THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[December 31, 2001]
O'Reilly Network: 2002: The Carpetbaggers Go Home - "The Internet is full of best-effort algorithms, timeout mechanisms,
asynchronous communication, and stateless clients. This is the fault-tolerant realpolitik of a public network composed of uncoordinated actors with conflicting agendas."
STARS Online: "How did scientists in the past imagine how we would be living in the 21st century? We look back and pick out 30 predictions that got it spectacularly wrong!"
[December 29, 2001]
"LinkAlarm is a link validation service for web sites. It checks every link on every page of your site, from your users' perspective. When LinkAlarm has finished checking your site, it sends you an email message that the report is ready. You can access the report on the web, or download the report for making repairs when you're not connected to the Internet."
Jakob Nielsen: Fighting Linkrot (1998) - "The overall quality of the user experience strongly influences people's assessment of the credibility and value of a site: if a site doesn't work well, users will abandon it."
A Guide to Better Usability on the Web - "This guide is intended for professionals working within the internet industry, such as producers, writers, editors, web designers, user interface designers, and marketing people who have an impact on the delivery and display of content on the internet."
BBC: Expedition to the lost net - "The study found that up to 5% of the net - potentially 100 million hosts - is completely unreachable."
Wired News: 2001 Was a Tough Read for E-Books - "In this new and very Darwinian world, the first crop of new publishing related companies has been massively selected for extinction and most real innovation will need to wait for a few more years."
[December 26, 2001]
Fast Tracker - Monitor Employee Internet Use - "FastTracker is a Web-based service designed to help organizations monitor and manage their employees' Web usage. The service provides managers with real-time reports listing the Web sites employees are visiting and how much time they're spending on them. FastTracker also delivers reports to employees' desktops summarizing the Web sites they've visited, the amount of time they spent there and whether or not their surfing habits violate the organization's Web-usage policy."
"Learn about the Java programming language through fun, entertaining word puzzles each month."
LucDesk wishes you, your family, and associates a very happy holiday season and prosperous 2002!
[December 23, 2001]
The Register: Who needs hackers when we've got MS? - "Microsoft needs to review its software code line-by-line and clean it up. Years of service packing, patching, re-patching, updating, critical updating, and hot-fixing Windows products have made them dirty and prone to breaking, as we see every few months. Better yet, Microsoft needs to revisit the basic design of Windows - namely, removing the shared code between applications and the underlying Windows operating system (like the pervasiveness of the Web-enabled Internet Explorer across each Windows application and system.)"
O'Reilly Network: Using JavaScript to Create a Powerful GUI - "The result? A site or application with powerful functionality and users who feel more confident about their actions and are less likely to make mistakes."
[December 22, 2001]
Rachel McAlpine: Design websites for 23 million migraine sufferers - "One known trigger of migraines is certain types of visual stimulation."
David Wertheimer: Why a PDA is not always a killer app - "I recognize that the PDA is the way of the future, and even the present. But having a Palm Pilot in my life does not make my daily routines any easier."
[December 21, 2001]
SEO Today: SEO Enhances Accessibility - "Optimizing your site for search engines enhances accessibility and improves usability, but benefits go further than that. It's smart to ensure that your site is viewable and navigable from a wide variety of Web clients and for people accessing the Web from a variety of different environments."
Google Zeitgeist (via Kuro5hin): What was hot and what was not in the year 2001?
[December 20, 2001]
EarthWeb.com: Book Review: User Interface Design For Programmers - "The author writes in a light, talkative style that is easily understandable by anyone. This book will show you that you don't need to be an artsy, graphic designer to produce a good user interface."
[December 17, 2001]
Gerry McGovern: Information architecture versus graphic design - "Much web design has suffered from an over reliance on graphic design principles. Too many graphic designers have tried to force the Web to be what it is not, in the process creating ineffective and sometimes unusable websites. Quality web design is driven by information architecture design principles. Graphic design should support these principles."
BBC: The range of possible domains is expanding - "Soon you could own a slice of cyberspace bearing your own name."
[December 16, 2001]
The Register: Microsoft, terrorism, and computer security
Peter Morville: In Defense of Search - "Many web sites and intranets can benefit most dramatically and immediately from enhancements to the search system. We're talking major ROI here. Lots of return with relatively little investment. ... But a search engine is not enough! Designers need to take a systemic approach that recognizes the roles played by the search interface, the content and the results presentation."
Wired News: The Quest to End Game Addiction - "With the holidays just around the corner, many people are relishing the thought of relaxing at home, munching all manner of fatty sweets and spending extra time with their ... computer games."
London_usability - "A group to provide a forum for all those working in Usability, HCI, Ergonomics, UI Design, Information Architecture and/or User Experience in London." (via Francois Jordaan)
[December 15, 2001]
NY Times (free registration required): "Linux is still struggling to make itself palatable to the everyday computer user."
Happy Hannuka!
[December 14, 2001]
USA Today: Online bill paying still doesn't click - "The reason: Online billing systems are still too limited and cumbersome."
"With the assistance of award-winning firm frogdesign (the geniuses behind the look of the early Apple and many of today's supercomputers and workstations), Forbes ASAP has designed and built (virtually, of course) the computer of 2010."
RAND: Where Will the Information Revolution Lead?
Robert Stocker: Applying Usability Testing And Techniques To Develop User-Centered Security - "The security architecture must be analyzed and decided upon early in the development process in order to have enough time to get users involved in the usability testing of the security method and to design the policies."
[December 10, 2001]
DESIRE Information Gateways Handbook: User interface design - "This chapter looks at the general user interface issues which should be considered when planning the development of an information gateway or when looking at the modification of an existing gateway. ... Poor user interface design can hide even the most powerful and useful Web sites from all but the most advanced and patient users."
IBM: Bucking the system with Ted Nelson - "I believe that what most people want and need is a unified system for all their work and records, not a bunch of separate 'applications.' ... But the question is still, how do we handle personal information? Because today's proliferation of specialized computer tools is, for most people, impossible and therefore useless. There is no answer for those who want simplicity."
The 10th anniversary of the first U.S. Web site at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (via Web Techniques)
[December 8, 2001]
Wired News: Taking Curl for a Whirl - "A small Massachusetts company headed up by some of the best brains at MIT, including Tim Berners-Lee, has released a new Web-building technology it says can replace HTML and JavaScript. ... Websites that use a single language will provide a significant increase over today's sites, which utilize a growing number of different software tools such as C++, HTML, Quicktime, JavaScript, Shockwave and Flash and other plug-ins that enable content. Once a site is up, visitors only need to download a single plug-in called Surge to view the accelerated pages."
[December 7, 2001]
The Register: Making Linux look harder than it is - "Could the biggest problem with Linux usability be that most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"
[December 4, 2001]
TFM (via iaslash): Conducting a web site evaluation - "The best design is one that prevents a problem from occurring. The best way to avoid errors is to test, test, and test! However, when errors do occur (and they will), provide user-friendly messages, not than geek-speak."
[December 3, 2001]
Gerry McGovern: The life of the information hunter-gather is not easy.
Jakob Nielsen: The 10 Best Intranet Designs of 2001
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Some countries are choosing Linux systems over Microsoft - "For reasons of national security and national pride, government officials in countries such as China, France and Germany are increasingly adopting the free, open-source computer operating system known as Linux."
ergosoft laboratories: Glossary of usability terms and definitions
IT-Director.com: Interview: Jakob Nielsen on usability and Intranets - "Organisations have an awful habit of developing an intranet and publishing their corporate manuals and best practice quides exactly as they find them in print. And that is just so wrong. ... You need people that know how to get a message across effectively, people that can write headlines, people that can convey information. You need professional content developers. They are essential."
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