Blue Ruin

From evolt comes this cool essay about Cont ent Management. Kooky link of the day is to this essay by an ardent creationist, who accuses Apple of all people of being in bed with the devil. (the link was slashdotted today, so may be hard to get to) Another Bruce Sterling tal k. Nifty Javascript that places a list of links to pages that have linked to you! Lively case study about how a Porn company bought the rights to several hundred expired domain names and pointed the URL's at Tina's Live Web Cam! Beautiful tessellating animations from Japan (I think you can skip downloading the Japanese font to view the page)

Research Buzz has a tip on another undocumented Google feature -- searchi ng by date. Adaptive Path has redesigned their web site... personally, I don't like it but they didn't ask me. Kaliber1000 has relaunched. Check them out! Speaking of which, their new issue pointed me at this. A series of drawings of people on subways around the world, with a nifty bit of Flash navigation.

Internet Insight: Moore's Law & Order Jon Barger (of Robot Wisdom fame) has posted a long exploration of the bad HTML coding issues he discovered when trying to find a copy of Hamlet online. Recently, I've seen a spate of silly patents, but this takes the cake!! Way cool interview with an "Extreme gardener." Webword has a very interesting article on all the ways you can look at what other people are looking at on the web (Google's Zeitgeist is only the beginning.) Twink is a band that plays music on toy instruments. Interesting update on what several Libertarians are doing/thinking about this whole War on Terra thing.

Check out the "Interaction Designers Coffee Breaks" Interesting paper entitled "Theory for Practice" From the Abstract: "This paper discusses a constructionist approach to information design and contrasts it with the more widely used constructivist approach. The paper suggests that there are five principles of information design: politics, position, parsimony, politeness, and performance. Of these, politeness is the most important." From TaskZ comes a Formal Definition of User-Centered Design (UCD) PeterMe has put up an article/case-study on Using Conceptual Models in Design. Good stuff. Interesting Flash site for the new OQO -- the World's First "Ultra Personal Computer." I've linked to this before, but it's worth revisiting. "Winners don't take all" a power-law analysis of linking on the Web. Go ahead: Ask Moses

Good Salon article on the history of game modding. Study Guide for RadioUserland Another Radio link to a discussion about the documentation. Paper: Met adata Mediation : Representation and Protocol Tom Tomorrow is snipping quotes and pieces about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I really wish somebody could tell me what this is all about. Whoever wrote this is obviously not sharing the same world as you and me, but somehow, he got this issue debated at MIT? Good lord! Here's a story about a European ant colony that effective stretches for thousands of miles. I never did trust ants. The power of three in visual representation!

Carbon dioxide scrubber -- please, feel free to drive that SUV whenever and wherever you want. A Design Pattern for converting enterprise domain data into HTML pages (hint: it's two steps and involves seperating content from prensentation) Scott Loftesness keeps a log of all the changes he makes to Radio. Someday, I'll be using more of these.

Google has opened it's search technology to automation by everyone and anyone by releasing a set of API's. I love it that new species are being discovered all the time! From Yahoo news and Reuters: Hi-Tech School Bullies Working Round the Clock Personality Tests (for class?) Get Organized Now! Because your most important appointment, is with yourself? Last lingering elements of 90s decadence? I hope so. From the Electronic Infitada: Debunking Six Common Israeli Myths What? Online games can be addictive? Nahhhh, couldn't be!!! I could quit any time! Douglas Rushkoff has a blog. Interesting story about the l ong wake the Hawaian islands cut through the Pacific.

I'm sorry for the long list of links. I keep a running file at work, but I keep forgetting to have RadioUserland autostart on my computer at home, so the updates never make it to the blog! What's worse than a pop-under ad? Pop-under DOWNLOADS!!! CIO Magazine has an interview with Internet Anthropologist Bonnie Nardi. According to this article in Darwin Magazine, the Shell Corporation has taken my advice... well, the advice I've given lots of clients, and that I would have given them if they'd asked. They're experiementing with a very open discussion forum on their site which allows anyone to say anything about them, and allows any employees to answer. As the article says, "Shell's lack of control over the forum is precisely equivalent to the depth of its real commitment." The shape of things to come? I hope so. Ivory Coast Witch Doctors have been placated. They threatened to put a curse on the national team if they weren't paid for their tremendous hard work in securing the country's 1992 (and only) victory in the Nations Cup. "In 2000, the team was locked up in a military camp, forced to frog march and attend lectures on patriotism after failing to go beyond the first round." Give me uninterested Laker fans any day. Please file this under "NO SHIT SHERLOCK." MILITARY-style "boot camp" regimes for young criminals fail to reduce reoffending significantly but produce fitter, healthier and more self-confident offenders, according to a report. Dark, thoughtful, pro-Israeli. This piece from the New Republic makes a lot of good points. On the subject, one which I (along with many many many others) have been brooding about for days/months/years, I finally actually read UN Security Council Resolution 242 and this very interesting collections of interpretations and clarifications which make it clear that the withdrawal by Israel is not from ALL territories occupied, but withdrawal to "recognized and secure" borders. I just love WriteDesign.com. Here's a series of pages on "Graphic Organizing" techniques that I want to try and include in our brainstorming sessions in class this summer. Oddpost Is a web-based email client that uses DHTML to almost perfectly mimic the functionality of Outlook. Wow this is cool. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you LEISURETOWN (and for the record, no, I'm not sure I "get it" either. Very nice how-to on interviewing clients to get information you need to design their database application. Rule 1: Be nice to the clients and don't make it seem like you're smarter than them. Good point! (also check out their "usability" articles.) Who knew? J. Bradford DeLong is an economist at Berkeley, who keeps an online journal worth reading. He also looks suspiciously like my step-father Ted... A cool blog to read. You know, if you're into this kind of geeky scripting stuff. I'm continually flabbergasted at the sheer volume of weirdness on the net. I think you should be too. A Must Read: Bruce Sterling's piece in last month's Wired: "Driven by al Qaeda's atrocities, the US charged into the classic quagmire of Afghanistan, legendary death trap of military ambition. With the customary roll of thunder, out came the full routine of the modern American expeditionary force. First, a cautious, methodical, widely televised suppression of local air defenses. Then, once CNN became accustomed to the violence, some leisurely and terrible precision targeting throughout the theater, around the clock. In Serbia in 1999, US aircraft smashed stationary targets, like buildings and bridges. In Afghanistan, thanks to much faster satellite relays, they demolished rapidly moving tanks, fleeing Toyota trucks, and amazed guerrillas. It took only two weeks to chase Taliban and al Qaeda forces into Pakistan, Iran, and beyond."

Happy April Fools Day Everyone! Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, March 31, Top Research Laboratories in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) High Tech Toilets! (For SuperDanny, a man of vision) We've been working with Jabber for a project, and the reviews have been excellent. Here's a story about their future directions. Untold History has this piece on the history of Flash, as told by it's creator. I'm putting together a list of links and papers for our class. Here's a .pdf titled: Using Information Scent to Model User Information Needs and Actions on the Web from Xerox PARC. There is also a lot of good stuff on IBM's Developer Works, such as this series UCD for different project types, part 1 I haven't had a chance to look these over yet, but here's a seemingly comprehensive list of Internet/Web Robots. Check out the ICANN blog.