Witold Riedel‘s weblog source code begins with a large ASCII rendering of his head.
Category: Internet (Page 35 of 40)
Pyra is looking for designers/Blogger fans to redesign Blogger.com, essentially for free. Comp with caution.
SVN’s forum has an excellent debate on the pros and cons of “free” design opportunities. I’m in the anti-comp-design camp these days, but the debate is complex and intriguing.
Andrew Baio has recompiled his list of available dictionary words in top-level domains. Some real gems in there, even in the .com list. Who wouldn’t want to claim scrota.com as their own? (Scrota.net and .org are there, too, for shoring up resources. Act now.)
Launching Monday is the Web site of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture. I find that conceptually fascinating: “promoting IA.” As vital as it is, IA certainly deserves any possible efforts to increase public knowledge and understanding.
The top level of the organization is jam-packed with name-brand IAs and an ambitious list of projects appears on its initiatives page. This is a site worth bookmarking.
I am curious to see how the organization develops, and whether it becomes public-relations oriented, like the EFF, or more communal, like the WWWAC. Stay tuned.
Update, November 5: There’s a vitriolic but compelling debate about the long-term usefulness of this organization on Metafilter.
“I can’t identify the people doing the best work,” says Jesse James Garrett in a Boxes and Arrows interview. “Everybody says Amazon’s interaction design is a big factor in the company’s successâwhy don’t I know the names of any of the people responsible for it? Why do most consultancies hide their talented staff, whose expertise makes their success possible, behind a faceless corporate identity?”
Jesse answered his own question: If a corporation’s staff is faceless, it is the company itself that has the expertise, not the individuals, who may come and go. Why externally hype someone? If the person leaves, the company takes a public-relations hit, and all the accolades walk out the door.
Still, this is intriguing. I’m not promoted externally by The Economist, yet it is known that I design Economist.com. Here’s a better question for Jesse: Does Amazon prohibit its employees from publicly mentioning where they work, and if so, is that a bad thing? Anytime I see an Amazon staff member mention something in public, it’s always with an “I’m not supposed to tell you this but…” disclaimer.
Part of Amazon’s success is its continual, and faceless, excellence. Jesse mentions it with negativity, but I don’t know if it is a bad thing.
Just a public service announcement from here. Oh, and do yourself a favor and start using more than one or two passwords for the dozens of sites you visit. Access to your data is more vulnerable than you think.
Doonesbury has been covering the weblog world this week. The run has been amusing, and plenty linked in the blog world, of course. Tuesday’s strip is the most pointed (and my personal favorite).
Making a Timeless User Experience in Digital Web magazine. “One has to think in all directions to properly define smart user-centric design, then, apply those decisions in a timeless fashion.”
Good interview with Google’s product manager by Mark Hurst on Good Experience. “All of us on the UI team think the value of Google is in not being cluttered, in offering a great user experience. I like to say that Google should be ‘what you want, when you want it.’ As opposed to ‘everything you could ever want, even when you don’t.'”