“An icon search task that lasts longer than anticipated can result in user annoyance or even premature abandonment.”

“More and more employers and universities are becoming aware of the amount of time their employees or students are spending using the Internet for personal reasons. Obviously employers want to discourage this behavior and may implement a number of different ways to do so… This guide discusses a way an employee or student can securely access the Internet while at work or school, and also get around some common firewall restrictions that prevent you from using most networked programs.”

“I’m doing a lot of speaking all of a sudden, related to my pre-launch plans around a new media company. I’m finding that there are certain skills in communicating the information and building understanding that are important and useful. I thought I’d pass on some thoughts along those lines.”

“On Monday I gave a 3-hour tutorial first thing in the morning, here at O’Reilly OSCON 2006 in Portland. From the description: Even though AJAX wouldn’t ever have become so popular if the Javascript world hadn’t suddenly exploded with mature development and testing tools, there’s little information on how to be a really good Javascript programmer. This talk is for everyone who feels their Javascript skills just aren’t up to snuff.”

“I decided to peruse the Wayback Machine’s earliest archives to see what the internet looked like in 1996, when I was 14 and evidently had much less free time than I do now. Much to my chagrin, few websites from these early years have been successfully archived, and many of the best preserved ones were created by fast food and soft drink corporations because they were some of the earliest adapters of the internet. They viewed the medium as a chance for inexpensive advertising and invested dozens upon dozens of dollars into it. The results are tremendously humiliating.” Thanks kottke.org!)

“Last week at work we were having a discussion about reporting, and I shared one of my principles when it comes to data collection, which is that logging is nearly always preferable to counting.”

Looks like an amazing three volume set: “Industrially manufactured objects of aesthetic value and timeless quality: 1) Definitive models of lasting influence and enduring significance; 2) Objects that are innovative in their use of new materials and unite technological advances with beautiful design; 3) Objects characterized by simplicity, balance and purity of form; 4) Objects that are perfect in their design and have remained unchanged since their creation.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“The first session at Webvisions is Matt Haughey talking about blogging professionally. Here are my notes from his talk.”

“In this first part of his conversation with Adaptive Path’s Jesse James Garrett, bestselling author Steven Johnson talks about his 1997 book Interface Culture and how his thinking on the design of interactive media has evolved since then. Steven Johnson’s keynote kicks off Day One of User Experience Week 2006, August 14-17 in Washington, D.C.”

“We brought Khoi Vinh and Jeffrey Veen together to talk about the differences between working at your own firm vs. working in-house for a big company. During the chat, Khoi and Jeffrey discussed how they give design a voice at the decision-making table, client work vs. internal work, why designers are engineers, Hill Street Blues, and more.”

“A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a pictogram is worth so much more… A good BoND [Back of the Napkin Diagram] can also assist with employee recruitment, team alignment, sales and technology build outs. The vocal [Rick] Segal comments, that ‘As the prospective client, employee, or VC engages, both parties can use the drawing as a central reference point. It’s a very useful tool that is often overlooked in favour of mountains of text laden painful power point slides.’ In fact, BoNDs can be used throughout the business, according to the Grandfather of business visualizations, Dave Gray, Founder and CEO of XPLANE (the business visualization company behind the powerful BoNDs you see in Business 2.0 magazine).”

“I will have to take Tufte’s word that the drawings of counter-dancing on pages 32 and 33 helpfully depict how to engage in this activity. After a few drawings in, I’m lost as to which dancer is where, and what they are supposed to be doing. It actually ended up raising what for me became a significant question — yes, these drawings compel with their aesthetics and diagrammatics, but are they really the best way to communicate this information? Tufte, you see, presumes the printed page as the tool for explanation. My tendency to question assumptions leads me to wonder — shouldn’t people learn counter-dancing by counter-dancing?”

“In this Saturday morning post, I explain HDR photography with the help of some articles. This post includes step by step ways to create your own HDR images. Be advised that they can be quite hard for beginners to get interesting results. But where there is a will, there is a way! And by experimenting, you will get some good pictures. Also, remember that to see the end result, you have to get through some initial steps.”

As soon as the image of the painting by Georges de La Tour loads, click the first thing you see. (Thanks a.wholelottanothing.org!)

“With news of business deals surrounding the Wired brand recently, I went back to have a look at Hotwired only to find it had been completely replaced with some sort of huckster search engine. I started working at Wired Magazine back in 1994. I actually arrived to manage Wired’s AOL presence, but that was quickly scrapped in favor of a Web site. Hotwired was one of the Web’s first commercial sites, and we went through many iterations as new browser technologies emerged. We learned so much in such a short amount of time. I dug into my archives and found all the home page interfaces I worked on back then. Here’s a little trip through the history of those redesigns.”