“In my new position Iíve got to think a bit differently than Iím used to. For the most part I really enjoy that. As you may know, or if youíve read my stuff for any amount of time, Iím into questioning convention. At the end of the day, Iím also very practical, so I try things out, see what works, and what doesnít and adjust my thinking and way of working based on that. Recently Iíve been thinking about Information Architecture conventions and processes. One of these is the traditional hierarchical site map used for many sites.”

“Hello and welcome, you have just found the best place to get your photograph, digital camera file or artwork reproduced onto the finest artists canvas. We use only the highest quality inks to produce a high resolution print that has brilliant colors and deep rich blacks.” (Thanks laura Holder not com!)

“The high cost of getting permission to use archival footage and photos threatens to put makers of documentaries out of business.”

“These charts will allow you to copy and paste the appropriate character and numeric entities for your documents. To be sure a particular browser supports the entities (both named and numeric), simply open your browser to this pages and view the charts. If the character you want doesnít appear in the target browser, it doesnít work (simple, huh?).” (Thanks Zeldman!)

“This survey compares 10 web sites through elements of their layout: styles, page construction and elementsÖ The survey seeks similarities and differences between those well known web sites, built by famous, talented designers (explanatory note). What can be observed is that those web sites agree on implicit, internalized layout and design norms (Consensus rate), and that deviance from these rules (Dissidence rate) is uncommon.”

Another look at Edward Tufte’s new book, Beautiful Evidence: “Here is the first of several chapters on consuming presentations, on what alert members of an audience or readers of a report should look for in assessing the credibility of the presenter. Most of Beautiful Evidence is about helpful techniques in evidence presentations; these 3 or 4 chapters, however, will describe sources of corruption. This draft will be posted for a month or so; I’d appreciate helpful comments.”

“This comprehensive and regularly updated site includes extensive references, information, interviews, articles and links about zines and e-zines.”

“A clickable, zooming map written in Flash and colored by data from an external text file. The external data file makes it easy to customize and update, and to use the same Flash file many times in the same Web page with different data sets.”

“The cross-column pull-out gave us a new technique for marking up a layout with a pull-out positioned between columns. Now we examine a variation of the technique for wrapping around the edges of a non-rectangular image positioned between columns.”

“Iíll be the first to admit that Iím not a designer, just a programmer and writer. So I need a bit of help with things like choosing color schemes for a site. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that make that easier. Darrenís post today about one of them reminded me that Iíve been collecting links to color tools for years, and itís about time I rounded them up into one place.”

“Spurred on by a recent weekend full of hot-tub induced dehydration, beer, and lack of sleep, some friends of mine discovered an interesting (I think, I at least) capability of the command line computer interface. Prepare to be really geeked-out. As I wrote briefly about last year, on the Linux command line, you can pass the output of one program into another by joining them together with | (the ‘pipe’ character). For example, if you entered whois actsofvolition.com | gedit, it would take the output of the whois lookup for that domain name and open it in gedit, a text editor. It occurred to one of us, in our sleep-deprived state, that you might be able to pipe the output of the random number generator into an audio player, and hear random noise.” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“This might be an old link, since I thought I had read it before, but while adding the cent sign to TKPal I ran across this piece called The Demise Of The $.01 Sign. I like the ¢ sign. If you want to help bring it back, please use ¢ in your HTML.”

“Here are my Top 10 ideas for how to build a better blog, now gathered in one place, and featuring a special Greatest Hits Collection Bonus Track!”

“Until January 2005, Apple had no iPod or PC products that served the mass market. With the launch of iPod Shuffle and Mac mini they have finally converged two product paths with the mass market in mind. This will not only drive more iPod sales (via the Shuffle), but also fulfill the promised ‘halo’ effect of the iPod products as PC users jump to the Mac mini.”

“I.D. magazineís January/February issue sees the return of a feature introduced by former editor Chee Pearlman: the annual I.D. Forty. These individuals are, in the magazineís assessment, the most influential figures currently at work in global design. I.D. goes a step further this time round by ranking the list from 1 to 40.”