From: Gleanings
To: Hungery Hungry Clickers
Subject: Gleanings: A Picnic Basket Full of Links

OPENING THANG

Lance Arthur inspires us all-- "Take Five" looks back at five years of a personal website.
http://www.glassdog.com

Meanwhile on the blog I've been puzzling over the roles of Information Architects, and their relationship with usability and the rest of the team
http://eleganthack.com/blog/index.html

Have a nice weekend: I've packed you a nice big gleanings to keep you busy in case it rains.

IA & DESIGN MATTERS

nadav drove down to baychi (and i got to ride along!) and we saw a terrific talk on modeling user experience. I haven't gotten my act together to get my notes up, but he has
http://www.giantant.com/antenna/archive/2001_04_08_index.shtml#3161262
I now worship meta. their schematics belong in MOMA.
http://www.metadesign.com/main.htm

~~~

In other news I was nosing around acia as I am wont to do and looked at this for the third time
Software for Information Architects
http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange011.html
Why is there no decent software for ia's to make their cute little sitemaps and wireframes?

~~~

kottke's collecting transit maps. amazing how many different ways there are to represent what is essentially the same data.
http://www.kottke.org/notes/0104.html#010409

found Information Graphics lying around IQHQ and dragged it home. nifty stuff, almost as lovely as Wurman's Information Architects. Lots of sign systems, graphs, infographics, transit maps and the like.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0500280770/eleganthack

~~~

Ethnographic-perspective paper on the internet as cultural space.
http://skylla.wz-berlin.de/pdf/2000/ii00-101.pdf

~~~

the FAQ on FAQ's
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/faqs/about-faqs/

~~~

Measuring mental workload
"Mental workload has been defined as the "degree of processing capacity that is expended during task performance" "
http://chem.larc.nasa.gov/HumanFactors/mworkload.htm

~~~

how to make a button
http://www.logiko.com/references/button.html

~~~

Noah grey interview on waferbaby
http://www.waferbaby.com/corner/noahgrey/

USABILITY MATTERS

Business 2.0: Intranets Save Time- But for Whom? (tomalak.org)
Jakob Nielsen. "Thinking about the intranet as a productivity tool can prevent
such mishaps. For every service or application you put on the intranet,
estimate the impact on users around the company. If usability is low, then
training time goes up and productivity goes down."
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/ebusiness/2001/04/09/29409

~~~

Interstitials in the balance
Are improving clickthrough rates and a higher selling price worth the annoyance that pop-up ads cause site visitors?
http://www.publish.com/ic_490520_6414_1-2841_1320_12.html

BUSINESS MATTERS

Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History
http://www.ecompany.com/edit/0,2088,11274,00.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Tech Industry Aims to Render MP3 Obsolete
"The industry doesn't want [MP3] pushed, and Microsoft and RealNetworks don't want it pushed. The consumer is going to eat what he's given,"
http://www.canoe.ca/MoneyWSJ/wsj2-dow.html

~~~

NY Times: Humor Is at Center of Microsoft's New Campaign. (tomalak.org)
Although the campaign is likely to be greeted warmly by many white- collar
office workers who have long grumbled about the paper clip, it has worried at
least one Microsoft researcher who is most closely credited with being the
father of the technology underlying the paper clip.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/technology/11ADCO.html

~~~

Amazon, Borders to Join Forces In Online Book-Selling Business
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB986946353234468786.htm

~~~

Napster's Sad Song Falls on Deaf Ears
By Ronna Abramson
Judge Patel says the music-swapping service may need to be shut down
if the company cannot successfully block unauthorized songs.
http://tm0.com/thestandard/sbct.cgi?s=126041531&i=328309&d=1306497

~~~

Germany plots cyber attacks on neo-Nazi sites
By IDG News Service
The German Interior minister contemplates the use of spam to fight
extremists
http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=126041608&i=328262&d=1305962

APROPOS OF NOTHING

How It Works: Detectors Can Find Just the Right Spot to Drive That Nail (iaslash.org)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/12/technology/12HOWW.html?0412ci

~~~

figlet server (giantant.com/antenna/)
http://www.surfplaza.com/figlet/

~~~

it's so fun, i don't even care what they do
http://www.filmarts.org/festival/festival00/

~~~

noel and mattjones sent me this, so it's gotta be cool

from: http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=8659
"Apparently, if you look at the second frame of credits on the new A.I. teaser trailer, there is a credit given to Jeanine Salla, Sentient Machine Therapist," Mooncookie explains. "If you enter her name into a Google.com search, you get http://www.familiasalla-es.ro/. Exploring this site will send you on a sprawling search for clues and other sites that are somehow related to the movie. It seems as if there are some 20+ websites that are connected with this guerilla-marketing geek's wet dream, a la the X-Men stunts last summer. After poking around for about five minutes, I was blown away by the man-hours put in to all this -- and the persistence of the geeks uncovering all this stuff -- but it seems everyone likes a good intrigue." As some Plastic wit once remarked, the real amazing thing is how the film industry will pay millions of bucks to lawyers to chase down and exterminate actual fan sites while simultaneously paying millions to developers to build fake fan sites. Only on the web, folks, only on the web!

~~~

why are mondays?
http://www.glassdog.com/the_lab/index.html

~~~

How much silly putty do you need? (rebeccablood.net)
http://www.crayola.com/store/showdetl.cfm?st=0&st2=0&st3=0&Product_ID=236&DS_ID=3
posted by Christina Wodtke 4/13/2001 08:11:10 AM

From: Gleanings
To: Wafflers
Subject: Gleanings: IAlicious

OPENING THANG

I suppose you all have seen this a half-dozen times but if not
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2001/04/07/modem_e_mail/
I can't believe you can get to be the president of a company and still can't tell "reply" from "reply all."
Of course fuckedcompany.com has the entire mails: http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/modem_email.cfm

It reminds me of his completely hilarious novel, "e"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452281881/eleganthack
in which the president of advertising agency company keeps having his emails forwarded to a fellow CEO in Finland. Well, it was one of those books you sit down at 6 to read,and get up at midnight having finished it and wishing there were two more just like it. Fun read.

Anyhow, things are quite busy here at IQHQ, so just a short and late glean for y'all today...

IA & DESIGN MATTERS

So, What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?
"By far the two most common types of fonts currently used on the Web are the serif font, Times New Roman (TNR) and the sans serif font, Arial. The question is, which one is more legible and at which size? "
http://wsupsy.psy.twsu.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm

The Curse of Information Design
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/curse/
set off some really great debate here
http://www.alistapart.com/discuss/read.cfm?forum=46&id=334&thread=97

"Consumers love shopping. Designers love Flash. You do the math. Developer Michael Cardenas shares tips to help you get started building Flash-based e-commerce sites."
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashbag/

The Architecture of Online
""Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one…"
http://www.ecomresourcecenter.com/ecom_connection/0315_2.html

Great blog on IA! Tons of good stuff...
http://www.iaslash.org/ia/

USABILITY MATTERS

Just How 'Blind' Are We to Advertising Banners on the Web?
http://wsupsy.psy.twsu.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/banners.htm

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Obey the waffle
http://www.hypnoticwaffles.com/

You can do anything at zombo.com (you MUST have sound turned on)
http://www.zombo.com

posted by Christina Wodtke 4/11/2001 11:31:42 AM

From: Gleanings
To: Cleanings
Subject: Gleanings: Monday after the drugs wear off

OPENING THANG

I was possessed by something this Sunday (Theraflu, most likely- caught a cold) and rambled crazily on the blog. I tried to understand the web's relationship to old medium by contemplating rock and roll, poetry and collage, and I wrote something nice about dot-coms. Okay, you've been warned, it's more off-topic than usual.
http://eleganthack.com/blog/index.html

DESIGN MATTERS

Beautiful. Beautiful fonts, interesting content, nice wrapper... not usable. but again, personal sites are not subject to such rants.
http://www.patricking.com/

Design is not a therapy session
"Web designers need to grow up, leave their
inner artist behind and embrace the challenge of usable design."
http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/design_therapy-1.html

IA MATTERS

Let me write that down: the genius of documentation
"For almost all Web developers, documentation equals dullness. Thus few Web
projects get properly documented. Which helps explain why so many fail."
http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/documentation-1.html

"Comic Books: A Case Study for Redesigning Traditional Media and Assessing Entertainment Value." (peterme.com)
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/%7Eaklein/ComicPaper.pdf

MARKETING MATTERS

HTML Versus Text: The Saga Continues
"So HTML's losing steam? Don't believe it. Despite what HTML naysayers say, Kim's finding that HTML messages consistently return stronger results than plain-text ones. But don't take her word for it -- put HTML messaging to the test."
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3710.html

Data's Dandy. But Do a Reality Check, Too
"Numbers, as much as we love them, are never enough. Part of the task of drawing meaning from customer data requires that we go beyond the charts and graphs and the segmentations and profile pictures and actually communicate with real people. "
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3726.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Counting the Human Toll Among the Internet Carnage
"What do you call someone who was president of a dot-com company last year?" asked Kenneth McGee, a vice president of Gartner Group, before answering: "Waiter!" The joke drew rather tepid laughter at a discussion session here of the World Economic Forum last week."
http://www.iht.com/articles/16255.html

NBC to Buy Back the Rest of NBCi
By Kenneth Li
Retreating from its big plans, the network plans to remove the portal from the public market by offering a premium to its shareholders.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23581,00.html

BTW the standard redesigned, and I don't understand why. It was one of the most pleasant and usable news experiences on the web. now it's a disjointed mumble. well, my opinion, anyhow.
http://www.thestandard.com/

APROPOS OF NOTHING

"Subvertising is the Art of Cultural resistance. It is the 'writing on the wall', the sticker on the lamppost, the corrected rewording of Billboards, the spoof T-shirt; but it is also the mass act of defiance of a street party. The key process involves redefining or even reclaiming our environment from the corporate beast. Subvertising is a lot like good modern art - they both involve finding idiots with too much power and wealth, and taxing them. "
http://www.subvertise.org/index.html (littlegreenfootballs.com)

Extreme Robotics
"Okay, why are robot designers suddenly so interested in geckos?"
http://www.techreview.com/web/leo040301d.asp
posted by Christina Wodtke 4/9/2001 08:36:02 AM

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