June 2003

The results to the recent 2003 AIfIA Information Architecture Salary Survey are out, and the response was mostly from Americans. We know others are out there and we want to reach them. To that end, a group of hard working volunteers are translating seminal IA writings into multiple languages.

Could listen to this riff pretty much all night. Also on the playlist is Black Eyed Pea’s Where is the Love? and Lumidee’s Never Leave You.

Quote of the day: Rabbi Zusya: “In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I’ll be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ “

Deborah Barber is another interface-designing, information-architecting, Astoria-residing, New York University music technology-majoring blogger. How wonderful are the wonders of this InterNet that she found me.

The more generic the system the more generic – and therefore less usable and more bland – the content will be. For example, text that needs to be used across several websites intended for different purposes and different people will most likely need to be more generic to serve all those needs. Since it’s not…

Besides the thesaurus book below, we need a book that addresses metadata design from the LIS, IT, UCD and knowledge representation points of view together: the IA metadata book. I think LIS knowledge is well-established, UCD and usability practice have evolved pretty well in this respect, and knowledge representation is being wrenched from AI circles…

Luckily found this by accident in my bookmarks…Tutorial on Thesaurus Construction. Once the appetite has been wet there’s the $65 book. Thanks to Peter for the book recommendation.

The AIfIA Job Board serves as a clearinghouse for position postings relating to information architecture and more broadly to information design, interaction design, and HCI. The Job Board is a service for AIfIA members.

Do you practice IA? Want to see what the current spread of salary and benefits looks like? Take the survey now, bask in raw data later.

Lisa Chan surfaces a link to Information Research, a free, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making freely accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines. The reviews look like a great way to keep up with new books, and of course there’s a weblog. This is wonderful. I’d love to see…

Olivetti: communication through design, a lovely little overview of the company’s design history.

Note to Self: Hotels.com sucks. As a front end to many backends they have little control over the bookings they originate. As a company not directly in the hospitality industry they don’t have the same culture of hospitality. Their contact form requires a java applet that is buggy. Their phone hold times can be long.…

I’ve got two more weeks of working in Delray Beach, Florida, which is halfway between Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Any IAs down here? Wanna hang? Mail me: victor (at) victorlombardi dot com.

A long-time friend of mine is a crack UNIX System Administrator in search of a job in the New Jersey, USA area. Resume (MS Word).