wowzaa! There’s a new and improved photo.net. I think in general they did a pretty good job of keeping it light weight. I’m not convinced of the usefullness of the portal-like use of modules on the home page; whereas they usually signify aggregated content this use seems to merely group stuff.
The comments section on the page linked above reflects the kind of passionate religion Philip created himself regarding web site design, which is now flying back in his face like a boomerang!
I just noticed this blog is eighth on the directory of Blogger blogs, which must have hundreds of blogs by now. I feel so early adopterish.
I’m finding a need to add to the To:, cc:, and bcc: fields in email. Say I’d like to send an email to a bunch of people in my office and I want them to know who was on the distribution list (to: or cc:) yet I don’t want the replies to go the whole list and become spam-ish (bcc:). I’d like a fyicc: (for your information carbon copy).
Jen discovered all these sites on “Communities of Practice.” We’re working with a client now who uses the term so much I thought it was simply their own laborious word for “departments.”
Terry Swack, design guru, weighs in on the term “user experience” with oh-so-much badly needed wisdom…
“I think all of us in this profession are guilty of using the term ‘user experience’ much too freely, which is why we have a difficult time talking about it amongst ourselves and to our clients. I would like to see us move away from saying we design ‘user experiences’. While we design many kinds of experiences, we don’t design the *user’s* experience…We can design the interaction (software and hardware), but it is Jim who has the experience! “
Jackpot! I found this article, Author Offers Theory on Gray Matter of Love, in the New York Times last week. When I tried to think about what people “fundamentally want in life” back on May 28th (food,
health,
shelter,
safety,
security, sex), I couldn’t figure out where cultural pursuits fit in. Culture (music, visual arts, literature, etc.) seems natural and has been with us for a long, long time, so I’m felt a need to find a place for it on my list. This article explains that it basically fall under “sex.” A theory that makes sense to me: those who have time to learn the lute must have spare time on their hands, so playing the lute is showing off that you’ve easily secured the food, health, shelter, etc. stuff…
Q. So creativity becomes a “fitness indicator,” a way to strut one’s quality, precisely because it is so wasteful and expensive?
A. Once mate choice identifies a trait as informative about something, that trait is going to be under strong selection to amplify its appearance.
Those who invest the most energy, the most maintenance time, the most genes, into growing the trait, will attract the most mates. One of the book’s main ideas is that the human traits of art, music and creativity are in there by design, as fitness indicators.
After reading Usability Is Like Love, I’m glad to see Joe Clark and friends at content.nu have launched a blog, nublog.