xBlog: The visual thinking weblog
27th September 2000

Information Visualization Resources

Just what it says. Categories include Books, Conferences, Courses and Tutorials, Institutions and Companies, Journals and Publishers, Organisations, People, Projects and Products, Research Groups. There are currently almost 400 links in the resource.

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27th September 2000

Uses of Structures for Thinking

“This survey is for thinkers — scientists, philosophers, writers, politicians, executives, journalists and all others who need to write down their thoughts, save them, organize and develop them, as well as exchange them with other thinkers. The Minciu Sodas laboratory has the goal of helping thinkers organize and develop their thoughts, create new thoughts.”

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22nd September 2000

Built 2 Order

“Information Architects construct their sites with a unique blueprint — A Foundation of Testing, A Floor Plan of Accessibility and a Tower of Functionality.”

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22nd September 2000

So, What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?

“By far the two most common types of fonts currently used on the Web are the serif font, Times New Roman (TNR) and the sans serif font, Arial. The question is, which one is more legible and at which size? In the past, it has been determined that serif fonts, which have ornamental strokes at the tip and base of each letter, are easier to read on paper than sans serif fonts, which do not have serifs. This is because it is believed that serifs help distinguish each individual letter (Albers, 1963). However, this benefit may be reduced or even eliminated on computer screens because of their display particularities, like poorer screen resolution and aliasing or ‘jaggies,’ as it is commonly known.”

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22nd September 2000

What makes for a well-designed web site

“I talk with a lot of architects, engineers, and building contractors in the course of my work as a writer, editor, and part-time Web-site consultant. I’ve detected some trends in web site design that seem to hold true for them and, perhaps, for many businesses. Firstly, no one is happy with their site unless they just completed a total redesign a couple of days ago.”

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22nd September 2000

* blogstart * the weblog resource

“This site was created so that people could find the weblogs with the content they were looking for without having to also wade through the other random things found on other search engines.”

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20th September 2000

Inside Mac OS X’s Unix Layer

“Mac OS X is so interesting because it is Unix — or, rather, one of the many Unix variants — through and through. Strip away the colorful candy shell, and any number of bearded, suspendered old-school Unix hackers would feel right at home inside the confines of Mac OS X. In fact, if you ignore the graphical user interface (GUI) entirely and limit your interaction with the operating system to an 80-by-25-character text window, you’d be hard-pressed to identify Mac OS X as anything other than a true-blue FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) release, on which OS X is based.”

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20th September 2000

EPSS InfoSite

New Links”The best place on the web for finding and sharing information, ideas and opinions about planning, designing and developing electronic performance support systems (EPSS) — [integrating] knowledge, task structuring support, data, tools and communicat

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20th September 2000

Social Navigation: A design approach

“Social navigation has been proposed as a means to help users cope with large information spaces. Through making other users actions visible we can take advantage of their work to find our way around and to solve problems. By information space, we mean anything from the interface to a normal application to large hypermedia spaces such as the World Wide Web or virtual reality environments. Users actions can be made visible in various ways: through direct social navigation (talking to or seeing individual users act), indirect social navigation (seeing the aggregated user behavior as in recommender system advice), or readwear (seeing how an object has been used by other users through its texture).”

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20th September 2000

An Audiovisual Environment Suite

“Real-Time Systems for Fluid Abstract Expression: Painterly Interfaces for Audiovisual Performance The Audiovisual Environment Suite (AVES) is a set of five interactive systems which allow people to create and perform abstract animation and sound in real time. Each environment is an experimental attempt to design an interface which is supple and easy t

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19th September 2000

Flash Usability Challenge

“I do care about developing and providing solutions that augment the customer experience. The key for me is identifying and providing effective, high quality web sites. For me, usability is a huge part of the customer experience. I basically filter every article and email and news posting as either helping or harming the customer experience. In a nutshell, the general usability of web sites is important to me. That is why I am sick and tired of people telling that Flash is great…”

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19th September 2000

Gingko Press Interviews Rudy VanderLans

“A personal style comes from honest investigation and experimentation. It comes from the ability to recognize what comes naturally to you and what feels good to you, and the ability to express those feelings honestly without much concern for what is currently in style.”

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19th September 2000

Up Button Bookmarklet

“…makes hacking URLs almost automatic.” Yes, this will come in quite useful. Lets you jump straight to directory views towards the root. Yay. Drag this (Up Button) to your tooolbar.

posted in Internet | Permalink | Comments Off

19th September 2000

ExitCoupons.com

This looks cool. Find out what’s available at U.S. highway exits. “eXitSource is a leader in the mobile information business. There are over 2.4 million data points in the current database, which includes over 20,000 exits within a quarter mile radius of either side of the every interstate highway exit in the U.S., with over 130,000 individual businesses organized into categories such as Food, Gas, Lodging, Retail, Medical, etc.”

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19th September 2000

Flash Usability Challenge

“I do care about developing and providing solutions that augment the customer experience. The key for me is identifying and providing effective, high quality web sites. For me, usability is a huge part of the customer experience. I basically filter every article and email and news posting as either helping or harming the customer experience. In a nutshell, the general usability of web sites is important to me. That is why I am sick and tired of people telling that Flash is great…”

posted in Usability | Permalink | Comments Off