: "Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a small (12 pages) website. I looked at it today and couldn't evaluate it. I can't tell whether the graphics look amateur, whether they take up too much space, whether people will be able to find the secondary navigation, whether the images are too big and whether the colour scheme is good or too green."
I get that too.
Travis from Facetmap started an
Travis from Facetmap started an interesting discussion on the SIGIA-L list about distributed thesauri.
WebWord.com: "Embrace the Green Dragon"?
WebWord.com: "Embrace the Green Dragon"? (look in the green bar)
I'm trying out cloudmark: collaborative
I'm trying out cloudmark: collaborative filtering against spam!
Put down that knife: "Dremedia
Put down that knife: "Dremedia has produced an elegant search engine for digital video archives. The British startup could save broadcasters a fortune." (via intervals)
The ia-cms group seems to
The ia-cms group seems to be starting well. You have to join to read the archives though...
XHTML, XForms, and device independence:
XHTML, XForms, and device independence: "No one can deny that HTML has been a great success. But... It is a mess. Both in its design and its use. XHTML is trying to improve the situation." Ha!
What's wrong with a messy world anyway? Sure, a web full of lovely compliant xhtml (with nicely tagged metadata) would be nice, but that wouldn't be the web - that is called a library. We already have those. They can't even get CSS right, I don't think all this is gonna happen anytime soon. Instead, some parts of the web will go clean, large parts of it never will. It doesn't matter. Why don't we focus a bit more on making the web useful - it is still a completely underdeveloped medium. Come on web designers! We have techies, we have designers, now we even have information architects. But where are the people that actually have something to say, to do on the web?
I'm wondering whether it's a
I'm wondering whether it's a good thing to talk politics on the blog?
ETM (Easytopicmaps.com) is an Open
ETM (Easytopicmaps.com) is an Open Directory Cool Site! (I promise I'll stop the self-linking soon...)
Maybe someone else can use
Maybe someone else can use my jobsearch wiki. May be worth checking if you are looking for an ia-job in NYC.
And the self linking continues:
And the self linking continues: Maybe I'm wrong on this ontology thing but something about it is just fishy.
I'm happy I have a
I'm happy I have a one year contract with Verizon only so I can get a different provider next year: they are really bad.
NUblog: Has online content jumped
NUblog: Has online content jumped the shark?: Joe Clark is running out of things to criticize. I'd like to say: Come on Joe: the web still sucks! Don't give up. Have some imagination of what it could be, and you'll have many further years of happy criticising. It's not because a website is standards compliant and usable that it's actually any good.
Joel on Software - September
Joel on Software - September 12, 2002: "One person who I was talking to yesterday would have used a custom field for something that we already have a built-in field for. This would have made their database confusing and inconsistent and would have definitely caused more problems than it solved. But it's still rude of me to tell customers that we don't have that feature for their own good, even though it usually is, and we're losing some sales because of it.
Sigh. I guess we could have a custom fields feature but hide it and make it so hard to use that people don't use it. At least we won't lose any sales :)
Hawai Creole English (Metafilter): a
Hawai Creole English (Metafilter): a nice illustration of how most people still think that creoles are somehow "lesser" (less complicated, less valuable, less subtle, ...) languages than standard languages (like standard English). The same idea that Black English is somehow a lesser language than standard English, when most linguistics agree it is actually not just a creole but a separate language.