beatnic - just wondering

• Westway Development Trust Climbing
  (tags: climbing London westway)

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Computer terms ‘confuse workers’
  End users eh?
  (tags: jargon technology)
• A List Apart: Articles: CSS Swag: Multi-Column Lists
  (tags: css webdesign development code)

• Creating Passionate Users: Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide
  “Keep asking, no matter what, ‘So, how does this help the user kick ass?’ and ‘How does this help the user do what he really wants to do?’”
  (tags: userexperience userscience usercentreddesign design productdesign)
• How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think
  No idea if this is any good but it sounds interesting…
  (tags: mindmap howto)

• Iterative Design: The Power of Cascading Style Sheets
  (tags: design prototyping iterativedesign webdesign css stylesheets)
• The Civic Trust
  “The Civic Trust works with people to promote thriving towns and villages, developing dynamic partnerships between communities, government and business to deliver regeneration and local improvement.”
  (tags: architecture urbanregeneration regeneration community peoplemakeplaces openspaces urbanenvironment environment urban)
• //// COLOURlovers :: palettes of colour love.
  (tags: colours palettes design)

… have really whetted my appetite for his long-hand interpretation coming soon.

Thanks to Menace for passing on this amazing video showing how to fold a t-shirt.

Now that’s online learning!

• BBC - Music - Bob Dylan - No Direction Home
  Really looking forward to this
  (tags: dylan music documentary scorcese bbc)

• Telegraph | News | Come to Peckham, it’s not nearly as bad as you think
  (tags: London Southwark Peckham tourism touristmap)
• Global Warming ‘past the point of no return’
  Climate change reaches tipping point
  (tags: climatechange globalwarming science climate news environment world)
• Personalized Google Homepage
  Finally got round to looking at this. You can add your own feeds. So now I have at least two different online places where I could be aggregating stuff…
  (tags: google personalisation aggregation aggregators ajax userinterface)
• Forms vs. Applications (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
  (tags: forms applications alertbox jakobnielsen webdesign userinterfaces applicationdesign design)

maybe instead of always being the one who is “more rational than thou” when the other person is upset, maybe sometimes in some scenarios it would help to at first be a little less calm in response

From The worst way to calm someone down on Creating Passionate Users.

Fancy yourself as a photographer?

Southwark is holding its first-ever photography competition with over £700 worth of prizes! And, as well as a cash prize, you will receive a stunning A2 size print of your photo - imagine that on your wall!

The theme of the competition, organised through the community councils, is “Postcards from Southwark” and we’re looking for positive images that show the rich diversity of Southwark’s people and landmarks.

Further info, categories, prizes etc. on Southwark Council website here

Flickr discussion via Mr Jaded here

To promote their tv series The New Ten Commandments, shown in February 2005, Channel Four commissioned this sulpture by Sokari Douglas Camp.

It’s called “The 11th Commandment”.

It represents the most popular new commandment as chosen by the British public: “Treat others as you would like to be treated” (see also British Humanist Assocation on the Golden Rule).

Looking for ideas for the sculpture, Douglas Camp wrapped herself and her children in the comfort and security of shawls. In the sculpture these have been transformed in to “Graffiti shawls” using the words of the commandment to protect and comfort the figures.

It’s currently on Peckham Rye Common (on the corner of East Dulwich Road and Peckham Rye) and will be going on tour to other London boroughs (Bexley, Islington, Hackney and Enfield) soon.

It’s yellow, and the size of a pin-head.

• Fourth Plinth
  Marc Quinn’s scultpture Alison Lapper pregnant unveiled yesterday in Trafalgar Square, London
  (tags: London sculpture art fourthplinth alisonlapper marcquinn)
• Transport for London - Results of later running weekend Tube consultation
  It’s official. Our survey says we want later running tubes at the weekends.
  (tags: london publictransport tfl transportforlondon onehourlater)
• del.icio.us: terrible twos
  Belated birthday wishes to delicious which turned two yesterday, many happy returns :-)
  (tags: delicious birthday howselfreferentialcanyougetbeforeyoudisappearupyourownarse del.icio.us)
• Demos - Catalogue - People Make Places
  The answer to “If we build it will they come”
  (tags: people places demo thinktank community)

• yugop.com
  Mindblowing stuff! Thanks to my friend Paul for the link, as he says lovely experiments
  (tags: motionlogics flash experimental patterns design art animation)
• Google Blog Search
  Here they go again
  (tags: google blogs search blogsearch)
• Last.fm
  Time for me to catch up with all the hype on this one. Looking forward to it
  (tags: internetradio music radio social audio audioscrobbler socialsoftware socialnetworking)

Are they designed to…

a) keep other traffic away from bicycles
b) keep bicycles away from other traffic

…?

Just wondering

• Learning 2005 Invitation - Game 1
  Quite addictive game… sticky
  (tags: masie learning2005)

True multitasking is when you do one foreground activity and lots of background activities.

But a lot of people confuse it with trying to do more than one foreground activity at the same time.

Summarising this comment.

I guess that’s why doing your make-up and driving don’t work too well together ;)

It never really existed anyway.

It’s no longer useful to call it the intranet. It’s just a concept. Everyone has a different idea of what the word means. That adds complexity. That means risk.

As an idea, a construct, it’s been useful, but moving forward it’s more of a hindrance. Who does it serve to call it the “intranet”?

The three ages of the intranet:

1. Attic geeks and vanity publishers
2. Structure and order, command and control
3. The death of the intranet

1. Attic geeks and vanity publishers

No law and order

Unmanaged content, unmanaged contributors

Poor/no navigation, poor/no search

Anarchy and chaos, and some quite good stuff

And why not? Now that the internet is here, everyone’s a web designer (right?), everyone’s a publisher – why shouldn’t that be true of intranets?

2. Structure and order, command and control

Control centre, rules, policy

Consistency, branding, homogeneity

Standards (W3C, design, editorial, accessibility…)

Search, Navigation

Framework, Structure

CMS, workflow, version control, templates

Governance

3. The death of the intranet

Intranet merges with desktop to become “screen-based working environment”

Oh and it’s still a portal if you want it to be but that’s always just confused things

Helps people do their job, perform tasks

Understands context

Attempting to control everything has stifled creativity and innovation and the willingness to share information and ideas with colleagues

But some of the online applications are starting to pay dividends, provide ROI. Particularly those which conducted user research as part of the design process and didn’t simply expose the inner “buiness-system” workings leaving people flummoxed and exasperated!

CMS has worked for some people and some content, but is not the panacea

One size doesn’t fit all

New stuff is cropping up all over the place – but it’s not all inside the organisation

Social bookmarking, folksonomies, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, conversations on discussion forums

How do we keep track of it all?

How do we keep control?

Do we want to? Do we need to?

Contextualise content. If content is king, context is god.

Make it relevant.

Combine taxonomies (local top-down to the systems they describe, controlled classification system) and folksonomies (bottom up, how people out there have described the stuff)

Stuff out there is as relevant and useful as stuff in here

The firewall is a hindrance

It’s not the intranet anymore, it’s a (mainly) screen-based extension of what I do (when I’m working, maybe)

But I still need a way in.

Well, not just one way in…

Now… what should we call these ways in?

• Conversational writing kicks formal writing’s ass
  If your brain had a bumper sticker, it would say: I heart conversation
  (tags: writing conversation)
• BBC NEWS | Magazine | The rules of advertising, Part 2
  Quite funny
  (tags: advertising bbcnewsmagazine satire)

• Ruby on Rails
  (tags: opensource development web application)

• Gartner Highlights Key Emerging Technologies in 2005 Hype Cycle
  Believe the hype
  (tags: emergintechnologies gartner pressrelease)