I came across this interesting article by researchers with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, who have discovered the amount of sunlight hitting the ground over China dropped by 3.7 watts per square yard over the last 50 years.
The article perhaps shows, in some way, that we may also be having a different kind of global climate impact: global dimming.
Scott Adams the author of the daily newspaper cartoon, Dilbert, has started bloggin about his life and experiences in his Dilbert blog.
Update (May 2008): The Dilbert Blog has been moved to http://dilbert.com/blog
Salvatore Fiore will be conducting a lecture with the University of York’s HCI GROUP on the 17th of October 2005 titled, Empathy and appropriation in designing for blind experience.
The lecture will discuss ongoing research on empathy and appropriation as themes within an exploratory design process.
More information about the talk can be found at the HCI GROUP’s Seminars webpage.
I’ve ordered the new Peter Morville book, Ambient Findability earlier today from Amazon UK. His new book covers the intriguing convergence of information and connectivity within Human Information Interaction (HII).
I can happily say that this, the B.J. Fogg book, Persuasive Technology, and Jamie Oliver’s Italy are my new additions to the bookshelf :)
Apologies for the little and non-existant posts here within reloade the past few months. I’ve been living and working in London and travelling a bit that it has been almost impossible to post to the journal.
A lot has happened since I arrived here in London, both with family and friends, and also my working experience, for both Sapient and most recently for Oyster (now Framfab UK).
Thanks for the emails and the requests for more updates. Yes, I am alive :) and I will be posting more soon.
In the meantime, here are some pics from my UK and Europe visit in my Flickr gallery. I’ll be presenting this coming weekend at ASIS&T Euro IA 2005 in Brussels so if you are around, I’ll see you there. It aims to be one excellent conference and the first Information Architecture conference in Europe.
Take care and see you real soon, Fredy :)
Mark Hurst has written an informative summary of his conversation with Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, a new book which discusses excessive choice, choice overload, anxiety, and stress. A related area to Hick’s Law.
After reading Mark’s interview, I kept thinking of The Uncanny Valley, an article I received from Eric Scheid during an IA Sydney meet a year or so ago. It is also an interesting read. :)
I was reading up on the introduction of the new 13-digit ISBN numbers and I was curious about its history.
Here are some articles which comment on the history of ISBN and its early development by W. H. Smith in 1965.
A BBC article, which references a Science Magazine journal, comments on how a faulty gene in dogs has been identified as that which causes epilepsy in dogs.
The identified gene is one area how the human and dog genone projects could aid both species.
Science Magazine has published an article that looks at some of the scientific clues from the Indian Ocean Tsunami that could help and aid in the preventure of future quakes from causing devastation again.
John Allsopp and Russ Weakley have launched the new PodSites website, which aims to collate various Hyperlinked Notes (or PodSites), that utilise the 4th generation iPod Notes HTML standards and features.
The website also has useful definitions to some of the new words in the cyber dictionary such as PodCasting and Enclosures (which are new to me also). The first 2 PodSites currently on the website are, an iPod-ready version of the current web-related accessibility standards and also Westciv’s Style Master CSS podGuide.
Good one guys! I’ll send you my PodSite Recipe Book real soon! :)
It looks like the hot topic currently in Sydney, London and everywhere else you can think of, has invited those pushing for accessibility, its methods and approaches, to hold an event this time in London covering the topic of Web Standards at @Media2005 on 9-10 June, 2005.
It has been a pleasure to attend workshops at the Australian Museum, meet some of those individuals and community groups from home in Sydney, such as Russ Weakley and Lindsay Evans (Red Square) and acknowledge their enthusiasm & passion for the recognition and importance of such an area; (WE04 – the Web Essentials 04 conference in Sydney is one clear example). It’s great that London is pursuing this also. I’ll see you there. :)
It looks like this has been posted in a various news groups (ie. ID-Discuss, CHI-Web) already, so excuse the cross-link, I’m just adding it here so I can find it later…
The 2004 Salary Survey for User Experience, Usability and IA professionals is available for download as a 65-page report, in PDF format, from Spirit Softworks and Peak Usability.
Victor Bayin has commented on the ACM Ubiquity article by Benjamin B. Bederson titled, Interfaces for Staying in the Flow. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks like an interesting read.
“Being in the flow”, as it is referred to by Psychologists, is the study for “optimal human experience” and over the years, basic characteristics of flow have been identified. The paper reviews the literature, and interprets the characteristics of flow within the context of interface design.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/localphp/hcil/tech-reports-search.php?number=2003-37
Liz Edols has written a great introductory article on what exactly are Taxonomies?
…’structures that provide a way of classifying things – living organisms, products, books – into a series of hierarchical groups to make them easier to identify, study, or locate.
Taxonomies consist of two parts – structures and applications. Structures consist of the categories (or terms) themselves and the relationships that link them together. Applications are the navigation tools available to help users find information.’
– A cited Reference from Jean Graef’s, Managing taxonomies strategically.
I came across this really useful list of Electronic Music Genres from Wikipedia. With rapid increases in styles and unclear labels of Electronic music (in my part) over recent years, it was becoming difficult to accurately clarify certain styles within their respective genres.
The list classifies the genres and sub-genres into “at least” more definable groups, which means I can dispense with genres in iTunes from “Funky Cool Breaky Beats” and “Man! that’s some mega chilled track” to Speed Garage and Melodic Trance respectively. :)
