Thoughts and wanderings around the internet, e-government and geekdom.
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Reasonable summary of why usability review is valuable. 10:31:41 AM |
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First Monday: From September 6, 1999; The Visible Problems of the Invisible Computer: A Skeptical Look at Information Appliances. Andrew Odlyzko. Worth a read, but even the great bear himself had caught a little dotcom madness. 9:01:12 AM |
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Whodunit? Only Webmaster Knows. The phone rings. On the other end is strange voice, threatening your life. Then the line goes dead. This is Majestic, the new online conspiracy game. 12:08:38 PM |
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Useful article on card sorting. IA made real. 9:04:34 AM |
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via Google: Readable synopsis of Velikovsky-like resynchronisation of ancient Egypt and Israel. I like the enormous amount of effort that goes into trying to proove / disproove biblical stories. 11:29:33 AM |
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BBC don’t-miss: Illiterate Indian street kids crack the Internet. Wait-and-see usability testing. 11:24:45 AM |
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Ninjai. Cracking animated film about a micro-Ninja. Great music, effects, etc. 11:24:01 AM |
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DaveNet: Google upgrades the Web. I call it a JIT-SE or Just-In-Time-Search-Engine. The JIT-SE feature is particularly suited to weblogs, which are time-oriented websites. The Google crawler notices that I update my site every day, so it knows it should come back and re-index my site every day. 1:27:11 PM |
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UP Magazine: When Larry met Sergey. The answer is testing, testing and then more testing. Every innovation is checked on the site, on users and on the company to make sure that, as Page says: “we are making things better not worse”. Indeed, they have no qualms about testing a product right down the line and then not releasing it. 1:26:46 PM |
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Good analysis of why the Tivo UI can work and that the standard WIMP one sucks. 1:21:35 PM |
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Cringely: MSIE dropping plug-in support to boost .Net? 2:35:20 PM |
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The Economist survey on drugs. The Economist has published a survey on illegal drugs. Its long, but its packed with facts. I love the Economist’s tone - I don’t know how they manage to get such consistency of voice. 2:34:51 PM |
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Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Show Me The Money. “It is probably the most useful exemplar of information mapping on the Web today and is well worth trying out if you’ve never used it. On one single map one can quickly gain a sense of the overall market conditions, yet still see many hundreds of individual data elements.” One of my long term favourites. 2:33:35 PM |
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NYTimes via WSN: Amazing long article about realworld economics in the Congo. More Coltan stuff, but extraordinary to think about as we sit at our desks. 2:32:44 PM |
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Wednesday: 15-August-2001 — Painless Software Management. Painless Software Management (WebWord) — “Companies add features because some customers want them. Not every customer wants every feature: most … 2:31:31 PM |
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15-August-2001 — Online Flight Booking - A Comparative Analysis. Online Flight Booking - A Comparative Analysis (Frontend) — “In the broadest sense, an online transaction is any web-based interaction … 2:30:58 PM |
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Web Techniques: Registration Revamp. This experience taught me that registration systems are big chunks of code. So if you want to redesign one, you either need lots of authority, very persuasive arguments, or design strategies that minimally affect the code and account for business practicalities. 2:30:12 PM |
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DaveNet: Excerpt from Breaking Windows. In Breaking Windows, however, a different picture emerges. The agony inside and around Microsoft is the theme of Bank’s fantastic book. I believe it’s the most illuminating and important book you can read in 2001 if you’re part of the computer, software or Internet industry. 2:29:35 PM |
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Industry Standard: From November 14, 1999; Architecting Innovation. Lawrence Lessig is talking sense, as usual. 2:29:05 PM |
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MS patch-scanner for Win-NT, 2K, IIS, SQL. Use it. 2:28:21 PM |
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Transcript of a discussion at the O’Reilly Open Source conference. The part about patents starts on page 3. The question from the audience about patents is on page 5. Microsoft’s rep said “Well, at the end of the day, if you have a patent, you enforce the patent if it’s valuable to you. And so I think that Microsoft and other people who have patents will ultimately decide to enforce those patents.” [Scripting News] 1:49:56 PM |
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How Big Blue Plays D.. As in R&D. Lots of interesting insight into how to run a commercial development department. 1:48:21 PM |
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14-August-2001 — Password Usability. Very simple article, but it is one of the things that Amazon has got very right. 1:47:33 PM |
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Mark Pilgrim: “Groove is an overkill solution in search of a problem.” 2:06:37 PM |
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Column | The Universal Canvas Revisited. Readers describe experimental approaches to live editing of web pages. Some great stuff on WYSIWYG editing of web pages. 2:06:08 PM |
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Column | Jeremy Rifkin’s “The Age of Access”. A stimulating book about how networked services change the economy, and us. 2:05:18 PM |
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Mob Software.. A Friday read. It’s long, long, long. 2:04:36 PM |
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Automatic for the Pedal. Recreational Shimano is taking the brains out of bicycling with an automatic gear-shifting system. Cool. 2:04:10 PM |
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Searching for Google’s Successor. Google is the king of all search engines, but a new generation of upstarts is nipping at its heels. By Angel Gonzalez. 2:03:36 PM |
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Interactive Week: Fueling Bandwidth Trading. But the energy giant and a few of its neighbors in downtown Houston believe that - regardless of the current wreckage - they are going to transform the telecommunications business and the way bandwidth is bought, sold and traded. 6:28:47 PM |
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NY Times: Software Double Bind. A question, of course, is how anyone would ever be able to obtain and use the tools that would legally allow them to circumvent copy-protection technology if the people that make and distribute them are thrown in jail or prosecuted in civil trials. [Tomalak's Realm] 6:23:41 PM |
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Industry Standard: Visible Hand. Lawrence Lessig. The harder issue - so far forgotten in this debate - is privacy. In real space, stores collect sales tax without necessarily collecting personal information. That’s because there’s “cash” in real space, and cash is a privacy-enhancing technology. [Tomalak's Realm] 6:20:55 PM |
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Renato Iannella: Digital Rights Management Architectures. [Scripting News] 2:11:59 PM |
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XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) Basics: Push and Pull Models. Much more detailed, and therefore more interesting. I don’t really see the point of the push/pull definition, but the examples are excellent. 2:02:16 PM |
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The full text of the Cluetrain Manifesto is available on the Web. 1:51:09 PM |
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Steven Levy: “When it comes to protecting the business plans of those who publish books and music, academic freedom and free speech are apparently expendable.” 1:50:24 PM |
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A Warhol Worm: An Internet plague in 15 minutes!. A Warhol Worm: An Internet plague in 15 minutes. A more co-ordinated scanning strategy could infect a million machines in 15 minutes. Too fast for humans to track / deal with. 1:37:53 PM |
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Whatis: The Map To Better Web Searching. Whatis would include available site characteristics like news and discussion, that would make finding the type of site you want easier, and help researchers map the Net. Should we map against the Dewey Decimal system? 4:16:35 PM |
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Vandals and phreakers plague MSN Internet park bench. You’d have thought they’d have local calls only from the start, no? 4:15:51 PM |
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When I am King (online comic). 10:03:49 AM |
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Couple of articles against Scott McCloud on comics. First, second, rebuttal. Original source. 9:55:15 AM |
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MS poised to switch Windows file systems with Blackcomb.. The Register: MS poised to switch Windows file systems with Blackcomb. 2:48:09 PM |
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NYObserver: Byron reveals $425M pump’n'dump dotcom scam. Astonishing. 2:47:05 PM |
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The fattest ever fat cats?. This has to be illegal or something like that? 5:00:36 PM |
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Context Magazine: Bluetoothless. I have to run my WAP 1.x argument here as well. Bluetooth isn’t the net, or compatible with it. Therefore it won’t spread as far. That’s the point of the article. 12:56:07 PM |
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The End of Innovation?. Lessig on fire again. 12:51:38 PM |
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Technology Matrix Applied |
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Holding up the rear. “Where did all that start-up money go? Clue No. 1: Today’s dot-com auctions are flooded with opulent Aeron chairs.” They are nice, though. 12:48:16 PM |
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Poetic license. When a writing student accused England’s poet laureate of sexual harassment, the tepid peccadilloes of a nation’s literati were laid bare. I wonder if Clare knows her? 12:45:06 PM |
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Internet Week: Content Management: Integrate To Dominate. 6:35:04 PM |
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Network World: Faster wireless LANs may prove a bargain. 54M bit/sec wireless products will be similar prices to the current 11Mb. Great news. 5:55:35 PM |
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This Modern World. Are you a left-wing wacko? Take this simple test and find out! Good summary of what we all think! |
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Working with guidelines. Heuristics, design principles, best practices and style guides. End of usability stuff for today! 5:32:17 PM |
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Criteria for Web Site Evaluation. Jul 18. Checklist of questions about appearance, navigation, usability. Could be made up into a useful tool. 5:31:47 PM |
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GE Style Guide. Jul 21. Creative templates for ge.com. Interesting to see it live on the web. 5:31:06 PM |
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User Testing: Does your site need it?. 5:30:44 PM |
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How can someone use ROT13 as an encryption module! PCMag: Bruce Perens explains feeble e-book encryption strategies. 5:30:16 PM |
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Strange ZDNet interview with Microsoft’s Jim Allchin on Smart Tags, etc. 5:28:48 PM |
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Nearly a week’s worth of data has now been collected on the |
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Context Magazine: Churning Out Ideas. A large proportion of Cincinnati has access to broadband, and people are using it as a test bed for new services. I don’t think this is unusual, but the results are interesting. 6:37:25 PM |
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Slashdot thread on Breaking Windows. Worth a read, I think. 1:53:29 PM |
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Risks of the Passport Single Signon Protocol.. Great article. 1:52:58 PM |
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EE Times: Updated WAP standard speaks wired Web’s language. The WAP Forum has released version 2.0 of the Wireless Application Protocol standard, significantly reworking the specification to bring it more in line with core Internet technologies. Good news - using XHTML Basic and IP, etc. 1:52:34 PM |
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Useit.Com: First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Users. M&AP as always, but very, very true. 1:52:03 PM |
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The crypto used in 802.11 wireless networking has been cracked.. “The crack is devastating; it’s fast and passive. Simply by listening, the 40-bit key can be cracked in 15 minutes. Worse, the crack scales linearly with the number of bits in the key, so raising the key length to 128 bits would raise the crack time to about an hour.” 1:51:35 PM |
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Describing The Web With Physics. More like maths, I think. I mean, physicists trying to claim that graph theory is theirs? 1:51:07 PM |
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Multitasking Harmful To Productivity. No surprises there, then. 1:50:35 PM |
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Graphical User Interface Timeline. Interesting. I suppose so. It’s graphical, at least. 6:14:37 PM |
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No way! Couch potatoes no longer. 1:43:36 PM |
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A reasonably user-friendly legal page. 11:20:57 AM |
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Darwin Magazine: Imagining Faster. Rapid prototyping may not mean faster product development, but could mean more design cycles and hence better products. Unless the management by committee group get in… 11:16:19 AM |
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White light, 3D display. I want one now! 11:14:26 AM |
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The Sigmund Typeface Utility. allows you to generate dynamic images of text via a query string. Nice little utility. This is probably the future for graphical navigation where there are significant numbers of variants. Add a serve from cache option and we’re away! 11:01:19 AM |
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Good summary of how to sort out Flash in web pages. 10:56:33 AM |
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Good paper on improving usability of route maps. I really like the simplify it all approach. Caveat: I like to have some context around the road I’m turning onto, so that you don’t do the whoops just missed it thing. 11:52:58 AM |
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Paul Boutin: search engine optimization. “When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s easy to become obsessed with doing every little thing, but the rewards for that kind of attention to detail are far too small. You need to stick to chasing the big game.” Great article for this point in time. 11:49:47 AM |
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Salon: The rigged missile defense test. “There was only one thing that all the happy salesmen forgot to mention about their latest test drive. The rocket fired from Vandenberg was carrying a global positioning satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it. In other words, it would be fair to say that the $100 million test was rigged.” This is terrifying. 11:37:44 AM |
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You’ve got to love Americanisms. “Talk, then Toss” 9:46:38 AM |
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