The last few shots from Florence are up. Here’s the first new one in the set. Now it’s on to Venice, almost done!
Fun fact: Florentine police use Segways to get around the station!
Month: July 2006
links for 2006-07-29
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A GTD blogs including interviews with people’s experiences with implementing the system.
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A GTD-plugin for Outlook.
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Nifty; this site collects all thingtagged objects on Flickr that are also registered with Thinglink.
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A little app that exports your Mac address book to CSV and imports it to Gmail.
A few more shots of Florence
Despite the heat and humidity this evening I got around sorting through a few more photos taken in Florence. Around 50 new ones have been added to the set. You can start at the first new one here.
I’d like to treat you to a nice example of serendipity. Here’s a photo I took of some stained glass windows depicting the agnus dei:
Now check out this photo by Rich Nurcombe… Weird.
YouTube is a spam machine!
Recently, I was trying to import some contacts from Gmail to YouTube. After going through a Plaxo dialog to select all my contacts, I assumed the next step would be to see who of those contacts were on YouTube. I thought wrong, in stead the service has e‑mailed every address I imported (almost 200) an invitation to connect with me without my explicit consent.
Naturally, I’m quite upset about the whole situation and have decided to at least offer my apologies for bothering anyone with this spam. If you’ve received a YouTube invitation from frog1980 and thought it was inappropriate, I’m very sorry to have unwontedly bothered you.
Also, I hope someone of YouTube reads this and will make it a point to reconsider the way importing contacts works. Spamming my friends without my consent is not a cool thing to do.
links for 2006-07-26
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Merholz posts his prelimenary ideas on IA co-created with users: “The spectrum goes from implicit, meaning derived from user behavior but not consciously created by the user, to explicit, meaning consciously created by the user.”
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Gene Smith “on social information architecture […] the different ways users can add structural value to websites”.
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Veen looks back at more than ten years of Hotwired. A nice way to consider the history of the web; how far have we really come?
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MacManus uses the freshly launched PeopleAggregator to briefly talk about what an open social network system should be.
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Another golden oldie, thought I should save this one. Peter discusses his interests that have broadened from IA to UX and at the same time focussed on findability. The UX honeycomb is a nice thinking-tool.
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Ziade notes that users are slow to adopt new services. This has to do with their reluctance to learn a new interface, satisficing on existing features and non-interest in new tech.
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D. Keith Robinson bemoans the current state of web design. He thinks we should focus less on tech (agreed), that designers should continuously educate themselves (agreed), design cannot succeed without a proper understanding of what should be communicated
Back with a black label
Just a short post to check in. I arrived back from Vienna this weekend. The week’s training was a lot of fun, very hot and quite successful. I managed to pass all my examinations which means I’m 2nd dan Takeda Ryu aikido now, and have received my assistants-license. Huzzah!
I didn’t take that many photos, most of them after a day’s training, but there’s a few up at Flickr now. Here’s my favourite shot:
links for 2006-07-25
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Maeda wonders what matters most: the process of creating an artwork, or just the artwork alone?
Off to Vienna
I’ll be off to Vienna in a few hours. I’ll be training Takeda Ryu for five days at the Matsumae Budo Center and resting my battered body in the Bosei Hotel. The week will include a tournament and some examinations, so I’m excited to see the outcome of those. I’ll be back on the air next week!
links for 2006-07-15
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Nice example of a dissatisfied user coming up with his own new interface to iTunes. The coolest thing is someone actually built this (it’s called CoverFlow).
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Old but good piece that looks at how the IxD and HCI fields overlap and differ. Includes some good attempts at defining IxD and design in general. Didn’t come across my favorite “design as problem-solving” definition though.
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Matt Webb and Tom Stafford describe how they think wikis can be used best. Contains some good tips, such as the gardening-ritual.
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A review of sorts of the book Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. Doctorow compares it to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
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Chris Crawford lashes out in typical fashion at the current state of affairs in the games industry. He particularly bemoans the lack of innovation and blames the industry for not having a structure in place to foster it.
links for 2006-07-14
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Edward Vielmetti wonders whether there’s any significant work done on the crossover of physical and virtual communities. Thomas Vander Wal replies that his work on the local infocloud touches on this.
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Vander Wal describes his concept of the local infocloud as “information resources that are familiar and easier to access than the whole of the web”. Most importantly he includes real-world resources.
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Blue Flavor bashes the recently launched People Aggregator for its bad design. Rightly so, I guess. Perhaps PA should solely focus on delivering an infrastructure and leave the design of apps to others?
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Huge amount of persona-related resources.
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“Lovemarks are a new way of thinking about the things we love. Lovemarks are better than brands, because they are about Love and Respect: they speak to us as thinking and feeling human beings. Lovemarks embody Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.”