OTHER usability. i wasn't quite sure whether to link to this. i found it interesting at first but, as i got further into it, i found it less informed and more opinionated. there are some good ideas in it tho. via webword. 06:21 pm

A List Apart: Indie Exposure.

"The web and the Internet aren't business. They are tools. They are a medium. They are opportunity."

01:36 pm

when i redesigned, i managed to delete my ssi time format which completely destroyed all my perma-links. (thanks karen.) while trying to figure out what stupid thing i'd done wrong, i realized that none of the perma-links on my archive pages were working either. considering the reason why they weren't working, i realize that they never have been working. sad. 12:53 pm

yeah, what he said. 02:40 pm

thanks go out to liz for this one, not many people will understand the humor but, chipshot.com looks amazingly like beyond 2 years ago. really, i can't imagine why. 06:03 pm

every time i see halcyon, i feel like i'm basking in the glow of someone who knows he is an amazing person and is unafraid of telling the world about it. this is a beautiful thing. 05:43 pm

i'm not sure what to think about this xns thing. part of me wants to think it's just another marketing scheme and another part of me thinks that it'll actually be really good technology. i guess i'll just have to wait and see. 05:33 pm

i've been going to sfsite for a while now to get news on new fantasy/horror/sf books. i just discovered At The World's End which is an online sf/fantasy/horror magazine which is published every friday.

it's done in england and through it i discovered that a storm of swords by george martin had been released. except it's only been released in england. i can't understand why amazon doesn't give you a link to the english version which has already been released. 12:30 pm

Make PR Your Web Master is an interesting article. unfortunately, the author makes the mistake of forgetting that a good web site is built by a team. having a pr person on the team would be a hugely important addition (assuming they're good at what they do) but, i don't think putting them in charge is a good idea at all. someone objective who can juggle the needs of marketing, pr, engineering, the ceo and the web team needs to be in charge of the web site. 12:21 pm

dori wrote her thoughts on fray day. i'm always amazed to read about someone else's thoughts and discover how closely they mirror my own. i could have written 75% of that myself.

something else that dori's piece reminded me is that i never write up details about stuff. it never occurred to me to mention going to dinner, even tho i had a good time and was glad to meet kay, and dan, and dori and hang out with matt and brad. maybe i just think it's not interesting enough to mention. 06:32 pm

the phrase of today: "those stupid fucks". i don't think i will ever again accept someone else's html for a project, mockups and designs are fine, but never html. i can live with coding someone's badly designed ui, it's easy to shake my head and ignore it because i'm concentrating purely on making it function. but, having to fix machine generated html where the person clearly had no concept of the essentials for coding html which will be part of a web application is making me grind my teeth and utter the above phrase over and over and over again. sigh, i'm only on the registration process. 06:03 pm

Hacking Jakob Nielsen. how jakob invented spam. via camworld. 05:27 pm

my attention span is getting seriously shortened. i'm sure it's not a good thing. this statement is, of course, prompted by another long article which i should read, but won't. but, i feel the need to save the link because you never know i might read it in the future. questionnaires in usability engineering FAQ. via webword. 12:39 pm

i had the interesting experience of having a police officer shine a really bright spotlight at my office door at 9pm last night. he then proceeded to walk up to the door, but not open it. i had to get up and make it clear to him that someone was in here just in case he was planning on calling in backup. it's good that he was checking out a report of someone lurking and looking in windows, but why would he think it unusual for an office to be unlocked, with no lights on at 9 o'clock on a sunday night? didn't he notice the comforting glow of the crt? 12:30 pm

in case you hadn't noticed, i redesigned this weekend. partly because i'm avoiding doing any real work, partly because i needed a better format to accomodate my behind the curtain: a day in the life of webloggers entry and partly to accomodate an improved portal design.

i moved it to it's own url portal.eatonweb.com and got rid of the useless, bloated single page list. it's broken down into different sections now and has a primitive search tool. hopefully, i've made it slightly more useful as a resource. 05:04 pm

my story of fray day. 02:10 pm

nyc and me is one of those journals that i find completely fascinating. i think it's the voyeur in me coming out. 05:19 pm

What makes for a well-designed web site. this article both describes the shunting around of a website to different departments until it ends up in the hands of a couple of people who "get it" and the importance of strategy. how can you build a site when you don't know what the company wants to accomplish with their site. via webword. 02:00 pm

flash seems to be the topic of the month jim heid talks about flash and accessibility on his newly relaunched site. 01:14 pm

if i'd actually been blogging yesterday instead of editing images and trying to redesign and avoiding doing real work, i would have linked to john's flash usability challenge aftermath there's also some interesting reader comments and follow up comments by john.

in this email to the chi-web list he wrote that in his opinion flash is a bridge technology between html-based sites and desktop applications. as soon as i read that, it struck a chord and i realized that i also believe it is a bridge, not only between html and desktop apps, but also between html and tv commercials. 12:58 pm

so, is anyone interested in getting together for dinner before the party on friday? i'm thinking about driving up a couple of hours early to miss some of the traffic. email me. 05:49 pm

i need to redesign. the site's gotten too busy. of course, i realize this just as i'm about to get buried in a new project. somehow, i don't think my boss will approve of me working on a non-paying project over a paying one. then again, he's just playing diablo2 all day, he can't complain too badly. 05:40 pm

knowing too many programming languages is a pain in my ass. rather, i should say, switching languages every couple months is torturous. today, i started coding the jsp on our latest project. half the day was spent looking stupid obvious stuff up, asking jason about syntax, and the like. it's been 6 months since i looked at any java code. it's all coming back to me now. but, 6 weeks from now i'll probably be doing another php project and it'll start all over again. 05:36 pm

What's Your Flavor? "Yum! You're mocha. Intense, rich, and a little complex, you're as tasty as they come". i wonder if webloggers will ever get sick of taking weird personality tests? via heather. 05:26 pm

wireless web on phones. this is an interesting article and the comments at the bottom are too. i agree with his assertion that wireless phones will never catch on as surfing tools and the fact that phones don't exactly have the ideal interface for text messaging. but, i think his dismissal of text messaging as the killer app for phones is a mistake. via tomalak. 05:16 pm

sylloge, google style. stewart brings up some interesting thoughts regarding intellectual property and designing for searchers on the why google page. 04:59 pm

it just occurred to me that jason is going out of town this weekend. which means that i have no truly valid excuses for not going to fray day 4. especially since it's been 6 months since i've seen everyone. 04:41 pm

kermit, a bunny and a spanking. 12:17 pm

the other project i've been working on is a redesign of the jungawunga site. it was much too busy. i've definitely noticed a trend in my design of late. 04:40 pm

victor's post about the importance of feedback reminded me how little feedback people are willing to give. at least directly to the creator. people are perfectly happy to rip stuff apart between themselves (*cough* chi-web *cough*). ironically, this unwillingness of others to give feedback makes it more difficult for the creator to improve their work.

without direct feedback it seems that, at least on the web, having someone link to you has become interpreted as positive feedback and conversely not being linked to is negative feedback. hence, the disappointment of not being included on someone's link list or the elation of being included. of course being interpreted negatively is rarely the intention of the non-linker, so the most common guage of feedback is the most unreliable as far as accuracy. 03:17 pm

scarily, i answered yes to all the questions asked in this rant on the "pesky, pervasive, invasive internet". yes i want access on the plane, in a taxicab, at the doctor's office...

what i don't understand tho is the second to last paragraph. the bit about how the author is sure that internet access is more sorely needed in a somalian school. personally, i think food and health care is more sorely needed in a somalian school than internet access. they're not even sure if it's useful in u.s. schools. 02:45 pm

Gnutella No Ideal Fix for Napster Fiends. as i've pointed out before, i have a miniscule amount of interest in gnutella. but, the ceo of my old company clip2 wrote the report this article is based on. clip2 has started a distributed search services site. hey, maybe that stock will actually be worth something some day. thanks pam 02:35 pm

actually, there was something interesting in the article below. at the bottom is a list of "10 commandments of information architecture". why is it that people feel that they can make a list of "commandments", yet confuse information architecture with web design? what does "design for printing" have to do with ia? 02:22 pm

i'm finding that i have less and less patience to read articles, if they don't grab me in the first 2 paragraphs i check to see how long they are and bail if they're excessive. mostly because i don't want to read 20 more that are similar to the first few. this statement was prompted by this article, Built 2 Order. which talks about information architects. who knows, it may be a good article. 02:16 pm

i'm not quite sure how useful this is, but the job title generator lets you explore different titles. although, i don't think anything can beat "web prima donna", right liz? 01:51 pm

ben's just a master at playing with our emotions. torturing us with the depression of his departure and then elating us with his triumphant return and then making us feel duped by admitting he wrote his departure almost a year ago. is it any wonder we love him? 01:34 pm

my latest project is finally live. i just completed a site for one of my favorite authors, Graham Joyce. oddly enough, he found me through a review i'd written on one of his books showing up in a search engine. 12:59 pm

steve posted an old email that he sent to wd-l after jwz resigned from mozilla. it's interesting. 03:31 pm

i'm going to miss ben. 03:25 pm

printfont: it's that site that has handwriting fonts from web designers on it. 03:22 pm

because of zeldman's horrible domain woes, alistapart.com is no longer working. but, luckily you can now read it at alistapart.zeldman.com. 07:17 pm

a nice simple explanation of how to create chromeless ie windows. thanks anil. 11:29 am

your elevator pitch is much too long. this summary of a talk by robert middleton talks about positioning and effective marketing, but what's really interesting is the way he uses the word "meme". while he gives the definition that i've always heard, he alters it to mean "an idea so simple and eloquent that it needs no explanation". essentially an elevator pitch that is more concise. 10:55 am

Imitation: flattery or thievery?. very nicely put. when i was redesigning back in march, i really wanted to use a particular shade of green and a particular shade of orange went perfectly with it. when i showed it to someone, he pointed out that it was identical to alistapart's color scheme. needless to say, the design & color scheme went in the trash. it certainly wasn't deliberate imitation. subconcious? maybe. coincidental? just as likely. 04:41 pm

i just remembered to go through and validate additions to the portal and i'm amazed at how many of them don't work in netscape. sometimes, i'd like to be really mean and not include them because i have to switch to ie to see them. then i realize how petty that would be. 03:16 pm

Beyond Usability. it's so nice to hear someone point out that usability is not the be all and end all of web sites. i'm not saying it's not extremely important, but so is customer service, having products in stock, having good product descriptions.... via webword. 12:28 pm

"comic genius. and that's all we have to say about it." i can't possibly put it any better than zeldman did. 06:25 pm

behind the curtain: a day in the life of webloggers. i don't know whether i find this concept incredibly scary or incredibly cool & fun. i'll have to think about it for a while. 06:03 pm

Gallery of CSS Descramblers. just doing my part. linking to a page that links to illegal code... 02:22 pm

a disturbing analysis of the rise of yahoo in google's search rankings several months prior to their partnership. 01:09 pm

Escaping the Matrix. a very fascinating read. there's not enough data given to support the theory, so without doing research it's hard to tell how accurate it is. either way, it's a pretty scary viewpoint of capitalism and democracy. 09:40 pm

this is torture. fontomas is giving away a free experimental font each week, which is really cool. the torturous part is that there will be no archives. you snooze you lose. via zeldman. 07:48 pm

A Conversation With Guy Gavriel Kay. 01:25 pm

an assessment of the fuckedcompany.com ebay thing. 12:06 pm

lost city of cancuen. appearances can be deceiving. via rebecca. 04:14 pm

internet.com To Acquire ClickZ. thanks sanj. 04:04 pm

matt gets cornered and gets quoted on sxsw.com. which by the way is now accepting entries for it's web awards. oh yeah, there's now a weblog category too. 03:18 pm

the casio wrist camera watch has inspired a gallery. only $199. via Lindsay. 02:17 pm

hmmm. is branding compatible with web usability? points out the fact that many sites can't implement both successfully, and even suggests that it can be done. two assertions that i agree with completely. but i'm not quite sure how relevant or accurate the "suggestions" are to branding or the combination of branding and usability. sure some of them are just good site design, but limiting branding to the top of the page? that implies that branding consists of just "a logo and a few keywords set as graphic images". maybe he's just describing his own site and holding it up as an example of successfully combined brand and usability. via webword. 01:59 pm

the speed of business. another article on site load speed. the author advocates a 2 second load time. ironically, the article took 30 seconds to load over my dsl line. 01:43 pm

Technology Cases Raise Issues of Competence. if microsoft sinks the money into convincing the courts that judges are not capable of ruling on technology issues it'll be a good thing. they may be doing it for their own reasons, but it might be good for the internet as a whole. 01:14 pm

eBay item 434391456 - F*ckedCompany.com. i don't understand how a site that is a favorite of vicious sharks who enjoy ripping people and companies apart and kicking them when they're down can possibly be worth $10 million. just because it has high traffic? via signal vs. noise. 12:51 pm

Around the Web World in 44 Days. the irony of the startup world, participate in a failure and you become even more valuable. via signal vs. noise. 12:47 pm

speaking of beyond, mark brier's new book the 10-second internet manager has been released, and has it's own website. what i can't figure out is how a marketing person termed "a rare internet expert" can build an incredibly ugly, unprofessional site and not realize how much it hurts his credibility and brand. 12:41 pm

denial in web design. horrible flash backs of my experience at beyond.com. unfortunately, when you have the engineering problem and the marketing problem and no one you escalate the facts to actually cares, you get to watch unusable sites drop like flies. via xblog. 12:37 pm

downtime by law. an accurate analysis of the judicial system and the reactions its decisions cause. it could also be applied to just about every other issue in the american political system. "lawyers rule the world" and since corporations are the one's that can most afford lawyers, corporations rule the world. and don't you forget it. 12:29 pm

i've never seen these before (probably because i've never cared enough), but internet traffic report and matrix iq keep track of internet performance. 11:28 am

i dropped kirsty off at the airport yesterday. i'm still torn between being sad and wishing she was back and being happy because the experience will help her grow. although i'll be seeing her in december, those three months seem like a long time. i'm also very nervous. i have my first appointment in ten years with a hair stylist other than kirsty. 01:04 pm

i finally watched magnolia wednesday night. it was as good as everybody said and as good as all paul thomas anderson's other films (at least the one's i've seen). 12:59 pm

Death of the Websafe Color Palette? a very interesting analysis of websafe colors, how they came about, how they mostly don't exist anymore. the bad thing is that there is no ideal solution. personally, i like strategy 2. i've never been a really caring person. but, i don't think i could do that for client sites. 10:54 am

it's not something that i'm into, but prosebush is a new collaborative fiction website. both for reading and writing. 02:51 pm

weblogs: a history and perspective. rebecca does a wonderful job of evoking the essence of weblogging over time. 02:00 pm

contracts 101. a good primer on what components make up a contract. 02:40 pm

for some odd reason, there's several links to porn sites in my referrer logs. i'm not quite sure why. 07:17 pm

i hate the fact that i become stuck on certain phrases. yesterday i realized that i was using the word "clearly" way too often. as in "clearly, he doesn't know what he's talking about". just now i realized that i'd used "spurred by" in two posts today. if i don't watch out, i'll start saying "wicked" again. 06:54 pm

john of webword has some more food for thought spurred by my brand rant. 06:48 pm

another one of those "i should read this but don't have the patience right now" links. Techniques at first glance seems to be a good replacement for jakob's writing for the web tips. it has been 3.5 years after all. 06:44 pm

wow. microsoft web fonts available for linux. now i can tell all those linux people that it's not my font size that's bad, it's that they haven't bothered to download decent fonts. via zeldman. 06:18 pm

j.g. sandom's inside edge column talks about brand. what's really interesting is his statement that the online experience creates the brand.

"If the site were slow, the brand would suffer. If the site withheld consumer control, the brand would suffer. If the site failed to deliver value, the brand would suffer. But if there were no consumer to navigate the site--if no one were in the woods to listen to the falling tree--there would be no brand."

my musings on brand, spurred of course by last week's doc marten's comments. 05:34 pm

just put up my latest creation. Agatha's Shadow. it's for a designer who does custom made goth clothing. 03:32 pm

i don't know what it is about graham joyce's writing that evokes an emotion of horror. not horror in the sense of being scared, but horror in the sense of contemplating a truly horrible occurence. his short story partial eclipse does that to me. then again, maybe i'm biased. 02:51 pm

not to be outdone by matt and kay's nuptial notes, dori and tom have put together WedLog. 01:48 pm

today has been site maintenance day. i cleaned up my hire me page, standardized the stylesheets, added sorting to the portal - you can now look at it by category, by language, and reverse alphabetical. exciting stuff, i know. one day, i'll figure out a way to let people update their listing without emailing me... one day. 03:32 pm

apparently, for the last 2 weeks, the add a blog page has been broken. thanks go out to karen for letting me know. 06:41 pm

i just realized how i've neglected to truly give my appreciation to lawrence who does tomalak's realm. not only does he pull together some of the most interesting links on a daily basis, but he also takes the time to email me with more info about stuff i've linked to. he's got some other useful stuff on his site like a conferences and events calendar (which i should have looked at last week when i was trying to remember all the one's i wanted to go to). thank you lawrence. 06:20 pm

lawrence sent me more info on the doc martens site. it was designed by pres.co and in their client section for dr. martens it says

"the internet strategy is linked to their overall goal of accelerating the brand in the new millennium, to challenge other lifestyle brands."

i'm beginning to wonder whether everyone's been misled into thinking the web is about commerce, it may just be all about the brand. 06:10 pm

lou rosenfeld interviews mark hurst. i don't have the patience to read all of this right now, but it looks interesting. at least the argument on chi-web was interesting. via mersault*thinking. 02:20 pm

mark hurst reviews the doc martens site. while i agree with everything he's saying, the question that always comes to mind is "what was their goal?". if they're trying to create an ecommerce store then they've failed miserably. if they're trying to evoke the brand and style of doc martens, it's maybe not such a bad site. 02:02 pm