From: Gleanings
To: readers
Subject: Gleanings: loquacious and elated
OPENING THANG
I promised to reveal what was keeping me busy– now the story can be told. I’ve left Hot Studio to join a small user-experience group called Carbon IQ (http://www.carboniq.com). I’m extraordinarily excited. Carbon IQ is a group of extremely smart people who care deeply about crafting positive human experiences (sometimes hard to find in this technology-centric industry). Anyhow, you can now hire me and my fabulous partners for information architecture and user experience research by contacting the company! Woo Hoo!!!!
now back to the show:
a NUA has graced my door stop, starting with an interesting editorial–
Oh, that internet thing… what a goofy fad!
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial/archives/issue1no156.html
My #1 least favorite sentence (okay, after “we’re out of coffee”) is “the web is all about ‘blank'” (such as, “the web is all about community” or “the web is all about eccomerce”).
That’s like saying “art is all about blank” or “books are all about blank.” It’s just a medium, and it holds stuff. Lots of different kinds of stuff. I’m gonna start hitting people over the head with a stick.
NY Times: Coming to Grips With the World Wide Web.
Several executives made bold predictions for the Web. “It’s like C-Span for
everyone,” one said. Seven years and many business propositions later, the
Web’s uses and limits are still being tested. But it is now possible to make a
number of observations informed by experience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/technology/11INTR.html
USABILITY MATTERS
a new paper that you can use to club the heads of marketing or nifty-flavored designers
http://www.bytelevel.com
It’s not very rigorous, but it does at least point out the price of scripting in pageload time.
(I tend to think of designers in two camps– the niftys and the communicators. the niftys make huge flash intros with no content, the communicators make beautiful interfaces that make information make sense. of course if you disagree, you can always flame me and tell me why I’m on drugs — yrondrugs@eleganthack.com)
personalizationdotcom put up the presentations from the Sf conference.
http://www.personalization.com/
EVENTS
great resource from tomalak
A regularly updated listing of different events around the world that relate
to the stories posted on his newsletter.
http://www.tomalak.org/conference.html
NEWS
ZDNet: IT staff work longer, produce less
IT professionals are working longer hours but producing less,
according to a new report on global IT trends.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2661710,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01
Internet Week: Return of the middleman
Despite the promotion of the Internet as a direct-selling tool, many
companies are actively encouraging middlemen to join their supply
chains.
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20001201S0002
Verizon: Small firms use Web for promotion, not ecommerce
Small businesses are setting up websites primarily to advertise and
promote their business, according to a new study.
http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=4646
PC Data: US consumers to buy more gifts online
Online consumers in the US plan to buy more gifts over the Web this
holiday season than the last, according to research by PC Data.
http://www.pcdataonline.com/press/pcdo113000.asp
NY Times: They Built Online Meeting Places But the Venture Capital Didn’t
Stay.
But four years and dozens of disappointments later, community portals, as they
came to be known, have fallen, and hard. The Globe, iVillage and others in the
doldrums have learned that while community is an attractive notion, it does
not transfer easily to the commercially minded Web.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/technology/11FOLK.html
NY Times: New Economy: How Reality Fits With Fantasy in Cyberspace.
In the biggest collaborative act of creation since M. C. Escher drew a pair of
hands drawing each other, the World Wide Web and the so-called new economy
have looked to the literature of science fiction for a sense of direction and
of style. The cross-fertilization worked both ways.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/technology/11NECO.html
IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR
mike “the finger” monterio pointed out I misspelled my subject line. i want to remind folks that this is a one woman show… i’m dyslexic and sporadic and have no editor… and no ads to pay one with. until that changes (if it ever does– could you trust me if I took ads?) I’m probably going to reveal my foolish spelling and my quirky grammar on a semi-weekly basis. I’m hoping that adds to my charm.