From: Gleanings
To: they might be gleanings
Subject: Gleanings: now with less content!

EYECANDY
http://www.limn.com
limn.com has been a nightmare for users.. this is half apology, but mostly
something very different.

www.thechoppingblock.com
turn on your speakers: their background music is by they might be giants.

APROPOS OF NOTHING
http://www.dumbentia.com/body_sins.html
seven deadly motivators

NEWS
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/breakthrough/2000/07/25/14812
Cellphone are for people communicating with people, not Proctor and gamble or the NBA...

from tomaak:

SJ Mercury: Forget the hype, e-books still hard on the eyes.
E-book technology is just not ready. It's too hard to read on the screen.
Think of this as the opposite of what's going on with the music industry and
Napster: With Napster, the public is clamoring for file-sharing technology but
the big companies are trying to ignore it.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/ebook081300.htm

In their dreams
Sony claims to be an Internet company. It isn’t yet
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20000226/index_wb2148.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/14/2000 8:47:03 AM

going to the source

I've revealed my sources...
http://www.eleganthack.com/gleanings.html

IA MATTERS
want to know the shape of the web? (and that means more than .com)
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/

speed and satisfaction
http://www.webcriteria.com/pdf/research_2000.cfm

narrative scenarios as a design tool
http://www.davidbliss.com/index.asp?unique_id=232

APROPOS OF NOTHING
from the devotimator folks
http://www.despair.com/demotivators/andiscuscap.html

flash-o-wonderbar
http://www.tedbaker.co.uk/cgi-bin/tedbaker.storefront

Amazon smartly asks the advice of their customers
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/help/new-navigation.html/104-5007298-7961541

NEWS

coke goes online (anyone else saying :why online?)
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17547,00.html?nl=int

FEEDBACK
a friend writes:

"I'm curious how "HTML" pages that are containers for badly written and
completely unnecessary JavaScript (or worse, Flash) and gratuitously
incompatible with browsers that disable scripting can even rate as
"functional". If I were shopping for a Web design house and saw
www.marchfirst.com I'd say "You people don't know what you're doing"
just as security drags me out the door kicking and screaming.

Eyecandy and Eye-A

IA MATTERS

Found a new resource: author of the Yale style manual... probably great for designers too.
http://www.patricklynch.net/

which leads me to this:

Mark Hurst weighs in on the end of web design
http://www.goodexperience.com/

and this:

InteractionArchitect.com
An excellent resource site on interaction design, user experience, and the value of user testing.
http://www.interactionarchitect.com/index.htm

and quite a few other tasty treats.

Found a weird new software methodology, extreme programming
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/
Which "emphasizes customer satisfaction and promotes team work."

Lou! Lou!
"CIO WebBusiness: Everybody Hates the Cable Guy.
Lou Rosenfeld. We put the words "Information Technology" together as a phrase
for a reason. But it's all too common for IT players to emphasize the
technology and ignore the information that the technology exists to convey.
Take my friendly local cable provider, MediaOne."
http://webbusiness.cio.com/archive/072500_closer.html

NEWS
of course out lead story is the shutting down of napster
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17168,00.html

also check out the Standard's compilation of stories on napster, including why it was actually good for the music labels.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17173,00.html

and from Tomalak:
Wired News: Whose Link Is It Anyway?
Is it OK for a website to turn the dialogue of online discussions into
product-oriented shopping links? The question underlies a new feature from
Deja.com that will automatically link mentions of product names in discussion
threads to a commerce area on its site.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,37715,00.html

COMPLETELY USELESS

dress tinky-winky game
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/tinkywinky/

EYECANDY
Homewrecker.com
http://www.homewrecker.com/ohlala.html

http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/

http://www.newmedia.com/nm-article.asp?articleID=400

The Word of the Day for today, Thu Jul 27, is:
**** Good evening ****

You can hear all the translations spoken at:
http://www.travlang.com/wordofday/59.html

The translations you requested of this are:

French: Bonsoir
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 2:34:50 PM

lite and designy

All the cool kids are doing it: personas
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0007d&L=chi-web&F=&S=&P=6404

the sh*tty internet logo of the week museum
http://www.kerosenegames.com/silm/
which reminds me of the swoosh collector
http://www.50cups.com/rings/rings.html

a website where you can design your own shoes: interesting web-ap
http://www.customatix.com/customatix/common/homepage/HomepageGeneral.po

a story for all designers: what about the websites that we never born
http://www.adobe.com/web/columns/zeldman/20000221.html

apropos of nothing
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm what if Lincoln had used PowerPoint?
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 2:34:15 PM

other people's gleans

biggerhand.com has taken over my job as idle surfer...

he writes

"ok, i give. this is brilliant:
http://www.cafepress.com/peterme/
of course the funniest thing is that it's terribly designed.

(if you glean it, i found the link on kottke.org. he also links to this:
http://www.untickalock.com/jakob/index.html "

also terribly funny.

Idle question: what is it designers have against capital letters?

he also sends this hot new palm ap (check out even if you don't have a palm... this may get you to buy one!)
http://www.minordemons.com/finger/index.html

and an article on how to build for PDA's
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/20/index2a.html?tw=design

Hey, more on my favorite lawsuit, IAM vs. Razorfish!
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/daily/0,3467,617000727,00.html

from Tomalak:
Darwin: Scaredy Pants.
At what point does careful consideration verge on utter paralysis? How many
times can someone steal your lunch money before you starve to death? I'm
thinking about those questions because I've been researching the Internet
initiatives of Levi Strauss.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080100/ecosys.html

Apropos of nothing:

from dsharp
"Japanese Seizure Robots!
THIS IS AWFUL, I KNOW YOU WILL LOVE IT!
As if the flashing colors weren't enough, this site takes MIDI music to the
heights of artistry.

Prepare yourself, then click here:
"

and

Business 2.0: From January 1, 2000; 501 Blues
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/ebusiness/2000/01/01/10399

and again from Darwin mag (I never heard of these guys before, and they are great!)
Darwin: Get Real.
David Weinberger. Combine fear and aggression and you end up with companies
literally afraid to speak like human beings. It's easier, after all, to plan
an attack than to communicate on the fly and--gasp!--listen.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080100/contact.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 2:33:44 PM

researching the researchers

they get it: quite a while on the Jupiter site, there was a terrific article on relanches and the dangers that lie with them (such as massive user bailout at the horror of trying to learn something new, no matter how much "better" it was) One of the ways to mitigate this was to inform user of an upcoming redesign and solicit feedback on it. Amazon did it for their new navigation. Alta vista does it here
http://live.altavista.com/scripts/editorial.dll?ei=2005160&ern=y

redesigns are in the air: adobe.com
from newmedia.com "BROADBAND Walkthrough: Adobe.com
(Thursday, 3 August 00) Adobe completely sheds its old corporate image
with a dramatic redesign of its Web site. Aimed at fostering a sense
of community, the site features expert QuickTime tutorials, interviews
with noteworthy designers, online galleries, forums, and a free
virtual portfolio area. By Jeff Burger."
http://www.newmedia.com/nm-article.asp?articleID=773

Speaking of Jupiter, and their research compatriots, I'm reading "how to lie with statistics" that appears to have been written in the 30s and makes quite entertaining light reading.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393310728/o/qid=965318003/sr=8-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_3/103-3658829-8248653

also found this

Salon: From September 2, 1999; Jupiter shoots for the moon
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/09/02/jupiter/index.html

and

Boston Globe: Fortunetelling.
Ideas, visibility, and marketing drive that image. Forrester's researchers are
paid based on a complicated formula that considers their involvement in
closing sales and appearances in the media.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/215/business/Fortunetelling+.shtml

lately the CHI-WEB list has been talking about exercises in pointlessness (sites that are pure marketing tools and provide no value to user)
included were
http://www.eu.levi.com/LEJ/
http://www.myautogarage.com

here is a resource to make your life saner: standard banner sizes
http://www.iab.net/iab_banner_standards/bannersource.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 2:33:16 PM

no news and good news

IA MATTERS
the wonderful world of web-aps. this will keep IA's in business for years to
come
http://www.idg.net/ic_207514_1794_9-10000.html

great conversation started by peterme on the CHI-WEB list
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0008a&L=chi-web#36
"What does a conceptual model look like"
Finally, something to show the client!

http://www.usability.com/tug_3_Product_Stages.htm
Conceptual design: the cornerstone of usability.

huh?

DESIGN MATTERS
There seems to be a revival of mocking jakob neilson (well, if you're gonna
demand fame, you gotta take your lumps.) Biggerhand.com sends this new
repository of all thing mocking jakob.
http://www.untickalock.com/jakob/index.html
By the way, apparently the infamous useit.com is about to undergo a makeover.
Don norman says his and jakob's sites have been redesigned and are being
user-tested as we speak. I'm waiting wiht baited breath...

but you can make it up to him: his birthday is coming up (thanks Mike!)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/wishlist/26JQ6PQQHD3T8/103-3658829-8248653

Honestly his latest alertbox
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000806.html
is much more inflammatory, bashing non-standard design and insisting (come on jakob!) that reputation managers will replace brand. Quite well working, much like a bad cup of coffee will get your blood running even before the caffeine hits the bloodstream.

Now that we're done beating on Jakob, check this out:
http://www.patricklynch.net/viz/viz020100.html
great article that explains why print has cause designers to design their
pages upside down...
It also helps explain a phenomenon I've seen in user testing I call "land
and scroll" Users come to a page and -before it's even finished loading, as
soon as they have anything vaguely resembling a page-- they scroll. I've
seen a quick up-down 'getting the lay of the land" and an instant permanent
scroll, pushing the global nav and any banner navigation down. hmmm

While we're at it, why not demystify another hero: Tufte!
Don Norman takes him down a peg on the CHI-WEB list
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0008a&L=chi-web#30

APROPOS OF NOTHING
hey! Mexican wrestler game!
http://www.sbermprod.com/guest/wrestling.html#
plus lucha swag http://www.luchaswag.com/
don't know what I'm talking about? http://www.firstcut.com/9807/n1.html
(thanks Tracy!)
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 2:32:48 PM

IA, design and brand

IA MATTERS
creating trust in cyberspace
http://www.tml.hut.fi/~pnr/publications/cam2000.pdf

iacandy

a bunch of truly beautiful odd new visualizations.. information design and IA are one.

http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/
and the story behind it
www.thinkmap.com

more
http://inxight.com/
more
http://www.smartmoney.com/marketmap/marketmap.html
from
http://www.smartmoney.com/intro/tools/

more
http://www.artandculture.com

hey, anyone going to any of these?
http://argus-acia.com/events/full_calendar.html

BRAND
The Evolution of Brand Strategy
The Changing Roles of Identity and Navigation Design
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/08/zauderer/

Uncanny
The Art & Design of Shawn Wolfe
Published by Houston
Best known as the man behind Beatkit, the ubiquitous "brand
without a product," Wolfe was deconstructing consumerism and
brand fetishism since before he knew that's what he was doing.

See the cover image at:
http://www.emigre.com/CBUN.html

NEWS

Did you think that you can stop worrying about downloads?

Fast Company: Why the Long Wait?
Latency, says Reed, directly affects the quality of users' experience on the
Net. Although ISPs aren't blind to this issue, too few of them agree that
latency is the defining metric of their networks' performance.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/38/ifaqs.html

Napster cannot be killed.

Industry Standard: It's Not Dead Yet.
Kevin Werbach. Rather than delaying a resolution of the major issues
surrounding online music distribution, the Napster injunction has accelerated
it. The injunction raised the stakes and also brought Napster tremendous
mainstream publicity.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17382,00.html

yeah, these guys are the victims. sure.

Wired News: States: Labels Fixed CD Prices.
Thirty states filed suit Tuesday against the five biggest record companies and
two music retailing giants, accusing them of conspiring to fix CDs prices --
an act that the states say cost consumers millions of dollars.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38103,00.html

the war between design and usability

USABILITY VS DESIGN
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/marsvenus/

DESIGN MATTERS
A little while ago I asked what designers have against capitalization. Mike
of biggerhand.com has been kind enough to let me share his response to me
wiht you.

me: "What "do* designers have against capitalization?"

mike: "they get used like exclamation marks: Too Often And For Emphasis!!!!!
(usually the emphasis is that the copy sucks, but we'll build around
it with exclamation marks, or "bangs" in marketinguese, and caps.)

in the event of cap & bang bloat i usually strip them all out and get
the client to put them back in. they generally put back about 25% of
what I took out.

In one particularly dire situation I talked marketing down by telling
them that caps added significant overhead in k-count. We then came to
the compromise that we would capitalize the first word of every
sentence and the CEO's name. To give them a "warm fuzzy" I agreed to
capitalize the first word in every paragraph too.

I like making people happy! (<--bang)"

NEWS BITES
from tomalak

Business 2.0: Five Questions With Mike Mulligan, CEO of MapQuest.
And while they've got a brand that people know, it's a brand that's not
relevant online. It's like Brillo. Everybody recognizes the brand Brillo,
but
it doesn't do you any good online. And everybody recognizes the brand Rand
McNally, but it doesn't do them any good online.
http://www.business2.com/content/channels/ebusiness/2000/07/18/14482
and
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,15572,00.html for more on
Rand Mcnally's struggle to play catch-up (also one of gleanings favorite
topics)

Business 2.0: World to Privacy Sites: Now or Never.
Looming legislation threatens to make many of their current functions
obsolete, and recent high-profile embarrassments have forced many of the
sites
to reconsider their entire raison d'être.
http://www.business2.com/content/channels/ebusiness/2000/08/02/15570

Business 2.0: The Perfect PR App.
The other day, I received a routine press release. It wasn't time sensitive.
It wasn't interesting. There was absolutely no way I or anyone else here
would've written about the contents of the release. Yet, it came in a FedEx
envelope sent via the highest, and most expensive, priority.
http://www.business2.com/content/insights/dailyinsights/2000/07/25/15494

Computerworld: States formally object to proposed settlement between
Toysmart
and the FTC.
The objection was submitted by Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly,
who
said in the filing that the effort to sell the customer data "is a breach of
Toysmart's promise and constitutes deception pursuant to the Consumer
Protection Act of Massachusetts"...
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO48208,00.html

more on the napster wars
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2000/08/07/yoink_napster/index.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 8/13/2000 9:08:41 AM