24 september 2004: design is the new art
flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com
This week:
- .edu
- Movies and music
- Incompitnce [sic]
- Science
- Management tips
- Postcards from the future
- Attack of the 50-foot factoid
- Web and 'net
- Design is the new art
- Fishy news: more offspring, and a medical emergency
.edu
ANU will sell A$100 million in consumer price index-linked bonds and use the proceeds to finance building projects. The Commonwealth Bank says other universities could do this but few have the financial weight to do it successfully.
Students say a UWS company, UWS Connect, is moving in on services traditionally provided by their association, including bookshops, stationery sales, bars and food halls. A dispute over ownership and management of student association buildings is headed for the Supreme Court.
How to measure what you learned in university. For a university, the value of this kind of measurement is in identifying weak curriculum areas and (as a marketing tool) in being able to show how much the university adds to students' analytic and communication skills.
22 September 2004 | top of page
Movies and music
"'Super Size Me', like so many other anti-McDonald's campaigns, comes with a generous side order of snobbery. Its real target is the people who eat in McDonald's - the apparently stupid, fat, unthinking masses who scoff Big Macs without even asking to see a nutritional and calorie breakdown first. Spurlock and his ilk might hate McDonald's, but they seem to loathe the McMasses even more."
For foreigners, the success of the New York punk band The Ramones was in their ambiguity: were they kidding or were The Ramones really that dim and brutish?
21 September 2004 | top of page
Incompitnce [sic]
The US hardware chain Home Depot obviously subscribes to the Ferengi code of ethics. See Ferengi rule 162: "Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit." (thanks, Fraser)
Apparently the (USA) women's clothier J Jill hasn't heard of Isadora Duncan.
What does one say when the election software counts votes differently depending on whether someone has sprayed Downy fabric softener on the floor around the computer? Then there's the story of the German couple who carefully followed the driving directions given by their car's satellite navigation system--until it guided them into a river.
21 September 2004 | top of page
Science
Microscope images can be seen as works of art but "scientific observation obliges its participants to engage in a kind of resistance to imagination. To simply gaze at a specimen is not enough: such viewing lends itself to speculative assessments that are not necessarily productive with regard to tangible results. If it is the scientist’s role to quantify data, then to simply observe the evocative beauty of what the 'scope reveals is essentially a meaningless--if not an altogether irresponsible--act."
Trees bring comfort and measurable benefits to urban environments. Cornell University researchers have developed 'structural soil', a mixture of gravel, gel, and dirt that they hope will hold roads up while allowing root systems to flourish underneath.
"The debate over who has access to the blueprints of diseases lies at the heart of current efforts to combat bioterrorism. Security officials are worried terrorists might use such information to create new, more deadly weapons. Researchers trying to find cures for diseases that threaten now--much less any new contagion such as SARS--are concerned they will be hamstrung by new restrictions... After looking at several possible ways to restrict information, the [US National Research Council] ... recommended the system be left as is, with open access plus additional education of scientists, as well as international discussion to make the risks more clear and avoidable."
The new "CSI:NY" series extends television’s love affair with death, transforming the forensic pathologist into TV hero. Jonathan Hayes, a real-life New York medical examiner, comments on the 'glamorisation' of his profession.
21 September 2004 | top of page
Management tips
Stop measuring performance and get something done.
If the corporation were a real person it would be considered a psychopath. Companies these days need to respond to individuals' concerns about ethics, environment, social responsibility and what customers really want.
The field of change management "has provided few answers of a practical kind. As promoted by those who don’t actually have to do it, it offers little more than a grab-bag of ideas that generate top consulting dollars for providing the illusion that there is a science to managing large-scale change in organisations."
Workplace safety, 1852: "If one man wishes to communicate any thing to another, or to ask for any thing from somebody at a short distance, he must go there; he is never permitted to shout or call out. There is a particular reason for this last regulation, Amidst all this silence, whenever a shout does occur, every body knows that some imminent danger is expected the next moment, and all rush away headlong from the direction of the shout. As to running toward it to offer any assistance, as common in all other cases, it is thoroughly understood that none can be afforded. An accident here is immediate and beyond remedy."
How to give and receive feedback, whether it's good *or* bad news.
Microsoft, Sun and Groove Networks "have begun to encourage employee blogs, on the theory that they can give the company a human face. While these companies' stories are case studies in liberalised PR, Friendster's reaction [to the content of an employee's personal weblog] makes it clear the marketing value of employee blogs is far from codified."
"How to ensure you've got the timely, meaty information journalists crave? Every PR pro worth her paycheque knows a great electronic press room means the difference between multiple column inches and a mere mention."
21 September 2004 | top of page
Postcards from the future
"Germany is a country located in sector 001 of the planet Earth. Its traditions, stunning landscape and international flair make it an attractive holiday destination for Klingons and other extraterrestrial life forms."
"Software in the 1980s, when usability was 'invented,' was all about computer-human interaction. A lot of software still is. But the Internet brings us a new kind of software: software that's about human-human interaction. Discussion groups. Social networking. Online classifieds. Oh, and, uh, email. It's all software that mediates between people, not between the human and the computer. When you're writing software that mediates between people, after you get the usability right, you have to get the social interface right. And the social interface is more important."
With today's search engines, you query a database and get a list of results. Search engines in the future will be more 'exploratory' in nature: results could be presented in ways that relate time, geography, audio and video, diagrams or other factors to the string of words you typed in.
MIT geeks are developing Haytstack, a "tool designed to let every individual manage all of their information in the way that makes most sense to them... In the past, information was scattered between e-mail client(s), filesystem, calendar, and address book(s), the Web, and other custom repositories. Haystack eliminates this partition so that individuals can work with their information in a unified fashion." You can download 'play with it' versions of the source code and the Haystack Semantic Web Browser, but there's no user manual yet.
20 September 2004 | top of page
Attack of the 50-foot factoid
Men are from Earth, and so are women. It's faulty research that sets them apart.
China, Russia, much of Europe and Australia all had a suicide rate of more than 13 people per 100,000 in 2002. The World Health Organization reports that 1 million people kill themselves every year, a total that exceeds deaths from murder and war combined. (via 3quarksdaily)
Vote early, vote often: 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. The winning margin in Florida in the 2001 election was 537 votes.
"The development of language is connected primarily with affect rather than cognition, with the emotional learning that occurs in infants in the arms of those who love them. That is, language is rooted not in genes, not in the wiring of brains, but in behaviors we have learned over millenniums." (via 3quarksdaily)
20 September 2004 | top of page
Web and 'net
The current challenge for search engine developers is how to handle natural-language queries automagically. As the technology becomes even more sophisticated at analysing language, it may be possible to provide an accurate 50-word answer to a question like "What are the rules for qualifying for the Academy Awards?" (via 3quarksdaily)
Other developers are trying to make search more of a visual experience: IceRocket.com provides thumbnail images of the pages in your results list, so you can see what a site looks like before you click'n'go. (thanks, Paul)
Daniel Gross suggests tax cuts have slowed jobs growth in the USA. Incentives for purchasing capital goods were spent on imported, not local, goods, and companies are spending money on enterprise (computer) systems and other large-scale capital development rather than hiring new staff.
Most professional websites already handle the basics pretty well. Here are some refinements that can improve your site's usability in the real world (as well as in the testing lab). Start with good content and a helpful search engine...
The Poynter Institute's Eyetrack III study examines how people view headlines, images, advertisements and textual content on web sites. While it focuses on newspaper/news media sites, Eyetrack III's findings also apply to home pages and content-rich pages on other kinds of web site.
Martyn Peake acknowledges "that a civilised society will accommodate the needs of disabled people, just as it does other groups with special needs." Nevertheless he says "setting standards for accessibility is likely to stifle innovation in the long run. Campaigning to make the internet more 'usable' will actually mean it will become of less use for everyone. By forcing the internet to be accessible to everyone, there is a risk that we are levelling it down, reducing its potential to suit many competing, latent, unrealised needs."
Some important content management tasks simply can't be handled by a CMS, no matter how sophisticated the technology. "They require human expertise and a high degree of local customization. Some CMS vendors offer some professional services in some of these areas. But these services are expensive and simply can't scale to meet the needs of the many organizations implementing CMSs. So the responsibility falls to some poor in-house souls who try their darnedest to tackle the dirty work of solving internal content management problems." Here are some of the hazards to beware when selecting a CMS.
The Verity CMS's Collaborative Classifier (PDF) "allows separate topic experts to manage parts of the hierarchy. They can look at newly-classified docs and set thresholds for where they want to individually approve them."
Trends in the CMS market: business is booming; software licensing is a mess; usability is emerging as a feature; metadata is still a weak point; 'thick' client software (generated by a Java applet, ActiveX control or a desktop client application) is common; hosted services are nimbler and quicker to release new functionality; and buyers are getting better at writing RFI/tender documents.
People from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds have different priorities and ways of understanding information. Building a web site for an international or multicultural audience means more than simply translating the words.
Topic maps and the semantic web: similarities and differences.
Writing an 'IA guidelines' document: sounds easy, is difficult.
An excellent example of a 'guidelines' web site for web and multimedia developers. The (American) PBS site includes examples of best practice, standards that must be met, general principles of web development, and the essential 'toolkit' for your career in media/web production.
A group of thirty content management experts have formed CM Professionals, an international community of content management professionals whose purpose is to further best practices based on shared experiences of experts and peers. CM Pros offers a members-only mailing list, a collaborative website, discussion forums, issue-oriented group blogs, knowledge wikis, syndicated web services, a job board, a professional directory and a calendar of face-to-face meeting opportunities.
The debate about pixels vs percentages for font sizes goes on... perhaps a solution is to make font sizes dependent on screen resolution instead.
Coke says establishing separate web sites for each of its brands is better for targeting its advertising and marketing. Should you follow Coca-Cola's lead, or keep everything together on one comprehensive, easily accessible site?
20 September 2004 | top of page
Design is the new art
"We have invested so much in the idea of art's central place in visual culture that it is difficult to accept that, while the art world's store-minders were looking the other way, design may simply have slipped around the back. In the early 20th century, revolutionary modernists dreamed of reuniting art and life. Pioneering artists invented modern typography and laid the foundations for the development of graphic design. Could it be that what we see in our thriving graphic culture are signs that the reunification of art and life is well under way?"
"Walking through the retrospective exhibition of Lee Bontecou... is uncannily like visiting an out-of-the-way museum of natural history, as if her entire work to date had been dedicated to the creation of a single work of installation art: a musée imaginaire... One could construct a speculative anthropology for these extraordinary structures--what they mean, and how they function." (via 3quarksdaily)
In the past, scripted TV shows have relied on teams of writers. Now a new role is emerging from American TV writers' ranks: the showrunners "do just about everything on a dramatic series, from writing scripts and casting actors to negotiating with the networks over salaries and budgets... " Multiple storylines and large, diverse casts are among the creative side-effects of this trend.
Formed in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and DW Griffith, the independent movie distributor United Artists released such classics as John Huston's "Misfits" and John Frankenheimer's "Manchurian Candidate". In the last few years it became the 'speciality' division of MGM. Now that Sony has taken over MGM, United Artists' future is uncertain. (New York Times login = flipsock, password = sneedle)
One
of the most acclaimed dance companies in the world, "The Dance
Theatre of Harlem... plans to disband its 44-member company and shut
its doors for the rest of the 2004-05 season until its finances can be
restructured".
The space you work in can reinforce or wreck the culture of your organisation, as well your brand positioning. Here are some examples of innovative office design that fosters higher-quality work and keeps employees happy.
'Duckomenta' is a fabulous online exhibition of works by Van Gogh, da Vinci, Mondrian, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bacon, Holbein, and many others, plus some Egyptian, northern European and classical Greek antiquities. (via Futurismic)
Fabulous knitted accessories: socks for your tampons, and googly tubular red hats.
20 September 2004 | top of page
Fishy news
Regular Flipsock readers will recall that m'colleagues and I have aquariums on our several desks.
Big
news this morning is that my own tropical tank now has four baby ram's-horn
snails as well as the multifarious guppy fry that appeared several weeks
ago.
We also had a medical emergency today: Arthur the blackmoor goldfish (pictured) likes to do a bit of gardening in his tank, pushing the gravel and plants around, and chasing his plastic fish around the bowl. This morning he apparently inhaled while gardening, and choked on a piece of his red silicon gravel. M'colleague Tania did a quick Heimlich manouevre and Arthur is now sulking, somewhat embarrassed, but healthy again. Phew!
20 September 2004 | top of page
2004 flipsocks:
17 Dec: the
sock has flipped
10 Dec: anything anywhere any time
3 Dec: instant
flattery
26 Nov: the steamroller
of branding
19 Nov: fried
v rice
5 Nov: the page
with no name
29 Oct: and then
there were none
22 Oct: filled
with naughty laughter
15 Oct: get
souls and disconcert the public
8 Oct: ooh,
aah, ooh
1 Oct: pinch
and a punch
24 Sep: design
is the new art
17 Sep: footsteps
of Aeneas
10 Sep: slow
art, viral aesthetic
3 Sep: I
can see your house from here
27 Aug: forever
blowing bubbles
20 Aug: jargon
for the digital age
13 Aug: beautiful
plumage, the Norwegian blue
6 Aug: brokenated
terribility
23 Jul: Alice
underground
16 Jul: color-coded
2 Jul: for
so long treated as nouns
25 Jun: looking
for love, echidna-style
18 Jun: joy-to-stuff
ratio
11 Jun: fun's
fun but a girl can't dance all night
4 Jun: pink dinosaur
28 May: two
people every minute
21 May: incompitnce [sic]
14 May: zygomatic smile
5 May: mailbox
30 Apr: bananaguard
23 Apr: mmmmmWAH!
15 Apr: playtime
8 Apr: googlewhack
2 Apr: we
wish to inform you...
18 Mar: daffy dills
12 Mar: echo
chamber
9 Jan: refund profologies
Also on this site:
articles:
who
is geoffrey ebert?
testing
for the fun factor
chicken
at the (higher education) crossroads
crawford's theory of interactivity
froghunting
home-page
real-estate wars
the eagle
has landed
listmania:
must-reads
for web people
recent reads
pop-culture
quotes
neology:
they shoulda been words
recipe:
lemon and
rosemary risotto
reviews:
Written
In Blood by Chris Lawson
The
Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
Without whom (web):
frankenstein
journal (Chris)
tbn97 (Troy)
webster's encyclopedia [sic]
science playwiths
(Peter)
neroliwesley.com.au (Neroli)
Fraser
Jonathan
Maverick IT network consultants
(Rick)
Look! There's a castle!
(Brent)
Cairns Corporation (Gerald)
Homosapien Books (Julie and
Bruce)
Southern Sky Watch
(Ian)
Panda's Thumb (Ian again)
ABC Science-Matters
(official)
science-matters (unofficial)
chisig
Bovios
Disinfo.com (Alex Burns)
Lee Battersby
Little Malop Gallery
Digest of Usability Resources and
News (Dey)
WooWooWoo (Andrew)
Without whom (also):
Ramona P Lovechild
Dombardo
Katherine with a K
Katherine (no relation)
Catherine
Teresa
Corey
Claire
Claire (no relation)
Helsbels
Iain
Toby and Jann
Andrew
Paul, Warren, Dr K and The New Reality
Stephen
Tania
Trevor
