tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51275342011-04-21T16:16:25.008-04:00This blog has moved to <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vgondi/">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vgondi</a>Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comBlogger1881100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1060170663158133592003-08-06T07:51:00.000-04:002003-08-06T08:00:31.586-04:00

This is the last post on this blog. I have a new manila blog on the harvard law school server. All posts on this blog are on the new blog too. It also has an rss feed.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1060060104660023962003-08-05T01:08:00.000-04:002003-08-05T01:08:24.630-04:00

Google for Privacy Conscious Users: Google's preferences page is not setup for privacy conscious users. If cookies are disabled, google bluntly says that the feature is not available with out enabling cookies. In order to make the page more usable to privacy conscious users, google can..... [MORE]

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1060020514736829162003-08-04T14:08:00.000-04:002003-08-04T14:08:34.720-04:00

Metadata Collection Don Park writes that most metadata gathering efforts focus on the creation phase. Another way to generate metadata is by donation. I think that the metadata collected this way will be highly biased. Google included voting buttons on its toolbar. Google instead of using the data to generate page rank, it is using it to find anomalies. Like finding pages which artificially boost

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059968164933080382003-08-03T23:36:00.000-04:002003-08-03T23:36:04.913-04:00

Time for Sterio Jiggle: Jim Gasperini experiments with a simple way to present sterioscopic images. Just put the left and right images in a gif. Creates an amazing effect with a simple solution. But you see only earthquakes in the images.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059892069980862082003-08-03T02:27:00.000-04:002003-08-04T22:54:09.676-04:00

Why design patterns Jared M. Spool talks about transfering information between people. Give templates, guidelines or something else? The something else is design patterns, "Patterns suggest that the team trusts the contributor to do the right thing, but that they might be missing essential design knowledge that can really only come from experience, which reduces the Us vs them phenomenon

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059802290411287412003-08-02T01:31:00.000-04:002003-08-02T01:31:30.313-04:00

myLaszlo.com You can host your demo apps at mylaszlo.com. I haven't been able to figure out how to click on "click-me". Will have to look at the code. The tuorials for laszlo are here.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059787556425832972003-08-01T21:25:00.000-04:002003-08-01T21:25:56.410-04:00

Make no mistake: Joel's foreward to Rick Chapman's new book, In Search of Stupidity, looks at the top 10 software companies in 1984 and in 2001. Only one company is in both the lists and with humungous revenues. He lists the mistakes each company made. One mistake was enough. Mistakes made by marketing people who don't know programming or programmers who don't know marketing. As you go to the top

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059784186696455412003-08-01T20:29:00.000-04:002003-08-01T20:29:46.726-04:00

Movie free with Pizza:The store currently pre-rents dvds from a local store. The site earns money through late fees and ads. If the new disposable dvds from Disney become popular, dvd's don't have the returning hassle. Maybe, another way to distribute junk to people is on the horizon.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059713435722275342003-08-01T00:50:00.000-04:002003-08-01T00:50:35.576-04:00

Macromedia Flash Player 7 Public Beta The next flash player is a lot faster in executing action script. You can go th the flash blogathon archive page before and after installing the player. It is a lot faster (about 5x), but is still slightly sluggish fo the blogathon archive page which has around 50 swfs.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059698648220125962003-07-31T20:44:00.000-04:002003-08-01T21:25:05.216-04:00

Users Representative on the design table: "web designers are called programmers, programmers are called engineers, engineers are called architects and architects are never called."

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059694192654641912003-07-31T19:29:00.000-04:002003-07-31T19:29:52.626-04:00

Macromedia site design processPageload speed & UI elements are the two most important elements that inflence user satisfaction. So the UI elements need to be highly functional and light. Regarding the globlal navigation UI widets, Macromedia tried lots of different stuff on its site. Buddy, Tray navigation, Drop downs, Tiered navigation. Latency of rollovers is 100ms for a neighbouring tab delay

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059626536720937102003-07-31T00:42:00.000-04:002003-08-01T04:09:32.066-04:00

TV viewers and Internet users: "The control an Internet user has is far, far greater than one equipped merely with a remote." The converse, internet users want to interact, not watch passively. This is what skip intos in flash missed. The internet is not TV. Show the users amazing stuff, but give them the controls they know how to use.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059608031419598282003-07-30T19:33:00.000-04:002003-07-30T19:33:51.323-04:00

Handheld Flash UI The Invisible ideas app has buttons made for the thumb. The buttons correspond to the relative angle of the left and right thumbs on each side. It is an app which guides you through a tour in Boston. Tells about important places, history, titbits, etc.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059601336893805452003-07-30T17:42:00.000-04:002003-07-30T17:42:16.760-04:00

Somebody's impersonating me Peldi: "So now, next time you see me online, how will you be able to tell if it's me or my double? Ask me a hard flashcom question, we'll see how I do... ;)" I had big laugh on this. Porn on Peldi's cook phone app and someone impersonating him. But its hard reality. We all will soon evolve into learning not to believe every thing we see and hear. We will learn to fit

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059598515236713462003-07-30T16:55:00.000-04:002003-07-30T17:17:23.006-04:00

3 Column Complex CSS Layout demo: A nice example on how the tutorial can fit into the demo. Shows css code displayed in the demo itself. Inorder to put different views on the screen, it is not nessasary to seperate them. Screen space/number of clicks can be saved with this method. It's hosted as a guest demo over on Position is Everything, which now has four excellent layout demos.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059508571673205452003-07-29T15:56:00.000-04:002003-07-29T17:31:51.416-04:00

Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience The article describes a step by step process of analyzing website logs. The important points are, convert numbers to percentages, its easier to compare. Use a spread sheet to derive metrics and comparison graphs. The analysis helps in caliculating the return on investment on the design. Software like Webtrends, IBM Surfaid, Omniture SiteCatalyst help in

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059450848065048112003-07-28T23:54:00.000-04:002003-07-29T00:06:21.123-04:00

Comments on 2advanced, a Flashy site The site in question, 2advanced.com gives a movie like experience. I'd love to see this kind of stuff if it is shown without me doing anything. We don't read stuff or interact in the movies, we just experience them. It can also be used to denote a brand statement like an ad. 2advanced is a site for a company that does these brand statements. They could drive

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059430335393723842003-07-28T18:12:00.000-04:002003-07-29T00:01:32.643-04:00

InfoWorld Readers' Choice Awards: : The results may surprise you. "Readers stand by Microsoft, Apple storms the enterprise, open source steadily gains ground, and everyone really hates spam"

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059429700326719102003-07-28T18:01:00.000-04:002003-07-28T18:01:40.293-04:00

Brand Objects™ Stephen Galluccio listed lots of RIA's, each with their own page and brand name. Not many of them worked for me though.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059420676302894702003-07-28T15:31:00.000-04:002003-07-28T15:31:16.310-04:00

UI for text input forms This form shows the UI for text input. A series of (xxx)-xxx-xxxx or dd/mm/yyyy will fill the form before hand and should be greyed out. The inputed information should be automatically fit into its field. A drop down box like that of IE should be supported in flash and data should be broight up from the local shared object.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059368769309604182003-07-28T01:06:00.000-04:002003-07-28T01:06:09.286-04:00

Fun with User Interface Metaphors: Beyond the desktop UI? Sarah Allen does some thinking on dektop UI's and web UI's. The web interface is metaphorically similar to travel. We go from place to place. We wait while travelling. Multiple webpages are consistent in design and create the illusion of a place. More fun with metaphors? Another metaphor for the desktop apps is, the desktop apps are

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-105925600289106062003-07-26T17:46:00.000-04:002003-07-27T04:40:59.313-04:00

BlogAds"Blog advertising makes opinions"

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059254720496755902003-07-26T17:25:00.000-04:002003-07-26T17:25:20.440-04:00

Lifestreams: Organize by time This paper tells that it is easy to remember files by the time they were produced on. It misses one result that, it is even easier to remember files by the time another thing happened, eg: the document that was created after I got the mail from Bob. Voisens blog gives a timeline for the posts by showing the top news at the time the post was published.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059251218979477652003-07-26T16:26:00.000-04:002003-07-26T16:26:58.883-04:00

Weblogs and Corporate companies: There has been a lot of discussion on how corporate companies can benifit by using weblogs. Well, if they don't, they wont have a voice when a strond negative publicity hits them. For example consider the "PDF unfit for human consumption" thing on July 14th. Lots of blogs caught it and the web was filled with PDF unfit comments. Now how can Adobe straighten up

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059203607580588682003-07-26T03:13:00.000-04:002003-07-26T03:23:25.393-04:00

Flash Paper Stats: Image size: 26 kb Flash paper swf size:58 kb, Print file of the img:1.6Mb, Print file from flash paper:1.59Mb. Webpage size: 127kb Flash paper size: 118kb, Print file of the webpage:6.73Mb, Print file from flash paper:8.8Mb. I tried printing from another page on the web, direct print file was 1.8Mb, but the print file from flash paper was 28Mb. WOW. So, flash paper

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059183049087280432003-07-25T21:30:00.000-04:002003-07-25T21:30:48.996-04:00

Telefono A neat chat interface with webcam and sound capabilities.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059111057068032112003-07-25T01:30:00.000-04:002003-07-25T01:30:56.983-04:00

Apps as wallpaper SWF Desktop lets you create wallpapers from Flash. It creates an installer which puts the flash file as a wallpaper. Currently you can put any webpage on the desktop by enabling the active desktop. I guess this program created an installer for that sequence.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059109244846627312003-07-25T01:00:00.000-04:002003-07-25T01:10:42.600-04:00

RPC calls through Javascript This is a nice blog interface which makes RPC calls through javascript and impliments DHtml interface. Different parts of the page update locally. The style is based on office 2003, so looks prim and proper. The interface itself is not geared towards fast browsing, but is more of an email client interface with three panes. Wonder if there are any companies making

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059082243724978272003-07-24T17:30:00.000-04:002003-07-24T17:46:37.663-04:00

Popups and Flash A discussion about popups and flash at chi-web. Google bar's popup blocker blocks all windows opened by swfs. Flash popups originated because integrating flash with the brower back buttons was difficult. Opening a popup with no back buttons told the users that this is a new environment which has different controls than the browser. Currently falsh supports browser backbuttons so

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059078821114946692003-07-24T16:33:00.000-04:002003-07-24T17:15:06.900-04:00

Accessibility tools and HCI patterns A neat summary of all the accessibility tools available for websites. W3C also has a full listing of all accessibility related software. The chi-web list also has a summary of Interaction Design Style Guides on the web. A detailed listing of Interaction Design related patterns is at Information Design patterns and at the HCI patterns page. About the chi-web

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059039353462341832003-07-24T05:35:00.000-04:002003-07-24T17:34:46.886-04:00

FOAF and Blogs Many people want FOAF to support more features like, level of knowing people, privacy, etc. But One area where FOAF can help is telling people, who's blogroll they are on. This can be done through OPML also. It dosn't matter which way, but there is a need to connect people by showing their immediate neighbourhood and facilitate community forming. Currently, a few visualizions exist

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1059019212273275322003-07-24T00:00:00.000-04:002003-07-24T00:07:23.330-04:00

Neat Idea Remember, there was a site where you can create a temporary mail ID with just one click and give it to anyone for a limited time? This one is better, you dont have to go through that one click. Just send give out the address xyz@mailinator.com and go check for the mail. No password, no setup. The lesson, minimalistic design.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058933404723902722003-07-23T00:10:00.000-04:002003-07-23T17:44:29.310-04:00

Why web apps rock and why they suck: Richard Tallent lists out the advantages and disadvantages of HTML apps. The disccussion steers clear of the flash boat, but has a list of reasons why Rich Internat Apps are needed.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058927311426285442003-07-22T22:28:00.000-04:002003-07-22T22:29:04.956-04:00

Control a car in Japan: Use this flash interface to control a wireless car in an office in Japan. You can see the cars videos and chat with others too.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058865496102748902003-07-22T05:18:00.000-04:002003-07-22T05:18:16.070-04:00

Demo of a Rich Internet UI A neat presentation showing the advantages of using RIA in shopping, buying & technology scenarios.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058848551255681512003-07-22T00:35:00.000-04:002003-07-22T00:35:51.213-04:00

Tog's First Principles Its nice to go back to the first principles and review them from time to time. Relevant to all sorts of user interfaces.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058845976514931932003-07-21T23:52:00.000-04:002003-07-21T23:52:56.476-04:00

Neat 3d flash stuffVectorpark, a morphing sequence of 3d walking things. Slow morphing with response to the mouse.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058838049557458422003-07-21T21:40:00.000-04:002003-07-21T22:29:04.470-04:00

Interface Scalability Jeff Freund from Clickability has an interesting article on how User Interfaces should scale to handle enormous amouts of data. He highlights four points, Minimize repeating operations, show contextual data relevent to the user, make it easy to arrange and make it easy to search data.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058689583415461832003-07-20T04:26:00.000-04:002003-07-21T18:36:37.166-04:00

FOAF-a-matic Describe yourself in RDF , use FoaF tools and have fun by visualizing the data at FOAF: Web View. More projects ares listed at FOAF project. A small discussion about FOAF and technorati is here.These two articles tell you more.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058686750453087512003-07-20T03:39:00.000-04:002003-07-20T03:55:48.840-04:00

The best DHtml app out thereA Personal Information Manager. Email, calendar, IM, News. etc. Pretty neat for dhtml. Got the same look and feel as a desktop app. It took 2years for them to make it!!! Now its open source, but works with IE/win only.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058584650979146282003-07-18T23:17:00.000-04:002003-07-19T18:48:39.420-04:00

The right question We miss lots of solutions to problems because we don't have the right question. It is the question that is more important than the answer. Jon Udell has a nice example. Also, "People are often very bad at saying why something works, or what forces act to drive them to a solution, but they typically are very good at saying why something doesn't or can't work. .."

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058583127968041932003-07-18T22:52:00.000-04:002003-07-18T22:52:42.520-04:00

Galleries and bookmarksSiggraph 2003 Web Graphics Expo. I never go through galleries on the web. They always go for bookmarking or for the blog. Why? Is it because we fix a limited amount of time for each page ? Maybe we like information given gradually rather than in big chunks? Jakob Nielsen's information foraging article makes sense here.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058575712500020562003-07-18T20:48:00.000-04:002003-07-18T21:51:22.163-04:00

Web-Based Card Sorting A neat card sorting tool in flash. More work by Jed Wood here.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058492319428261912003-07-17T21:38:00.000-04:002003-07-17T22:36:55.806-04:00

Give me Information and tools, not decisions Danny O'Brien has an intereting rant about Microsoft creating apps only for corporate users, linux for geeks and apple for home users. About Dashboard, he says, what users want from software is not decisions, but information and tools to make better decisions. Right on.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058388252577148282003-07-16T16:44:00.000-04:002003-07-16T17:43:31.043-04:00

Macromedia Contribute & FlashPaper Macromedia released Contribute 2 which has the ability to integrate e-commerce into a site with Paypal. This version is also including Flashpaper, a printerdriver which prints out pdf's like flash. I guess it is not a direct competitor to pdfs, but is taking up the niche space of puting any document type on the web. Pdfs don't perform this part well enough on

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058345011119673092003-07-16T04:43:00.000-04:002003-07-16T15:27:26.840-04:00

Usability Heuristics for Rich Internet Applications Jess McMullin and Grant Skinner have a list of thumb rules to keep in mind while designing RIAs. Designing for User Experiences (DUX) 2003 papers Lots of case studies here.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058343956193021372003-07-16T04:25:00.000-04:002003-07-16T15:28:24.960-04:00

Hands across the screen Some reasons why the scrollbar ended up on the right side of the screen. Via Ultrasaurus. Wonder why the screen goes up when the scrollbar is pulled down and not the other way round.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058248754287458102003-07-15T01:59:00.000-04:002003-07-15T05:04:28.603-04:00

Disposable email address Creates a disposable forwarder valid for 24hrs-8days to your email address. Single click setup. You don't have a choice in selecting the email ID. So it is complely random and unguessable.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058247145107589252003-07-15T01:32:00.000-04:002003-07-15T01:32:25.010-04:00

Timeline of knowledge-representation Starts from 13,700,000,000 BC and follows through all the representation systems that humans have used to understand how the world works. Neat.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058219580677021232003-07-14T17:53:00.000-04:002003-07-14T17:53:00.653-04:00

New Technorati Pinger is active: New race to get pings from users to create the "most recent blogs" list. Userland and blogger ping weblogs.com and blogger site when a blog is updated. Movable type users mostly ping weblogs.com. Blo.gs and blogrolling joined both the lists and had their own ping collectors. Now technorati started its own service. This list is very important to search engines,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058212199592079942003-07-14T15:49:00.000-04:002003-07-15T03:30:36.726-04:00

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Alertbox) It is easy to make a pdf, but not to read it. Emailing a pdf is fine if you know the other side will need to print. But pdf's on the web are a lot of trouble. The success of easy online publishing will be the death of pdf's. It is currently doing well for forms used in business workspaces, but microsoft is entering the arena with Microsoft Infopath,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058168343970579322003-07-14T03:39:00.000-04:002003-07-15T02:03:05.233-04:00

The next killer app:: The information aggregator? Dashboard, an open source project, similar but more advanced than taskpane in windows. You will have a pane on your desktop which will keep track of your context and provide services from different databases. For example if you come across a url on your main app, the dashboard will search for related sites on google, find weblogs bloging on that

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058080647989464302003-07-13T03:17:00.000-04:002003-07-13T03:19:22.476-04:00

What is Design? “Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state (Simon, Sciences of the Artificial,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1058035844814010352003-07-12T14:50:00.000-04:002003-07-13T01:23:17.280-04:00

Flash piechart component The DRK 4 has the 3D charting set. Peret Joel cooked up this demo. Cool stuff.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057971648754169672003-07-11T21:00:00.000-04:002003-07-11T22:15:26.943-04:00

Scalado - Flash Image Zoomer They use flash to zoom into images. It would be nice to have the application itself in flash and send the selected images off to a thumbnail maker which makes the thumbnails for presentation. Finally show the images similar to scaldos imagezoom function. Mirror TV from philips It dosn't use a camara, it is a natural mirror. Ambient Devices also has lots of devices

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057878234807972412003-07-10T19:03:00.000-04:002003-07-10T20:26:04.870-04:00

Flash UI prototypes: Nice. Webcam, Arranging, Layout selector, Drag drop.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057797262839646192003-07-09T20:34:00.000-04:002003-07-09T20:34:22.760-04:00

Googles popup blocker: It is very annoying if you click on a link and it is blocked by the pop up blocker. Just like spam blockers, it is better to err on the side of allowing a few posts rather than blocking legitimate posts. Google's popup blocker blocks all windows opened by a flash file!!!! One more thing, the auto fill does not take information filled in the html fields. It wants you to go

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057793281566511592003-07-09T19:28:00.000-04:002003-07-09T19:28:01.516-04:00

Web Design & Usability Guidelines Guidelines by NCI. Each guideline also has "strength of evidence". Jjg.net Jesse James Garrett, the author of, "The Elements of User Experience", has lots of resources for Information Architecture. XIFF Labs: Jabber and Flash integration If you are making an application which requires presence information, these components might be useful. Central apps might

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057793154976707412003-07-09T19:25:00.000-04:002003-07-09T19:25:54.936-04:00

Group for User Interface Research - DENIM THe group at berkeley is developing a tool For early stage web site and UI design. Sketch based, so it also has tablet PC support.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057693355189536022003-07-08T15:42:00.000-04:002003-07-08T15:42:35.063-04:00

Information Foraging Noise Between Statons has a collection of links on Information Foraging. Nielsen's alertbox also had an article about it.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057643836879456832003-07-08T01:57:00.000-04:002003-07-08T01:57:16.696-04:00

IDEA 2003 Gallery The Industrial Design excellence awards.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057643794110142912003-07-08T01:56:00.000-04:002003-07-08T01:56:33.923-04:00

Ryze business networking It is a site dedicated to form networks. A little like Egroups, but is directed at forming networks, not supporting existing networks.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057643231780634422003-07-08T01:47:00.000-04:002003-07-08T01:47:11.623-04:00

Feedster :: RSS Search Engine This is the service that started with the name "Roogle". It has come a long way from that. I was searching for info on John Robb leaving Userland on his weblog, but it was down. Feedster comes to the rescue, it had the post in its cache. It not only has a search according to relevance, date and blog rank, but also has a photo list. It also can search only blogs in

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057477777854661802003-07-06T03:49:00.000-04:002003-07-06T03:49:37.676-04:00

Your Photos and Greetings Douglass Turner has a neat app which applies preset effects the photo we email to the server. Well, photoshop also does this Right? The difference here is that, he uses stock photos, puts the pic we present in them and conveys a strong message. Sort of a greeting, but this greeting uses your photos to convey the message. THe first url has nice examples and this link

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057351229114539202003-07-04T16:40:00.000-04:002003-07-04T16:50:36.003-04:00

Optimal Line Length : "for reading prose text from monitors? Users tend to read faster if the line lengths are longer (up to 10 inches). If the line lengths are too short (2.5 inches or less) it may impede rapid reading. Finally, users tend to prefer lines that are moderately long (4 to 5 inches)."

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057299518272989912003-07-04T02:18:00.000-04:002003-07-04T02:18:38.253-04:00

Digital Shoplifting? What are the consequences of having a cheap camera, voice recorder, phone, internet everywhere? This is one of them. People in japan are capturing info in magazines and sending them along to friends. Will an etiquette develop or business models change?

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057272127525381862003-07-03T18:42:00.001-04:002003-07-03T18:44:57.043-04:00

Interoperability And Standards Strategy The article explains the importance of having open standards and how competition exists in the standard. If competing standards co-exist, they occupy their niche areas. The user wins if a single open standard exists. The companies win if they have control over the standards.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1057272148495288932003-07-03T18:42:00.000-04:002003-07-03T18:42:28.396-04:00

Is microsoft boring? Alsop at Forture says, "Yes". Gates on UsaToday says, "It isn't". Reboot6 videos Tech talks by Cory Doctorow, Ben Hammersley, Scott Heiferman, Meg Hourihan, Jason Fried, Marc Canter, Dan Gillmor, Tim O'Reilly online.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-1056660023957205542003-06-26T16:40:00.000-04:002003-06-26T17:14:40.060-04:00

Master of Designs' comments: Technology review has an interview with Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the company that designed original Apple mouse, the Palm V and Handspring Treo handheld computers, the Lilly insulin pen, etc. He stresses on the point that handhelds are for shot time operations, while desktop work is longer and the apps have to be designed in that way and also transition between

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-959503442003-06-23T12:36:00.000-04:002003-06-24T04:17:11.000-04:00

Search by time: When we search the web for a few keywords, the information can be arranged in various ways, by relevance, by time, by categories, by author, by location, by content type (text, images, pdfs), etc. Google provides the results by relevance. Technorati cosmos provides blog results by time. If a search is made in google and the first few resulting url's are put in technorati cosmos,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-958881412003-06-21T04:10:00.000-04:002003-06-21T04:10:17.363-04:00

Designing on both sides of your brain: "Cars are designed to switch gears easily. Modern humans are not. When we learn a technique or a tool, it's natural for us to fixate on its use. If you have a hammer, everything is a nail." Design patterns help us to shift gears. Views also should be designed keeping this fact in mind for the user. Solution: "All problems have multiple solutions. The larger

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-958361582003-06-19T14:42:00.000-04:002003-06-19T14:42:32.180-04:00

Prior art as a design method: Dave says, "Something that has been proven is much better than 'I have a better way'." So how to evlove? The answer is to include both the methods to test to see if your method works. If you can't introduce your method along with the old one, introduce your method as a preview and see if people use it. Get feedback and iterate and make your method better. The

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-958012522003-06-18T15:24:00.000-04:002003-06-18T18:17:14.000-04:00

What makes a Weblog? A weblog is the voice of a person or a brand. There are three important qualities the voice of a person has. It strives to show others that we are consistent, capable and moral. Consistency: When we go to a weblog, we predict the kind of content that will be presented and expect that it will follow a logical pattern. If a person is observed for quite sometime we will begin

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-957804012003-06-18T01:17:00.000-04:002003-06-18T01:40:31.000-04:00

Technology Evangelism: James Plamondon, a former employee at MSFT is writing a book on how MSFT won the platform wars it waged. The mission of Technical Evangelism at Microsoft is: To accelerate the creation of a critical mass of leveraged support for a platform until it gains unstoppable momentum. "Evangelism is War" The web brought us into a common battle ground where everyone knows where the

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-957368052003-06-16T21:40:00.000-04:002003-06-17T00:19:54.000-04:00

More about RIA: There is plenty of companies trying to build rich client based on java, XML and SVG (Altio, Esual, Curl, Nexaweb, Luxor-XUL, XWT, eNode...). Macromedia Story: A neat detailed flash presentation on the Macromedia history, present and the future. MX RIA Vision: This presentation has a similar interface as the history. I guess this was one of the first UI iterations from Odopod

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-955330842003-06-10T23:12:00.000-04:002003-06-12T19:59:08.000-04:00

XML + Flash = Laszlo: "They're using XML to parameterize how a SWF looks and acts, also xml is used while exchanging XML-formatted data with the server" via JD. They have some neat demos on their site. You write your app in XML (Laszlo app language LZX), and the server does the flash for you. More info here. Macromedia Royale: Macromedia is also releasing "flash for programmers". Write XML and

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-952723072003-06-04T02:05:00.000-04:002003-06-17T00:31:51.000-04:00

Keanu Reeves and £50 million Guess who got the cash, the costume and special effects teams. Reeves made a good deal, 15 per cent profit-share of matrix sequels. Thats the way I like my matrix tix money being spent.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-952459732003-06-03T13:44:00.000-04:002003-06-12T20:16:20.000-04:00

Creating a Flash MX Component: A nice tutorial at flashcomponents.net. There is also one at Macromedia. Components are available for download at flash exchange and at flashcomponents.net. Also, more here. Flash Remoting Tutorials: Daemon has some easy flash remoting tutorials. Checklist, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-952118012003-06-02T19:27:00.000-04:002003-06-03T00:39:50.000-04:00

Make faces: Want to be the face maker? Here's the link. Done in flash Ultrashock: One stop for all kinds of flash information. Also, Greg Burch is the flash component guru.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-951574142003-06-01T13:06:00.000-04:002003-06-01T13:06:36.430-04:00

Why blogs are successful: Most people start blogs to have a place to put their digital stuff. There heve been attempts to give people this funnctionality through briefcases, online storage, etc. The advantage of a blog is that, the quality of work will improve because of the evaluation apprehension caused by others looking at our blog. This advantage is lost if a blog is made private. I started

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-951252052003-05-31T13:17:00.000-04:002003-05-31T13:18:52.000-04:00

Flash and Map interfaces: Nathan Kuhlman has summed up all the map interfaces used on news sites during the iraq war. His arguments: Why use flash if you can do the same thing? If you use flash and have something more to give, give standard UI widgets also. The bottom line is, enhance the user experience and solve the space problem using flash, but also give standard widgets also.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-951233782003-05-31T12:14:00.000-04:002003-05-31T12:14:50.270-04:00

Foosball Robot Some german guys built a Foosball robot, plays really well. They have some videos on their site too.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-950869942003-05-30T12:46:00.000-04:002003-05-30T12:46:23.350-04:00

Jon Udell at Oscom "Technologists see systems from the inside out, users see them from the outside in. " The goal of CMS software is "to engage and influence minds" He has hit on an interesting point, why get new meta data? Use conventions to utilize already existing data that the user writes, like titles, urls. How to integrate search words with directories? How to make pages easily scanable?

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-950365962003-05-29T11:19:00.000-04:002003-05-30T12:46:59.000-04:00

Prominence-Interpretation Theory in Website Credibility: "When people evaluate website credibility, they do two things repeatedly. First, users notice some element ("prominence"), such as the website's visual design. Next, users make a judgment about what they've noticed ("interpretation"). People repeat these two steps for different website elements to reach an overall credibility assessment.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-949982872003-05-28T13:57:00.000-04:002003-05-28T13:57:40.000-04:00

CSS Guru at Netscape comm: Eric A. Meyer, has lots of interesting tricks with CSS.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-949195782003-05-26T21:58:00.000-04:002003-05-29T00:07:57.000-04:00

Blogroll arrangement: What I like about blogrolling.com is that it orders my blog roll blogroll according to the most recent updated. I can change the setting to alphabatic or by added date etc, but they are not available to me on my blog. Blo.gs also implements favourates.xml whicharranges your blogroll by the most frequently updated. I want more options on my page; Arrange by: Last updated,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-948866662003-05-26T02:23:00.000-04:002003-05-28T02:25:42.000-04:00

Which interfaces are better in flash, which better in html? Jakob Neilson gives three reasons why flash is bad. "It encourages design abuse (gratuitous animation, less user control, nonstandard GUI controls) , it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value." User interfaces which respond to the mouse drags rather than mouse

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-948864862003-05-26T02:15:00.000-04:002003-05-28T02:24:33.000-04:00

Arul's flash blog:Arul Kumaran maintains another flash blog from India. Illogicz's neat flash files has some pretty neat flash thingies with fla files, but the link to text editor had been removed :( No problem, obedit does it too also does ektron.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-948859922003-05-26T01:56:00.000-04:002003-05-28T02:24:54.000-04:00

Microsoft pattern repository: MSDN launched its own pattern repository on Apr 24th 2003. An interesting piece from Stece Kirk, "Why make a distinction between architecture and design? Though we often use the terms interchangeably in informal contexts, in practice the distinction can be an important one. Borrowing from the mature field of building technologies, architecture refers to the building

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-948857942003-05-26T01:49:00.000-04:002003-05-28T02:23:30.000-04:00

All in one flash aggie: A flash MX aggregator, also has aggies for the other macromedia products. Aggregates from about 60 blogs, WOW. Tutorials in Action scripting: Jason Perry has some interesting flash thingies, how to make the back button work, how to dynamically load images, and lots of other stuff. Short and sweet.

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Problems with patterns: A pattern concists of a problem, forces around the problem, solutions and its consequences. The name was caught by the media, bashed up and left alone. The most important part of a pattern is the coining a name, which makes its representionin our mind easier. We can talk about it with others and make more complex operations with it. Well compexity is reduced by finding

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-948301092003-05-24T11:58:00.000-04:002003-06-19T15:10:36.000-04:00

Web outliner Marc Barrot showed this tool at the BlogTalk conference. It helps as a demonstration and looks cool with the single click to select and click again to edit, but I guess is cumbersome to use online. Showing the outlined data in different views is needed. Some views are 1 paned, 2 paned, 3 paned, presentation, jaguar finder views, windows explorer views. Also, the ouliners interface

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-947551032003-05-22T17:20:00.000-04:002003-05-23T15:54:35.000-04:00

Gator and Pop-ups: The report on Gator Advertisements by Ben Edelman got lots of blogs and media discussing about Gator and Popups. Most people think that pop ups stink and Gator has taken it a step further and is helping your competitors post stuff to the user when they come to your site. First Q, why is this looking unethical? Showing the user lots of options, which are in context, is good,

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-946749462003-05-21T03:34:00.000-04:002003-05-21T04:05:42.000-04:00

Humble beginings of flash Want to know where flash came from? Charlie Jackson, "He did SuperPaint and SuperCard, then sold out to Aldus for huge money. He retired from the software business to pursue his other passion -- building a great Olympic shooting team for the US. Along the way Charlie was the primary backer of Wired Magazine." From DaveNet. Screenweaver: "Screenweaver is an extension to

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-946733302003-05-21T02:33:00.000-04:002003-05-21T02:33:02.763-04:00

Flash Text Effects: Running low on flash effects any time, use these for ideas .

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-946721792003-05-21T01:53:00.000-04:002003-05-21T02:24:34.000-04:00

How does a story develop on the net? Most common cycle: Mainstream media (Article) -> Opinion -> Vote -> Reacton posts -> Summary. So the different types of posts according to this article are, opinions, voting, summary and reaction (voting + view point). Can you find more categories of posts? It also brings out an interesting point that stories with out a keyword get lost. Also when people are

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-946426842003-05-20T13:36:00.000-04:002003-05-21T01:31:27.000-04:00

What I think Dave is doing: The weblogs are presently lacking a directory view. Each weblog post falls into different topics. The topics are the same as search words in google. Google has separated the web into a structure for us. What google can do currently: If you give a topic, it can give all the posts falling in that category. But it cannot show all the topics a post belongs to. As a

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-946403242003-05-20T12:42:00.000-04:002003-05-21T01:59:11.000-04:00

Popular Myths and Googles Rebutal: Metadata: Users won't enter meta data for the purpose of entering it. The trick is to put metadata extraction into the process, not making a seperate step out of it. Deep web: All pages on the web are 0-1 steps from google. Googles' job is not to give the answer, it is to give the path to the answer. What is an effective way of showing the path to an answer?

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The Google Cluster Architecture: How does Google serve more than 200 million searches per day? Via Tig's corner. Want more, here are the papers written by Googlers.

Scrap Masterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03258119950668826063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5127534.post-945140032003-05-17T18:47:00.000-04:002003-05-17T18:47:37.286-04:00

Devalue blogs on google? More discussion of this with a pinch of politics added. Will it happen? In the 10 things that google has found to be true, "Focus on the user and all else will follow" is 1 and "You can make money without doing evil" is 6th. Focus on the user Inorder to decide on the fate of blogs on google, let us look at what the users want. If I am searching for "NEC tablet", will I

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