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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, October 30, 2002
A new gig
Today was the first day of a three-month information architecture consulting engagement in New York City. I'm still working for e.magination, but on site at the eBusiness division of The American International Group (AIG), one of the world's largest insurance companies with offices in every major market in the world. The VP that is sponsoring me has already given me five projects like re-architecting the taxonomy of four out of five of their global web sites and helping to implement an enterprise-wide CMS. My head hurts...so more soon. Monday, October 28, 2002
A celtic-style wedding with a halloween accent
Here are some photos from our weekend trip to Cincinnati and sister-in-law Mary Muir's wedding to Steve Loesch. It was one of the most pleasant, human-scale weddings I've ever attended. The blend of celtic and halloween themes was just right.  At the rehersal dinner, Mary's sister Kate was the subject of Jeff Leksons' test of my Sidekick digital camera and Black Diamond LED head light.  The bagpipers at the ceremony rocked!  Fall leaves and carved pumpkins were a perfect seasonal accent to the chapel walkway.  Steve and Mary are pictured here seriously enjoying the harp interlude.  Here is Steve's niece Torrie at the harp. She's quite the expert performer at the ripe old age of 6. Thursday, October 24, 2002
Echo from Arts & Letters
Brad Thiessen, one of the editors of the recently departed Arts and Letters Daily, wrote to say that a very similar site has taken its place. Checking back at the original A&L site, I see a new Reader's Note announcing that The Chronicle of Higher Education has successfully taken over the project. This is great news, and I look forward to an ongoing stream of quality reading and thinking. Note: I'm off to my sister-in-law's wedding, and may not post here again until Monday. If I can get a signal, I will post to my thread at Hiptop Nation. Have a great weekend! Tuesday, October 22, 2002
Sunday, October 20, 2002
Roving posts and art
Scroll down in my Hiptop Nation blog to see the post entitled Homage to Hockney where I begin to experiment with sequence and collage to overcome size limits of, and add more temporal dimension to the Sidekick camera images. If you don't know about David Hockney's work in Polaroid collage, take a look at this page of lecture notes on grafts and edges from George L. Dillon's excellent course notes at The University of Washingtion entitled, Writing with Images: Towards a Semiotics of the Web. I am leaving more dropped words and typos when I post from the field because currently, the posts can't be previewed or re-edited. I'm also soaking in the experience of thinking and composing thoughts on-the-fly in all kinds of conditions. I'm far from even being a backpack journalist, but one day soon, I hope to commit some journalism. Friday, October 18, 2002
Dis-service level agreement
Thanks to all those who wrote asking what happened to curiouslee during the last couple days. I had to restore my files once again from my own backup. I'm really close to switching over to the new site to rid myself of a provider that obviously doesn't care any more about the customers it acquired when it rolled-up a local hosting company. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Do all good web zines have to die?
I just discovered that Arts and Letters Daily's parent company has filed for bankruptcy, and that the site hasn't published since October 6th. Look through the complete archives to see why, in my opinion, this loss makes today a sad day. I hold out hope the publication will return under new ownership sometime after the October 24th auction. Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Long and loving sidekick/hiptop reviews
"After playing with mine for almost 2 weeks now, I'm hopelessly hooked." — Amy "... an integral lump of succulent chocolate in my pocket ..." — Root "Easy to use, FUN to use, intuitive, and the thing just WORKS." — *j
Portable DVD players blister-packed and on a hook at Walmart...
... — almost. A while back, I wrote about the Koss Hip Hues portable DVD player that Target is selling for $99 now. This thing looks just like a portable CD player, but can also be connected to your TV to play movies. Tonight, the good Mike Goodwin wrote to tell me that Walmart is selling a portable I-Jam DVD player with a built-in 4-inch LCD screen for $197! Whatever the quality of this unit, it's still a major price drop as these things typically cost $400-$900. I could never see paying close to $1000 for a mini-DVD player because you can now get a complete computer laptop with DVD capability for about that price. This gadget is really tempting because it's looking like I'll be working out of hotel rooms more often in the future. This inexpensive player would also make a great addition to anyone's iMac/iDVD system. Beyond just making home movies, I'm thinking playing TV shows from PVR software, creating photo slideshows, and converting PowerPoint presentations would be fun possibilities. Come to think of it, this player should fit very well in a Christmas stocking. Monday, October 14, 2002
Water lilies both real and ethereal
Maybe it's because of Negroponte's recent Wired piece on wireless water lilies, and all my recent playing with wireless gadgets that compelled me to make my latest Mirror Project submission. Or maybe it was just the awesome beauty of a natural, non-digital environment.
Photo-blogging from wherever...
I finally got around to setting up a blog thread at Hiptop Nation, a new experiment in wireless photo-blogging. My first post appeared seconds after I pressed the Sidekick's scroll wheel to send the message. Man, do I look old in this photo, but I am probably one of the oldest geeks using a Sidekick. I've added a link to my photo blog in the navigation of this page template. Sunday, October 13, 2002
Blog pages squeezed into my hip pocket
 Shown here larger than actual size are some blog pages as rendered by the Sidekick's web browser. I rendered the screens as JPEGs to try to give you an idea of the color of the screen as I see it when I surf under my bedcovers at night (just kidding). The pixels are of course much sharper than what's pictured here. I love how the current design of Curiouslee (pictured above) renders with the "I surf as much as I eat" tagline just above the virtual fold. The browser chrome gives up 23 pixels out of the 160 vertical height to show the page title and system status icons (pressing Menu-Shift-T in the browser hides the title bar). During page loading, a 25 pixel high bar appears temporarily along the bottom to show a progress bar and URL. Notice how content-friendly the engineers are with the vertical scroll indicator on the right edge. They trap the 3 pixel wide arrows and elevator bar with a one pixel white line, which only surrounds the visible elements of the scrollbar. DangerInfo.com has a thread starting up on optimizing pages for the Hiptop and Hiptop411.com is maintaining an HTML tag reference. Pages requested from the device are downloaded by Danger, Inc.'s proxy servers which reduce graphics to 4-bit (16 shades of grey), and resize large images down to a width of 240 pixels. The server proxy also does a pretty good job of linearizing multicolumn tables. Table columns are scanned from left to right and then stacked. Content generally fits well within the 240 pixel width, but you typically get the left navigation first and have to scroll down a ways to get the main content. This week, I'm making a Sidekick browser chrome file in Photoshop just for my own amusement. Since I don't have any access to an SDK (few do right now), I'm redrawing the basic UI elements from very close-up photographs of the screen. For those of you who might be wondering what your blog pages look like, here are a couple:   I'm working up a bunch of thoughts based on my first two weeks with the device, which hopefully will be up in the next few days. Naturally, I'm composing on the Sidekick and e-mailing to myself. For some very timely reading on the state of the mobile communications industry, and some thoughts on IA's role in UI design for mobile devices, read Shawn Smith's article at Boxes and Arrows. Friday, October 11, 2002
Picturing people
 Tricia I have a simple new goal for the next few months: photograph more people than places, and in particular, women. I started with my friend Tricia this week. Maybe you next? This portrait is a startling compositional mirror of the skyline and ship image I made on September 24th. I think my picture-editing instincts have subconsciously recognized my shift in interest from landscapes to people. See both images together. Thursday, October 10, 2002
Blog housekeeping
Well it seems the season for housekeeping in the electronic realm of the Lee Empire. I've renewed a bunch of domains, and set up a new account at Pair Networks in preparation for a switch to a new host and the Movable Type blogging system. Our current hosting provider's servers crashed badly a while ago, and they weren't able to restore from back-ups (which strongly suggests they had no back-ups). That was inexcusable, and cause enough for a change. With the ability to serve from a SQL database, and lots of flexibility in server-side scripting at Pair, I'll finally be able to add such blog features as categorized archives and photo galleries. I'll be checking and flagging dead links in the archives, and editing down the last two years of images into a gallery similar to Adam Tow's. Hopefully all this activity will manifest as a series of pleasant blog surprises and without interruption to Curiouslee. Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Use your pencam/webcam on Mac OS X
I found on one of the Mac resource sites this USB camera driver for Mac OS X which supports an incredible array of mass-market cameras. I e-mailed their support address with a suggestion to create a driver for the T-mobile Sidekick that would make it possible to download Pencam images via a short USB cable into the Sidekick's image gallery program.
Apple store video
Richard Taylor has posted a QuickTime video of the opening of the Apple Store in Towson. See if you can spot Tim and me in the clip. After watching the video, it occured to me that an Apple store opening would be the perfect setting for Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog to make a video.
Play DVD movies without the DVD...
...and do it legally? Dan Gillmor mentioned in a recent column that on Mac OS X he could simply drag a DVD data file onto his hard drive to play again after the disk was ejected. He found this was very handy to store several movies to view on plane flights. Aaron Swartz describes in more detail how he did this with the Monsters, Inc. DVD. So far, no one knows how it is possible that Apple hasn't locked down this capability. Sunday, October 06, 2002
A new counter culture arrives in Towson
With his press credentials, friend Tim and I got into the new Apple Store in Towson Town Center about 30 minutes before yesterday's grand opening at 10 am. Tim was there to get some quotes and photos for David Zeiler's Mac column, and of course I was there to get shots for this blog.  This is the pristine store interior just before the first customers entered. The staff was in the back room chanting.  Tim tests out the store's open WiFi hotspot.  A staffer went out front and did a countdown, while the rest formed a double receiving line to greet the customers. In this photo, the first customer high-fives his way into the wonderland of lucite, white formica, and bamboo.  Store evangelist Doug Gauck dispenses advice to a customer at The Genius Bar. The store was full to capacity, and the line outside stretched around to the other side of the atrium for about 90 minutes. Not since my days as a Mac user group coordinator have I seen this many local Apple fans gathered in one place. Following the energetic crowd, I spent as much time gawking at all the toys as shooting. I contributed to the cause by taking a Griffin PowerMate and Aladdin Systems' Ten for X Utilities to the register. Several staffers and customers noticed me taking pictures with my new T-mobile Sidekick (not the photos here!), so I transmitted a set to the store e-mail address right from the showroom floor. My only wish as I headed out the door was that my Sidekick was white and chrome instead of painted silver. Maybe next year we'll finally have a PDA or communicator from Apple... Saturday, October 05, 2002
The ultimate backup
For $712,000 and a week's wait, Dr. Craig Venter will write the essence of your personal genetic code on a CD-ROM. The BBC reports that having a genome map created at birth could help doctors develop a lifelong strategy of preventative testing based on patterns in the genetic code that suggest risk of hereditary diseases. Another group at Solexa believe that they are close to prefecting the ability to read a person's genome within a day at a cost of $1,000. Hmmm, this could one day be another service offering for Kinko's. Friday, October 04, 2002
e.arrival
After way too long, the company where I work has a new web site up. I welcome the soothing "less is more" design and no nonsense navigation. There are a few updated versions of my archived blog posts seeding a new section of articles. And now I have to get crackin' on some IA whitepapers. Thursday, October 03, 2002
iRights
An article at O'Reilly discusses The Near Future of Digital Rights Management. The issues raised are part of an ongoing battle that the EFF is fighting to stop media conglomerates from dictating how hardware manufacturers deploy their product features. A panel discussion at the recent Mac OS X Conference considered the threat of new and proposed laws to Apple's Digital Hub strategy. The OS X operating system is slowly becoming a Digital Rights Management operating system. This is all scary stuff. I know I don't want a chip embedded in my iMac or iPod that polices fair use. Would you? Update: Read more on this in the Dan Gillmor column. Another thought: how long will it be before web servers and content management systems are required by law to police your content? Tuesday, October 01, 2002
Switching travel sidekicks
Yesterday's travel sidekick was our company CEO, Brian, and not that he's not a great guy, but I picked up a new Sidekick today. I went to the T-mobile store in Towson, MD first thing in the morning to pick up the new T-mobile Sidekick Communicator. I was there before they opened and was first to pick up the product, which I have had on reserve since last week. After about what seemed like 35 steps involving the sales terminal, various packs of paperwork and the product itself, and of course my credit card, I had an activated Sidekick device. There were two others in line waiting behind me including a cool guy who called himself "The Fly." We exchanged contact info with the promise to set up a Sidekick user group. Then I raced back downtown to hop on the Acela to New York City. I plugged the Sidekick into an AC outlet in the cafe car to begin my first day with this new travel companion. I won't go into an exhaustive review here due to time constraints, but I must say I'm very happy with the device. Many of the criticisms I've seen, including those from Uncle Walt at the WSJ, are unfounded. This device attempts to break the paradigm of a mobile communicator by exploring a hybrid form factor that is 60% wireless Internet interface and 40% cellphone with a tiny digital camera and games thrown in for fun. The design gets a lot of things right, and provides a tantalizing catalyst for imagining what's possible in the next version. Here are some photos I took on Wall Street and at South Street Seaport:      The first row are about the best you can get out of the tiny gumdrop-shaped camera attachment, and the bottom row of frames tells me the thing is useless for scenics. It was insanely cool though, to be on AOL IM with my wife Amy and others, and to e-mail these photos to them right from the pier. On the ride back, I spent more time on the Sidekick exploring the interface, and as can be expected, the signal went in an out along the tracks back to Baltimore. When the signal drops, e-mail drafts and open chat windows are saved locally until the next network connection. I chatted on IM with Amy's dad who couldn't believe I was on a moving train and using a pocket-sized wireless device. I also tested the phone, and with the built-in microphone, Amy said the audio was "strange." Switching to the headphone mic improved the call quality. More soon as I continue to hang out with my new Sidekick.
Bits from on the move
Brian and I got back from Boston around 4pm today, and I returned to the office to find my review copy of Ben Schneiderman's new book Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies had arrived. I also found out that I do have to go to New York City again tomorrow. This is the third meeting with a busy CIO to convince him he needs information architecture. Then Kate, Steve, Amy and I headed down to Annapolis tonight to see Joan Osborne at the Rams Head Tavern. But I'm never too tired to review photos. Here are a few from Boston:  Brian looks out on the Boston skyline from the executive penthouse rental we stayed at Sunday night.  Our Monday morning view of Boston Harbor from 42 floors up.  Here's a diagram of the emergency exits on the American Eagle. Our deplaning was much more casual.
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