From: Gleanings
To: fellow travellers
Subject: Gleanings: On the Road to Morocco
OPENING THANG
Well, folks I’m off to Morocco this afternoon for a two week vacation with my handsome husband. Normally this would mean you’d go gleanless, but NO! I won’t let you suffer!
My fabulous partner Noel will be stepping in to keep you happy and gleaned during my absence. Noel is an email junkie like myself, and won’t have any trouble keeping you regaled with the same sort of tasty tidbits that have kept http://www.gap-toothed.com, http://www.kickballusa.com, http://www.1minute.org and the ever fabulous http://www.carboniq.com alive and kicking up their collective heels.
gleanings-comments@eleganthack.com will be pointing at him, so be sure to send your intriguing links and insightful feedback there.
Any questions? Great, I’m off! (did I remember to turn off the coffeepot?)
IA MATTERS
Luminant white paper on IA by J. Vodvarka
Designing the User Experience
http://www.luminant.com/whitepapers.htm
Cool paper on why people buy, and what causes those irrational moments we all know and love.
I was very impressed with this, and suspect there may be some important repurcussions for IA.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010211mag-econ.html
Macromedia has released the Wireframing Extension for
Dreamweaver, that allows you to build site prototypes for usability testing
in a few hours.
It can be downloaded at http://www.macromedia.com/exchange/dreamweaver/
Search for ‘wireframing’.
Information Anxiety 2
By Richard Saul Wurman
The wild man of TED is back, with a sequel to his 1990 bestseller.
http://www.thestandard.com/subject/book/display/0,4294,204,00.html
I’m reading it, and it’s a mess. But an entertaining mess.
Presentations from the Summit are up.
http://www.asis.org/Conferences/SUMMITFINAL/
USABILITY MATTERS
Color Deficient Vision
http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/
Safe web colours for colour-deficient vision
http://innovate.bt.com/people/rigdence/colours/
• Donald Norman on learner-centered design
“The traditional course is run by a professor, an instructor, who organizes the course material in some logical method and gives lecture materials and assigns readings. This is an approach that we can call either ‘teacher-centric,’ or maybe, ‘content-centric.’ And it fails to take into account the way people learn. The first step in learner-centric is to understand how learning takes place. Much modern research in cognitive science shows that people learn by doing. So it is very important that people learn not by reading a book, and not by listening to a lecture, but by doing tasks that can engage the mind.”
http://www.elearningpost.com/elthemes/norman.asp
NEWS & COMMENTARY
Congress and Cookies
A new bill working its way through Congress could change the way you track
your customers as they surf the Web. The legislation would, among other
things, mandate that Web sites obtain consumer consent before using
third-party services to track visitors’ online journeys with cookies.
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2494
Nasdaq Plunges at Open
Greater-than-expected inflation and worse-than-expected earnings for Nortel are combining to send tech stocks much lower.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21392,00.html
Don’t Return to Sender, Please
Most people leave forwarding addresses when they move in the “real” world.
But when it comes to cyber moves, less than one-third of Internet users
notify Web sites and e-mail newsletters of new e-mail addresses. This
means that millions of e-mails are missing their mark–and their audience.
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2488
EVENTS- BAY AREA
“Legal Ins & Outs for Startups and Entrepreneurs”
Networking Event/ Educational Seminar/ Audience Round-table
You would normally pay $375 an hour to get advice from a lawyer.
Attend this event for $25 and network with fellow entrepreneurs,
enjoy food/beverages, listen to an educational seminar covering
legal issues for entrepreneurs and then participate in a round
table discussion about company formation, intellectual property
protection, non-disclosure agreements, raising venture capital…
what ever YOU want to talk about!
http://www.StartupUniversity.com/sfbay
Jacqueline Kessel, Founder of HiTech Law
Food/Beverages/Networking 7pm
Top 10 Legal Questions Presentation: 8pm
Audience Roundtable 830 – 930pm
Wednesday, February 21st
Fee: $25 Includes Food & Beverages!
http://www.StartupUniversity.com/sfbay
APROPOS OF NOTHING
because people hav a need to glue things together
http://www.thistothat.com/
I used to do a thing on the graphixgrrls list called site du jour. here a bunch of them….
pretty
http://www.webproductions.com/photo/
to me this is exquisite and amazing and exactly what the web is all about..
bizarre little human pages… the question is does it have *no* design at
all, or is it beautifully designed.
http://www.rhythm.com/~julius/
this is a extraordinary and beautiful use of the web to showcase an artist’s
fine art work
http://www.photomontage.com/
beautiful tecnolicious
http://www.nike.com/idstart/
100 % dhtml. they boot anything that’s not 4.x+.
Today’s site du jour deserves a little time… it a collection of W.W.II letters
written to and from the designer’s father while he was at war. The design in
ever way supports the story, and the little icons accompanying each letter
gives you a feeling for the writers.
http://www.private-art.com/