From: Gleanings
To: Ears
Subject: Gleanings: Let there be music

OPENING THANG

Well, long-time readers know how I feel about the music industry: they don't get it. And musicians; they deserve more than what the labels give them. And napster: peer-to-peer is inevitable.

So when long-time reader Shellyrae wrote in asking for an ad for her band Bassic, I was perplexed. I've never run an ad before (except suggesting someone hire mike over at biggerhand.com, but I don't think that counts)

And then I read this:

"We're trying to support ourselves and our newborn daughter on the money
we're making from our music - instead of having to keep working for (often
failing) dotcom's and various other tech/internet/software companies. We're
also trying to keep from being signed to a label because we think that most
(if not all) music labels have extremely dishonest business practices and
often times the musicians tend to be the big losers in the end, especially
if they don't pump out the typical top-40, music for the masses crap."

Mp3.com is doing something very interesting: allowing the artists to avoid the whole label nightmare that Ms. Love rails against in her salon article.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/

So visit www.mp3.com/bassic and check out their music. If you dig it, buy it! Subvert. subvert. subvert.

DESIGN MATTERS

Worship at the church of Kalman?
http://www.undesign.org

Tokyo design firm with great splash page
http://www.furifuri.com/

Powazek reinvents himself again. God, I'd like to find time to do a redesign of EH just once.... and all this while he writes a book. Okay, I'll just crawl in a corner now.
http://www.powazek.com/

Visual Design for Instructional Content (Part I) (xblog.com)
"In an earlier article 'Monkey Instruction', we addressed the issue of effective writing for online instruction. We asked why some online courses are boring and analyzed a Webmonkey course to understand its writing style that makes it such a popular course."
http://www.elearningpost.com/elthemes/visual1.asp

IA MATTERS

Carbon IQ is keeping some good company these days. I was pleasantly surprised to see us on this list.
http://www.christung.com/design.htm

Peterme weighs in on the Argus closure
http://www.peterme.com

USABILITY MATTERS

Web-Based User Interface Evaluation with Questionnaires
Gary Perlman
http://www.acm.org/~perlman/question.html

IBM developerWorks: Debunking the myths of UI design. (tomalak.org)
"Software development would benefit greatly from extensive study by
sociologists, anthropologists, and clinical psychologists. As we await such
analyses, let's document some beliefs embedded in the culture of software
development, specifically about user interface design."
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-myth.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Know your gurus
http://www2.darwinmag.com/learn/guru/category.cfm?ID=all

Inside: Cash Begins Trickling in at Web Sites, as Amazon Honor System Slowly Takes Hold. (tomalak.org)
"Touted as the first fast, easy and elegant way for Web sites to receive
much-appreciated financial support from readers, the Amazon Honor System has so far shaped up to be a boon for one already established name but a bust for many other media-world participants."
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=25782&pod_id=7

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Scott McCloud's "choose your own carl" project has finally been completed.
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/carl/3b/cyoc.html

Summer rerun-- but I still love this site! best use of stock photos *ever*
http://www.it3c.co.uk

If you love music (esp jazz)
http://www.beatthief.com/

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/15/2001 07:58:29 AM

From: Gleanings
To: Argonauts everywhere
Subject: Gleanings: the end of an era

OPENING THANG

My feelings on Argus's closing
http://eleganthack.com/blog/2001_03_01_pastblog.shtml#2768333

Erin's
http://www.emdezine.com/designwritings/

DESIGN MATTERS

The Brutal, Blood-Red Remains (http://www.subtraction.com/)
"The Dow Jones fell a dizzy 436 points, while the NASDAQ fell below the
psychologically frightening 2000 mark. A friend of mine, using MapStation
from SmartMoney, sent me this visualization of what happened today with the
NASDAQ. Red indicates equities that lost ground today. The one green bar is
Compuware (CPWR), who must have cut a deal with the devil or something."
http://www.subtraction.com/log/images/010312_nasdaq_view.html
also good
http://www.subtraction.com/log/images/010228/index.html
Infographic high! good site, too.check out "cats"

TECH MATTERS

CodeHound - The Software Developer's Search Engine
no chat rooms · no polls · no news · no virtual tradeshows
no discussion groups · no mailing lists · no registration
no career centers · no editor's picks · no online events · no forums
http://www.codehound.com/

Internet World: Dumb Pipes Are Golden.
Jakob Nielsen. Most Internet analyses view data transport as the worst
possible business. After all, moving bits around is the blandest of
commodities and is often referred to dismissively as being a "dumb pipe." In
real life, good connectivity is far from being a commodity.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/03132001d.jsp

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Industry Standard: The Advertising Slump. (tomalak.org)
"Now I have never, ever been accused of being a Pollyanna, and Yahoo's
announcement is certainly not very comforting for companies that are building
businesses on the Net. But I have to say that the Merc's apocalyptic
characterization of the situation is more than a little hysterical."
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,22732,00.html

Business Week: Google's Larry Page: Good Ideas Still Get Funded. (tomalak.org)
"But you don't need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person. So
you don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea. You can do
it in your spare time, you can really work on ideas and see if they take
off..."
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2001/nf20010313_831.htm

APROPOS OF NOTHING

i said, go look at "cats"
http://www.subtraction.com/cats/index.html

It's just in Italian now -- says they're working on the English version -- but what great graphics!
http://www.eateathurrah.com/

Preparing for st. paddy's:

puzzle
http://www-physics.mps.ohio-state.edu/~trey/lep/main.html

and a menu from epicurious

Grainy-Mustard Mashed Potatoes with Sausage, Bon Appetit
http://www.epicurious.com/ego/sausagepotatoes

Irish Beef Stew, Bon Appetit
http://www.epicurious.com/ego/beefstew

Chocolate Bread Pudding, Bon Appetit
http://www.epicurious.com/ego/chocolatepudding

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/14/2001 07:32:50 AM

From: Gleanings
To: IAs
Subject: Gleanings: the end of the world as we know it

Sorry for the two-glean-a-day, but since this list is primarily made up of Information Architects, I felt it was worth interrupting your regularly schedualed broadcast to announce this extremely sad news.

a letter from Lou

"Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are deeply sorry to announce that Argus Associates is ceasing operations
this month. We remain absolutely convinced that the need for high-quality
information architecture consulting and design will continue to expand, and
that by year-end market demand will have rebounded as well. However, Argus
doesn't have the financial resources to weather this storm.

We are proud of Argus' accomplishments, particularly:

* Writing a best-selling O'Reilly book that expanded awareness of the
practice and value of information architecture.

* Growing a consistently profitable (10 years in a row) consulting practice
that designed IA solutions for more than 100 clients, including some of the
world's largest corporations.

* Participating in the creation of a new community of information architects
through ACIA and ASIS&T publications and events.

* Building the strongest co-located team of information architects in the
world.

If you're in a position to make new hires, we highly encourage you to
consider some of the wonderful staff (including project managers,
information architects, and specialists) we've been forced to let go.
Contact information, bios, and resumes will soon be available online
http://argus-inc.com/contact/argus_alumni.shtml ).

Peter Morville and I will continue participating in the development of the
IA Community and hope to maintain the Argus Center for Information
Architecture ( http://argus-acia.com/ ) as a focal point for these efforts.
We will also be available as individuals for limited consulting engagements.

We believe that the information architecture community has already made a
positive impact, and we look forward to the continued growth of the practice
of information architecture over the coming years.

We greatly appreciate your support and wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Louis Rosenfeld Peter Morville
lou@argus-inc.com morville@argus-inc.com"
posted by Christina Wodtke 3/13/2001 03:04:10 PM

From: Gleanings
To: Mikes and Not-mikes
Subject: Gleanings: Mike Tuesday

OPENING THANG

I mentioned Mike Kuniavsky yesterday, and got a few inquiries as to who he is. I imagine that question won't be asked once he finally finishes his book on user research for O'Reilly, but for now I'll say he's one of those thugs over at adaptivepath.com (hi guys!) and the man I'm having breakfast with in an hour.

Need more?
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/14/index3a.html?tw=design
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/radio/mikek.html
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/34/index1a_page13.html?tw=design
and
http://www.stockpuppets.com/ (check out "who built them")

USABILITY MATTERS

Scenarios were the hot topic on chi-web, and I got some great links from it...

Scenario building is another relatively inexpensive and quick method for collecting requirements and task information. The primary advantage of scenario building versus exploratory surveys is that it allows users to create a context for their requirements and tasks.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/moderator-guide/requirements.html

narrative scenarios as a design tool
http://www.davidbliss.com/index.asp?unique_id=232
(btw, davidbliss.com has a lot of great info. be sure to explore...)

It's the User, Stupid
How do Open Source app designers figure out what users want? Most don't bother, says UI researcher Mike Kuniavsky - and software and user both suffer.
http://sendmail.net/interviews/interviewkuniavsky.shtml

IBM Ease of Use: Putting it to the test. (tomalak.org)
At the Fidelity laboratory, there have been over 120 usability tests of web
sites or applications in the past three years. The new state-of-the-art lab
doubles the testing capacity of the original one, which Tullis helped
establish, and employs a wide range of new evaluation techniques.
http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/1564

MARKETING MATTERS

Clueless Is as Clueless Does
"I'm constantly entertained by the Internet strategies of Big Media companies. They're always good for a laugh. "
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3518.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Salon: Do you kick Yahoo? (tomalak.org)
Scott Rosenberg. All of which raises the obvious question: Plainly, the
market's pundits were way off a year ago, at the pinnacle of Net stock mania;
so why should we put any more stock in them now? Their downside is looking
just as insane as their upside.
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2001/03/10/yahoo_down/index.html

Inside: Copy This! Can 'Military' Technology Beat Digital Piracy? (tomalak.org)
A small Austin start-up run by intelligence community alums is parachuting
into the burgeoning, post-Napster, copy-protection market with a remarkably
thin, invisible software product that claims to offer nearly invincible armor
for music, video, film and e-books alike.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=25476&pod_id=13&user_type=2

"In the beginning was the Command Line" on the history of the GUIs, Operating Systems, and the future of Linux. by Neal Stevenson (alpern.org/prof)
http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$7161#7162

IFCC: Auction sites generate most complaints (nua.com)
Most consumer complaints with regard to the Internet relate to fraud
at auction sites such as Ebay.

Embassy of Belarus (US): Internet economy healthy in Belarus (nua.com)
Note: I'd never heard of Belarus. Reading the article, turns out it's mostly men in Minsk looking for a date. Now that's a killer-ap.

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Mike of biggerhand.com writes
"go here: http://www.10socks.com
it might be the only case i can think of where a slow modem
connection actually ENHANCED the experience. I was anticipating each
and every sock!"

Is it possible someone hasn't heard of the clock of the long now?
http://www.longnow.org/

FEEDBACK

Kylie Baxter writes:
"I use Powermarks to manage my bookmarks and think it's fab. It works by
keyword so bookmarks are stored in a flat file format. I have over 2000
bookmarks now and it's so easy to find stuff now!
Not free, but worth every penny/cent."
http://www.kaylon.com/power.html

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/13/2001 07:27:05 AM

From: Gleanings
To: To Name
Subject: Gleanings: Order and Disorder

OPENING THANG

Monday, monday... drinking coffee out of my art director mug
http://biggerhand.com/sketchbook/artdirection.html
watching the fog burn off the San Francisco downtown
http://nothing-new.com/blog/2001_02_11_nothingnew#2332631
and making favicons.
http://www.favicon.com/

If you use IE and you add eleganthack.com to your favorites, you'll see it.
(it's pretty ugly, but what do you want at 16x16.)

Interesting chat starting on the CHI list pondering if these oddities make the Favorites list more usable.
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0103b&L=chi-web#22

Favorites/bookmarks have always been an interesting quandary to me. When you fist get online, you use search engines to find stuff. later, you bookmark websites to find them again. Eventually your list gets so long you organize your list into folders. Then your list of folders gets so long, that's useless too, and you return to search engines. It seems to me the bookmark quandary applies to any website where people are asked to store large amounts of items, from photo sites such as snapfish.com and ofoto.com to the online storage services. How do you give people meaningful tools to organize their stuff? Not that offline offers any good solutions
(despite the sexiness of this. http://www.ikea-usa.com/product_presentation/category.asp?id=8f2a0ab2d9ded31182b600508ba25e47200003221649067302000121316584851020010206143415323)
You should see my sock drawer. if I can't wrangle 10 pair of socks, how am I expected to manage 500 bookmarks?

USABILITY MATTERS

Mike Kuniavsky has sending URL's out left and right these days. good stuff, that.

Mocking Jakob
http://www.allyourbrand.org/contribs/useit.gif

Understanding Jakob
http://www.dplanet.org/articles/?c=015

The infamous eye-tracking study
http://poynter.org/pub/eyenews.htm

DESIGN MATTERS

A piece on the journalistic aspects of using photography versus drawing in
illustrating some tragic information for a newspaper: (mike k)
http://www.poynter.org/centerpiece/030701.htm

NEW & COMMENTARY

NY Times: The Dreams of Webzines Fizzle Out. (tomalak.org)
Five years ago, Slate and Salon arrived amid proclamations that "Webzines"
would become a multibillion-dollar business and displace print publications by
stealing their readers and sucking their advertising dry. Many people,
including not a few print publishers, believed it. But none of it
happened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/09/technology/09ZINE.html?pagewanted=all

USA Today: Europe's music-piracy solution: taxes.(tomalak.org)
The legislation, which takes effect in each of the 15 EU nations after being
ratified by the national parliaments, allows countries to add fees for each
blank CD or CD burner sold -- mirroring existing laws in Italy and Germany,
where additional charges of between 5% and 10% are already being
assessed.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/2001-03-09-europe.htm

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Found Neil Gaiman's online journal for American Gods
http://www.americangods.com/journal.html
It's definitely a fanboy spot, and uninteresting to those who don't know who Gaimen is, BUT the entry on copyediting is pretty cool, so scroll down to where it says "One longish, quite funny, entry on the mechanics of copy editing was eaten by Blogger a couple of days ago..."

Don't kill them, f*ck them
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/LAW/03/09/internet.abortion.threat.ap/index.html

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/12/2001 08:18:41 AM

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