Monday, September 09, 2002

Radio Tip Remember Mark Pilgrim's 30 days of lessons in making your site more accessible and usable?  Well here is another resource in that department. Thanks to [Morgan Wilson's Exploded Library] post about Usability (incidentally check my Blind of NH story for a chilling collection of Usability Challenges), I see that [Library Techlog] has link and review to Usability Toolkit from a Special Interest Group that is trying to help everyone improve Usability. QUOTING [Library Techlog] The Usability Toolkit is a collection of  forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews. UNQUOTE [Library Techlog] [Morgan Wilson's Exploded Library]  was particularly interested in QUOTE the Topics in Usability section, including usability basics, FAQ and ethics section UNQUOTE [Morgan Wilson's Exploded Library]  11:36:54 PM

Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE Weblogged Conversation: Slow Academic Adoption of Weblogs. Seb closes the loop on an interesting multi-weblog conversation about why weblogs have not (yet?) been widely adoped by academics as a research tool: Stephen over at Blogging Alone mentions Sébastien Paquet's reasons why blogging has failed to become a widely accepted research tool among academia. I disagree with nearly all of these reasons. Below is the list of reasons and my thoughts based on my own experiences: Follow the link to Seb's summary to get the whole flow of the dialogue. UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]  I inserted into quoting the link to Stephen context. The flow of the dialogue is not yet clear to me, but I get the drift of it. I will agree that a lot of people have valid concerns about Privacy on the Internet, and the risk that someone will steal their ideas, if they prematurely share them through the Weblogging medium. I believe that Weblogging Technology documentation is mainly aimed at people who are not only Computer Literate, but somewhat experienced in tinkering with how things work on their screens.  In other professions than computing developers, there are many people who lack this attribute.  They just want to use the software.  You do not have to know how to change a tire or tune an engine to drive a car - when it needs service you take it to the experts.  When TV set or Telephone is broke, either call repairman or buy a new one.  There are computer users who want that from their computer experience.  Thus it is perfectly legitimate for such people to complain about the learning curve. I agree that it is easier to publish through some time honored template, even when some new template might be be better suited for the work, especially when there are other players, like employers, who need to approve the new template. I think that scientists seek to figure out how things work, then engineers apply the results in the real world.  Scientists propose a theory to explain the evidence, then come up with experiments to test the theory.  Developers have similar approach, by coming up with ways to test new software and changes to software.  In that sense, computer people are a mixture of scientist and engineer, but computer science in the real world is still like an artist crafting something.  I doubt that I understand social scientists well enought to comment on how they fit into that picture. 1:18:39 PM

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] QUOTE I found out via an email exchange that one of the founders of the [newly relaunched] electronic intifada website is Dutch. Arjan El Fassed also posted several comments to yesterday's posting. Of course there are counter posts now as well that is forming a lively conversation. My advice to Arjan is to re-re-launch electronicintifada as a weblog. Perhaps a multi-user weblog for multiple authors. Currently the site appears to emulate a BigPub and imho detracts from their mission. As with all aspects of war, be careful not to become what you are fighting against. UNQUOTE [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] This is also like the appearance of impropriety.  The enemies are not clearly understood by government intelligence, let alone anyone else.  When any group of people discuss something, the odds are that several are police spies, journalists trying to ferret out a story, pure innocents trying to figure out what is going on, and it may be that none of the participants are any of the bad guys, but in a war, the rules of innocent until proven guilty are sometimes altered into round up suspects before someone pulls another 9/11. 1:15:31 PM

Reference Directories to Blogs by Profession, organized by  Sebastien Paquet His home page. His weblog is Seb's Open Research Weblogs by Profession is a directory of professions active in weblogging, in which for many, but not all, he has links to directories for each of the professions that he lists. Consultants Educators and (old) Teachnology Journalists Knowledge Management people Lawyers and Academic Law Librarians Researchers Software developers Web designers and information architects   12:58:37 PM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.