Check out this visual over at XPLANE founder Dave Gray’s blog: “Language is more than just communication, it is the primary method by which we do things together. Language is the accumulation of shared meaning — on common ground.”

“A short guide to what works and what doesn’t when talking to reporters.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love road signs. I respect their clean layouts and clear typography, I dig their spartan utilitarian design aesthetic, and I usually appreciate their concise and meaningful content. But this parking sign from Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill neighborhood cost me 45 hard-earned ones.”

We email. We wiki. We blog. We IM. We convince ourselves that as long as we can write well, these are all good forms of communication. Perhaps in some ways even better, since we’re not distracted (blinded, biased, seduced) by the person’s physical presence. And we are wrong. According to the neuroscientists, anyway. I’ve just come back from a couple of days at the Conference on World Affairs, and attended a couple of different presentations where Dr. Thomas Lewis spoke. He has a particular interest in neurobiology (including the neurobiology of love), and what the brain does and does not want and need. One of the key points he made was that we are fooling ourselves into thinking that text is even half as effective as face-to-face at communicating a message.”

“An experimental interview with Maish R. Nichani of elearningpost: …Nichani has been blogging — well, it seems like forever. His blog, elearningpost, is always full of fascinating and thought-provoking links. But Maish himself has always been a bit of a mystery. So I asked Maish if he would be up for a little ‘experiment in conversation.’ Luckily he said yes! …The idea behind this ‘experiment’ is to do an asynchronous interview with Maish, and open the conversation up to you, the Communication Nation community.”

“Do you design your communications or do they just kind of happen? When your communication is important — that is, when you want it to be remembered — you need to think carefully and design it to resonate with your intended audience… You can improve your communication by thinking about seven ‘C’s’ of communication design: The seven C’s lay out a simple sequence which can help you start broadly and work your way down to specifics”

“Do you communicate formally or informally? When you give a talk, is it highly structured and laid out in formal blocks, like a city? Or is it an untamed wilderness; a confusing tangle of references? What about your website? How about your work environment? What does it communicate?”

Live, group note-taking. Five people in a meeting? Take one set of notes instead of five. Everyone types on the same web page; End ‘versionitis’ — take one set of notes; See changes as they happen; Publish instantly — stop e-mailing documents; Everything’s stored securely on the web.”

“Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder. In many fields the task of bringing an idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch: software feature ideas, implementation strategies, movie screenplays, organizational changes, and business plans, are all pitched from one person to another.”

“I can’t believe it’s taken me five years to get this posted. It’s certainly a work in progress and missing lots of things, but it’s a start. The key is a little misleading and, as the timeline gets closer to present, there is a lot of missing of areas. For example, Writing/Print includes phtoography and other visual media. Broadcasting includes all transmitted media (including the telegraph and telephone) and all massmedia (with the exception of print media), such as television and film. There are still, probably, a lot of mispellings, too.”

“Some of these pages may take a long time to download, depending on your Internet connection. Some of the telephone directories shown here are for sale on the gotphonebooks page. More pictures will be added as time permits. Hover the cursor over a photo to get a brief description of the phone book.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“If you’re looking for new ways to use media to help you relate better to other people, you’re in the right place! …Cliff Atkinson is a leading authority on PowerPoint and organizational communications. As an independent management consultant, his clients include companies ranking in the top 5 of the Fortune 500. He is a keynote speaker and writer, and president of Sociable Media in Los Angeles.”

“This is a pretty arbitrary list of landmarks in the history of information (whatever those might be), which I compiled for the Encyclopedia Britannica with the historian Daniel Brownstein.” (Thanks kottke.org)

“With this easy tool you can find out about all information we have on any phone number in the world. Simply enter the phone number in international format for correct results, although we have tried to program this tool in such a way that you can enter a phone in a varity of (non-standard) ways as well.”

“The graphic designerís role is largely one of giving form to content. Often ñ perhaps even nearly always ñ this process is a cosmetic exercise. Only rarely does the form of a message become a signal of meaning in and of itself. Last week, at Princeton Universityís Firestone Library, I saw an example of the power that form can give content: George F. Kennanís legendary ‘Telegraphic Message from Moscow of February 22, 1946,’ or, as it is better known to students of twentieth century foreign policy, ‘The Long Telegram.’”