Year: 2006

  • Everyday IA group on Flickr

    For pictures of information architecture in everyday life, check out the Everyday Information Architecture group on Flickr.

  • For the Baker-Hamilton Suggestion Box

    Note: This is very dense and wonky, and only marginally informed considering how definite it sounds. I’m just noodling with limited information, but I have a realpolitik suggestion for the Baker-Hamilton Commission. It can’t be much worse than what has been bruited about so far. It is a variation on the federated partition idea, and…

  • Chris Bowers’ Google Bomb

    Chris Bowers of MyDD.com has put together an excellent list of links to articles on various republican candidates. By having large #s of folks duplicate this list of links, the odds go up that when someone searches, for example, Pombo, their results will include this article. Never let it be said that I wouldn’t post…

  • From Red Herring: Google Gets Customizable

    Users can create customized search engines for their sites to focus on any kind of content. In another round of battle against Yahoo, Google has introduced a customized version of its search engine that will enable bloggers and other web site operators to offer a specialized form of Google to search for specific kinds of…

  • Where no user has gone before

    This article in UX Matters talks about designing breakthrough products and offers some interesting ideas on innovation and solving problems that sometimes people don’t even realize they have. Bonus Extractable content: One of the case studies is Vocera, a client of ours that makes a Star Trek-like ubiquitous communication system. The homepage of the website…

  • Screen Size and Productivity Revisited

    Usability guru Jakob Nielsen defuses Apple’s large display sales ploy with an insightful article here. So much for my new 30″-er on the company tab.

  • Christian Crumlish Elected To IAI Board

    Extractable’s Director of Strategic Services, Christian Crumlish, was recently named to the board of directors for the Information Architecture Institute. The Information Architecture Institute is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture. Founded in 2002, the Institute has over 1000 members in 60 countries. Christian will serve on the board from…

  • W3C roadmap for accessible RIAs

    Rich Internet Application (RIA) formats, such as Ajax, Flex, OpenLazslo, XAML, and so on, are all the rage on the Web these days, but sometimes the tradeoff involved in moving from a clunky-feeling page-at-a-time forms-driven web interface model to the more snappy thick-client feel of RIAs is a loss in accessibility (as well as issues…

  • Google's new AdWords optimizer

    TechCrunch tells us: Google will soon begin offering AdWords advertisers a new tool to experiment with a variety of different landing page layouts in order determine which one gains the most conversions from site visitors. Google Analytics Senior Manager Brett Crosby unveiled the tool, called Google Website Optimizer, this morning at the eMetrics summit in…

  • Coming soon: a bunch of books on designing for mobile

    I’ve been hearing rumblings about a bunch of books in the pipeline of various publishers on designing for the mobile interface, including one to be called Designing the Mobile User Experience and another called Mobile Web Design. There are others too, but I don’t have links handy (yet). Update: Scott Weiss just posted about a…

  • Is North Korea Nuts?

    This viewpoint should be common knowledge. North Korea: A Nuclear Threat–An exclusive account of what Pyongyang really wants. Newsweek International Edition On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement….to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed [to] “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take…

  • Well, they’re not all that concerned.

    “The Republican Party is taking pro-family conservatives for granted,” said Mike Mears, executive director of the political action committee of Concerned Women for America, which promotes biblical values. –“Some Seek ‘Pink Purge’ in the GOP,” LA Times DKo: No, it’s not a mistake; I’ve seen him quoted before.

  • IE 7 is Being Released

    Today Microsoft is intending to release the latest version of Internet Explorer. IE 7 features a cleaned up appearance, tabs (a favorite feature of Mozilla Firefox), RSS feed support, better printing and most importantly, improved support for HTML and CSS standards. CNET reports that Yahoo! has beat Microsoft to the punch by release their own…

  • Challenges to innovation

    Scott Berkun writes about Why innovation efforts fail, citing a few common problems (“task forces and committees are separate from the real teams,” suggestions are vetoed, innovation must be a core value and not an add-on). He also identifies a few factors that help innovation succeed (startign with a pilot project, willingness to accept risks,…

  • MAPlight helps you ‘follow the money’

    Years ago B and I dreamed about something called the “Senator From” project, based on the idea that, for example, Scoop Jackson used to be known as “the Senator from Boeing.” We’d take the public info available and identify the largest contributors to candidate and officeholder. Great idea, but we didn’t know how to execute…

  • Take election day off

    The Democratic Party is asking people to take election day off to do last minute get out the vote work – The Democratic Party | Take a Day Off for Democracy – an area where the Republicans traditionally beat us. I’m in.

  • What the mobile user wants

    We’re not the only shop working on mobile user interfaces these days and we’re learning quickly as we go and absorbing advice and insight from multiple sources and directions. Here’s an article published last week in UX Matters called Designing the Mobile User Experience with some good food for thought.

  • Flash video takes over the planet

    Nice article (well part 1, at least) on the sudden rise and total domination of Flash video over the last year or so: The Rise of Flash Video, Part 1

  • It's raining books on interaction design

    John Kolko, a teacher at Savannah College of Art & Design, is writing and self-publishing a book called Thoughts on Interaction Design. He’s also blogging the process as he goes along. (It’s his first book, his first attempt at publishing, and his first business, so he’s treating the entire experience as an experiment.) His book…

  • Bush insider: Bush administration used and mocked Christian right

    MSNBC reports that a new book called Tempting Faith, by former administration official David Kuo, gives an inside look at the Bush administration that’s bound to give some of the Christian Right pause on election day. He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist…

  • John Murtha’s not mincing words

    Here’s an amazing snippet a friend just emailed me. This is from a new MoveOn.org exhortation written by Congressman John Murtha: A year ago when I presented my plan for Iraq, I did it to provide leadership and protect our troops. The Republicans have spent their time name-calling while the situation for our troops in…