Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Matt points to Linus Pauling Research Notebooks. Now that’s the kind of stuff I want to see on the web!

Topic maps finally have their own Open Directory category: Computers: Artificial Intelligence: Knowledge Representation: Topic Maps

Forbes.com: Patently Absurd. This is crazy.

“After IBM’s presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues–all of whom had both engineering and law degrees–took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM’s claims. We used phrases like: “You must be kidding,” and “You ought to be ashamed.” But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun’s technology infringed even that one.

An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. “OK,” he said, “maybe you don’t infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?”

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list. “

At kottke.org, Jason scripts his iTunes software to display what he’s listening to on his website.

The printing press made it worthwhile to learn how to read, the Internet makes it worthwhile to learn to how to code.

I’m going to Montreal over the weekend. Let me know if you want to meet up. Who’se in Montreal?

More from the CHI-WEB archives:

“So you have to ask: how do other kinds of designers define “conceptual models”? If you look at how GUI designers document their designs, or architects their floor plans, you’ll see other ways to define and describe interaction, and define production. [...] I’ve said before on this list that I think the definition of information architecture is dangerous in misguiding the focus of the real mission: helping people. The word “user” is gone, and the connection to the larger heritage of HCI is lost. “

CHI-WEB archives: (via Best of CHI and sigia-l)

“In summary, I think one key to success is to enable a very small set of folks to drive the design thinking. I would much rather have one product designer that has medium proficiency in information design, visual design, and interaction design, than three individuals each contributing only those independent perspectives. You want a small number of people to be able to go and iterate quickly, trying out lots of ideas without hoops, bureaucracy or design by committee, but balanced by input or contributions from all of the
disciplines you need.”

Boxes and Arrows: Re-architecting PeopleSoft.com from the bottom-up, I like this case study. What worked and what didn’t.

I almost deleted a legit email about a job because the email title looked like spam. Ah.

Usability Testing: You Get What You Pay For: “Also, if you have multiple distinct user categories, then you must test 6-8 of each type.”

No.

She illustrates the point with a story of someone using developers to test a site. Now, I think most people know they shouldn’t use developers to test a consumer site, but the idea that your sample has to be part of your target audience when doing usability testing is wrong. It all boils down to how you’ve defined your target audience. Usually this is defined as the audience you want to reach with the website (the people that will make you money), which is not the same as the audience that you can do usability testing with, that’s usually a lot larger. I’m not saying you can test with anyone. But depending on what exactly you’re testing, you can do cheap and cheerful testing of generic interface properties with most people.

“i.e., have the same set of key characteristics, such as job experience level, computer experience level, age, gender, expected frequency of use, etc.) ” I mean, come on. How much difference will those characteristics make in most cases? That’s just wrong.

Defining your target audience is done for a purpose. Usually for marketing (who do we sell to and how?). The better developer does it again for design (marketing profiles don’t contain a lot of useful info when designing a solution). But 99% (a Nielsen-esque exaggeration) of usability problems can be uncovered by testing with almost anyone.

I guess it depends on the type of projects you work on. One of the examples shows “doctors, nurses, technicians and receptionists” - of course those are very specialized audiences and you should test with them. Again a bad example.

I just don’t like the tone of the article, the false examples, the “I’m an expert therefore I only can test” tone.

I think the flaw of the article is that the author seems to assume a “one time fix it all” type of testing, ignoring iterative design practices where you test things, say, three times a week. I’m all for in depth testing but it doesn’t mean quick and dirty testing is useless.

I love my tech editors

Scott Berkun updated his useful the best of CHI-WEB and SIGIA-L list.

Google Weblog.

kuro5hin.org || We’re Broke: The Economics of a Web Community

Google is (was? June 6) looking for a UI Designer.

Some interesting Employment Opportunities at the New York Public Library.

NYT newstracker (Flash movie) is cool but (I think) limited in usefulness because it works like a search. We have search already. We want metadata.

Bill Kearney argues for loose categorization schemes in facets. I agree about, say, 100%. XFML. “What I’m expecting is the emergence of coincidences or accidental associations. I see these as being far more enlightening that rigid methods that merely confirm the obvious. The inspiration found from the kick on the side of the head is a often quite a bit more potent than hanging around a mob of simpering sycophants.”

Content Syndication with XML and RSS. A fine blog about RSS and XML.

Microsoft to reinstate Java in Windows - CNET.com “In an about-face, Microsoft said Tuesday that it will reinstate the ability to run Java programs in Windows XP. [...] In the long term, though, the company plans to remove Java from Windows altogether. “

myFirstXhtmlMindBomb. One paragraph and I finally get XHTML.

Joel on Software - Strategy Letter V: “Let me repeat that because you might have dozed off, and it’s important. Demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease.” I wish I could write like that!

phpDocumentor

Another person doing really cool ethnography work to keep an eye on is Bonni Nardi. Interview by Lou Rosenfeld. (via Peterme)

Peter Merholz points to Steve Whittaker who has some yummie research papers like this one called Networkers and their activity in intensional networks (PDF), discussing how social networks are becoming more important (using ethnographic research methods.), and how we should take these into account when designing interactions, and not just design for teams.

Christina wonders about Google’s tabs versus Amazon’s tabs: do tabs contain different information, or just different views of the same information. In this case it seems the web standard (Amazon) has overridden the classic correct behaviour (Google). And I wonder with Christina: if this is so, what does a widget that offers different views of the same information look like?

I happened to be in Central Park (New York, USA) today, and lo and behold, there was a free concert by the legendary queen of salsa, Celia Cruz. Unbelievable.

I stood in the queue for 50 minutes (not too bad), and by the time I got in and got a beer she was there, shaking and singing salsa like no other. The lady is in her late 70’s, and when she shook her but at the audience it started to rain. It hailed, it poured, and the sun came back. That was my afternoon in New York - this morning was pretty amazing as well, but I’ve been sworn to silence.

(It really hailed. We didn’t care.)

Email interface design 101.: “Email interfaces offer the advantages of being asynchronous (you don’t have to be online to use it) and fast for repetitive sending of one step commands to a web server, and allow for requested interaction by the server. Email interfaces have a lot of untapped potential.”

I wrote a short article about email interface design because I feel it’s really uncharted territory. Any feedback is really welcome.

Victor’s looking for a decent Email Client. Aren’t we all? I’ve been really dissapointed with the lack of development in the email client interface department the last few years. I guess that’s what you get with a monopoly? Then again, I’ve been realy dissapointed with the lack of development in good photo storage interfaces, and with the lack of development in browser interfaces the last few years (can we get a proper bookmark interface finally please?). Maybe I’m just not easy to please.

Inside Intel’s Mentoring Movement (FastCompany)

“Ann Otero seems like an unlikely mentor — at least by the rules most companies apply. The 12-year Intel veteran is neither a star engineer nor a fast-track sales executive. She’s a senior administrative assistant.

But Otero has rare gifts that Intel prizes. Among the 5,500 employees at the company’s sprawling New Mexico plant, Otero is a master at tapping into the informal people networks that make the company tick. Need to know who to call in human resources about a difficult employee? Wondering how to decode the company’s internal teams? Otero knows who to call and how to read the Intel culture. Her ability to navigate Intel is so refined that she’s currently teaching her skills to an Intel manager who happens to outrank her. “

How Google Searches Itself

“Most Fridays at Google, the search-engine company in Mountain View, California, Marissa Mayer and about 50 engineers and other employees sit down to do a search of their own. Mayer, an intense, fast-talking product manager, scribbles rapidly as the engineers race to explain and defend the new ideas that they’ve posted to an internal Web site.

By the end of the hour-long meeting, six, seven, or sometimes even eight new ideas are fleshed out enough to take to the next level of development. Some of those ideas might become new features on Google, new code or search algorithms, or a new way to juice up the Google home page.
(more…)

War Resister Becomes Savior of Tibet’s Literature (NYT)

“There are stacks of Tibetan books in every room but the kitchen of E. Gene Smith’s house here. Many are centuries old, and from the looks of things they are practically nudging Mr. Smith out the door.

The books are just a fraction of the 12,000 volumes of Buddhist and Buddhist-influenced literature that Mr. Smith began to collect in 1965, when he first went to India and found work in the Library of Congress office in New Delhi. Most of the books were brought by refugees, who had carried them over the Himalayas in their flight from the invading Chinese.

[...] He and a few employees of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, the nonprofit organization he founded and directs from his home, are trying to have every one of the hundreds of millions of pages scanned onto a computer and made retrievable at no cost on a Web site (tbrc.org). “

Competition Is Heating Up for Control of .org Domain (NYT, registration required)

“An intense, largely behind-the-scenes competition is under way for the right to manage the global database that keeps track of Internet addresses of noncommercial organizations.
Although the business of registering Internet names has begun to shrink this year, as many as eight or nine bids are expected at a meeting this month in Bucharest, Romania, when the group that oversees Internet addresses will decide who should manage the list of names that end in .org.”

kuro5hin.org | How Much Data Should We Store?

“So I asked FBI agents there how much the fingerprint records were abused. They informed me that a few times every year they catch employees looking up records illegally for personal purposes, and fire them. To me, that was like saying “we squash the small offenders.” That, as opposed to saying “we have/had a problem and are trying to stop it.”

Decision Sequence Analysis, a marketing technique to find out what decisions you want people to focus on at certain points.

I AM MRS. MARIAM SESE-SEKO WIDOW OF LATE PRESIDENT MOBUTU SESE-SEKO OF ZAIRE? NOW KNOWN AS DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC).
(more…)

Six Degrees: an email driven productivity tool, is available for download (30 day trial) from today on. What a great idea, I’m gonna try it. Click the More link for my first impressions.
(more…)

Eudora has some pretty cool messages, like this one that popped up after I pressed the “Use Old” button.

New Architect: Keeping Web Services Simple: looks like UDDI is trying to solve everything, and is loosing sight of the goal of universal adoption along the way. Classic mistake guys, there’s something in the developer psyche that just makes us want to build a solution that does everything. Resist That Evil Temptation!

John Rhodes wonders whether Amazon and eBay are on a crash course?. The Clash of Giants!