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)

Continue Reading…

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…
Continue Reading…

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).

Continue Reading…

• 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)