From: Gleanings
To: onlookers
Subject: Gleanings: How much would you pay for immortality?
OPENING THANG
xplane.com/xblog points to this article
“We’ve noticed a disturbing trend in home page design — information
overload. Web designers and developers seem to have resolved the ‘to click
or to scroll?’ controversy by loading everything onto the home page. ‘More and more and more is better,’ they seem to be saying.”
Hey! I’m pretty sure the designers are not doing this by choice. If I remember from my product days, there are quite a few pressures put upon the homepage by every single department in the dotcom. Every designer I’ve ever known has wanted massive amounts of white space.
IA MATTERS
*Somebody set peter morville’s pants on fire.
Strange Connections: An Information Architect’s Manifesto
Information architects of the world unite!
The environment has changed. Now, so must we!
*and this may set yours on fire
IAsk
Learn about the age, salary, travel, experience, and benefit packages of your fellow information architects.
*Information architecture, brand and content sites
“Gave this presentation to undergraduate information systems management
students at University College London today. I actually wrote it for the
journalism students at Cardiff University, where I’m presenting it next
week — so it’s pretty wide ranging and general, but it goes over the
development process of BBC News in detail, plus some other stuff as an
intro to user-centered design principles. Oh… btw, it’s 6.3 meg… sorry!
;-)” from www.xblog.com
USABILITY MATTERS
*Maximizing Windows
by Bruce Tognazzini
*Wireless Phone Usability Study
The study is available for free download from www.usableproducts.com. Note:
registration is required.
*Another great post from Don Norman. This one on statistical validity
*Content: Don’t Make Me Think! by Steve Krug
Chris Farnum explains why you should buy this Web Usability book for your boss.
DESIGN MATTERS
NEWS & COMMENTARY
*Internet World: New Economy Is Down but Not Out.
Jakob Nielsen. The previous two years, presentations by Internet companies had
the old-timers quaking in their boots, so this year many speakers clearly
enjoyed the downturn in the new economy. Even so, most executives seemed to
have realized the importance of the Internet.
*Inside: How the Net Could Nuke TV: Video File-Sharing.
Tom Watson and Jason Chervokas. If you believe the runaway success of
Napster’s peer-to-peer business has fundamentally altered the media landscape,
then the next big quake logically will be in television. Just as Aimster, so
may a similar combination of software, hardware, and bandwidth change the way
we watch television.
APROPOS OF NOTHING
*I received a charming note from a reader in the Philippines explaining he could not possibly make Anton’s show, but he still wanted to hear the song.
link removed for storage reasons
Correspondence went like this:
> Indeed, I enjoyed the song. Is it really your song?
Anton and I both lived in Sacramento some years ago. We used to wander from
coffee house to coffee house, talking philosophy and drawing cubist caricatures
on coffee stained napkins (that’s how the mythology goes, anyhow.) One day
we made an immortality pact; I’d do a painting of him and buy him a carrows
pyramid breakfast, in exchange for a song written for me (production of a
song takes longer, that’s why I threw in the breakfast. 2.99 for two eggs,
bacon and two pancakes, if I remember correctly).
He mistook my comment that it didn’t really have to be about me to mean it
*shouldn’t* be about me, which is how he got this odd surrealist concoction.
It’s not my favorite song by Anton, but it is most certainly written for me.