sharaf's online journal on web design, standards, industry news, accessibility, usability...and stuff
I attended this conference a year ago and it was really a great event. You get the chance to rub shoulders with some well-known authors and web professionals. This is one of those conferences where you can run into both Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug. Highly recommended!
Today, November 13th is World Usability Day. There are hundreds of different usability events taking place around the world to celebrate this special day. Happy Usability Day!
There are several web design and development conferences that are coming up this Fall and in Spring 2008. Here is a short list of some of the best ones I recommend:
An Event Apart San Francisco
October 4–5, 2007
San Francisco, CA
Adaptive Path MX East Conference
October 21-23, 2007
Philadelphia, PA
Voices That Matter: Web Design
October 22-25, 2007
San Francisco, CA
Future of Web Design
November 6-8, 2007
New York, NY
Web Builder 2.0
December 3-5, 2007
Las Vegas, NV
Webstock 2008
February 11-15, 2008
Wellington, New Zealand
Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG and The Brand Gap, will conduct a three-day branding workshop in Philadelphia on September 18-20, 2007. For schedule and registration visit: www.zagweek.com
I recently attended the Adobe AIR Bus Tour in Philadelphia and was quite impressed with the updated version of Apollo, which is now called AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).
As many technology junkies predicted, line between web and desktop applications are beginning to blur. One of these technologies that bridges the gap between the web and the desktop is AIR. AIR allows you to easily develop and run web applications on the desktop in any platform or operating system as long as you have Flash Player installed. There are many AIR based applications already developed that you can download and install on your computer. For example, the Kuler Desktop, the online application for creating online color themes is pretty cool.
There are number of ways to develop AIR based applications, using Coldfusion, CSS+HTML, Ajax, Javascript and others, just make sure you have Flex Builder or the AIR SDK on your computer to test them out. Also, check out the tutorials if you are new to AIR.
(Edward Tufte’s New Book: Beatuful Evidence)
If you don’t know who Edward Tufte is, you should definitely get to know him. Edward Tufte (ET) is one of best experts in the field of data and graphics display. According to Business Week, he is “the Galileo of graphics”.
Listening to ET in his one-day course in New York gave me a clear picture that he has a tough love for Microsoft PowerPoint. He suggests that there are several problems with PowerPoint and its uses to present data and graphics to audiencies in many different settings. ET suggests to use 2 page paper instead of PowerPoint. Yes, 2 page paper to replace all that jazzy flying bullet points and cool transition effects.
According to ET, 2 page paper can display the same amount of information efficiently as 50-200 PowerPoint slides. That was an eye openning discovery, because he actually shows how it can be done through some examples during his lecture. I highly recommend attending Tufte’s lectures, which takes place in different cities throughout the year in the U.S.
Read more about ET and PowerPoint issues on his web site.
Adobe’s New Online Video Editing Tool
Adobe came out with a new variations of Adobe Premiere and Photoshop Elements that let’s Photobucket users edit videos online through these programs. This is Adobe’s new strategy to shift it’s desktop based software to the web and make it available as a web service, just like Microsoft’s Office Live or Google’s “Office.”
Click-shirt
Interactive online t-shirt designs.
Say Hello to Pipes – Yahoo Relaunches Online Aggregator
According to news stories, Pipes was so popular that Yahoo expereienced a melt down when it first launched its aggregator servce.
Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business
Article from Knowledge@Wharton newsletter.
Web Design Contracts: Why Bother
Digital Web Magazine article that explores different aspects of web design contracts and why you should have one.
WorkHack
Easy to use online task management tool.
Tutorial: CSS Hack to display percentage bar
New Book: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd Ed.)
Upcoming Event: An Event Apart Boston: March 26-27, 2007
Some upcoming conferences and workshops that are worth checking out:
New Jobs at Vitamin
UK firms are looking for web designers, developers and programmers.
Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Team up for Sitemaps
Three major search engines agreed to work together on using Sitemap XML protocol for ranking web sites.
Google gives $2M to Stanford Law Internet center
Web Builder 2.0 Conference – Web 2.0 Conference Designed for the Entire Team
December 4-6, 2006 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas
In Web World, Rich Now Envy The Superrich
Interesting NY Times article about web entrepreneurs and their drive to become richer.
Enterprise Information Architecture: A Semantic and Organizational Foundation
New article at Boxes and Arrows.
ClickTale
Record and watch your users and how they interact with your web site.
Upcoming Events: Web Directions North
Web Directions Conference will take place in Vancouver, BC, Canada from February 6-10, 2007. Speakers will include Kelly Goto, Dan Cederholm, Joe Clark and other web super stars.
Local Start-up gets traffic
Traffic.com of Wayne, PA is acquired by Navteq for $179 million.
College Rolls out Ipod Program
At Nevada Community College iPods will be provided to all new students. This is a new trend among colleges and universities in the U.S. that encourages using iPods in classroom by students and Podcasting clasroom lectures by faculty. Now you can listen to music while in class, and its ok.
Research: You have 4 seconds to load a site
According to a research by Akamai, web users expect a site to load within 4 seconds, if it doesn’t, they leave or hit the ‘Back’ button.
New Book: Mobile Web Design
A new book by Cameron Moll worth checking out.
Blogs: Brand New
“Brand New is a Speak Up spin-off displaying opinions, and focusing solely, on corporate and brand identity work.”
Free Pixel Fonts
Enjoy free pixel fonts to your heart’s content.
100 million web sites served!
According to Necraft, the Internet now has 100 million web sites. This means in the future there will be even more demand for search engines to find what you want through clutter of millions of sites.
Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices
Workshop by Dan Saffer who literally wrote the book on “Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices“. This all-day workshop will be held in New York, NY on October 25, 2006.
Google Office Updates
This week Google finished integrating its Google Spreadsheet and Writely (aka Google Docs) applications.
Latest Alist Apart Articles
New articles on Working with Others: Accessibility and User Research and The ALA Primer Part Two: Resources For Beginners
The Rise of Flash Video
Article by Tom Green a well-known author of many Flash books and training CDs.
Understanding Ajax: Getting Started
AJAX tutorial for beginners.
The 25 Worst Web Sites by PC World
Microsoft Designs High-Tech School in Philly
Kudos to Microsoft and to Philadelphia School District for pulling this off. Let’s hope that other big cities move in the same direction to rescue their failing public school systems.
Phony Web Design Company Shutdown by U.S. Court
Beware if some web design company calls you to setup your web site for free. If you accept their “no-obligation” free-trial offer, you will pay an arm and a leg at the end of the month.
Web Builder 2.0 Conference
If you want to build rich-interactive web applications or would like to learn how to start, then you might want to take a look at this conference. It will be held from December 4-6, 2006 in Las Vegas, NV.
Amigo
Amigo is a new service that matches advertisers with online newsletters. Built by the same good people who brought you Drop Send.
Target.com Web Accessibility Lawsuit Gets Green Light
U.S. Judge in California upheld the lawsuit against Target.com. The lawsuit came about because Target.com was not accessible to blind users.
Crazy Egg
Very neat service that shows you where people are clicking and where they are not on your web site.
Add microformats magic to your site
Article on how and why you should incorporate microformats into your site.
Famster
You wanna put your family on the web? Famster is here to help. You can setup a secure web site for your family to share calendars, photos, notes, blog and much more for free. Easy to use and setup.
Pickle Juice (aka new Gatorade competitor)
Yes, pickle juice has all the good stuff you need to hydrate yourself after a heavy workout.
World Usability Day
On November 14, 2006 usability professionals world wide celebrate the World Usability Day. Find out how you can get involved.
YaleShmale
Interesting approach to market a university…
Eboogle
Ebay and Google signed a deal this week to work together on text-based and click-to-call advertising online.
Writely is back
Writely is now back and accepts new accounts. Writely is simple and one the best word processing applications online. FYI: Writely was recently acquired by Google.
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