trick or treat salvation. go for the snide commentary, not the comic. i don't read fundamentalist christian propaganda very often, but reading this made me notice how they alter stuff for their own purposes. the biblical quotes they use state that in order to get into heaven a person needs to *believe* in jesus. the people who wrote this comic decided to define believe as " to repent of your sins and invite jesus into your heart." 04:19 pm

it's all microsoft's fault. which is good because i was worried about peterme. not only does saving to the web from powerpoint create unviewable code for anything other than ie, it puts up that nasty error message. powerpoint users be warned. 02:08 pm

i can't describe how much these error pages irritate me. i have flash-backs to 96/97 when every site had a "best viewed in" icon because people were too lazy to code cross-browser. pages that don't display at all are irritating too, but that at least can be blamed on bad coding and lack of qa not complete disregard for netscape users. 01:26 pm

rather than add to the noise, i'll just point to what taylor said and what nadav said. 01:15 pm

updates will be sporadic until friday. i'm going to be at web2k for the next three days which means i have to actually get some serious work cranked out today. i'll be driving up to sf sometime tomorrow. hopefully in the morning because i'd like to catch steve's online communities session, but probably early afternoon. wednesday night and the whole day thursday will be taken up by the planning and execution of the cool-site-in-a-day thingy, but if anyone wants to get together for lunch on friday let me know. i'll be checking email, of course, and i'll have my mobile (408.921.5550). 12:59 pm

Blaster. it's really sad that there is actually a need and a market for this anti-carjacking system. they say it's not meant to kill people, but i'd hate to see a guy who's been standing in that gout of flame. 12:44 pm

Wal-Mart.com launches it's revamped site. surprise surprise, it's got cut-off corners. 12:30 pm

you have to wonder whether people think before they register domain names. whorepresents.com must get more hits from people looking for porn than from people who actually want to use their search tool. 04:09 pm

Web Merchants Make Good on Hype. 04:07 pm

another author interview, this one with anne rice. she's got a new book out. i'll probably be disappointed again, but i keep hoping she'll get back to writing decent stuff. 03:53 pm

an interview with laurell k. hamilton. 03:28 pm

as threatened, a page devoted to cut-off corner designs. 12:45 pm

fox.com. another. thanks redrick. 11:45 am

ok. if i get any more of these, i'm really gonna have to make a page for them all. Holodeck73. thanks neale. 08:11 pm

and yet another cut-off corner site. cdnow. 01:26 pm

hesketh.com. yet another cut-off corner site. love the design tho. 01:15 pm

apparently, there was quite a bit of reaction to the whole e-mail/email thing. thanks derek. 12:59 pm

interesting. not only is the zbox supposed to make package delivery easier, it also makes package returns easier. 11:09 am

Birth of a Station. the playstation is capable of drawing 10 million polygons per second. according to alvy ray smith, reality is eighty million polygons per second. no wonder those screenshots look so good. via tomalak. 11:06 am

debra pointed out that there *are* porn weblogs out there. their owners just haven't realized that they're weblogs. 10:41 am

Burton. another cut-off corner site. 10:21 am

if i get many more of these, i'll have to start a page to list them all. Funny Garbage, another cut-off corner site. thanks tim. 03:51 pm

i'm still amazed at the insistence that people will pay for content. it just isn't happening. the "what the hell" pricing model is just another micropayment system. a more expensive one. 03:15 pm

A Glass of Wine Helps Show What Buyers Want. what a surprise. price isn't the only factor in making an online purchase. tomalak. 03:05 pm

just in case you didn't pre-order your playstation 2, you can get one on eBay. only $1775. 02:58 pm

The P2P myth 02:51 pm

i wanted to make a comment about groove, but tremendo beat me to it:

"Yes is P2P, yes it has very smart people behind it, yes it has big names hyping it. No I don't understand yet why I need it, or want it."

02:22 pm

today, i got my first porn submission to the portal. i'm surprised it hasn't happened before. as i was deleting it, it occurred to me that a smart porn king would start a porn weblog... 01:40 pm

we didn't start the weblogs. smile. thanks dori. 05:35 pm

startup 2000. i think all vc's should require hopefuls to succeed at this game before actually funding them. via dack. 11:28 am

beunited. another in the increasingly long list of cut-off corner sites. 10:30 am

it turns out that Marriott has a really good web site which allows you to get rates and make reservations online. surprisingly, they still have available rooms at a semi-decent rate. at least now i don't have to face driving up there every day. 05:28 pm

i started reading this article, Reengineering Nancy, because of a quote posted to a mailing list. it turned out to be a fascinating article about overcoming biology. the quote below really brings home the fact of gender discrimination.

"The men also treated me like a woman: they stopped listening to me in meetings and often would offer up my ideas as their own even after I had shared them with the group. It was as if I had become invisible. Before transition, I was a highly respected leader, but within months, I was a micromanaged, often berated engineer."

i have no idea what i'm going to do about web2000 now. i was originally planning to drive up for a day, go to the expo and a few open sessions, then drive home. now i've got a 3 day pass, 1 full day (9 - 5:30) is taken up by the cool site thing. i don't even want to attempt trying to find a hotel at this late a date. which leaves me with several unappealing options, all of which involve driving up to sf several days in a row. sometimes i amaze myself at how inept i am at last minute arrangements. sigh. 02:19 pm

just in case you want to see jesse's visual vocabulary, he's provided a real life example. 01:52 pm

Job Candidates Charge for the Interview. a new site, imaxo is allowing people to charge for the time it takes to go to an interview. now that seems like a good way to earn extra money on the side... 01:36 pm

A Matter of (Wired News) Style. i'm sorry, but this is the most amusing article i've read in a long time. three pages of justification for using e-mail instead of email. three long pages proclaiming that instead of accepting and propagating the evolution of language we're going to fight for stagnation dammit.

"And while people still can't spell or punctuate correctly when they dash off an e-mail (or anything else, for that matter), no editor worth the name can justify looking on benignly while the English language is butchered in the name of some tin-pot revolution, regardless of its narcotic effect at the time."

there was a recent thread on the wise-women mailing list talking about grammar/punctuation pet peeves. people tend to think that the way they were taught is the "right" way. any deviation from that way is unacceptable and "wrong". but, people forget that language evolves. there is no "right" way. if you're going to get pedantic about language, you should remember that the english language has been around a hell of a long time and what we speak/write today has very little resemblance to that language. it has evolved. this quote from a column called rory's ramblings says it all.

"...English is constantly changing and evolving, "moving with the times" if you like. English adapts and adopts, bringing in things that might work, adopting them if they do, and throwing them out if they don't."

i just find it incredibly amusing that the editors of wired have taken it upon themselves to stop the natural evolution of the language. we all know how effective it's been for the french. 01:23 pm

Korean firm develops 3-D Web browser. ok, so i can see why they're predicting that the internet will go 3-d, not that i believe it for one second, but i can buy it is an argument for the browser. but. can someone explain to me how/why i'm going to use a 3-d browser to surf the web using my mobile phone? 05:19 pm

bluetooth will let your tires talk to your mobile phone. 05:14 pm

since it's still really hard to find good engineers, i woud speculate that the rise in dot com job cuts is more of an exercise in cutting the fat. not that i've worked with any useless, self-important, over-paid dot com workers or anything. right liz? 04:07 pm

after numerous attempts, adobe finally accepted my serial # and allowed me to order the photoshop 6 upgrade. it arrived this morning. which means, i have no chance of doing work today. 03:46 pm

will found more sites with cut-off corners. altavista was definitely one of the one's i'd seen and forgotten about. thanks will. 01:18 pm

my sense of time is really distorted. it seems like it was 2 years ago that i got excited and quickly deflated (6/3/99 & 6/12/99) about participating in web99's cool site in a day contest. i seem to remember that it was incredibly important to me at the time. most likely having to do with needing a self-confidence boost and validation that i was a decent web developer.

now, 16 months later, there's no importance attached to the contest. i don't have any need for that kind of validation. i've developed quite a big ego all on my own. instead, i'm doing it because it seems like it'll be an interesting learning experience. 03:11 pm

occasionally, i get an email from someone asking me to post a link to their site. usually, they're not worth looking at. Culturekiosque.com surprised me. 02:46 pm

the Heifer Project is a charity that on first glance is really bizarre, but when youthink about it, it's really smart. 02:25 pm

Cliff Yablonski Hates You. in fact, cliff yablonski hates everyone. if you want, you can send him a picture and he'll post it along with nasty comments. there are some truly amusing comments in there, but be warned there are also a lot of tasteless, offensive comments too. 06:17 pm

Trouble in Paradise: Problems Facing the Usability Community. i found myself nodding my head at every point that john makes in this article. i don't sell usability or even interface design, i sell web app/site devlopment that is really good. the reason it's really good is because i take into account usability and good interface design when i develop the app/site. if you go to a company and say "i'll build you an app that achieves your goals and lets your customers easily achieve their goals," they'll respond by hiring you. if you go to a company and say "i'll build you an app that has a user interface which is optimized for ease of use and has been thoroughly usability tested," their eyes will glaze over. 01:52 pm

M (For Misguided?)-Commerce. this article does a really good job of summing up why i think wireless web is never going to work. via goodexperience. 01:36 pm

today seems to be a day for future predictions. There's no computer like no computer talks about pervasive computing. perhaps i'm being short-sighted in believing that some form of the desktop computer will exist for quite a long time. not that i don't think some of their examples would be cool to have. but, a wristwatch that holds that day's appointments will have to get those appointments from a larger database and someone will have to enter those appointments into the database. i see lots of portable computing devices in the future, but i still see the desktop hanging around. hopefully, it'll have a better os by then. via tomalak. 01:27 pm

Society grappling with info overload. i thought we all knew that. via tomalak. 01:18 pm

Is the tech industry out of ideas? dan bricklin is quoted as saying

"We're in that between time. It's like a plateau time. We can see the future, but we can't just create it overnight.''

i'm optimistic enough to agree with him although, i reserve the right to be wrong. the article went downhill from that quote. the predictions being that xml and wireless would be the future that kick starts innovation.

xml isn't a technology that has suddenly given us the ability to transfer data over the web. there's other protocols which have allowed that for years. xml will just, hopefully, standardize it. i won't even go into my thoughts about wireless and broadband. 12:49 pm

i don't know what to think of egomedia's flash site. i despise the fact that they take up my full-screen, but there's something oddly fascinating about playing with the site. thanks derek. 11:27 am

observation: soda cans make great burn soothers. soda cans and mice don't work well together. 12:21 pm

stupid human trick of the day: go to pour off some coffee from a too full cup. let coffee overflow onto right hand. scald right hand. switch cup to left hand because dropping a full cup of coffee on the coffee shop floor would be bad. switch so quickly that coffee overflows onto left hand. scald left hand. wish for invisibility because the whole coffee shop is staring at you. 10:35 am

another odd, we were just talking about this the other day thing. the topic was teleportation. the conclusion being that there would have to be a fundamental change in quantum physics. my comment being that scientific "facts" are always being tossed out the window. the theory that an electron can't be split is getting tossed out the window. via neale. 12:08 pm

The user experience.

" In many cases Web designers are repeating past sins when they blindly adopt GUI approaches for Web-based applications."

via tomalak. 11:30 am

for some strange reason, when we upgraded our computers last month, we left the old cd-rom's and hard-drives. today we decided to upgrade them. upgrading is always so much fun. anyway, while waiting for the tediously long win2000 install, i picked up my latest book acquisition, the land of laughs. this quote which was in the front of the book struck a chord.

"be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
- flaubert

ugh. i *really* did not want to know that about neale. actually, knowing it isn't that bad, it's the description that made me cringe. 03:40 pm

liz just adopted a really goofy looking dog. 03:32 pm

i think this is one of the sites i was forgetting about: scifi.com. thanks to jess for pointing me to it. 02:53 pm

another "cut off corner" site to add to the list go.com. thanks go out to eric for pointing it out. 12:45 pm

while you're looking at his visual vocabulary, you should also check out jesse's information architecture resources. 11:34 am

jesse has shared an incredibly comprehensive visual vocabulary for describing ia and interaction. i've used quite a few of these symbols in my various maps, but there's a lot of useful one's i've never seen before and great explanations for how these symbols should be used. 11:26 am

hard to believe, but Scripting News has a new look. i like. well, everything but the times roman text, but ya know, nothing's perfect. 05:36 pm

the results for jorn's poll titled fourteen ways to fix the web are really interesting. apparently, banner ads aren't that bothersome to people. via webword. 04:49 pm

world wide yawn.

"a discussion about the Internet is about as interesting as listening to someone describing the features of their new vacuum cleaner."

The Death of Geek-Rule?. demographics they are a changing. 04:31 pm

second thing i've read today which reminded me of something else. julia hayden's anecdote brought to mind an email from a few months back. the writer mentioned that i should make a book of my web writings. something along the lines of "it would be better than bridget jone's diary". having never read the book, i couldn't begin to judge the "better" part, but the concept of putting my life in a book was really odd to me. first off, why would a publisher want to publish said book? and secondly, why would someone pay for a book when it's already published for free online. i'm not writing to make money. as julia said, "It's my public service." mostly a public service to myself. that's not to say i would turn down a publisher who offered me a big fat check to throw together already written material and make a book. it's just not a goal i have. it's also not even a remote possiblity, so it's not like i have to worry about it. 11:33 am

how to make friends in cyberspace. this article got me thinking more about diablo2 and battle.net. back in july there was a salon article describing battle.net as a fashion show. while the article was meant to be humorous, it was very accurate. i know players that save outfits to wear in the chat channels. battle.net is essentially a big irc client with it's own built in avatars where everyone has something in common (the game) and, bonus, when you get sick of chatting, you can go play a game. or conversely, when you get sick of playing the game, you can go and chat. i never considered that a game could develop a community inside of itself. 11:17 am

build a better buggy whip. christopher locke discusses how companies who fail to re-examine their assumptions can completely miss the boat. via tomalak. 10:56 am

there seems to be a design trend i'm seeing lately. square tabs with one corner chopped off at a 45 degree angle. of course, the only example i can remember right now is neale, but i know i've seen it in a couple other places. 12:54 pm

i love zeldman's columns because he always manages to vocalize ideas that i've been thinking. of course, he also says it much better than i ever could. Do print art directors make the best web designers?. 12:32 pm

i'm very intrigued by kevin saatchi's lovemarks concept. he proposes that things like mystery, sensuality, emotional connections and love are what makes a company or product successful. my gut instinct being that he is very right. via stewart. 12:21 pm

Jeffrey makes me cry. 03:35 pm

sometimes, i don't like myself. the fact that news of chipshot.com's bankrupcy filing gave me pleasure indicates a sad, petty side that i don't like to admit that i have. 12:36 pm

sigh. i'm consciously trying very hard not to get into jakob bashing. it's become a popular sport that i'm very sick of. however, it's extremely hard to do. his latest alertbox talks about marketing. specifically something he calls "request marketing". my first reaction was, how did a usability engineer who usually ignores the fact that corporations rely heavily on marketing suddenly become a marketing expert.

merriam-webster defines marketing as "the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service". while amazon is providing a service with it's author notification system, they aren't promoting or selling that service. in fact, it's extremely difficult to find the sign-up method. as far as i can tell, that doesn't fall under the definition of marketing.

in fact, all the examples he uses seem more like requests for information than requests for marketing. the web is definitely a user-driven medium (as opposed to "customer-driven", which implies that e-commerce is the only use for the web). but, all i'm seeing are requests for information. in the case of product information requests, the information usually gets wrapped in marketing, but that doesn't mean the user requested marketing. they just put up with it because they want the information.

maybe, it's just that jakob has invented a new term, "request marketing", and i just can't associate his definition with the traditional definition of marketing. 12:06 pm

The infamous Jakob Nielsen. as john said "ouch". 11:45 am

one bad thing about comments. you then feel obligated to check back and see if there are any. which certainly makes the ability to select which posts allow comments a very very valuable feature. 04:55 pm

i'm not really sure how bloggers new (beta) comments feature is going to work out. not the technology, of course, but the introduction of a new dynamic to most weblogs. i've always said my weblog is for me and it is completely a one way medium (unless you email me, which no one ever does). by adding comments, the medium changes to a two-way/many-way (is that a word?) conversation. definitely different. maybe better if people are more willing to make a post than write an email. possibly even better because email is still one-to-one and unreadable to others. we will see. of course, this is all a prelude for me to say "what do you think?" 02:56 pm

ev brilliantly suggested making the timestamp the permalink. i hate things that are so bloody obvious once someone mentions it. i always feel inadequate for not thinking of it myself. 02:01 pm

reefer madness. a very good article detailing america's hypocrisy when it comes to recreational drugs. 01:26 pm

derek writes a wonderful little post about the meaninglessness of the label weblog.

"I think all this hooey is simply public self-expression."

95% of my friends and acquaintances are people who i've met online and i would never have met them without taking the action of expressing myself through my weblog. 12:40 pm

simon singh's cipher challenge has finally been solved. after reading the code book last year, i attempted to crack the codes. unsurprisingly, i didn't get past the first 2 or 3. the book is a fascinating history of code breaking, well worth reading. 11:30 am

off-peak living and work less, produce more both appeal to the true idler in me. via dack. 03:39 pm

zeldman was kind enough to give a perfect example of why buying virtual software can be a very bad thing. read his latest my glamorous life. 01:15 pm

Web Publishers Learn to Love Micropayments. i'm still positive that micropayments will never work on the web. people don't want to pay for content that isn't solid. i don't want to pay to read a book online then 6 months from now when i'd like to re-read it again have to pay again or not be able to access it because the link is broken.

if a consumer purchases something, they want a real item in their hand. part of the reason beyond failed was their betting the farm on downloadable software. the trouble was, people didn't want to buy software and not get the cd that went with it.

micropayments are just wishful thinking by content producers who want to actually make money off the content they put on the web.

oh, if you want to point to stephen king as a successful user of micropayments, remember that he is threatening to never publish more of the book if he doesn't receive enough money. pretty big incentive if you enjoy the "free" installments and want to know what happens next. via tomalak. 01:05 pm

Call Them Demons, Call Them Heroes. john rhodes points out the importance of the words you use in your writing. make sure the words you use accurately convey the tone you are trying to achieve. 12:50 pm

i don't know why i find it so disturbing, but the fact that bloghop lets you put a "rate me" form on your site kind of makes me sick. essentially, you're saying to people "hey, tell everybody how popular and wonderful my blog is". since someone who dislikes your blog probably wouldn't be visiting anyway, you're essentially skewing the "ratings". although, i just noticed that the ratings page doesn't actually list weblogs by how well they're rated, but by how many votes they've gotten, so i guess it's not really skewing the ratings. which means that if someone can get 300 people to rate them as "the worst" they'd still be at the top of the ratings page. 12:16 pm

Now That I Have Your Attention. i've definitely noticed a trend for more personalized spam subject lines. via tomalak. 05:39 pm

i finally got around to reading doc searls open letter to meg whitman about ebay's plans to sell adspace. it's well worth reading. it's sad how many companies suddenly decide that their users are actually an audience and then delude themselves into thinking that their audience is demanding advertising. 04:50 pm

i finished laurell k. hamilton's latest book a kiss of shadows this weekend. like all her others, i had a hard time putting it down. the story was great, she has a talent for integrating the creatures of fiction into the modern world. vampires etc. in the anita blake series, and now elves in this one. unfortunately, the book came to a rather abrupt end. one minute tension, intrigue, plot twists, then next the heroine is flying back home and everything is happy and complete. i can only hope that this was not the author's doing but the publisher's because it was really poorly done. 02:44 pm

for some odd reason, i've never heard of the cynic's dictionary. how could that be? 07:14 pm

it's always wonderful to decide to check on the due date of a project, thinking that it's at the end of the month and realizing that it's actually 5 days away. 5 days including the weekend. don't expect much for the next couple of days. 12:25 pm

reducing reliance on superstition. more on the magic number 7. 04:38 pm

Tell a Story to Engage Your Audience. it seems so obvious once someone points it out, but i'm pretty sure this never occurred to me before as something corporations should be doing. it seems to me that it would be a very valuable practice. again via industrialflux. 02:53 pm

wise-women is having a T-shirt/mug/mousepad design contest. 01:59 pm

In Praise of Sloppy HTML uses the argument of cost as a good reason for using wysiwyg programs that pump out horrendous code. his argument falls apart by the fact that as a hand-coder, i can churn out a hand-coded page faster than anyone with a wysiwyg tool and my page will work cross-browser/cross-platform, have alt tags, accomodate complex layouts and have workarounds for browser quirks which wysiwyg tools don't even know about. with all the tweaking that needs to be done, it's not necessarily faster and therefore, not necessarily cheaper. 01:39 pm

john dvorak thinks xml is killing the web. he talks about all the confusion around xml, but i think he's confused about how it will be used. it's not a pure front-end technology. sure, if it's used on the backend, it'll probably be used on the front too. but, if there is no application/database behind it, there's no point in using xml for a site. i can see html eventually being replaced by xhtml. but i can't see it going away. via dack. 01:01 pm

The Web's Deep Optimism.

" the Web isn't a medium; it's a world. A medium conveys a message from Point A to Point B. But on the Web, we're the ones that are moving, not messages."

via industrialflux. 12:47 pm

Visible Navigation for the Web. "I’ve just had a glimpse of the future of the web, and it is called Urbanpixel." for tog to call this the next killer app. is a pretty positive statement for the concept. it's hard to say from the small amount of info available. tog uses a store example, but i don't know if i'd want an online store to emulate a meatspace store so closely. the urbanpixel site, however, gives an example of searching the web that seems much more interesting to me. via industrialflux. 12:43 pm

the latest project i'm working on involves coding the jsp (and backend which is jason's job) for an application. i didn't design the ui or code the html for it. it's been quite a torturous process, cringing at bad ui, pulling my hair out over generated html etc. yesterday, it truly hit home the difference in mindset of a ui designer vs. a coder. usually i can balance the two, but having no control over the ui and therefore being forced to ignore it, i have become completely focused on being a coder. i realized that making my life easier was the most important thing to me, doing less coding was my goal. this really emphasized the importance of the ui people working closely with the programmers, checks and balances. 12:31 pm

obsessed with the topic of authors and books this morning. has anyone noticed how 99% of authors' sites are completely horrendous. considering how bad some of the publishers' sites are, i would venture that the book publishing industry has yet to realize the value of the web. 12:16 pm

writing about the books i've read recently reminds me that i really should revive my long dead library section of the site. but, of course, i'd have to put it in a database and that takes time and i'm really supposed to be working and by the time i get done with this project, i'll have forgotten that i wanted to revive the library. 12:05 pm

i also finished graham joyce's house of lost dreams recently. it was very enjoyable but not my favorite of his books. it wasn't quite as cohesive as his others, slightly more disjointed and didn't flow as well. but, it was his first, so it's somewhat understandable. it's also out of print. there are definitely some perks for doing an author's website.

writing the above paragraph was extremely difficult. it's really easy to give an honest opinion about someone's work when (1) you don't know them personally and (2) you figure they'll probably never read it anyway. neither of those being the case here makes it hard to write something that is not toned down. 12:02 pm

i finished reading the marriage of sticks a couple of weeks ago and last night i finished sleeping in flame both of which are by jonathan carroll. as i finished up the book last night, i realized that the amazing thing about carroll's writing is that his books start out so mundane. talking about the relatively boring life of the main character. he then starts to inject slightly odd occurrences which increase in frequency until the story has become completely weird and freaky yet in some odd way believable. at least that was the case for the two books i've read. we'll see if the trend continues, kissing the beehive is next on my reading list. 11:27 am

sent this to a mailing list yesterday and realized that i probably should have posted it here too. the magical number seven is the original article by george miller which discussed the capacity of short-term memory. which is where the often quoted 7 +/- 2 "rule" for the max number of links in a navbar came from. the trouble being that since most people don't know what the number is referring to, they completely misinterpret how it works.

many people don't understand that by chunking information you can put many more links in the navigation. if you chunk information, you can have seven chunks each chunk containing up to seven links. 11:19 am

i haven't run across the concept of games for im, but i really shouldn't be too surprised that someone thought of it. flipside has 5 games for icq. not only can you waste your buddies' time with messaging, you can waste it by playing games, all when you should really be working. too bad i don't use icq. 06:19 pm

Rotor-fabrik has several truly tiny fonts for free. even smaller than silkscreen. via webtype.org. 01:17 pm

popularity seems to be the topic du jour. well maybe not of the day, but definitely of the week. lance, talks about pipa in his latest life serial. 01:00 pm

i *really* want a Mosquito Magnet. i *really* don't want to pay $700 for it. i have yet to see anything that gets rid of mosquitoes effectively, and i'm not really willing to spend $700 just to find out that it doesn't work. via lilly. 03:45 pm

narnia.com for those who love c.s. lewis' chronicles. nicely done with the original illustrations by pauline baynes. via lilly. 03:22 pm

Divining the Nature of Business.

"he explained why businesses exist as they do — why, for, instance, they choose to produce some goods themselves and contract with outside companies to provide the rest."

via stating the obvious. 01:01 pm

Man kills self and injures fiancée in wood chipper. sick fascination link of the day. via signal vs. noise. 12:54 pm

The Bedrock of Innovation: Leveraging Difference. an interesting article about fostering the creativity of employees and recognizing the value of a worker's knowledge. unfortunately, many companies don't recognize these things. via xblog. 12:48 pm

good advice for anyone running a personal website. i've said it before, but never so well. 12:32 pm

View Source... Lessons from the Web's Massively Parallel Development. via kottke. 12:30 pm

this weekend a friend mentioned that tom cruise's character in magnolia was based on an actual person. i can't remember the guy's name but, it did spark a conversation about neuro linguistic programming which i now need to look into more. my curiousity being especially piqued by the fact that my friend didn't really want to talk about how exactly it was done. nlp resources seems like a good starting point. of course, i don't have time to read through it right now. diablo calls. 06:57 pm

the thing i find most amazing about this 9 year-old college student isn't how much of a genius he is, but how he managed to circumvent the beaurocracy of the u.s. school system. when i was 8 they refused to move me forward 2 grades even tho i went home crying every day because i was so bored. then again, i was never even close to being as brilliant as this kid. 04:28 pm

keith dawson writes about xns. which helps to clear up some of my earlier confusion. 04:18 pm

Passion Matters. i don't know why i'd never heard of the wise-women mailing list, but i'm glad dori had the link in her sig. 04:04 pm

vincent of Mersault*Thinking is thankfully back from the dead. i was starting to miss him but, i guess he had good reason. anyway, he pointed to industrial flux, which i agree is a wonderful blog. 03:30 pm

17 Myths of Graphic Design. "the truth isn't always easy to see." via industrial flux. 03:25 pm

i've spent several hours (which should have been spent working) reading through the inevitable ado over jakob's latest alertbox. although the thread goes all over the place, some of the comments were worth reading.

i'm not even going to bother to post another comment to metafilter, i doubt anyone would make it to the bottom to read it. but, i do find it amusing that the two hottest debated topics are (1) nielsen didn't mention weblogs. he didn't mention diaries either, but no one was complaining about that. and (2) his statement about "teaching kids how to author hypertext" was interpreted to mean teaching them html. it sounded to me like he was advocating teaching them to write for the hypertext medium, i.e. the web. 02:53 pm

talking structure, zeldman's latest htmhell column.

"web design ... says specific things to specific people. it does this by offering meaningful content in the context of focused digital architecture. navigation and interface are the doors to that architecture"

01:24 pm

most of the time, i read articles on weblogs out of mild curiousity, but rarely find them interesting enough to link to. 90% of them lately have been more like advertisements for this really cool tool and oh by the way, the thing it lets you create is a weblog. techno greeks is a really well thought out piece that was fascinating to read.

"Revolution? Solution? Blogs let everybody get their Warholian 15 nanoseconds of fame, but to call this a revolution takes attention away from the real revolution: reaching out to build sites that matter."

via elearningpost. 07:03 pm

occasionally, when i'm adding a weblog to the portal, i run across one that really grabs me. instant enemy did that. i think because of the stories he tells. 05:21 pm