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THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !

Last Updated: October 30, 2004

[October 31, 2003]

Mercury News: 5 'exabytes' of information created in '02, report says - "Lyman and Varian studied information stored on four kinds of media -- print, film, magnetic (such as computer hard disks) and optical (such as CDs and DVDs), as well as information flowing through various electronic channels (telephone, radio, TV and the Internet). [...] They found twice as much new information had been created in 2002 as in 1999, the last year they studied."

Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines - "Individual designers make thousands of decisions in crafting websites. They have to be knowledgeable about the content, informed about the user community, in touch with the organizational goals, and aware of the technology implications of design decisions. Design is difficult, but these new research-based guidelines are an important step forward in providing assistance to those who are dedicated to quality."

Steve Bass, author of PC Annoyances: Five Irritating Annoyances -- and Five Fixes

Before & After: How to design a logo of letters

[October 27, 2003]

BBC News: Tackling the net's numbers shortage - "In the early days of the internet, it seemed improbable that all of the four billion available IP addresses would be used, but that is exactly what is happening."

[October 25, 2003]

Wired News: Video Games Will Calm Your Fears - "The researchers found that PC games that allow users to construct and change game environments, used with a headset that lets wearers simulate virtual reality, were just as effective at stimulating phobic responses as dedicated simulation machines that can cost four times as much."

Ivan Walsh (SitePoint): Good Information Architecture Increases Online Sales - "The role of good Information Architecture is to make the Website work not in the technical sense, but from a functional, organized, conceptual perspective. Tidy navigation, meaningful labels, and consistent screens all help enhance the shopping experience."

[October 23, 2003]

BBC: 'Keep cool' over computer hassles - Top five stress triggers:

"Bloglines is a new way to stay current with your favorite blogs. As an RSS aggregator, Bloglines tracks changes to blogs that you subscribe to, and remembers which entries you've read." (via Disruptive Technology)

The Institute for End User Computing - "Our Purpose is to engage in Research and Education initiatives to bring together the people and technologies needed to develop a simple, supple, secure, and sophisticated platform to make End User Computing an intuitive, enjoyable, and empowering experience for everyone." (via Hypertext News)

[October 21, 2003]

Russ Weakley (Max Design, via Simon Willison's Weblog): Floatutorial - a step by step tutorial on CSS layouts - "Floatutorial takes you through the basics of floating elements such as images, drop caps, next and back buttons, image galleries, inline lists and multi-column layouts."

The Register: PC rage turns the air blue in UK households - "More than four in five (86 per cent) of British computer users get irritated and stressed by PC problems, according to a survey commissioned by security firm Symantec. Only 14 per cent of those quizzed had the Zen-like calm to say problems with their PCs never irritate them."

[October 20, 2003]

Nathan Matias (SitePoint): Caffeinate Your Hypertext - "This article will look at key issues in hypertext authoring, point out some common, fun, and interesting examples, and finish up with a bucket of questions and ideas."

SAP: Concept Statements and Website Messages - Part II - "When creating a concept statement, a design team should ask, which message it wants to convey to the users. This intimate relationship between the two led me to state in the introduction to this article that the message is the reality check for a concept statement."

[October 19, 2003]

BBC: Odd mishaps cause computer grief - "Data recovery experts say although machine failure is blamed for the majority of lost files, humans are getting more careless too. But while ways to rescue files are increasingly sophisticated, people have to do more to protect and back up data."

[October 13, 2003]

Gerry McGovern - "When people come to your website they have a mental map of how their 'ideal' webpage should be. They expect to see certain things in certain places. They expect to read certain killer words in your classification and content. The more you meet their mental map, the more successful your website will be."

Steven Johnson, Interface Culture (Harper SanFrancisco, 1997) - "Ask any Web user to recall what first lured him into cyberspace; you're not likely to hear rhapsodic descriptions of a twirling animated graphic or a thin, distorted sound clip. No, the eureka moment for most of us came when we first clicked on a link, and found ourselves jettisoned across the planet. The freedom and immediacy of that movement ... was genuinely unlike anything before it ..."

O'Reilly Network: "Sending SMS Messages Using Windows XP"

[October 12, 2003]

Norman Augustine - "One of the most feared expressions in modern times is... The computer is down."

[October 11, 2003]

Dave Winer (BloggerCon, October 4-5, 2003): The Rule of Links - "The Rule of Links is that you link when it's appropriate to do so. Linking is an art. It's a choice. You don't link from every word or even every noun, or from the subject of every sentence. But when a reader reasonably would want to know more about the subject, the Rule of Links says you should link to it. [...] If you're writing about something that's on the web, at any length, the Rule of Links turns from should to must. It's disrespectful to your readers not to link to the subject of your article so they can form their own opinions."

Archived Macromedia Flash Players available for testing purposes - "They are available specifically for Macromedia Flash developers who are examining their sites from the perspective of users with older Flash Players." (via Quasimondo.com)

[October 07, 2003]

The Register: Linux vs. Windows Viruses - "Why are Linux and Mac OS X safer? First, look at the two factors that cause email viruses and worms to propagate: social engineering, and poorly designed software. [...] When it comes to email-borne viruses and worms, Linux may not be completely immune - after all, nothing is immune to human gullibility and stupidity - but it is much more resistant. To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it."

Wired News: Microsoft Sued for Weak Security - "The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsoft's security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off 'fast-moving' hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system."

[October 06, 2003]

The Register: Microsoft: a threat to global IT and job security? - "From the security perspective monoculture is not of necessity bad; the problems (as indeed the document argues) lie in the flawed nature of the design of the base product, magnified many times by the ubiquity of that product, and again by the complexities introduced under the banner of integration and automation. So in theory at least, it seems to us, you could have a monoculture whose fundamental design premise was not fatally flawed, and whose security issues would therefore not be magnified by 'cascade failure' across the network. Sure you could still argue it was lining the pockets of a bunch of greedheads who were stifling diversity, but that's a different argument."

Sean Gallagher: "Of Patches and Potatoes: Windows, Monocultures, and Bad Things Happening"

[October 04, 2003]

New Scientist: Advanced chip opens door to software choice - "A computer chip designed to run more than one operating system at a time could break Microsoft's stranglehold on PC software. Plans for the chip were announced last week by Intel, the world's largest maker of processor chips. Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously. Analysts are saying it could be one of the decade's most significant breakthroughs in computer technology."

Henrik Olsen (GUUUI): "How visual simplicity can harm usability"

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