04 March 2002

Counting the cost  "Maybe we should shunt employees off the balance sheet into Enron-esque special purpose entities and pretend that recessions never happen." John Plender has some interesting reflections on the consequences of what he terms "just-in-time chief executive officers". 12:48:17 PM

Deep linking Jakob Nielsen writes his usual good sense on the importance of so-called deep linking. I'm only surprised he doesn't mention another bad design mistake that I encounter all too frequently: frames-based sites that don't easily provide the URL to enable deep linking. I often engage in convoluted work arounds to ensure my Davos Newbies entries have useful links, rather than mere links to the homepage that odd webmasters seem to prefer. 12:42:09 PM

Look on my works ye mighty and despair In 1986, someone at the BBC had the clever idea of creating a modern Domesday Book, the eleventh century record of settlements in England. One problem: they put the information on 12-inch video disks, that could only play on special BBC Micro computers. Few of these computers were bought at the time (what a surprise), and now the information is well-nigh unretrievable. A newly established Digital Preservation Coalition is tackling the problem. Needless to say, the eleventh century original is still eminently readable. 12:39:02 PM

© Copyright 2002 Lance Knobel.