The personal web log of Mike Lee, a web information architect living and working weekdays in New York City, and spending weekends at home in Baltimore.

 

"I surf as much as I eat."

 

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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
2003: 01.02.03.04.05.06

 

 

 

 

 

[?]

Lou on the move; Amy GELs

Lou Rosenfeld, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, is out of the gate today in the DC area to kick off his multi-city lecture tour. Today and tomorrow, he's at The Content Management Strategies Conference, and Wednesday is his intensive one-day seminar on Enterprise Information Architecture. You can still catch up with Lou even if you're not at either of these events. Wednesday night, Lou is holding an IA/usability happy hour, and you need to do is RSVP as soon as possible via his site. Friday, The University of Maryland ASIS&T Student Chapter is hosting a reception for Lou at the Hornbake Library on campus from 12 - 2 pm in room 0103. RSVP to Tina Bobe [ tbobe (at) wam.umd.edu ]. Whew! Sure the man earns his living this way, but if you know Lou, it's really passion in motion.

Heading away from the Rosenfeld Vortex, Amy's taking an early train Friday from Baltimore to Manhattan with a bunch of her AARP homies to attend The Good Experience Live (GEL) Conference. I'm hoping she'll be tapping away on her Visor keyboard during the sessions to produce a set of notes similar to those I posted for her from the IA Summit.

Though it would have been nice to go to these events, I'm knee deep in enterprise information architecture at AIG this week.

posted 11:42 PM +

Brooklyn bridge wide

I took a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge tonight.

Update Saturday 4/26: I had just seen the DVD of Ken Burns' 1982 documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge Wednesday night, and I did a massive double-take when he got in line ahead of me today in New York Penn Station to board the Acela Express heading south. He was carrying a large literature case which undoubtedly contained materials for one of his next projects. By the time I got down to the train platform, he had disappeared into the first class car.

posted 11:33 PM +

The jury is out

Oy, I've been in jury duty the last couple days in Baltimore City. I waited around with several hundred other citizens the first day, and then was picked to serve on a one-day trial today. The trial ended right on time, and I hauled back to Manhattan tonight after a quick dinner with Amy at the cafe in Penn Station.

Of course, the most important amenities of the juror's waiting room were my laptop and cell phone. Laptops and cell phones are allowed in the waiting rooms of the courthouse, but I was scolded for plugging my PowerBook into an AC outlet. So I picked at some work with my remaining battery power. My Sidekick ended up saving the day since people thought it was just a cell phone. I followed Jason's live blogging of the Emerging Technology Conference (Jason: you are doing God's work!), and IM'd Amy off and on all day. I really had the urge to post photos to Hiptop Nation, but I left my camera module on my desk in Jersey City.

The actual rule on cell phones is that they are allowed, but must not be used in the waiting rooms or the court. I wonder how long it's going to be before cell phones are banned completely because someone compromised a trail using SMS or texting. Checking Google, I see that folks in the UK are experimenting with SMS as a witness notification system in courtrooms.

posted 11:34 PM +

Common traits of trusted advisors

I came across our copy of the book The Trusted Advisor this evening, and flipped through it to refresh my memory of the text. The book is an excellent, readable guide on how consultants can nurture a trusted relationship with their clients. The information is also very relevant to those acting as staff consultants within organizations as well. Here's a list of "Common Traits of Trusted Advisors" from the back of the book which I'm posting here to re-read regularly.

1.) Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
2.) Are consistent (we can depend on them)
3.) Always help us see things from fresh perspectives
4.) Don't try to force things on us
5.) Help us think things through (it's our decision)
6.) Don't substitute their judgement for ours
7.) Don't panic or get overemotional (they stay calm)
8.) Help us think and separate our logic from our emotion
9.) Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly
10.) Don't pull their punches (we can rely on them to tell us the truth)
11.) Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
12.) Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
13.) Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation, and let us choose
14.) Challenge our assumptions (help us uncover the false assumptions we've been working under)
15.) Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but they take the issues seriously)
16.) Act like a real person, not someone in a role
17.) Are reliably on our side and always seem to have our interests at heart
18.) Remember everything we ever said (without notes)
19.) Are always honorable (they don't gossip about others, and we trust their values)
20.) Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories, and anecdotes (few problems are completely unique)
21.) Have a sense of humor to diffuse (our) tension in tough situations
22.) Are smart (sometimes in ways we're not)

One of the authors maintains a companion web site with some additional articles.

posted 11:33 PM +

Easter harbor and peeps

It was a beautiful day for a walk through Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

On water's edge near The Science Center, a mother duck had parked her babies on the granite blocks for some sun.

One savvy duckling snuggles up to mom.

In case you haven't had enough cute, here's a pile of duckling peeps (140k).

We then caught the 3:15 show of James Cameron's 3D IMAX film, Ghosts of the Abyss, at The Science Center. The 45-minute film was presented in polarized 3D on the giant IMAX screen. I thought most of the live action scenes weren't much improved by the 3D effect, but the schematic animation overlays of the Titanic and various underwater vehicles were excellent. Popular Science offers a slideshow of scenes from the film. And Film & Video Magazine has a good technical article about the production.

posted 8:50 PM +

Kai's power thought

"I think ... there ... 4am!"

—Kai Krause

Photos of the castles that selling off computer graphics toys bought are up on his German language web site. There are many, including myself, who eagerly await the return of Kai.

posted 1:17 AM +

Web design and UI-related keepers

Matt Webb: How to Write Effective Prompts in Conversational User Interfaces, Victor's oldie but goodie blurb gallery, which I've passed on to countless clients.

WebWord: Apple's document piles, UIE article on testing the three click rule, Site Navigation: Keeping It Under Control

Google: Generate tabbed interfaces with Javascript OOP, Dave Hyatt on tabs for multi-page systems, Devilish Details: Best Practices in Web Design

Zeldman: Ruler Favelet Updated

OSX Zone: Aqua Ruler for OS X

posted 11:31 PM +

Photo friday: water

This crocus among us is my first post to Photo Friday.

More recent water: edamame, foggy night, and icicle.

posted 11:13 PM +

Gawking Times Square

From a walk through Times Square last night: a view of The Paramount Building framed by the digital billboard in front of the studios of ABC's Good Morning America.

posted 11:56 PM +

Tasty tweaks on the old Titanium

With the temperature dropping 40+ degrees tomorrow from today's high in NY of 88, I may have a nice evening in my hotel room to play with all these new tweaks on my Apple PowerBook.

I'm ecstatic over the tabs in the newest beta of Safari. It doesn't bother me too much that the tabs are oriented "upsidedown," but it did take some practice to avoid clicking on the close tab icon while selecting between tabs. It was also nice to hear that the latest OS update, 10.2.5, can be purchased on a CD that rolls together all the incremental updates since the release of OS 10.2 (Jaguar).

Just in time to support a wave of information architecture deliverables is the support for the importing and exporting of Visio files in Omnigraffle 3 Pro. I'll be installing the update tomorrow, and testing several complex diagrams back and forth between my PC desktop at work and the PowerBook. Since Omnigraffle is more "designer friendly," I imagine I'll do the construction of new symbols and drawing parts in Omnigraffle first.

If Then Software has released a donationware utility, PDF U 1.0, that does all the grunt code customization necessary to activate the hidden PDF services in the print dialog such as E-mailing a PDF. The installation using the utility was quick and clean, and there's an option to uninstall.

I've been repeatedly inspired by the immersive full-screen panoramas at Hans Nyberg's Panoramas.DK. Since I've been carrying around a fisheye converter lens for the Nikon Coolpix, I decided it was high time I tried out one of the cubic VR authoring tools. I'm about to install PTMac, which puts a user-friendly UI on top of Helmut Dersh's PanoTools. There are several places around Lower Manhattan I have in mind to photograph in spherical VR.

And one weekend soon when I'm back at my desktop iMac and DVD burner, I want to try out forty-two, a DVD transcoding utility that will RIP movies from DVDs to play as DiVX on the desktop, or to down-convert to MPEG on VideoCD.

posted 11:35 PM +

Photo friday inspires

 

 

Molly, October 2002

 

This week's Photo Friday challenge theme "skin" reminded me of this image I made last year. I didn't have time to really go out and shoot to meet the challenge in a timely way, so I am just posting it here. In the future, I'll be able to make an image specifically for the week's theme.

Last fall, I wanted to work on photographing more people—women in particular. If you scroll back through the curiousLee archives, you'll see mostly landscapes and macro images. Because I tend to be introverted and introspective, you won't find me poking my camera into people's personal space too often; though I'm fine shooting candids and groups at gatherings. Making the leap to creating more images of people was about overcoming an internal block. Since I've shared my photos far and wide as a form of social currency, people are eager to see my new work, and getting participation of subjects turned out to be as simple as asking.

My choice to focus on women was because I've found they are much more eager to participate and explore poses than men. With most men, I'm lucky to get a couple images before they ask if I'm done yet. I also decided to recruit subjects by asking friends, and one of first project portraits was of Tricia. But I also wanted to investigate hiring models to work in a studio environment. So the photo of Molly above, who hires herself out as a figure model, is from a two-hour session in the MICA photo studio last October. I spent way too much time preparing lighting equipment for the shoot only to end up just opening a window to work with natural light. I used my Nikon Coolpix 995, and a simple black velvet backdrop.

This self-assigned theme got sidetracked when the consulting assignment in New York was signed and most of my free time was eaten up in travel and hotel living. I did manage some interesting images of my mom and grandmother during visits to them, but now that the NY engagement is winding down, I'm looking forward to picking up momentum on this theme again.

posted 11:46 AM +

100 little soaps

Tonight is my 100th night of hotel living in Manhattan since I began consulting on information architecture at AIG's Corporate eBusiness group. I started staying at The Best Western Seaport Inn, and after a month, moved about eight blocks to The Club Quarters Downtown at the corner of Wall and Pine. I typically arrive from hometown Baltimore after train and taxi rides on Sunday nights, and check out Friday mornings to return home that evening.

As I lie here in the bed of room 1803 with my PowerBook on my belly, I'm reflecting on some of the great and good aspects of hotel living:

• Hosting nine smart and friendly information architects in my room for the monthly IA Salon
• Ordering books on the run from BN.com with my Sidekick, and having the shipment automagically appear the same day on the writing desk of my room upon my return
• Carlos, who picks up my luggage every Friday morning for weekend storage
• Same day service for dry cleaning
• Take out food delivered in 20 minutes to my door and billed to my hotel account
• Free WiFi in every room at The Club Quarters

And some not-so-great things:

• Checking into a different room every week
• Weird noises and cigarette smoke from the adjacent room
• Inadequate heat in the clothes dryer in the laundrette on the 3rd floor
• Low water pressure and lukewarm water in some of the showers
• Little soaps

But above all, as great as being in New York City can be some days, I miss my wife, my puppy dog and normal life in Baltimore.

Good thing I'm loving my work, and that a happy end is in sight.

posted 10:16 PM +

Big cold place

In response to my last post, Eric wonders why you'd need money in Antartica. I Googled McMurdo Station and learned that during the summer months (our winters), there are 1100 people living there doing scientific research or support. The station is a small town with a cafeteria, post office, and barbershop. Since the installation is run by the U.S. Government, the basic needs for living are free but Dome Slugs can spend their ATM cash on the nightlife.

After collecting these links, I ended up reading Big Dead Place and laughed my ass off.

I wonder if there's any information architecture work down there.

posted 11:17 PM +

Most remote ATM

From Fast Company's 10 things You Always Wanted To Know About Money (and can't afford not to ask):

These days, ATMs outnumber bank branches by more than four to one. Cruise ships have ATMs. The U.S. Navy started putting ATMs on warships in 1988 to make cash accessible to sailors, and 144 ships now have them. Americans do more than 1.1 billion ATM transactions a month -- which breaks down to 26,000 transactions a minute.

Perhaps the most remote U.S.-related ATM is operated by Wells Fargo Bank. It's located at McMurdo Station, a U.S. base in Antarctica. It's so remote that Erick Chiang, head of polar research support for the National Science Foundation, offers the ATM's coordinates when you ask, Well, where is it? "It's about 78 degrees south, longitude 166 degrees east," he says.

Chiang, who has been to McMurdo several times, says that the ATM is connected to the big global networks with McMurdo's full-time satellite link. "It even operates during the winter months," he says, when the station is cut off from the rest of the world and staffed by just 250 people.

I think I'll have to perk my camera to look for strange ATM locations here in New York City.

posted 11:27 PM +

Another scene from hell ...

I was packing for my train ride back to Manhattan this afternoon when I caught a story on the latest incident of friendly fire in the Iraq war. John Simpson, a seasoned war reporter working for the BBC, was 10 yards away from a mistaken airstrike explosion. The BBC crew was tailing a convoy of U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters when one of the U.S. officers called an airstrike to take out a threatening Iraqi tank. Two F15 fighters released a bomb on the convoy instead of the tank. 18 were killed and 45 injured. The BBC team survived with minor injuries but lost their interpreter.

A BBC story serves up streaming video (RealPlayer required) of the tape I saw. The first few seconds burned onto my retina one of the most graphically-powerful sequences I've seen of this war. A waist-level camera angle shows the cameraman's face for a couple seconds. His head leaves the frame, replaced immediately by a couple vivid red blood drips (presumably his). The biggest droplet drips downword as the camera pans across the smoke-filled scene. A few seconds later, the blood was smeared away by a finger.

I've selected some key frames to create a storyboard that is as strong as any graphic novel page, but what we're seeing is too real, and too far from over. These images will haunt me for a while. Click on the image above if you dare.

posted 11:31 PM +

WiFi in the Lower 'hood

The New York Times reported today that the Alliance for Downtown New York is launching free WiFi service in several parks and public spaces in Lower Manhattan on May 1. The service is modeled after NYC Wireless at Bryant Park. The locations are:

• City Hall Park
  
• South Street Seaport
  
• Bowling Green (by the bull sculpture)
  
• Vietnam Veterans Plaza on Water Street north of Broad
  
• Liberty Plaza at Broadway and Liberty Street (near Ground Zero)
  
• Rector Park in Battery Park City (overlooking the Hudson River and Jersey City)

The MTA offers an excellent, super detailed PDF map (180k) of Lower Manhattan in case you need help finding the parks in relation to subway and ferry stops.

My current contract at AIG ends around May 9th (but is likely to be extended), so I'll be around long enough to test out all the locations. All of Lower Manhattan is within a 15 minute walk from my hotel off Wall Street.

My favorite WiFi hotspot will probably be South Street Seaport, where I hope the signal will wrap around the pavillion to the promenade facing the Brooklyn Bridge. As I walk the hotspots, I'll continue my ubicomp digital zoom photo series.

posted 11:33 PM +

Way over New York at night

NASA's Earth Science & Image Analysis Office recently released this heartstoppingly beautiful image of a moonlit New England featuring the lights of New York City and Long Island. The image was taken back in January by an astronaut aboard the Space Station. Sadly, the NASA source page presents the image upside-down and in poor quality. A fairly large version can be downloaded, but you need to request a URL via e-mail. The high-resolution digital original is not available on the site. So I processed the image in Photoshop to show here, and I offer a larger 48K version. If you want my processed original, drop me an e-mail.

posted 11:58 PM +

DENIM updated

I got an e-mail notice today that DENIM, UC Berkeley's Group for User Interface Research's web design sketching tool, has been updated for Windows and UNIX platforms. I'd been wondering what became of the effort and it's nice to see that the app is still being enhanced. It's tricky to explain exactly what DENIM does, so take a look at this old curiousLee post. My Wacom tablet is back in Baltimore, so this is also a note to myself to pack the tablet this weekend so I can tinker with the new DENIM next week.

posted 11:53 PM +

Photogenic Portland

Here are the tourist photos from our first trip to Portland, Oregon for the IA Summit. We really only experienced a tiny selection of the delights of the city in the one afternoon we had to explore. The downtown area was wonderfully human-scaled and very walkable. Most of the photos are from a magical walk through the Portland Classical Chinese Gardens in Chinatown. Though it was cloudy and rainy most of the weekend, the diffused light was perfect to photograph the wetted-down gardens. I made a couple trips to Powell's Technical Books, and picked up a copy of Robert Horn's Mapping Hypertext along with a couple other books I'll write about later. Between the cloudy weather, and attending the conference, I never saw the mountains around the city until my plane took off late Monday morning. But the brief appearances of the snow-covered peaks made for impressive parting pictures.

My IA Summit images are all up on Boxes and Arrows. Some of my photos illustrate the two meaty wrapup articles produced by dedicated BA staff and contributors (part 1, part 2). Thanks to all who wrote or blogged to compliment me on the image of Stewart Brand.

posted 11:55 PM +

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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
2003: 01.02.03.04.05.06

 

 

 

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The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. [?]