disambiguity

MeasureMap + Google: Is there something I’m missing?

More acquistions, even before products are deployed, smacks scarily of bubble-time but, given the influence of Adaptive Path, I’m going to give the news that Google have just acquired MeasureMap the benefit of the doubt. For now.

I threw my email address in the ‘notification’ form for measure map a while back but have never received an invitation, so all I have to go on are a few screenshots that I’ve seen on their site and elsewhere.

Here’s what I don’t understand… if I have a blog and Google Analytics, why would I want MeasureMap?

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links for 14 February 2006

Happy Valentines Day Link Lovers:)

An interesting bunch for you (well, really for me, but you’re welcome to share) today.

• CSS - Navigation Magnification
  oooh, could this be the navigation effect I’ve been looking for (to solve a particular problem on a project I’ve been working on)!
  (tags: interfacedesign CSS navigation)
• GoogleCloud.com: Ajax-driven Google Zeitgeist
  interesting… at the meta level, completely useless to me, although probably v. interesting to social theorists. Combine it with friends/groups/communities of practice and suddenly v. useful (see post below for a more detailed review)
  (tags: web2.0 searchresults google mashup interactiondesign)
• Ratchet Up : How It’s Going To Work: Projection
  How are we going to transcend the tiny screen images of current cellphones and VidPods? By projecting their images onto any convenient surface…. hmmm… interesting social issues coming up if they follow this path…
  (tags: mobile usability interactiondesign)

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Googlecloud review (has anyone done usability testing on tag clouds yet?)

So, today I checked out Googlecloud which I saw via Ajaxian and which was released by the crew at Trade This. (phew! that’s my linking karma for the day!)

My first impression was not great. This was what I saw:

It got me thinking back to the Go Flock Yourself post in my daily links from yesterday regarding the evils (or really, the lack of usability) of tag clouds. I’m not concerned with purity of the representation in terms of font size, but in this case, the links that I’m actually interested in are going to be so small as to be virtually invisible… and I don’t even know if they’re there. This zeitgeist, who favour Britney Spears just over Linux Desktop, isn’t really much use to me.

But then…

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For shame Danna Vale

Now, this is not a political blog, and I hope to rarely mention political issues here, but sometimes a politician behaves in a manner so outrageous that I just can’t help myself. Those of you in Australia who’ve been listening/watching the news this morning will know exactly what I’m talking about. The Hon. Danna Vale MP. (Its beyond ironic to preface her name with Hon. after the way she’s been carrying on).

The background is that our Federal Government is currently debating whether or not the Government (in particular, the Health Minister) should be able to control access to the ‘abortion drug’ RU486 - whether or not the Therapeutic Goods Administration had reviewed and approved use of the drug (which they haven’t even had the opportunity to do at this stage).

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links for 13 February 2006

• Web2.0 - extended mindcloudmap on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  I stumbed across this via http://atariboy.wordpress.com/2006/02/12/all-the-web20-you-could-want/
  At first I was thinking - so what… its a static image on Flickr with a bunch of 2.0 terms and buzzwords… but then… as you mouseover, the magic appears… using Flickr’s ‘notes’ function, lots of people have added hyperlinks to the terms in the cloud, creating a rich networked map to an enormous range of key sites and readings associated with Web 2.0
  (tags: flickr web2.0 SocialNetworks participation)
• Aperto AG
  A digital communications agency in Berlin.Clients include Siemens and Volkswagen
  (tags: agency berlin germany)
• Go Flock Yourself > Web 2.0 retards need to read more Tufte
  rails against ‘clouds’ (eg. Tag Clouds) as a currently popular visual device, compares to pie charts in terms of lack of clarity.
  (tags: cloud design interfacedesign web2.0)
• MetaWrap Time Converter, Build 3
  More clever code from James, but this time something even I can play with The Time Convertor allows you to easily see what time it is in any city of the world (and includes links to Google Maps. v clever James). Particularly sexy is the way that you can see whether or not it is daylight in any given city (celestial mechanics, I think James said was behind it). The cities also link to their Google Map equivalent. Very nice. I’ve asked James if he can do me one where I can see where ‘business hours’ are still in play to help organise global phone conferences
  (tags: application mashup time global)

• Emily Chang - The Agile Web Design Manifesto, An Introduction
  I’m interested in the idea of an Agile Development approach. This article sets out some ‘core principles’ right at the end. This is related to the ongoing dialogue on the challenges associated with designing for Ajax.
  (tags: agiledesign agile design interactiondesign interfacedesign web2.0 ajax)
• Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
  First published February 8, 2003. So, there you go. All though AList bashing is issue du jour, we’ve been carrying on about it for years and years. Just goes to show, you can’t keep a good issue down. (Or, these AListers may be rolling their eyes at us with good reason)
  (tags: media theory socialSoftware sociology longtail blogging)
• UPA - The Usability Professionals’ Association
  (tags: usability professionalassociations)

good lord, it’s a school yard out here (and I’m a nerd again!)

ok. So, by every standard possible, I’m such a junior-blogger. I think I’m heading into week three, or something like that, and I’ve been pretty busy at work, which has kept a handle on my blog reading as well as posting. Its been impossible to miss the bruhaha going on as the A-Listers cop a serve from those who they’ve apparently been keeping outside the gates of blogging fame and glory (via Tech.Memeorandum, yep, still loving it).

There are a lot of different takes you can have on this situation, and I have a couple… but the more I read it the more everyone is starting to remind me of a bunch of highschool kids jostling for social superiority. Trying to work out who is in the cool gang, how to get there if you’re not, why another gang is the next cool gang, or an alternate cool gang at least, how we should be nice to the kids who aren’t in the cool gang, or the next coolest gang, or the one after that.

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web 1.0 buttons = today’s mobile banners?

better late than never I came across this image on BoingBoing

it’s a mosaic of web 1.0 logos, in response to the recent popular mosaic of web 2.0 logos posted to Flickr and much discussed.

Now, here’s the question… is it just me or do these web 1.0 button mosaic remind you a lot of the banners we’re seeing on 3G mobile these days? (qualification: I can only speak for Australian 3G services just now).

Anyone?

Technorati Tags: mobile, 3G

links for 12 February 2006

Yep, you can tell by today’s link that, although its Sunday, its been a working day for me.

• Taking a business-centric approach to portals
  by James Robertson. I haven’t had a good read of this yet, but the discussion around the difference between the portal as a concept and the portal as a technical solution seemed interesting.
  (tags: portal informationarchitecture)

Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)

Several months after everyone I knew was reading this book I’ve finally gotten around to it. I’m surprised its taken me this long because, as I mentioned before, Malcolm Gladwell raves about this book and Malcolm’s books have given me some of my most engaging conversations over beers at the pub (I was going to say dinner party conversations, but … eh, I don’t have dinner parties and rarely get invited to them… I’m going to cling to the theory that its because I’m too young! Wishful thinking I think).

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shock of the new (or, oh no, i’ve broken my template and I can’t fix it.. yet)

apologies for those of you who were so fond, i’m sure, of the bright pink template I had up until a few moments ago.

I’ve somehow managed to break that template,.. I think it might be karma for picking on someone elses site?

anyway, until I get a chance to work out how to fix the bloody thing, we’re stuck with this rather dull grey version.

lucky I don’t have much on this weekend