OPENING THANG
Still very busy, but stole a couple hours to do some tweaks on
I worked this weekend, and how did I take breaks? By stretching and jogging into the park? No! Why would I leave my computer...
IA MATTERS
The Lost Chapter of Inmates (via equency.com)
"What we have managed to accomplish in just a couple of decades is the complete transformation of every business relationship from a natural, interpersonal, human one to one that is defined, modulated, constrained, and tainted by computer software. "
Visual Design for Instructional Content (Part II) (also via equency.com)
"The second part of the article explores the use of comics as instructional content with specific reference to the work of comics creator and theoretician Scott McCloud. "
Further Reflections on Information Architecture
"Discussed here:
What is IA?
Information Architecture != Architecture
Who Develops the Information Architecture?
Stop Whining About Marketing--Become Marketing!"
"URLs should be simple, concise, and designed to last forever - reflecting the page's content and hiding the implementation. "
Found a new IA blog
DESIGN MATTERS
Dalliance is a family of 9 fonts inspired by the elegant handwriting on an antique map depicting a battle that took place at Ostrach, southwest Germany, in 1799.
For more information, click here
Make plans to attend the third annual typography conference of the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SoTA).
USABILITY MATTERS
"No site or application has one single group of users who share the same attributes. On the contrary, there are likely to be a number of distinct user types, each of which will have differing expectations and work patterns. Good interface design will cater for as many of these groups as possible, whilst of course reflecting the different priority the business may accord them. "
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Okay, I think this trend has gone too far...
Sephora.com Givenchy Fragrance (via noisebetweenstations.com)
UK adverts complained about... naughty!
return of a classic:
Clearly there is something wrong with me. I became obsessed with discovering who the "a-list" is. I'm sure this is very old hat for most of you, so feel free to skip this post, since it has nothing to do with IA and everything to do with bizarre web subcultures. However, if you --like me-- rather enjoy bizarre web subcultures, hop on.
It all started with the ALA article on flaming the famous, which caused me to become obsessed with figuring out who the maligned four were.
"four writer-designers received praise for pioneering the personal storytelling site"
"the four had somehow "sold out.""
"Two of the four were so distressed by these accusations that they drastically curtailed their creative output"
Tease! So I read the forum in search of the four. That led me to Metafilter (I'd visited it before, but never gotten involved). MeFi led me to Shuffleboard where I briefly became a guru-groupie and flirted with jakob neilson (kinkier than becoming a furry).
I wandered back to MeFi where they had given me four names. I did a seach on "derek" and "powazek" hoping to track down the war that started it all. I finally did find it (or one of the wars, anyhow) on metatalk by searching on "webby" and following a link.
It was a pretty funny "flamewar"-- the worst the thread had to offer was a suggestion that {fray} was past it's prime (along the line of saying it's "so five minutes ago" and patently untrue). I did enjoy meg saying her grandmother was past her prime and she still loved her... woo, I thought I had a penchant for puttting my foot in my mouth. I never did find the insulted other three, but by that time I no longer cared.
Having now surfed MeFi and MeTa so much, I was amazed how often people referred to this "a-list" as if it were something written up somewhere. I did a quick search on it, and found no originating thread or official list. Shuffleboard soon convinced me that the a-list was a group hallucination held by heavy bloggers.
I was pleased to find metatalk, but almost immediately insulted matt (see comment regarding foot above). Sigh.
Continuing my inane streak. Woo hoo! No wiser, and never did figure out who the a-list consists of beyond meg, ev, cam(maybe), matt, powazek and kottke. But deeply amused trying so very hard to unravel something "everybody" knows.