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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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Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Special village The former editor of The Village Voice writes about the special place that is Greenwich Village: Greenwich Village has been called 'the most significant square mile in American cultural history,' 'the home of half the talent and half the eccentricity in the country,' 'the place where everything happens first.' Many major movements in American intellectual history began or were nurtured in the Village—socialism, feminism, pacifism, gay liberation, Marxism, Freudianism, avant-garde fiction and poetry and theater, cubism, abstract expressionism, the anti-war movement and the counterculture of the sixties. And nearly every major American writer and artist lived in the Village at one time or another. What other community could claim a spectrum ranging from Henry James to Marlon Brando, from Marcel Duchamp to Bob Dylan, from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to Abbie Hoffman? Time to make another trip up. There's a process among us This web development process chart came across the IA list today. Nice chart, but I don't think there are enough references to client responsibilities. Lost a contact lens? No, the person you see on their hands and knees in the grass might be frantically searching for a new x-D picture card they dropped. The x-D is smaller than SD/MMC cards—like about the size of a copper penny—and could eventually hold up to 8 gigabytes of data. The photo of a handful of cards in the link above is precisely my problem. I've way too many card formats. I agree with Steve (of Steve's Digicams) that we don't need another stinkin' data card format for our PDAs and digital cameras. SD cards are small enough already, too hard to handle, and easy to misplace. Steve rants (see his 7/30/2002 soapbox) that electronics manufacturers would do well to concentrate on longer battery life and overall product usability. Monday, July 29, 2002
Excessive heat warning  When The National Weather Service extended its excessive heat warning into today, I didn't expect to see a flaming car as my first sight out of the house this morning. Sunday, July 28, 2002
Heatscape I spent a few hours this afternoon at Artscape. I have to say that despite the withering 100+ degree heat, this was one of the best I've experienced in years. In addition to the usual beer, food, and corporate sponsored promo booths, there were more crafts vendors than any other year, and a good mix of art gallery shows and live entertainment. I liked that there was a separate food court in the adjacent UB parking lot. Moving the art cars to the main Mt. Royal Avenue drag also helped to liven the scene. Here are a few random photos:  Frank Lee shows off his kinetic sculpture, the RU-ME2, which he constructed for the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race. If someone could have been nominated for the title of Ambassador to Artscape, it would be Frank. He was on the front page of The Sun's Maryland section today.  The multi-talented John Berndt curated the Odd Instruments show and organized the Sound/Shift performance of experimental musical instruments at the Decker Gallery. This is a close-up of one of Reed Ghazala's fascinating bent-circuit instruments.  Artscape staffers hose down hot festivalgoers.  After using my faculty ID to get into the closed computer lab building at MICA to cool off, I hiked back to the car, which when pried open, was an oven. There was even an evil face on the driver's seat. Friday, July 26, 2002
Bits of brain food The Guardian reviews the book The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Metropolis offers an eclectic gallery of products and prototypes that embody good information design. In the current paper issue of Popular Science, I see that Dutch Boy has built a better paint can: The Twist & Pour Paint Delivery System. (Note: my wife tells me the product has been advertised on prime time TV for the last month. Shows you how much TV I watch.) core77 reports on Meary, emotive eyeball stickers you can buy in Japan to rehumanize any product. Research on why cuddling feels good is the topic of an article at New Scientist. Ubiquity interviews Terry Winograd on themes of convergence, ambient technology, and success in innovation. I've been roaming through the archives of NewsFuture, a newsletter on media convergence published by The Media Center at The American Press Institute. The July 2002 issue of Usability News is out, and chock full of articles relevant to my current work. I caught up with the recent discussion on Iaslash and Iawiki on Don Swanson's theories of undiscovered public knowledge. Thursday, July 25, 2002
Getting away We booked the cottage in Maine for our 10 day vacation in early August. I'm counting down the seconds to the minute we finish packing the car to head north. Here's an aerial photo of the place and the local chamber's tourist web site. Undersea cables post updated Because Leslee at work asked about the subject, I updated the links in the October 18, 2000 blog entry on undersea fiber optic cable technology. Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Terror on Maryland Avenue  I had a close encounter with Snakeheads at the American Dime Museum in Charles Village last week! In a new gallery off the main entrance, there's an aquarium with three of the frankenfish on display. These suckers have invaded a lake in nearby Crofton, Maryland and are wanted in several states for potentially wreaking havoc on ecosystems by eating every little creature in sight. And the media are having a field day with these alien invaders. Even the feds are now stepping in to consider a ban on the sales and interstate transport of the tasty monsters. Maybe their arrival is a sign. Monday, July 22, 2002
Worldcom's walls close in  But what huge walls they were. We were presenting IA and design work to The Worldcom Foundation the week before the news broke on June 26th about financial troubles. Here is the main concourse or "Mainstreet" of their Northern Virginia Operations Center. It's is about the length of four Football fields, and just a massive symbol of corporate power in the dot-com era. Now, as the company implodes, it looks more like the core of the Death Star. Footnote: this is one building out of a worldwide (but shrinking) operation that spans 65 countries. Sunday, July 21, 2002
Sunspot Tim e-mailed about Doonesbury's vignette on WiFi wardriving. Amy clipped this for me from Saturday's early edition, but Tim points out that the online version has two extra panels. Illustrator Tim wrote to say "hi." He sat in on one of my classes about a year ago. He got a great blog and check out his robots! Saturday, July 20, 2002
A mini DVD/CD player for not much more than the price of the plastic A few weeks back while shopping at Target, I did a doubletake when I saw this Koss Hip Hues Wild DVD/CD player (71k JPEG). I thought it was just another audio disc player because they were in funky colors and just piled on a shelf. Upon closer inspection I realized that the thing had video output! At only $99, it was $300 cheaper than an equivalent Sony. I picked one up, and it works great. We've replaced our big black Apex deck. I saw today the price of the Koss dropped to $79, which might mean they are closing them out. While the sale is over as of tomorrow, I'm sure it will come around again. Google and Kuroshin have some discussion on the player. This is an example of what used to be sophisticated, high-end technology creeping quietly into the blister-pack mainstream. These players are cheap enough that I can see a movie company screenprinting co-brand graphics on the case and bundling the player with a special edition DVD for under $100. What a great way to expand the installed base. Friday, July 19, 2002
Pieces to read tonight... My wife wants her Roll-up TV. She thinks this is "too cool for words." Visit Cambridge Display Technologies for more. Ecommerce Times reports on My Virtual Model, an online fitting room. A review of a new book on steganography. PDA Buzz discusses Apple's new iSync technology. Interesting: DoCoMo is unveiling a technology for their cell phones which allows you to access an ATM from the phone, and without a card. A Washington Monthly article and main web site for the book The Rise of the Creative Class. A Canadian National Post commentary on clichés. Specialization is for Insects Thursday, July 18, 2002
No fun in finding and doing? There's some good fightin' words on SIGIA-L after Paula Thornton touched off a storm of discussion with her statement that people on the web are focused on finding and doing, not being entertained. This is part of the ongoing reaction to Jakob's sudden proclaimation that the web needs to be fun. It's been an active month on the list in general. Maybe it's the heat. Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Freshman faces I'm working on a small freelance job tonight that has come around once a year for the last five years or so. I process 700-900 color digital photos of the freshman class of Loyola College in Photoshop to convert them into black and white, and to set the highlights and shadows for proper offset printing dot rendering in the printed picture book. All this is done mostly hands off with a Photoshop macro. Then I go back and manually adjust about 75 of the special case images that are too dark or too light. Looking at the 700+ faces each year makes me wish I could see a timeline behind each image to find out who drops out of college, gets married, becomes a celebrity, or simply lives a normal life into the next year. Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Web sites worthy of your love I gave my talk at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington's Annual Convention today. About 40 people, mostly direct marketers and managers working in print, heard me give a gentle introduction to user experience and information architecture. I made it a point at the beginning of the session to exclude visual design and technology to focus on human issues in the realm of the real world up to the computer screen and a couple clicks in. My closing "new ideas" were:
After the talk, I took a stroll through the exhibit hall and marveled at the relatively unchanged world of direct mail marketing. Booths were still hawking ad specialties, label printing equipment, and list management software. There certainly is innovation in direct marketing, but on the print side of things, there's still an entire offline generation that prefers to conduct business by snail mail. Monday, July 15, 2002
Space invader mouse  I noticed the other night that my iMac's Apple Pro Mouse LED projects what looks like a Space Invaders alien when lifted a couple inches off my desk. I'm surprised it doesn't project the Apple logo or better yet, their stock price. Driving to switch Even though I bought my new iMac (the lamp) back in February, it has stayed at the office where it was more convenient for me to configure it gradually while behind a firewall. I got so busy with work and personal projects in the months of March and April that the machine didn't get used much. Finally last Thursday I drove it home to replace the Dell laptop I've been carrying around, and to enjoy it more before it becomes obsolete (there are rumors of a 17" iMac coming). Some things I've learned in the last few weeks:
But otherwise, it's an awesome machine. Lastly, one of the more interesting pieces of pre-MacWorld news is the introduction of EyeTV, the first PVR system for the Mac. With it you can record from any TV source directly to your hard drive like the TiVo. Jim Heid already has an exclusive hands-on review on his site. Blogging software diagram John Hiler at Microcontent News has posted a nice flow chart of the technical requirements of various types of web logging software. The diagram is for an article he's developing on the topic. Friday, July 12, 2002
Isca's heart I was just reading about Isca Greenfield-Sanders in Wired. She's getting noticed all over for her hauntingly beautiful mixed media paintings, which are a hybrid of traditional and digital techniques. Paper Magazine is right on about her. And at her boyfriend's web site, the subject of his recent oil paintings doesn't come as a surprise. Sudsy buzz Adam sent a link to caffeine infused bath soap where the kick is absorbed right through the skin. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat ... Thursday, July 11, 2002
The joy of cirrus  A cold front swept across Baltimore today, smearing the sticky summer cumulus into wispy cirrus. The Joy sign marks the entrance to the building next to ours, which is named after the Proctor & Gamble soap product manufactured here in another era. This photo reminds me to pack for vacation my copy of The Invention of Clouds, a historical account of the classification and naming of clouds. The book recently won The LA Times Book Prize in the science and technology category. Information architecture is bigger than the web The latest issue of Inf@Vis! surveys some classic definitions of information architecture, and concludes that while IA has become popular for web development, the discipline should be about understanding all kinds of knowledge. Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Duly noted I forgot to add that curiouslee was Blogger.com's Blog of Note yesterday. This fame fades in 10 easy steps. Old timer's VCR repair trick fixes my Coolpix I just finished repairing the sticky mode switch on my way out-of-warranty Nikon Coolpix 950 using instructions I found on a photographer's web site. It took a jeweler's screwdriver, a $7.50 can of magic DeoxIT D5 spray, and 30 minutes. I just saved myself the shipping hassle to Nikon USA Service and a fee. DIY rocks! When math, art, and science fold together I caught an interesting announcement on an upcoming exhibit and conference in today's Baltimore City Paper: Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science is an exhibition opening this Saturday, July 13 at the Holtzman Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, Towson University, Osler and Cross Campus Drive. The exhibit runs until August 10, and is in conjunction with the conference of the same name. The exhibit displays mathematically derived or mathematically relevant artistic creations such as origami, computer generated imagery, and three-dimensional geometric art. I'm definitely going to the exhibit and will try to make it to at least one day of the conference since Towson is a 20 minute drive from home. With the IA Summit and Hypertext 2002 behind me, has been a great year for conferences coming to the Baltimore area that are right in my zone of interests. Monday, July 08, 2002
IA's day... ... incorporated the System Usability Scale (SUS) into a user testing plan today ... woo hoo! And I prepared a new PowerPoint presentation for a delegation of visiting Chinese business people arriving tomorrow. I have to cut an hour-long talk down to 30 minutes to accomodate the interpreter. We were briefed on Chinese business customs. Note to self: enter your time sheet! Sunday, July 07, 2002
Smoky sun day The morning arrived with an orange sun and beige sky that lasted most of the day. We finally found out why online when an advisory from the National Weather Service described smoke blowing into the mid-Atlantic from wildfires in Quebec. That's a distance of 700 miles!  2pm satellite view of Quebec wildfire smoke over Maryland. NASA has some very nice images and Quicktime movies posted: Quebec Wildfires - Multispectral color, (0.2 MB JPG) 6 July 2002 Quebec Wildfires - Smoke over USA, (1.4 MB QT) 6-7 July 2002 Quebec Wildfires - Infrared View, (1.9 MB QT) 5-7 July 2002 Captions here...  The smoky Baltimore skyline as seen from the roof of a parking garage in Charles Village. After I took the skyline photo, I thought about how easily a plume of radiation or biohazard could float the same distance. Thursday, July 04, 2002
Rocket's red glare over Baltimore  Bursts in the sky over the Tide Point Building.  Red, white, and blue water mist.  A low rocket over the harbor!  Fleeting complexity.  A bright firework lights the fog on the promenade. Chalk pix and posts Matt has caught up from being memenuked and has posted a bunch of new submissions to Warchalking.org including the photo I took last weekend of my mark at MICA. People are coming up with all kinds of cool variations on the original set, and they are getting prettier and more complex. I think this movement will take two directions: Matt's simple marks will continue to be used for quick marking on the streets, and a more polished version will be standardized for signage. I'd like to see those taken all the way up through standards orgs like NIST, IEEE, and ISO. Then Matt's meme will live on forever. Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Bits from today's inbox Watershed Radio, a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and Sierra Club sponsored educational web site, is running the firefly photo I took last July. Web Reference interviews Douglas Bagnall, the creator of the 5K javascript chess program. Anchordesk's David Coursey discusses how a $15 watch is better at keeping time than your computer clock. Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Wheel on the move Yay! My backordered copy of Jessica Helfand's Reinventing the Wheel has automatically shipped from Amazon. And there's a 30% discount to boot. Here's my post from last November on the EYE magazine article on which this book is based. Invisible mobile  The European division of Forrester Research has coined the term Invisible Mobile to describe mobile communication without human intervention. These are the invisible domains of physical objects yet to be enabled with embedded mobile communications capability. Forrester sees this as a virtually untapped market opportunity. One scenario described is smart radio frequency ID tags applied to bottles of Coca-Cola so that the bottles can be tracked from the factory, through distribution and stores right into the home. Information about bottle inventories would be broadcast from radio-enabled trucks, stores, and home refrigerators. I don't know if I'm ready for just-in-time snack delivery as part of a sophisticated supply chain all the way into my kitchen. I don't want my refrigerator telling Coca-Cola Corporation how many bottles I'm consuming and when. The analysis can be downloaded from the Forrester site if you register.
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