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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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Sunday, September 29, 2002
Hopping along the coast...
I'm in Boston tonight and Monday, and in New York City Tuesday to rant about information architecture, so posts may not appear until after I get back. On the gadget front, my Sidekick is on hold at the T-mobile store in Towson, and I'm looking forward to picking it up Wednesday. I also see that Apple is opening its newest store in the Towson Mall on October 5th. I may have to go on opening day to feed the Apple spirit. Thursday, September 26, 2002
Diagramming on the go
 Since Monday, I've been one of the first to play with PocketDraw, my friend Brian's new Pocket PC diagramming software. If you have a recent-model Pocket PC, and like to make diagrams in programs such as Microsoft Visio, ConceptDraw or Inspiration, you'll want to download Beta 1 from the product's web site. PocketDraw isn't an artist's illustration tool like FreeHand or Illustrator. The program excels at providing the ability to place pre-packaged symbols on the document canvas from a palette library. In the photo above, I'm dragging a flow chart start symbol off the palette. You have full control of symbols to perform operations such as drag, scale, rotate, change fill/stroke properties, and edit verticies. By adding line connectors with or without arrows, you can easily construct flow charts, org charts, network diagrams, etc. PocketDraw uses sophisticated autorouting to rearrange connected lines as you move symbols around. I'll post again once I've spent more time in the app. Information architects out there may be wondering if JJG's Visual Vocabulary for mapping web sites will be available in PocketDraw on the Pocket PC, and to that I say: damn straight! Stay tuned...
Why we believe the truth is out there
Yesterday's NewsScan included some thoughts from Jodi Dean, a political science professor, on why we believe in aliens. Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Flying into history Over the last two weekends, I watched the new 9/11 anniversary DVDs from CBS, CNN, and the Naudet Brothers. While the pivotal events such as the plane crashes and building collapses have been played ad infinitum, I appreciated the unique footage on each disk. Of the three, the CBS show was the most straightforward. The CNN video had some unique pool footage from Air Force One as Bush went into protection mode during the attacks. But the Naudet Brothers film, shown on CBS at the six month anniversary, was the most compelling because it contains the only footage of the first plane impact, and uniquely covers the scene at the foot of the towers before they collapsed. One of the videos pointed out that the time from the second plane impact through the collapses was the one of the most photographed events in history. It occurred to me that you could collect some of the images and video from various angles and stitch them together into a bullet time movie such as was introduced in The Matrix. Bullet time is a scene with moving subjects frozen for a moment, and photographed by dozens or hundreds of cameras from all directions. When these images are compiled into a movie, you are able to examine the still life scene from all around. I wouldn't be surprised if a government agency hasn't already done this on a supercomputer as a way to analyze the impact of the second plane, and implosion sequences of both buildings. One of the ways to do this kind of virtual scene on a small scale would be to compile some frames of the buildings from different angles as an object movie in QuickTime VR format. Then I remembered a product I played with a few years ago from MetaTools called Canoma. Using the product on your Mac or PC (now acquired by Adobe and currently off the market), you could import any still image into the program and project it on to some primitive geometry inferred from key reference points in the scene. If you just created a cube object behind a photo of a house while establishing a ground plane, upon rendering, you would be able to magically fly into the scene and look around from any angle. Obviously where there was no image data, such as the sides or back of the house, the 3D surfaces there would be blank, but the program did a passable job of interpolating color fills and shading in those areas. If you merged two or more photos into the 3D scene, you could achieve some astounding results. I assumed someone had to have applied this technique to historical images, and a check in Google confirms this. Amsterdam art historian Kees Kaldenbach recently collaborated with the Delft Institute of Technology to create a 3D walkthrough of 17th century Delft as illustrated in Johannes Vermeer's painting "View of Delft." The project, Walking with Vermeer put Canoma into service to dimensionalize and merge several historical prints of the south gates of Delft, which resulted in an incredible virtual walkthrough. The longest QuickTime movie, "A walk by Rotterdam and Schiedam Gates in Delft" is well worth the five megabyte download. It's linked to the right-most of the five icons in the map on the "Walking with Vermeer" home page. Looking at this QuickTime clip, my mind races into a future when some physical locations have such well-mapped 3D geometry that a breaking news event would begin with a 3D shaded model of an area, and then as stills and video become available on the network, they would pop in properly mapped on the appropriate surfaces of the model. Viewers would be able to use a joystick or some other input device to roam around the virtual scene to take in the spatialized images and audio. Not only could you watch as news assets accumulated over time, but you could roll back the entire scene to any previous state for detailed study. You would bookmark time-stamped views from any number of vantage points in the scene for later review. Naturally, you'd be watching all this on a flat panel screen in your living room. The idea of flying through news in space and time like this reminds of the work of Robin Kullberg (and others) of MIT's Visible Language Workshop in mapping historical timelines. But think of that work extended to present day where we have at our disposal cellular communications, wireless networks, GPS, and powerful pocket computers with cameras. People much smarter than I and closer to the news business have to be thinking about the newsroom of the future—and apparently they are. Now I click the Publish button in Blogger to send this thoughtwandering post flying into history ...
Fetish relationship management?
Follwing up on the the previous post on visualizations, here's a link via BoingBoing that points to Katharine Gates' updated Fetish Roadmap. The high resolution version of this map would be fun to print large to post on one of my 4x8 foot project boards at work. This would certainly make office tours more interesting. And who's to say this dimension of social interaction doesn't relate to the majority of traffic on the Web? Saturday, September 21, 2002
Techy data visualizations
There's been a wave of blog links to fun data visualizations lately. Here are four that I enjoyed:     Perhaps this is the result of people having some time on their hands during summer vacations?
Gorgeous gallery
Tonight, via Antipixel, I found etherf@rm's breathtaking photo gallery. This is a man who loves his digital gadgets, and knows how to use them soulfully. On my growing list of things to do for this site is to do another editing pass on my 16,000+ photo archive and build a web photo gallery. Which also reminds me: I haven't been out shooting in about a week and a half. Friday, September 20, 2002
Intravenous RSS
I've been playing with NetNewsWire Lite on the iMac tonight and loving the concentrated, RSS-driven view it gives me of syndicated news. This prompted me to finally activate the RSS feed for curiouslee. After some template hacking, and tweaks to recent posts, you can now find a spiffy XML icon in the left rail of this page. The only bummer is that Blogger doesn't support images in its feed. If you don't understand what RSS is about after reading the info link under the icon, you probably don't need it.
A dangerous young sidekick
In the last few weeks, I've been avidly following a couple blog sites (a general info blog, and a blog by a beta tester) on the soon-to-be-released T-mobile Sidekick developed by Danger. The Sidekick is the T-mobile branded version of the Danger Hiptop. Basically, it's a hybrid PDA/cellphone with Internet capabilities. While the features and industrial design are very cool, the real draw for me is that this is the first device using the faster GPRS data network to offer always-on Internet connectivity for a flat monthly fee. And the device itself is priced right at $199 after a rebate. Since it is targeted at the 18-35 year-old market, the Sidekick has strong social interaction features such as AOL Instant Messenger built-in, the ability to check three POP e-mail accounts, a greyscale web browser, and a digital camera attachment so you can e-mail tiny color pictures. The Sidekick comes with a basic Asteroids-type game, but will surely accommodate more downloadable games in the future. The cellphone facet of the product is the weakest with no access to a numeric keypad in voice mode, and an awkward form-factor that brings the screen in very close contact with your cheek when you're in conversation. But I'm not a big cellphone user, so the call-making deficiencies are not a big deal. It was just announced that the Sidekick will be in stores around October 1st. Since I'm ready to give up the bare bones cellphone issued to me at work, I called the T-mobile store in Towson, MD (410-583-8833) today and reserved one. Now I can satisfy my web surfing addiction nationwide. I should have this phone well before the four-week undergraduate graphic design workshop I'm teaching at MICA on Babyfaces: Designing User Interfaces for Mobile Communication Devices. Students who take the workshop learn how to design icons and user interface screens for a mobile communicator for the youth market. This is the third year I've done the workshop, and for this round, I'm going to have to extend my project specs, because the Sidekick now embodies all the features of the hypothetical device specification I used in the last two workshops. I am reorganizing the portfolio of student projects from the last two years into a new site, which I will link off the blog page as soon as it's posted to the school's web server. For some very good research and analysis on the youth market for mobile devices, visit this resource page at IXI, and download the 45 page PDF of Cheskin's study The Wireless Future: A Look at Youth Unplugged. Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Digital prints that last
Steve's Digicams reviews the new Epson Stylus Photo 2200 archival inkjet printer. The printer outputs your digital images onto acid-free substrate using pigment-based inks. The resulting prints are colorfast for around 80 years, which is on par with high quality traditional chemical materials. Though a bit pricey at $699, you gain the huge advantage of not having to maintain a chemical darkroom lab. Also a digital workflow, which includes a high-resolution camera, Adobe Photoshop, and color profiling software, offers the advantage of highly repeatable results. I went looking for the 2200 last weekend at CompUSA, but the rep says they sold out of the printers in a few days. He said another shipment would be in soon. I can't wait to see sample prints, so a visit to Service Photo is on my to do list for the next week. Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Memory prices drop again
Gizmodo reports that Amazon is offering a deal on 512mb compact Flash cards. They are $149 after a $50 rebate! Very soon, two of these cards will be cheaper than a one gig microdrive, which I was so impressed with not long ago.
Project pictures
I finally got around to submitting another photo to The Mirror Project. I'm still working on getting to an interesting landmark for the iPod Lounge gallery. Also, check out The Shadow Project. Monday, September 16, 2002
Monday moves
This morning I moved to a glassed-in office, which I share with our art director. I'll be unpacking and tossing junk for the next couple days. I spent a good part of the morning just catching up with all the managers since I've been out of the office most of the last two weeks. I may be spending less time at my new desk in the near future because I heard that our second trip to a prospect in New York City went over well, and I'm closer to closing an information architecture consulting engagement that would require train trips to the city almost every week. It's such an honor to even be asked to make a return visit to a company in the Fortune 25 (that's not a typo: twenty-five). Amy started her first day at AARP today with six hours of new employee orientation presentations. There was even a company video. And she walked away with another thick stack of company literature and policies to read. One hour of actual work was clocked and then she got back on the train to come home. Sunday, September 15, 2002
Chameleon blog
Last week, I had a nice e-mail exchange with Paulo, a student at MICA's graduate program in digital arts. I visited his blog a couple times and noticed that he changed his design. No, the design changes every time you reload. Like a lot of times. Paulo must have the record for the most design skins applied, and cups of coffee consumed, while at the computer. The designs are very well done, so hit the refresh button a few times and enjoy.
Scary bread photo captioned
I discovered that someone on LiveJournal added my photo of some pieces of french bread to a forum thread for people to suggest captions. While I thought the bread pieces looked merely scary, people posted some hilarious and clever bits:
OK, now we're off to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding at The Charles. Saturday, September 14, 2002
Über smiley
A team at CMU has retrieved from old bulletin board tapes the first documented use of the of the smiley emoticon :-) The author has posted his own page with some historical background. And there we discover that the 20th anniversary of the glyph will be on September 19th. Friday, September 13, 2002
My wife joins AARP!
No, she's not old enough to be a member yet! Starting Monday, Amy will start her new job as Manager of Creative Web Development for the public web site of AARP. Basically she's the creative director responsible for the team that produces the visual and content design of the site. In case you don't know, AARP stands for The American Association of Retired Persons, and has 35 million members. AARP is also the largest association in Washington, D.C. She will be commuting on the MARC train (with her iPod companion) down to Union Station, and then will walk the few blocks to the headquarters on E Street, NW. She did the train thing for a while a few years ago, and is looking forward to the ride time. This job marks a shift from strategic consulting back to web development, so we'll be able to attend some conferences together, and she will be raiding my library of tech books more often. Her current consulting engagements and firm will be carried forward by her insanely smart partner Jeanne and her talented team. Amy will be working with longtime buddy Beth Mazur, who is well known in information design and information architecture circles. Beth just restarted her blog a few days ago. I'll post more as this new gig unfolds.
Published pix
In the last few weeks there's been a sudden increase in requests to publish my photos.  Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Publishing will use this September 2001 image of some fiberoptics and 250-pair copper cable in the second edition of Principles of Electronic Communication Systems. The cables are samples I sometimes use in talks. I just set them on my front porch step for the photo. Using Photoshop, I added the black dot in the lower left corner to draw attention to one of the polymer-clad glass fibers.  Just before I made the cables image, I chatted up some Verizon workmen who were pulling cable in front of the house. That week, I had been playing with the Nikon Coolpix fisheye lens from work and got some nice exaggerated perspective on an otherwise mundane scene. A design studio in Canada is using the shot in a PowerPoint presentation on manhole safety.  Back in July 2001, Amy and I were coming back from dinner and as we came up the front walkway, she started to catch some fireflies. I turned my camera on, and in the fading twilight, followed one glowing specimen to the tip of her finger. Somehow, I managed to get the macro and auto focus to cooperate to make the image. Not only was I in motion towards the subject, but Amy was raising her finger, and the critter took off just after I pressed the shutter button. A lucky shot indeed. Smithsonian's Watershed Radio web site ran this photo a couple months ago, and Annenberg/CPB Learner.org's Journey North site will show the image soon. These examples demonstrate something I've heard at countless photo lectures: you don't have to go anywhere special, or always use fancy camera equipment to make interesting images. You just need to practice noticing more details in your surroundings, and looking closer and longer. Well ok, carrying a camera all the time, and shooting for many years does help. Thursday, September 12, 2002
WiFi blogstation
 This is a photo uploaded from back at my desk of the setup and location of the last two posts. I would love to be able to post images taken with the HP camera on the Pocket PC, but so far I haven't able to get any WinCE FTP clients to work. AvantBlog is a server in Australia that accepts posts from an Avantgo form, and submits them via the Blogger API. The system works with any device that supports Avantgo technology, so this should work with my wife's Omnisky modem on her Visor. But you don't need a wireless connection at all. Entries posted through the Avantgo interface are sent the next time you sync with your desktop computer. The process requires you to first add the server address as a new Avantgo channel. After sync-ing, AvantBlog appears at the top of the channel list, and you get a login form when you open the channel. Because of the stateless mode in which Avantgo operates, you have to sync after entering your account info, and again after each post. I also had to store my FTP password in Blogger's preferences. Otherwise the post gets into the server's posts queue, but doesn't get transferred to my web site. The only other minor annoyance was the tiny text field provided for entering the text of the post. I'm sure this is because this same form field has to fit on lower resolution Palm devices. Now what I need is an up-to-date paper guidebook of open WiFi hotspots. I'm off to 80211hotspots.com ...
Blogging on the waterfront
OK. I'm sitting here on the Tide Point promenade typing this blog entry. It's a clear cool night, and the water is calm. The entire downtown Baltimore skyline is shimmering across the northern horizon. There isn't much noise except for the occasional fish tail slapping water gently along with some soft piano Muzak coming from the P.A. system of the daycare center behind me. And now I have to go because the security guard says no one is allowed to sit out here after 11pm. Fred's orders.
Untethered posting
I'm testing the process of posting to Blogger with AvantBlog using my Audiovox Maestro Pocket PC, Socket WiFi card, and keyboard. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere interesting ... just my desk at the office. I will try posting from the waterfront or the Johns Hopkins campus grounds next. Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Memories eased in a grid of pixels
 I was just looking at my blog entries and photos from a year ago. Further on in my archives, I posted our 11/11 visit to ground zero. I prefer these freeze frames to the saturation video coverage we're seeing today. Just the memories around my personal images are enough to last a lifetime. Tuesday, September 10, 2002
From crayons to perfume to iPod
It's Amy and my 15th wedding anniversary today! We have an evening out planned of course. Geek that she is, she has requested a 20 gigabyte iPod instead of a watch or crystal. When it arrives tomorrow, it will be full about 40 minutes after she plugs it into her Gateway computer. She claims that having 4,000 songs at her disposal in a package the size of a pack of cigarettes will be "adequate." By the end of the week, I'll be able to add her smiling photo to the gallery at iPod Lounge. Monday, September 09, 2002
Celebrating the work of the designer's type designer
Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter opened today at The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery at UMBC. Many working in web development don't know that Carter designed the font Verdana, which is arguably the most viewed font anywhere because of its use in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Carter himself will lead a symposium on typography as an industrial object, focusing on the relationship between type design as a form of industrial design and visual communication. The symposium will be held on campus on September 26th at 4pm. Saturday, September 07, 2002
Passionate presses
I spent the afternoon at my first Small Press Expo (SPEXPO), which was held this weekend at the Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland. The expo is one of several annual events where independant comic book and zine artists gather to show off and sell their projects. It's been two years since the last SPEXPO because last year's was cancelled due to the travel disruptions after the 9/11 attacks. In with the aspiring new entrants and seasoned veterans was comics theorist Scott McCloud. He's revered (and criticised) not only by many comics artists, but also web designers and information architects for his innovative ideas on sequential storytelling and digital content presentation in Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics.  Scott McCloud signs my hardcover edition of Understanding Comics.  Scott's signature and the icons he added when I told him I work as an information architect. With his notorious enthusiasm, Scott talked about some of his upcoming projects, and his active teaching and public speaking. He mentioned that in the next year or two, he will most likely collect his current reflections in a book he'll probably call Thinking Comics. Amy and I chatted with a variety of artists and here's a sampling of our loot:
The only disappointing thing about the day was that we plowed through our books this evening, and I wish I had picked up a few more. Oh well, another excuse for a visit to Atomic Books.  Marc and Leslee at the ISG booth. The credit for this sunny fun day goes to Leslee Parker, a web designer where I work, for gently prodding me over the last two years to attend this expo. She's the tireless and loving promoter of her partner Marc Hempel, a member of Insight Studios Group, and well known of late for Naked Brain. Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Slight shift in surroundings Starting tomorrow, I'll be on site for a week or two in the bowels of a client's building assisting a web services group with creating templates for a content management system. Then in the evenings, I have to move my office cubicle to other side of the room I'm in. So new blog posts may not appear until the weekend. The trip to Bethany Beach this past weekend can be summed up as family, little kids, and rain. All good depending on your point of view. For a big shift in reality, look at Derek Powazek's photos from Burning Man.
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