“Welcome to the IA Library. The IA Library is a selection of resources related to the field of information architecture. The collection includes articles, books, blogs, and more.”

“The latest issue of Design Link (from Herman Miller) is out and among its snippets is this blurb for some interesting research from the Design Council in the UK: The Impact of Design on Stock Market Performance: ‘A recent study in Great Britain has shown a direct relation between design and business success. The Design Council, an organization funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, released research findings this month.’”

“The 1040 tax form is so deeply woven into the American psyche, especially this time of year, that it seems as inevitable and immutable as Mount Rushmore. Since 1977, the last time it was completely redesigned, the 1040 has been tweaked only to accommodate new federal laws. Through five presidencies, those changes have piled up, creating a maze of frustration for millions as they struggle to meet today’s filing deadline. To ease that frustration, the 1040 could use a complete makeover, and that is exactly what the Journal Sentinel asked of Karen A. Schriver. She is an internationally known expert in the presentation of information.”

“We all remember last December’s grim news: MP3.com closed its doors, warning thousands of musicians that ‘all your content will be deleted from our servers.’ However, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, most of the original MP3.com archive was never deleted! Two companies, GarageBand and Trusonic, claiming to have a legitimate copy of the archive, are now enabling former MP3.com artists to visit www.MP3isBack.com and recover their MP3.com music, instantly re-generating their artist pages with just a few clicks.”

“Online conversion calculators, conversion tables and metric formulas.” Includes temperature, length, distance, measurement, area, volume and weight conversions.

“This colorpicker is based heavily upon the code from ColorMatch 5k. I’ve made it more compatible ó it now works in Mozilla, and should also work in Opera, since I’m using a much better slider control. I’ve also added 3 more colors, bringing the total auto-generated colors to 9, and the ability to export your colors to a Photoshop color table.”

“Ever wonder what it takes to crash PHP, well here is a quick guide. Technically speaking PHP being a high level language should not crash, but reality speaks for itself. By knowing what could make PHP crash it may be possible to implement various safety mechanisms in your PHP configuration that would prevent users from crashing your PHP.”

“Card sorting is a technique that many information architects (and related professionals.) use as an input to the structure of a site or product. With so many of us using the technique, why would we need to write an article on it? While card sorting is described in a few texts and a number of sites, most descriptions are brief. There is not a definitive article that describes the technique and its variants and explains the issues to watch out for. Given the number of questions posted to discussion groups, and discussions we have had at conferences, we thought it was time to get all of the issues in one place.”

“National Geographic’s redesigned online atlas gives you the worldóyour way. Find nearly any place on Earth, and view it by population, climate, and much more. Plus, browse antique maps, find country facts, or plan your next outdoor adventure with our trail maps.”

“The tough reality is that hard drives are made up of spinning disks, which on the average system spin between 5,000 and 10,000 times per minute. Tiny electromagnetic heads hover over these disks, reading and writing information, constantly. Like a light bulb, there is a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failures) estimate for hard drives. Typically this was around 100,000 hours, but some of the most recent hard drives boast 500,000 of power on hours. This means that on average your drive would last over 57 years if it’s on 24/7, but of course reality is a lot different.”

“Microsoft on Thursday announced it has released documentation that allows corporate and third-party developers to take full advantage of the XML-based schemas, called DatadiagramML, in its Office Visio diagramming tool.”

“Here you’ll find a growing collection of free high resolution photos and illustrations. They’re free to use in both your personal and professional design projects. Registration is not required. Just be sure to review our Terms of Use before downloading. All of our images are high quality JPGs. Sizes vary from a minimum of 1280×960 up to 3072×2048.”

“A9.com enhances your search results with your search history, which keeps track of which searches you have done in the past, and what search results you have seen and clicked on… In addition to web search results we present book results from Amazon.com that include Search Inside the Book.”

“What can business sections do to break through the perception that they’re boring, dry, hard to understand, too mathematical and just plain dull? Here are 10 tips for breathing more life into the design of your business pages.” (Thanks News Designer)

“America’s editors say they faced tough calls on how to handle photographs of gruesome killings in Fallujah, Iraq. Thousands of American readers, asked for their views by hometown news organizations, helped illustrate that difficulty.”