WebSage

Online Reading of the Day…

• Boxes and Arrows: HTML’s Time is Over. Let’s Move On. – some strong opinions on what is wrong with HTML plus a list of technological alternatives to its dominance.
• HTML is Dead? Long Live HTML!
• Yahoo! to Buy Inktomi – a good analysis on why is Yahoo! buying Inktomi.
• Ftrain: My Financial Career – a refreshing look at how the world of banking has changed (or not) in the past 93 years…

Scripting Tool of the Day:

• Browser Detect Lite
• Dithered.com’s Javascript Library

Voice Interfaces and Usability

• Voice Interfaces: Assessing the Potential – Jakob Nielsen claims that voice interfaces will not replace screens as the medium of choice for most user interfaces.
• Something in the air: An interface only a mother could love – a refreshing critique on voice interface from IBM’s developerworks website
• Designing Highly Effective Voice Applications: Lessons in the Art and Science of Voice User Interfaces – Free Voice Usability Webcast Series
• Google Voice Search allows you to make a telephone call to Google with a search query and get the results on a web page
• Voice User Interface – a research paper from the NetUsability.org website (MS Word file).

Anniversary of the day… 2003 is the tenth anniversary of the Online Books Page — listing free books on the web.

Web Information Architecture and Usability Catch of the Day:

• The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines – Stanford University
• Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
• Boxes and Arrows: What is a Web Application?

Weblog (Blog) Systems

• Blogger is a web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly — whenever the urge strikes. Blogger is the leading tool in the rapidly growing area of web publishing known as weblogs, or “blogs.”
• Radio UserLand is an easy-to-use Weblog tool that runs on your desktop. Radio will automatically build your weblog, organize and archive your posts, and publish it to the Web in minutes.
• Movable Type is a decentralized, web-based personal publishing system designed to ease maintenance of regularly updated news or journal sites, like weblogs.
• Blosxom (pronounced “Blossom”) is a lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind.
• Slash is the source code and database that was originally used to create Slashdot, and has now been released under the GNU General Public License.
• Greymatter is the original opensource weblogging and journal software.

Non-commercial Web Directories
- irreplaceable alternatives to the add-driven commercial directories and web portals

• Librarians’ Index to the Internet – lii.org
• Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
• Resource Discovery Network
• Internet Public Library

Information Architecture, Web Usability & Interaction Design Resources

• Information Architecture for the Rest of Us
• Evaluating Information Architecture (PDF)
• Seven Pitfalls to Avoid in Information Architecture
• Using Site Evaluations to Communicate with Clients
• Boxes and Arrows
• The Interaction Designer’s Coffee Break
• Lou Rosenfeld’s weblog
• A collection of pithy quotations related to usability, communication and design
• Information Architecture CommonplaceBook

Search Engine Optimization Catch of the Day

• Visualizing the Web with Google: The TouchGraph GoogleBrowser shows you what the web “looks like” to the search engine, visually displaying the linkages between your favorite web sites.
• Search Engine Watch: Death Of A Meta Tag
• Search Engine News: Rebirth of the Keyword Meta Tag?

Library Lookup

The free Library Lookup bookmarklet is a brilliant little bit of code that makes looking up books at your local library painless and virtually instantaneous.

• LibraryLookup Homepage
  The Library Lookup bookmarklet instantly searches your local library while you’re viewing pages at any online bookstore.
• Build your own bookmarklet

Unfortunatelly, I have not found a way to make this work with the Arlington County Library…

Usability Catch of the day:

• Return on Investment (ROI) for Usability (Jacob Nielsen’s Alertbox Jan. 2003)
  Development projects should spend 10% of their budget on usability. Following a usability redesign, websites increase usability by 135% on average; intranets improve slightly less.
• HTML tips: How to make forms your visitors can actually use
• Review – The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web

Projects I am working on now:

• One World Baha’i School — website design, production and maintenance
• Washington DC Baha’i Center — website maintenance
• H.A. Sack Company — website production and maintenance, search engine optimization
• Interfaith Conference of Washington Metropolitan Area — information architecture redesign
• Baha’i Music Web Database — website design and production, database programming (work in progress)
• Washington Metropolitan Baha’i Chorale — website design and production (work in progress)
• Delta Corporation — website design and production (work in progress)