“Our mission is to create an outlet where artists can expose their name and work to people who would otherwise not see it. We believe that art should be progressive, yet personal and approachable. What better way to do this, than with a heavy cold steel machine?”

“This year, the Ziff Davis Smart Business Labs teamed up with eyeTracking.com to find out which sites make it easiest and fastest to find what you’re looking for, get questions answered, and complete and track your order. We chose two leading companies in the hottest e-commerce categories and pitted them against one another in our exhaustive tests.”

“Here’s a longish post that starts with a statement from the Department of Dangerous Oversimplification: information architecture is basically a two-part exercise. 1. First choose the most useful tools and techniques (e.g., card sorting, contextual inquiry) to learn about users’ information needs, the characteristics of content, and organizational context and constraints. 2. With that knowledge in hand, design an information architecture using the subset of all possible architectural components (e.g., site index, search engine) that will provide high value to users while minimizing development and maintenance costs.”

“Unfortunately, but understandably, audio is often under-utilized. When dealing with Web based media, audio can be a data hog and is traditionally known as a usability killer. On top of that, you can’t rely on every end user to have their speakers turned on. These are legitimate concerns and they shouldn’t be ignored. At the same time I think we need to keep looking forward and that involves thinking of sound design as an integral part of interactive media. If we begin to make media experiences enriching enough, eventually users will want to have their speakers on.”

“We read everywhere, including on ClickZ, that advertisers need to remember we are visual beings. True, we are bombarded with more visual marketing stimuli than ever before. But to say that because we’re being buried in visual stuff we’re visual beings is like saying because we periodically fill ourselves up with air we’re balloons. We aren’t nearly as visual as a lot of people like, perhaps need, to assume. The premise that ‘going visual’ is the cure-all for advertising ills is a path to advertising doom.”

“This year, the Ziff Davis Smart Business Labs teamed up with eyeTracking.com to find out which sites make it easiest and fastest to find what you’re looking for, get questions answered, and complete and track your order. We chose two leading companies in the hottest e-commerce categories and pitted them against one another in our exhaustive tests.”

“The way we handle information on our computers is called the ‘desktop metaphor.’ But there is nothing metaphorical about the way we point-and-click our way through icons, folders and files. A number of companies are experimenting with software and services that allow users to better navigate around, through and over the mountain of data that comes pouring through our home and work computers every day, in the shape of e-mail, faxes, Web pages and spreadsheets. If the new systems ever catch on — and some skeptics say our old system is too ingrained to make way for the new — it could change the whole concept of how we relate to our machines.”