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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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Friday, November 30, 2001
Some style and writing guides Workz.com: Creating a Style Guide - a short article with some good guidelines for getting started Style: It Doesn't Come Easy - an article by Microsoft about Microsoft's Style Guide The Microsoft User Experience - Microsoft's User Interface Guidelines The Economist.com Style Guide - based on the stylebook used by the magazine's journalists. This was released just a couple weeks ago, and is good stuff. O'Reilly Network Style Guide - still more excellent notes on usage with emphasis on technology [8/13/02: this link is down, but is archived at Wayback.] Steve Jackson Games Editorial Style - this example might have some application for large, scripted multimedia projects IEEE Standards Style Manual - nicely indexed University of Maryland Libraries Style Guide for Authors of Web Pages - for use by the Web Editorial Board and UMCP libraries staff Deadwood Phrases - a great list we should all memorize GUI Bloopers Book Chapter 4: Textual Bloopers - a free PDF download Poynter.org's Writing Short, Writing Well in a 50-inch Web World - by the original experts on writing well and telling stories to those with short attention spans WBUR's The Connection: Bad Writing - a funny/sad discussion (51 minute audio stream) on the pervasiveness of bad writing Thursday, November 29, 2001
The word on word play  The Sackler in Washington is exhibiting Xu Bing's "square words" calligraphy. These are English letters rendered in a sort of monogram arrangement to appear as Chinese characters. The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning Without Words runs into May, and I've got to make a trip to DC soon to have a look. Meantime, there's a Flash animation to experience on the web site. Jump ahead to the photos from my visit to the show. Dreaming in broadband Dreaming in Broadband is a special report on the issues facing Hollywood as it contemplates a broadband revolution. The site has excerpts from FRONTLINE's interviews with industry insiders on Hollywood's digital future; and links & readings on broadband and digital filmmaking. This bit is from Brushstroke.tv. Wednesday, November 28, 2001
A gesture-based information architecture tool  In a previous blog entry, I pined for more physicality in web design. Well the University of Berkeley's Group for User Interface Research has just released version 1.0 of DENIM, their informal gesture-based web site mapping and layout tool which brings human gestures back into the desktop design environment. It runs on Windows or MacOSX to display a drawing area where site maps, storyboards, and page layout details can be sketched and manipulated in innovative ways. The innovation here is the software's ability to capture and group written text via a WACOM tablet into movable screen objects. If you write the word "home" on the blank canvas, DENIM captures the strokes of each letter, recognizes the letters as a whole word and then groups them into a grey box. After you create a cluster of these free-form labels, you draw lines between them which DENIM converts to vector-based connector lines. This creates a web site map. Zoom in from this view using the view slider on the left edge of the screen, and each site map label sprouts a blank storyboard canvas. The screenshot above shows this state from a copy of Denim running on my laptop (and it runs very well on a Dell 8100 in Win2K). Here's the same view at actual size (42k GIF). The grey circles are gesture-friendly command menus that pop-up when you right click. The zoomed view of a single storyboard makes it easy to sketch page-level details. With the pencil tool, you can draw lines from objects within a storyboard to other pages. Selecting the "run" mode opens a simulated browser window where linked graphic objects are actually clickable links between storyboards. Take a look at the concise online documentation which serves as a good system tour. It's not a far leap from the XML-based DENIM output to a Visio drawing. I can't wait! Meantime, I'm going to be setting this up with our large SmartBoard screen, which will support a projection of the Denim interface. I'll report back here once I get a chance to set this up. Another team at the Berkeley Lab has already taken this one step further with a prototype called The Designer's Outpost, which can capture states of the drawing as well as Post-IT Notes placed on a customized version of the SmartBoard. If you have a fast connection, I highly recommend looking at the demo videos. Tuesday, November 27, 2001
Internet wall posters mini-catalog Just because it needed to be done, I've compiled a mini-catalog of Internet geography posters.  3Design * CAIDA Internet Map Poster $24.98    Peacock Maps * World Internet Poster $29.95 * Whole Internet Poster 2001 $29.95 * First Internet Maps Poster $29.95  Telegeography * Global Internet Map 2002 $185 Matrix.net * Wall poster (price?) Monday, November 26, 2001
Human Face This BBC Video/DVD on the Human Face came across my Amazon recommendations and I added it to my wish list. The BBC has a companion web site which has some interesting reading. Tufte likes "Secret Knowledge" I noticed an entry by Edward Tufte on Amazon saying that David Hockney's Secret Knowledge is his new favorite art book. Ol' ET had this to say: Spectacular, November 15, 2001 I snapped some pix of some of the spreads so you can see why ET is raving.  The Great Wall in Hockney's studio, portraits from 1150 to 1889.  A series of smiles from 1303 to 1624 ... from eyeballing to optics.  A timeline from 1400 to 2000 graphing the changes in the degree of realism in portrait painting. The red line is the use of optics in painting, while the green line is the "eyeballing" tradition. The green line's proximity to the red is when artists most closely emulated naturalistic effects. Saturday, November 24, 2001
Drinking in the new David Hockney book I couldn't wait for an Amazon shipment and impulsively snagged the David Hockney book over the holiday. Even if you aren't persuaded by his visual analysis, the reproductions provide an exquisite journey through 400 years of portrait painting. The Observer has a review, and The New Yorker has posted the long January 2000 article that started the controversy. Friday, November 23, 2001
Eye features classic wheel charts  I was surprised to see one of my favorite circular calculators on the cover of the British design magazine EYE (no magazine content is available on the site as of this writing) this month. Jessica Helfand's depthy prose on the nature of circles wraps around a nice gallery of various wheel chart calculators from her collection. The article didn't go far back enough to cover volvelles, the earliest examples in 15th century books. Here's a thought-provoking snip from the essay:
 The Nuclear Bomb Effects Calculator on the cover is the most complex example and one I've been meaning to write about in this blog. A close-up of mine shows the wackiest scale: man velocity. The yellow arrow shows that a 165 lb. adult human would be launched into the air at a velocity of 60 feet per second within the first 10 feet of travel if a 1 megaton bomb were exploded 2 miles away. The companion book explains that the data was inferred from animal cadaver drop tests off moving vehicles. The intense vaporizing destruction that nuclear devices deliver really makes knowing your body's flight velocity irrelevant. Some comdex goodies Imaging Resource reports on some intriguing technology prototypes shown recently at Comdex. ArcSoft, makers of PhotoMontage 2000, demonstrated what will be a low-cost 3D scanning product. The unnamed product is a small tabletop platform that surrounds small objects with a solid "bluesreen" color, and camera targets. A digital camera captures a series of images at different angles, and then a sophisticated software application derives a 3D mesh from the scenes. A set-up like this would be useful in sculpture classes by providing students with a way to create prototypes in traditional materials like clay. Hopefully, they can get this to market for under $300. Further down in the article, there's a look at the second round of prototypes of the Sony Duo series of wearable digital cameras. Thursday, November 22, 2001
CuriousLee flashes before my eyes I searched curiousLee in Google's Images database today, and came up with a thumbnail gallery of images archived on this blog. Considering the billions of images on the web, and that they've only cataloged about 330 million at Google, this little site has a good showing. I've added the query link to this page template. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Words in the ether Scientific American reviews linguist David Crystal's book Language and the Internet which surveys how the medium of the Internet has affected language in general, and individual languages in particular. To give you a taste of Crystal's writing, The Cambridge University Press web page on the book provides the first chapter for download in PDF. I'm adding this to my next book buying binge. Monday, November 19, 2001
Opossum creek retreat This weekend, we tried a different cabin in West Virginia after our trips in July and August to a small place in Level, WVA. Opossum Creek Retreats in Lansing offered another chance to scout deeper in the state and to observe the Leonid Meteor shower far away from city lights. We stayed in cozy cabin 1 which is outfitted with a hot tub and situated deep in the forest at the end of a dirt road.  A moss-covered log draws my attention to the forest floor to explore delicate details.  One-half mile from the cabin is The New River Gorge Bridge. Saturday at the bridge lookout was unusual with a forest fire on the far side of the gorge. We watched light planes drop fire suppression material. On the news that night, we heard they successfully put out the fire, and the current theory on the cause is arson. See a larger image (33k).  This the full-sky view from the meadow where we watched the Leonid Meteors very early Sunday morning. In a radical departure, I decided to lay on my back and just watch the whole sky without fiddling with camera equipment. We saw an average of 2 meteors per minute and several fireballs during the 4 - 6am peak. It was a moonless night, and amazingly, not too cold for mid-November. There were the normal forest sounds and a hint of truck traffic from the nearby bridge, but I wished meteors could make a "whoosh" sound to perk up the quiet drama. To get an idea of what we saw, take a look at the first and second gallery pages at Spaceweather.com. We saw all the same phenomena, except for debris clouds and aurorae. This may have been an amazing once-in-a-lifetime event, but I hope not! Friday, November 16, 2001
Upload and away I just pushed out a load of posts back to Oct. 24. Enjoy! We're in West Virginia until Tuesday in a cabin 1/2 mile from The New River Gorge Bridge, the longest single arch steel bridge in the US. Ditching today's tired desktops MIT Technology Review has an article on what some thinkers are envisioning as the next generation of computer user interfaces that could replace the tired desktop metaphor. The piece surveys David Gerlernter's Scopeware, Inxight Software, and Microsoft's 3D Windows environment The Task Gallery. The examples contrast spatial metaphors of reverse-chronological navigation in Scopeware (formerly Lifestreams) against Microsoft's 3D/virtual reality-like hallway. Inxight's system is really more of a fancy way to visualize heirarchies of data or file systems. I went ahead and bought the education version of Inxight Studio, and it's pretty cool. Also, if you are on a high-speed connection, I highly recommend downloading Microsoft's 72 meg video demo of the Task Gallery. Thursday, November 15, 2001
Rennaisance kid re-brands the earth Drew Olbrich, a software engineer working for Pacific Data Images, the company who produced the animations for Shrek and Antz, offers a plan to visually re-brand the Earth. The rest of his personal projects site is chock full of fun experiments and artwork. I particularly enjoyed the Thing in a Jar, Phlegm and keyboard. Wednesday, November 14, 2001
User interface architecture IBM's Ease of Use Web Site, which is a nice resource on usability, has stashed a gem of a PDF on User Interface Architecture (UIA). Linked off a page with the boring title System Administration User Experience, this 48 page booklet (253 k PDF) concisely presents best practices for designing and laying out user interface widgets. While most information architects seem to prefer working top-down from the home page dealing with mental models, navigation schemes, classification, and the semantics around labeling, there's a vast dark ocean of interfaces to server applications and databases that desperately need attention. But drilling deep into transactional experience tunnels under a web site is decidedly un-sexy, plus you have to come nose-to-nose with cranky software engineers. I'm hoping (but not hopeful) that the user experience glitterati will move beyond the surface to bridge their thinking into the hard-core software development world. Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Origami PDA Earlier this week at the COMDEX show, National Semiconductor Corp. showed an elegant and clever concept design for a folding PDA called The Origami. The device has almost every concievable electronic function rolled into its folding form factor including a cell phone, video/still camera, color touch screen, keyboard, wireless connectivity, and GPS. Though not slated for production, there are devices like this just around the corner from other manufacturers. Mr. Spock would almost want to trade in his tricorder for this tasty toy. Monday, November 12, 2001
AdaptivePath's information architecture brain dump AdaptivePath, the new union of the hippest and brainiest information architects in the San Francisco area, has released a massive treasure-trove of their course materials and sample deliverables. They debated internally about the release, but decided it was better to make a contribution of intellectual capital to the growing IA community. Sunday, November 11, 2001
11/11: A pilgrimage to ground zero We drove up to New York City for the weekend to visit Ground Zero, and to contribute to the economy. Eight weeks after the attacks, the city seems to be returning to normal, except for the memorials and the area of destruction itself. But it's hard to see the lasting effects in a quick weekend trip. NPR says there are still 10,000 people displaced from their apartments, and tens of thousands more have lost their jobs. Here are some photos:  Firehouse #6 sign close-up—they lost 4 men.  Children's artwork inside the fire house.  Re-routing of utility lines and people around Ground Zero.  Memorial displays in front of Trinity Church.  One of many flyers from those in search of the missing.  The remaining shard of the north tower.  Night operations.  The memorial at Union Square.  The Empire State Building is again the tallest building in New York City. We also stopped by Kate's Paperie, where I finally bought a Moleskine Notebook, and Canal Jean Co. where I picked up a winter overcoat and tweed jacket. At the Strand Bookstore, I loaded up on a few discounted books:
The trip reconfirmed for me Milton Glaser's revised slogan: I Love New York More Than Ever.
Friday, November 09, 2001
Cringeley on .NET Bob Cringeley, an unabashed Microsoft basher, writes about how Microsoft has won over the DOJ again, and will guiltlessly ram their .NET technology into the marketplace. Read the first half of the column for the meat of his discussion. Thursday, November 08, 2001
Seeing and living tao  Caterpillar in Level, West Virginia In one elegant volume of classic images and quotations, this book pretty much speaks to why I've been doing so much photography. The Tao of Photography, a book by two professors at The University of Hawaii, draws strong parallels between the eastern philosophy of Taoism and the methods of great photographers. A collection of writings based on the teachings of the 4th Century Chinese philosophers, The Chuang Tzu makes the case that freedom from the sense of self can remove barriers to seeing, and bring a heightened sense of awareness. I'll have more on my journey through these writings in future blogs. Here's a translation of selected chapters of The Chuang Tzu, and some quotes from the photography book. XML in 10 points If you're new to XML, this list of high-level concepts from the W3C provides a quick introduction. And you really only get seven points. Wednesday, November 07, 2001
A memorial to 9-11 at our train station  Some Amtrak employees created a stunning 9-11 memorial that has been on temporary display at Baltimore's Penn Station. With materials similar to the wreckage at Ground Zero, the artists assembled a frame to support a series of immersive panoramic photomosaics of the rescue operations. Here's a close up (63k JPEG) of one of the panoramas. A display of this size engulfs your field of view and promotes contemplation. Accessibility in electronic learning environments The IMS Global Learning Consortium, an industry coalition that is working to standardize the technology architecture of electronic learning environments, has released a draft whitepaper of guidelines for developing accessible learning environments. The document still has some holes, but is chock full of links to resources. The file can be viewed in both HTML and PDF format. While the focus of the piece is on learning environments, the guidelines would apply to intra- and extranets as well. Nice content management process poster Bob Boiko, author of The Content Management Bible, sells a wallchart that illustrates a model process for web content management. The poster sports a colorful design along with a layout that should dazzle some clients. Parts of the poster can be downloaded as a Powerpoint presentation. Monday, November 05, 2001
NIST common standard for usability reports The National Institute of Standards and Technology offers a useful Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports. The sample report provides a nice framework to use in creating customized usability deliverables. The example document can be downloaded in Word 97 format. Driving 3 million hairs in software There was a time not too many years ago where I was enchanted by some masterful computer animation of simplistic geometric solids. Today, Pixar's new film Monsters, Inc. sucked me into suspension of disbelief with the same masterful animation (and storytelling) now applied to photorealistic creatures. Wired has an article on the software Pixar used to animate the 3 million discrete hairs on the main character named Sulley. Geometrically growing computer processing power has completely liberated the imaginations of animators and directors. Sunday, November 04, 2001
Jar Jar on DVD and a new laptop still irritates The release of the DVD of The Phantom Menace coincided with the delivery of a brand new top-o-the-line Dell laptop at the office. The 1 GHZ Dell Inspirion 8100 is loaded with tons of RAM and a big hard drive so it effortlessly handled the DVD playback and all of the extended content features. I was blown away by the crystal clear quality of the DVD encoding, and the sound quality was breathtaking. Unfortunately, the clarity of presentation just amplified the irritating scenes with Jar Jar—George Lucas' attempt at comic relief where none was needed. A Salon story offers a possible path to freedom from the annoying Jar Jar. Apparently, fans equipped with state-of-the-art desktop video editing equipment have produced their own re-edited version of The Phantom Menace. People who have seen the first of the re-cut versions say it's an improved experience. When more versions started appearing to move the result of fan fun to outright lawbreaking, Lucasfilm lost their sense of humor and launched their lawyers. It's been the month of Star Wars hype renewal with the release of the first theatrical trailer for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones in front of prints of Pixar's wonderful Monsters, Inc. A look at the business implications of the public's post 9/11 psyche Baltimore web strategy icon Sean Carton sent me an announcement about the release of their study Who Am I? How Business Can Survive A Global Crisis of Identity. The study is a timely snapshot of the post 9-11 consumer psyche based on the research of a global network of anthropologists coordinated by Context Research. The field data supports four possible scenarios of consumer reactions, and outlines the business implications of each. The study is organized for quick skimming, but I found myself identifying with, and delving into the many of the ethnographic vignettes. It's a free download, so grab a copy. Saturday, November 03, 2001
A technology newsletter lives on I really missed Jeffrey Harrow's weekly newsletter The Rapidly Changing Face of Technology when Compaq shut it down. The archives are still there, and I just recently discovered that the newsletter lived on as The Harrow Technology Report. The newsletter is one of the best sources I've found on technology trends. There's even an MP3 version so you can listen from a music player or laptop while driving or working. My personal wayback machine  At Salon, Dumpster Diving on the Web covers the opening of The Internet Archive to the public. Dubbed The Wayback Machine, visitors can search an archive of 10 billion web pages back to 1996. A couple years ago, I realized I had my own personal Wayback Machine in web cache files recorded on DAT tape backups I started in 1994. I recovered some of those folders, and pieced together my early visits to Yahoo, CBS, Wired and The White House. I only scanned tapes into early '95, but someday soon, I'll go back in and do some more mining. Friday, November 02, 2001
Digital kid assistant Miniaturization marches on, and each year manufacturers are cramming more into kids' electronic toys. Kessel, a toy design firm in Hong Kong, has released the Wave Back PDA Plus. The Wave Back rolls wireless connectivity, a digital camera, chat, e-mail, voice messaging, and wireless gaming into a portable handheld device. The thing supposedly has a 1,000 foot range and may have a street price of around $100. A web portal for the product is under construction. It looks like the Wave Back will compete head on with the Cybiko and Vtech's Phusion. Thursday, November 01, 2001
Making art with your GPS unit From the BBC: a story about drawing pictures with your GPS. My Garmin eTrex is somewhere in Spain at the moment with a friend who's biking cross-country, but I'm half-tempted to give this a try when he gets back. I'm particularly intrigued by the GPS-o-graph software which creates 3D visualizations of GPS trails.
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