February 2003
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Accountants and Visionaries
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1 min read
In David Stutz’s resignation letter to Microsoft, he despairs of the toll the downturn will take on management: ‘Being the lowest cost commodity producer during such a recovery will be arduous, and will have the side-effect of changing Microsoft into a place where creative managers and accountants, rather than visionaries, will call the shots.’ I…
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The Killer, Open Search Engine
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1 min read
What the independent publisher needs now is a killer, free, open-source search engine for our sites. The Movable Type of search engines, with a plug-in architecture allowing individuals to add features. None of the free search engines currently available achieve what MT has in terms of simplicity, usability, performance, and usefulness. Lazy Web, I invoke…
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Quiz: The Onion or The New York Times?
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1 min read
Chirac Upsets East Europe by Telling It to ‘Shut Up’ on Iraq.
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A Simplified Model for Facet Analysis
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1 min read
We republished an article by Louise Spiteri which attempts to boil down all the complex – and often confusing – original thinking on faceted organization into something managable.
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Smart Mobs-Powered Snowball Fight in Central Park
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1 min read
Happening today.
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Newish Wine in Newish Bottles
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1 min read
In the latest ASIST Bulletin (PDF) Andrew Dillon asks if, ‘research in information architecture is nothing more than old wine in new bottles.‘ Not unlike an < href="http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-01/dillon.html">older column in which he asked, ‘I need more convincing that any one person could be described accurately as an information architect.‘ In this new issue James Kalbach…
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Two Feet of Snow!
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1 min read
Fun!
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Duncan Watts and Network Theory
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1 min read
WNYC Radio interview with Duncan Watts discussing network theory and his small world experiment.
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Havel on Iraq
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2 min read
The recent New Yorker interview with Václav Havel is interesting for many reasons. Of timely interest is his comment on the Czech support for aggression towards Iraq: “I think it’s not by chance that the idea of confronting evil may have found more support in [eastern European] countries that have had a recent experience with…
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Google Buys Pyra
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1 min read
Holy Shit! Google is buying Pyra! (and therefore Blogger). As one of the earliest Blogger users and beta testers I’ve seen for a long time how that crew, particularly Evan, has worked hard to keep Blogger up and running. Although I’ve graduated to Tinderbox and Movable Type it’s still a thrill when I see a…
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Metadirectories
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1 min read
Fragmentation of the online movie ticket industry is frustrating customers who don’t know which service(s) to use to buy tickets at which theaters. Seems like it would be legal enough to build a metadirectory that handles the usual searches and then directs you to the right site. Hell, the ticket vendors might actually pay you…
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Venn Diagram
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0 min read
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Why Corporations are Failing Individuals
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1 min read
Peter Morville reviews (PDF) “The Support Economy” by Shoshanna Zuboff and James Maxmin: ‘While individuals search for psychological self-determination, organizations sap time and freedom from employees and withhold service and support from consumers, all in the merciless pursuit of cost-efficient (read value-starved) transactions…‘
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AIfIA, Come talk to us
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1 min read
Adam interviews some leaders from the Asilomar Institute: ‘… these are the right people, organized in the right way, and appearing at the right time, to proselytize on behalf of our young profession…If you’re interested in arguing the point…all of us will be at the IA Summit in Portland next month. We’ll all have those…
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Building New Mental Modals
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3 min read
The new B&A article What’s Your Idea of a Mental Model? reminds me of an idea that’s been circling my head lately. In some respects, many of our most nicely designed products address the physical shape and perhaps the hardware-software user interface, but not the way the technical architecture contributes to our mental model. Sometimes…