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The personal web log of Mike Lee, a web information architect, and teacher working in New York City "I surf as much as I eat." curiouslee in...   Hiptop Nation Mirror Project Google Images The City Paper UMBC TechPort email me past monthly... 2000:10.11.12 2001:01.02.03.04.05.06 07.08. 09.10.11.12 2002:01.02.03.04.05.06 07.08.09.10.11.12
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Monday, April 30, 2001
Recovery alphabet Wordspy writes about x-shaped recovery, a term used to describe one of several economic patterns shaped like letters. Apparently, the Fed wants to avoid the dreaded "L". Bricklin on pamphleteers Dan Bricklin posted a thought-provoking essay comparing today's web sites to pamphleteering, a mode of print publishing popular in the 1700s. The parallels are uncanny. Sunday, April 29, 2001
Aliens investigate the digital harbor  I came across this scene today in front of our building. What's really going on? The truth is out there—check back later this week for the answer. Dutch police bomb cell phone thieves Infoworld reports on how the Dutch police are using the popular SMS (Short Message Service) feature of cell phones to broadcast an annoying message to stolen phones. Every three minutes, the phone displays this message while technicians trace the location of the device: "This handset was nicked, buying or selling is a crime. The police." According to the article, the trick is working, and 150 arrests have been made. Saturday, April 28, 2001
A blue eye on you MIT Technology Review has a short blurb on IBM's Blue Eyes technology and the ACLU's predictable objection to it. Blue Eyes is part of IBM's research into affective computing, which investigates ways to make computers sense and understand human behaviors and feelings. Apparently, IBM intends to deploy pupil and facial recognition cameras in stores to capture physiological data on shoppers, and relate those findings to buying habits. I'm with the ACLU on this, and personally find this idea creepy. I hope they get past the obvious application of selling to something more humanistic. A computer that knows how you are feeling should work to crash less often. Friday, April 27, 2001
Book bloat  I just got the textbook for my Saturday class on Dreamweaver, and am shocked at how bloated it has become. I've always thought highly of the Peachpit Press Visual Quickstart Guide series, but over the last year, they've gotten much thicker and less "quick" to access. In the photo above, I've stuck a pen in the text to show the approximate thickness of the older volumes. Macromedia has added many new features to Dreamweaver and Peachpit is justifiably trying to keep up. The editorial focus of the content is still the same, but I have to think that a really thick book will intimidate users. One thing the editors could do is to put the index right at the front of the book. Or how about a "top 20 tasks" list? Maybe next year... IAs not anonymous The first meeting of a small group of Baltimore-based Information Architects convened at the offices of the newly rebranded Carton Donofrio Partners. It was a great comfort to share stories at a time when our industry is suffering from a bloodbath of layoffs and bankruptcies. I didn't think we had enough time allocated to talk and share, and next month, when I host the group, I'll make sure to encourge more dialogue. If you're interested in receiving notices about these informal gatherings, drop an email to Sean Cohen. This Thursday night, the D.C. Information Architects are meeting, and I'll report after. The Argus Center maintains a list of information architecture groups. Thursday, April 26, 2001
The visualizer I'm finding a large portion of the work I do as an Information Architect (IA) involves visualization. Clients and their staff rarely know how extensive their content has become on an existing site, or are unable to imagine how a body of content would fill out a new web site. Inventorying and mapping content is sometimes 50 - 75% of my effort. So more often I'm an Information Visualizer (IV), than an IA. History keepers During my lunch-hour today, I had a charming visit with Nancy Perlman, and her assistant Helen at The Baltimore Museum of Industry's Research Center. Nancy is the Director and Archivist responsible for managing a vast collection of artifacts and documents about Baltimore's industrial past. I was there to find out more about the Proctor and Gamble building we are inhabiting, and the Domino Sugar plant we see from our conference room. I also shared with her my concerns about the preservation of historically significant information on the new digital-era industries, and Nancy agreed that more work needs to be done now. The resources I saw at the research center, and contacts I came away with will provide a rich repository to enrich the historical context of my daily work. Wednesday, April 25, 2001
Sweet moon and stars  On my way to the car tonight, I caught a whiff of molasses and a stellar scene over the Domino Sugar plant. As steam-spewing equipment cranked away inside the plant on the recently-delivered shipload of raw sugar, the Moon, bathed in earthshine, presided over a bright Jupiter and dimmer Aldebaran. Saturn was there too, but I lost it behind the smokestack in the name of artistic composition. Another moon with stars, the P&G trademark, is in constant view through the window by my desk on the third floor of our building. The original dark blue and white ceramic logos were removed by the architect, and replaced with facsimilies glazed in bright yellow. The switch was certainly for aesthetic reasons since the rumors about the symbol are totally false. If anything, these symbols have brought us immense good fortune.  Internet meltdown: phase two Businessweek has a good article on the next phase of the ongoing Internet Meltdown. The shaky little dot-coms have mostly gone under, now the big ones are sweating. Tuesday, April 24, 2001
Storytelling notes I couldn't make it to the Smithsonian Associates' recent seminar on storytelling, but friend Paul did, and sent some links: George Brett has posted some seminar notes on his web log, and you can join a mailing list discussion by sending a message to StorytellingInBusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Also wife Amy sent an email about Interviews 50¢, a site of stories by a producer and reporter who travelled around America with a card table and handmade sign. Monday, April 23, 2001
Insight on being a god Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg provides some humorous answers on what he learned from playing God in the game Black & White (logged here previously). Sunday, April 22, 2001
When men were men, and fonts were fonts The highlight of our visit to The Baltimore Museum of Industry yesterday was the demonstration of, and opportunity to operate a working Merganthaler Linotype Machine. Linotypes were in wide spread use for almost 100 years until the advent of phototypesetting technology, and later, Macintosh-based desktop publishing. Setting a line of type involved my keying in the appropriate letters, which caused tiny brass matrix molds for each letter to drop into the assembler box (see below). When the line of type was complete, I pulled a lever, causing the row of matricies to move up, and then to the left into a casting chamber. Pulling another lever injected molten lead on to the back face of the matricies, and a bar of lead type dropped back out to the front of the machine. A long elevator arm lifted the set of matricies back to the top of the machine for sorting and return to the font storage magazine. Between the clickety-clack sound of the motorized mechanisms, and all the lever-pulling, I was recharged with a more tangible feeling of graphic production. Working on a computer first gives you a liberating sense of weightlessness, but then the lack of physical engagement leaves a void.  Ray Loomis, a former offset print shop owner, holds a real "font," the removable magazine that stores the type matrix molds used to form lines of lead type. The font is 18 pt. Helvetica.  Ray operating the machine he first encountered as a teenage boy.  Here's a close-up of a single letter matrix, front and back. The serrated teeth cut into the top of the brass sliver are actually a coded pattern that uniquely identifies the letterform as they are sorted for return to one of 90 storage channels in the font magazine.  Here are our names spelled out in the assembler box, ready to move up the elevator into casting. Ray ran a paper proof of the type sample on his flatbed press, and gave us the lead type slug and a sample matrix mold. Since we didn't get to the printing display until almost closing time, I didn't get nearly enough time on the machine. I plan on going back for some more hands-on and stories from Ray. If you're interested, Saturdays are when Ray is there running the machine. Out on the web, Woodside Press has a very good description of the inner workings of the Linotype Machine, and Linotype.org has archived a detailed manual on the care of type matricies. Saturday, April 21, 2001
Deep zooms from space NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center has released some animations of satellite imagery showing dramatic zooms in and out of great cities. The animations were compiled from a combination of data sets from NASA's Terra satellite and Space Imaging's Ikonos satellite. The NASA page also has some older posts with some interesting time studies of changes in lakes and vegetation. Meditations on the point I now have a favorite spot near our building to visit at the end of the day. The harborside of the small pump house at the end of the promenade hides a nice sitting spot with a wonderful view of the Domino Sugar plant and Baltimore skyline. It's a restful place to watch the sun set. Here are some views from last week:  Sunset and rain pools on the promenade deck.  Sunbeams on the Sugar Express.  Not a view from the promenade, but from on the way to the parking lot. With a panoramic view of the harbor, it's hard not to get great photos. I'm looking forward to documenting the nuances of light and shadow as the seasons pass. Feed on Black & White People are raving about the lush graphics and sophisticated artificial intelligence in the new game Black & White. In development for a number of years, the game lets you play a god or evil ruler in an imaginary kingdom. Feed has an article about the game, and an interview with the game's creator on the innovative A.I. The Lionhead and product sub-sites are a mess to navigate, so here's a link to a gallery of some screenshots from the game. Friday, April 20, 2001
See-through speakers ABC News reports on the development of paper-thin, transparent audio speakers, that might one day be incorporated into the design of LCD screens. The South Korean laboratory that developed the material will work with a speaker manufacturer to bring a product to market in a year or two. This stuff would be great for museum exhibits and tourist kiosks. Imagine sound coming from various points on a large transparent map display. Becoming Human The Institute of Human Origins has launched a broadband interactive documentary that tells the story of 4 million years of human evolution. The site is hosted with audio commentary by palentologist Donald Johansen. The system and bandwidth requirements are hefty, but it's worth a look if you're in to PBS-style production value. Thursday, April 19, 2001
See what you hear, hear what you see On a ride down to DC today, I had a wonderfully expansive chat with our new business development guy, Sean Fenlon. Backed by a doctorate in music theory, he gave me some new insights into the structure and architecture of music. Naturally, I went poking around Google and came upon two broad fields of study that looked interesting. For each, I saved some interesting links to delve deeper: Music Visualization is the graphical depiction of recorded or MIDI sequenced music.
Scientific Sonification is a process in scientific analysis used to represent data or phenomena in audible form.
I haven't found much on the sonification of web site maps or using sound for wayfinding in virtual spaces, but I'm sure the work is out there. Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Soda cutbacks a bad sign Today's Fribbles column on Motley Fool says the soda delivery guy is often the first person who can tell you a tech company is in trouble. I'd say keep an eye on the Gummi Bears and Cheese Doodles as well. Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Actual reality The Onion offers The Guide to Human Interaction, a handy mini-poster for the reality impaired. A PDF version suitable for printing is thoughtfully provided. (Hint: Human reads poster. Human laughs.) Monday, April 16, 2001
Human upgraded The new issue of Communications of the ACM is one of the best in recent memory. It's a special on "The Next 1,000 Years" inspired by the ACM1: Beyond Cyberspace conference. Over 60 thought leaders and visionaries submitted essays outlining their predictions and hopes for the far future. Here's a snip from Don Norman's piece on how humans might interact with computers at the end of this millenium: For years, I resisted the notion that technology would supplant biology, but now I'm sure the trend is inevitable. We are close to the point where video cameras, and memory chips will be tiny enough to be implanted within our bodies. Add some simple circuitry, solve the power-supply problem, and we could supplement hearing and sight, along with memory and reasoning. This is a wonderful dream, but if realized, someone will spoil the fun by wrapping a business model around it—or worse. Sunday, April 15, 2001
Rust Point After unpacking at the new office yesterday, I went exploring along the train tracks behind our building from the Domino Sugar plant on our west side to the grain silos east. It was about a mile-long walk in beautiful late afternoon sunlight, and I had my Nikon Coolpix 950 powered up the whole time. The penninsula we're on is called Locust Point, and our cluster of buildings is on Tide Point, the northernmost edge along the harbor. The area should really be called Rust Point, as that's what you see everywhere around our newly-redeveloped group of buildings. Commercial activity around Baltimore's harbor has shifted from moving containers and buckets to routing data packets, spawning the new marketing moniker Digital Harbor. In the next year, I'll be taking photos around The Point as more of the rust is chipped and hauled away. Here are some of my first shots:      I've built a framed sub-site with thumbnails and higher resolution images. The first two images are from earlier in the month, and the rest from yesterday. I'm also going to start shooting with real film since two megabit resolution leaves much to be desired, and the scenes cry out for Kodachrome.Saturday, April 14, 2001
Snapshot semiotics Today's pleasant web find is Bob Bednar's Snapshot Semiotics: A Visual Cultural Study of Snapshot Photography, Landscape, and Tourism in the Contemporary American Southwest. Bednar applies semiotics, the study of signs, to the study of the "contact zones" between people and the scenes they photograph. The lengthy overview describes in detail and illustrates the various dimensions of the study. One of the most vivid examples is a photo of a sign at Glen Canyon Dam Overlook in Arizona. And I'm going to chew on this paragraph for a while: Before you leave, I would like to return to the question of what it means to say that landscape is a medium that can be fruitfully studied using ethnographic methods developed in media studies research and in the "new ethnography." Like literary texts and media texts such as movies, television shows, popular music, Bob Bednar is a professor in the Department of Communication at Southwestern University, and you can find out more about his work on his home page. Friday, April 13, 2001
Celebrating a new icon design book  I've relied on William Horton's The Icon Design Book since 1994 for my icon design assignment at MICA. At the time the book was published, I was amazed that 350 pages could be written just about icons. But there hasn't been much published since. Now there's finally a new book, and it devotes more attention to icon aesthetics. Icon Design : How to Design and Use Computer Icons Effectively, by UK illustrator Steve Caplin, traces the rapid evolution of computer icons over the past two decades and examines why they have become essential components of computer graphics. The last third of the book covers the practical issues of designing and drawing icons. Where the book falls short is coverage on icons for mobile devices and home Internet appliances, and a companion web site would have made it easy for the author to follow up. This is a great book overall, so grab a copy if you are planning on doing any work with icons in the future. Thursday, April 12, 2001
In the end, just paper A couple recent news stories at Wired and Federal Computer Week, and a discussion thread at Slashdot have focused on the emphemeral nature of digital data. Little is being done to preserve for historical purposes the terabytes of e-mail and electronic document files that have been exchanged in the digital era. As I weed out the last year's web development detritous in preparation for Saturday's move, it occurs to me that in a few years the computer hardware I use will be completely outdated, and the electronic files I work with mostly be inaccessible due to file format changes. It's unlikely I'll be able to show a future generation information architectures created in Microsoft Visio and backed up on CD-ROM. The most accessible artifacts will be any paper printouts I've saved. Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Kozmo's last delivery Most people I know who use Kozmo, the web-based home delivery service, thought it was great. Unfortunately for Kozmo, their fans were savvy city dwellers who loved to try new things, and there wasn't enough of a market after the adventurous. Kozmo shut down today, laying off over 1,000 people. Last fall, I read an analysis in Strategy & Business magazine that made a pretty clear case that there wasn't enough of a customer base outside big cities. It's still amazing to me that so many e-business startups didn't do this kind of research at the business plan stage. It guess it was really hard to turn down venture money when it was readily available. Die Clippy, die The New York Times reports on how the ad campaign for Microsoft Windows XP trashes Clippy, the agent-based help system in Office. I'm so glad Clippy doesn't really have the voice of Gilbert Gottfried! Tuesday, April 10, 2001
Zeldman on becoming a web designer Another book around the corner is Jeffrey Zeldman's Taking Your Talent to the Web: Making the Transition from Graphic Design to Web Design. The sample chapter looks good. The book fills a gap in the available literature on web development by addressing how graphic designers can make the transition to web design. The industry favors new generations who often have little formal training in visual design. In my work as a web design teacher, I see this as a growing generation gap in digital design. I'll post thoughts on this after I've had a look at this book and ruminate some more. Experience design rules Nathan Shedroff's new book on Experience Design is about to be released. With so much talk about task usability lately, what with the bad ballot and all, it's about time some more attention was given to the holistic view of how people engage the web. Nathan's personal site has a new look as well. Monday, April 09, 2001
A new hangout this Saturday I went after work to visit e.magination's new offices. We're moving there Saturday, and here are some photos from around the exterior:  They just added the white letters "TIDE POINT" yesterday. The bosses' offices are right under the letters "I" and "N".  The cranes pictured here are offloading loads of raw sugar from a ship docked at the Domino Sugar factory next door. Each bucket-full weighs eight tons, and about five ships arrive per month from around the world.  Our view of the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Here is some background information on the new location. Many more photos to come... Sunday, April 08, 2001
Shockwave 3D beta Macromedia released the beta of their 3D Shockwave plug-in over the weekend. The new plug-in adds the ability to render 3D objects and navigable scenes. It's based on technology licensed from Intel a while back, and according to the FAQ, there are no announced authoring tools yet. I installed the plug-in on a Mac, and all the demos actually worked without crashing. Of all the 3D technologies trying to make a comeback, I think 3D Shockwave has the best shot, not because of the technology, but because of the large installed base of users and developers. Saturday, April 07, 2001
Rocketcams big and small NASA successfully launched the Mars Odyssey probe today, and Spacefilight Now has some great QuickTime clips of the takeoff from an on-board video camera. The videos show the launchpad receding away steadily and the shadow of the rocket plume. Seconds later, the spent strap-on boosters are seen falling away, followed quickly by the first stage. As the horizon shows the curvature of the Earth, and blue haze of clouds and atmosphere, the satellite's protective shroud falls away in pieces. A second camera mounted inside the nose of the rocket finished the sequence with a view of the spin-up and release of the Odyssey. I'm sure the cost of the wireless video equipment is dropping, and these films will become a regular feature of rocket launches. The videos offer little useful information to flight engineers, but are great for NASA's PR efforts. The camera was developed by CrossLink, Inc. of Boulder, Colorado. These films reminded me of the old Estes Cineroc model rocket that was used in the 70's to send a battery powered, miniature 8mm motion picture camera hundreds of feet in the air. Only one site has a sample video of this now-rare rocket footage. The Cineroc was considered an advanced kit, and required some skill in the darkroom loading custom film magazines from bulk motion picture stock. Sophisticated, yet inexpensive electronics make it relatively easy for today's model rocketeers to create flight videos. On the X10 site there's an article about a rocket hobbyist named Jaime Clay who has adapted the inexpensive XCam 2 wireless video camera to a model rocket, and flown a number of successful flights. There are tech details and construction plans on the site as well. Now this is a useful keyboard!  Dutch designer Hella Jongerius created this fanciful keyboard for the Workspheres show at The Museum of Modern Art. Friday, April 06, 2001
The Clockpix project Netherlands design firm Letterror has redesigned their site, and they're working on a fun new project called Clockpix, a web clock that tells time with a series of 144 photos of clocks. They are about 54% of the way through the list of time increments, and are looking for image submissions. The give and take of ReplayTV Bruce Tognazinni alerts us to the dangerous precedent set by ReplayTV's ability to remotely disable features on its digital video recorder. They ended up restoring the feature, but as more consumer products become web-enabled, this centralized control will tempt some companies into forcing users to accept products "as is" with no ongoing obligation to maintain or keep promised features and functionality. Thursday, April 05, 2001
The birthplace of Microsoft There's a report on CNET that Paul Allen is buying property on the block in Albuquerque, N.M. where he and Bill Gates started Microsoft in 1975. The obvioous goal would be to build a museum to showcase the history of Microsoft. What I want to know is if they will replicate the smell of B.O. and old tennis shoes from that era. Netflix A Money.com story tickled my memory of the Netflix DVD rental service. I was hooked on the postal mail-based service early last year, and then drifted back to buying them at the local deep discounter. When I was a member, the service couldn't have been simpler. After logging in to the site, I made my picks, and they were mailed in slim postage-paid return envelopes. After opening the package and playing the DVD, I simply placed it back in the protective envelope, resealed the flap, and dropped it in a mail box. The service sent a sequence of confirmation emails that tracked the shipment and return of the disc, and also to promote new titles. I could order on a Wednesday and have movies for the weekend. They later sweetened the deal with a flat-rate all you can rent policy. With the $19.95 a month plan, I could have three DVDs in in my home at any one time in constant rotation. I could watch movies as fast as I could order them and drop them back in the mail. It's hard not to justify giving the service a try if you like watching a lot of DVDs. Lately, several people at work are swearing by the new and improved movie recommendation features of their site, so I might sign up again. Wednesday, April 04, 2001
Data centers are epicenters I love to tour data centers even though they are basically boring to look at. Seeing a well designed data center gives me confirmation that my web site has a physical form, and like being in a well-fortified bank, I feel reassured. You also realize how concentrated and vulnerable the technology of a web site really is. As expansive and complex as a web site might seem to you, the surfer, the physical machinery that delivers it is often one or a few innoucous blue boxes. Pulling one small wire out could immediately take a site like Amazon down. So extreme physical security measures are required to protect the compact racks of web servers that hold the focal point of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commerce transactions. Not to mention fact that that the most serious threats come from the invisible probes of hackers through the network itself, so the human staff is an important aspect of monitoring and maintaining operations. Tuesday, April 03, 2001
Extreme Programming No, this is not some new teen hacker cult. Extreme Programming is a practical, results-oriented software development methodology being adopted by an increasing number of organizations. Its basic philosophies include pairing programmers together as a check and balance, delivering a working prototype to the customer as soon as possible, and direct communication with the client to implement priority features. This new movement represents a cultural shift away from the norm of iconoclastic programmers working in solitude, and injects a good dose of accountability. You could say that collaboration, communication, and courage makes clean code. CNET has the story. Monday, April 02, 2001
Save my whiteboard Save My Whiteboard 1.0 is a free Mac-only utility that quickly crops, undistorts, and contrast-corrects digital camera images of whiteboards. I'll be trying this one out soon since I take photos of whiteboards all the time. In the last few months at work, I've found that it's much easier to snap a photo than to set up and fuss with our Mimio digital whiteboard system. The Mimio is good for really long brainstorming sessions, but for short or impromptu meetings, or when I'm offsite, the digital camera is much more convenient, and doesn't require a laptop. Also, there's no way management will outfit all the conference rooms and small whiteboards with Mimios, so the gadget tends to be used by a only few people. Back at my desk, I simply pop the CompactFlash card into my laptop adapter, and drag the images into a folder. I batch process them using a macro in Photoshop that enhances the images and trims file sizes, and then I place them into a Word document. I'm getting known as the whiteboard photographer, but I get to poke my nose into a variety of meetings. Now if the Mimio were upgraded with Bluetooth to wirelessly transmit whiteboard images into my PDA or laptop, I'll get excited again. Typography for navigation menus A very good tutorial on setting aliased or anti-aliased fonts for web navigation menus is at WebReference. The five-page piece covers type techniques in Photoshop and ImageReady, PaintShop Pro, Fireworks, Flash and CorelDraw. The article ends with links to fonts suitable for use at small sizes in web menus. Sunday, April 01, 2001
Lee symbol  A close-up of the Lee family chinese character from the brass plaque that marks the spot where my dad was laid to rest in 1998.
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