Year: 2006

  • OpenID event for developers in Berkeley

    Kaliya “Identity Woman” Hamlin writes: Webwide distributed SSO is finally happening… Learn more from the core guys behind this emerging standard for user-centric digital identity. August 10th 6-9 in Berkeley at 2029 University, Upstairs. RSVP to me kaliya (at) Mac (dot) com and please pass this along to those who might be interested… OpenID is…

  • OpenID info evening (for developers)

    Kaliya “Identity Woman” Hamlin writes: Webwide distributed SSO is finally happening… Learn more from the core guys behind this emerging standard for user-centric digital identity. August 10th 6-9 in Berkeley at 2029 University, Upstairs. RSVP to me kaliya (at) Mac (dot) com and please pass this along to those who might be interested… OpenID is…

  • zorca interviews xian

    Suzanne Stefanac is writing a book on blogging called Dispatches from Blogistan (catchy title, eh?) for Peachpit / New Riders. Naturally, she’s been blogging the whole process and posting snippets of work in progress and the texts of interviews she’s conducted for the book. I know Suzanne from The Well, where I host the blog…

  • Discomfiting the Apologists of Dickensian Predation.

    This is a year old; I came across it in a search. But it’s worth noting. It ought to discomfit the apologists of Dickensian predation. (Old New-Left? Me?) How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart July 17, 2005 NYT “But not everyone is happy with Costco’s business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is…

  • Blogging interview with Extractable strategist

    Suzanne Stefanac is writing a book on blogging called Dispatches from Blogistan for Peachpit/New Riders. Naturally, she’s been blogging the whole process and posting snippets of work in progress and the texts of interviews she’s conducted for the book. I know Suzanne from The Well, where I host the blog conference and where I’m known…

  • The Commodious Ambiguity of “Optimism”

    [I seem to be working my way back into rambling Philosophy mode here.] General Abizaid said: “So the question is, am I optimistic whether or not Iraqi forces, with our support, with the backing of the Iraqi government, can prevent the slide to civil war? My answer is yes, I’m optimistic that that slide can…

  • Interview re microformats

    Microformats are standards-compliant structures based primarily on ordinary XHTML tag attributes (such as “rel=” in a link tag). The Knowledge@Wharton website features an excellent interview with Tantek

  • Yahoo launches corporate blog, 'Yodel Anecdotal'

    Interestingly, Yahoo is running their new Yodel Anecdotal corporate blog on WordPress (the same software we run this blog on) and not their own homegrown Yahoo 360 platform. Speaking of blogs, one of our clients recently asked us whether the old rule of thumb that a blog needs a new post every day is really…

  • Is ANWR as ugly as they say?

    Jim Goldstein was up in Alaska in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge recently and brought back these photographs. He says, “A conservative friend asked me, ‘Is ANWR as really as ugly as they say it is? This alarmed me a great deal after having one of the best photo trips I’ve taken to date. The…

  • Jakob says 1024 x 768 is cool

    We talk about what screen resolution to design for a lot of the time, and the compatability cops are always trying to keep us mired in the past, man, but now usability (and hairstyle) guru Jakob Nielsen gives us permission to optimize for 1024 x 768 (Screen Resolution and Page Layout (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)). Of…

  • Friday UX links

    Postdated edition: 10 Foot World, Inc. (all about applications for Media Center’s ’10 foot interface’ 10 foot interface showdown A microstudy of tagging (Gene Smith discusses the physical tagging of nametags at this year’s IA Summit – includes an inset picture of my own tag cloud) SEO page ‘strength’ gauge (via atomiq) Writing vs. rewriting…

  • Web 2.0 'under reconstruction' icon-slash-movies

    The Iconfactory (via Digg, or reddit, or something)

  • “The Next Six Months”

    We have been told over and over again the last few years that “The Next Six Months” will be decisive for our Iraq invasion to succeed. Doesn’t that mean at some point that the last six months already were decisive?

  • Latest 'Polar Bear' survey up

    Beth Koloski, editorial assistant for the third edition of the Polar Bear book has posted an invitation to take another survey: To gather information for the next edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been surveying the IA community. The third survey, Software for IA, is now…

  • Socialtext open-sources its core wiki product

    I was going to post a link to this press release Socialtext Releases First Commercial Open Source Wiki | Socialtext Enterprise Wiki, when Dan pointed me to this CNet round-up of business-wiki related news. Looks like the idea is getting some traction in the business world. (One of our clients just pre-launched a wiki in…

  • Business process modeling tools

    A recent discussion on the IAI list got onto the subject of business process modeling, and the frustrations some folks have had with Rational Rose. Two recommendations for current tools were Processworks from Wizdom (uses the IDEF model), and IBM’s free Task Modeler (an Eclipse-based tool for modelling the user experience, (and for making DITA…

  • Friday UX links

    Seattle edition: User Interface Design – Taking the Good with the Bad (good Digital Web article about the inherent tradeoffs in UI design and why you can never please everyone Part one of jjg’s conversation with Steven Johnson Part one of Dan Saffer’s conversation with Dan Brown (they both have web design books out or…

  • Free content management webinar

    Scott Abel, Content Management Strategist at The Content Wrangler, Inc. alerted the community to a free webinar on Cutting Edge Web Content Management, July 26, 2006 at 2PM EST, to be presented by Ann Rockley, The Rockley Group: Developing and delivering dynamic, personalized content via the Web for superior customer service. Mountains of content. Multiple…

  • Progressive enhancement meets graceful degradation

    In response to a recent post by Thomas Vander Wal, in which he said, “One approach, which seems to be growing in popularity is [to build] sites that work and Ajax and scripting to augment and improve simplicity,” Austin Govella replied, writing The term of art for this is “progressive enhancement”. Often in contrast to…

  • Various approaches to 'asynchronous browse refinement un-selecting'

    Dan Klyn assembled a set of guided navigation UI widgets at his Wildly Appropriate blog back in January, introducing them by writing, “For a good long while now I’ve been meaning to create a spreadsheet or Flickr set or something which could serve as a systematic and comprehensive roundup of the UI widgets that folks…

  • The paradox of choice

    Dan’s favorite blog, Signal vs. Noise, recently addressed the interface problem caused by giving people too many choices. I’ve also heard this problem referred to as “analysis paralysis.” The interface designer, in the view of 37 Signals (the owners of the SvN blog), needs to ask as a sort of “benevolent dictator” to deliver a…