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The personal web log of Mike Lee, a web information architect living and working "I surf as much as I eat." curiousLee in...   Hiptop Nation Technorati GeoURL Blogstreet Daypop Stats Photo Friday 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 2003: 01.02.03.04.05.06
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Thursday, May 29, 2003
Remote control husband
I'm getting lists of things to do from Amy's Sidekick to mine, so while I won't be posting here until the weekend, I am moblogging.
Saturday, May 24, 2003
One last late night walk in the 'hood
After a multi-hour mind meld with Tanya at Pasha, I took one last walk around the neighborhood where I've lived most of the last six months.  Around the corner from my hotel, I studied the mirror image of The New York Stock Exchange in a puddle of rain water.  A few blocks further west, the steady rain caught the floodlights of Ground Zero creating a magical glow around what was once the darkest place on Earth.  Along the pedestrian walkway nearby, I discovered a thousand paper cranes folded by school children. This healing act is displayed for a city that has recovered, and whose spirit is stronger than ever. I'm giving this blog a rest for a week or so while I go on vacation ...
Friday, May 23, 2003
One view of work I won't miss
 Well, I'm just about all packed up to end an incredible odyssey practicing my bag of tricks at the highest level of Corporate America. I'll ease out of Manhattan tomorrow on the Amtrak train while all my junk from the office and the hotel are in transit via FedEx and UPS. I'm looking forward to my return to New York for a week next month as a visiting consultant. After my vacation next week, my view changes from what's pictured above to this and this. It'll be nice to wear shorts and sneakers in to work again. But I hear I'll be starting up on a new project for a company that makes software for the insurance industry. Arrggh!
Thursday, May 22, 2003
I've got your new search right here
 I rounded the corner of Wall and Pine on my way to the ferry this morning and bumped into the Yahoo Vampire. He's part of the ad campaign promoting their new search. This corner is near the entrance to Deutsche Bank. Bank ... blood bank ... vampire ... uh, I get it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
High on Brooklyn Heights
 Sighting AIG Headquarters' 70 Pine Building through the armillary at the end of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade tonight. This after taking a long Pause with James at Kapadokya.
New Yorkers look up to stars of all kinds
 Another photo post as I continue to be on the run with last-minute goodbyes to people and packing: I finally walked by the new Hayden Planetarium Monday night. It was quite a jewel to encounter on a beautiful night on the Upper West Side near Central Park. The dome of the planetarium looks like it's about to take flight. I didn't have my wide-angle lens, so this image is one I hastily pasted together in Photoshop from four separate frames.
Saturday, May 17, 2003
Bridge to a good time
 Friday night, I stayed a little later in the city to go with some co-workers to the DUMBO area of Brooklyn. This is a view of the Brooklyn Bridge in our taxi's rear view mirror. The clock on the red building is at the top of the historic Eagle Warehouse Building. Liz was telling me about the incredible loft apartment that sits behind the glass-faced clock.  We went for some yummy pizza at Grimaldi's Pizzeria (which was right in front of Eagle Warehouse), and walked down to the Riverside Cafe so I could take some photos of the view of Lower Manhattan. The rain was starting up, so I didn't get to walk around around the promenade. Maybe next week.  My Brooklynite co-workers Liz and Sheryl, and Liz's husband John.
Detritous of a desk
 This week I've been busy writing for work, and in lots of meetings, so I haven't had much time to write for this blog. But I am still carrying my camera everywhere. Here are more photos: This is the state of my cubicle on the 7th floor of 90 Hudson in Jersey City. Since I'm a consultant, I never got a name plate. As possibly the only person in AIG's Manhattan or Jersey City offices with a long ponytail, I made a symbol sign a few months ago (at left in photo) to mark my cubicle. The stack of books to the right is about 90% of what I accumulated in the last six months working and living in New York. Needless to say, there are several shipments of boxes going out next week. Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Empire moon
 I was testing out my new Manfrotto Digi Tripod last night in front of 1333 Broadway (at West 35th) by stalking the rising moon over The Empire State Building. I wish I had bought this tripod weeks ago. When possible, locking down the camera on a tripod makes a huge difference in image quality. The Digi has just the right amount of weight to dampen camera shake, but is still small enough to carry over your shoulder. The Coolpix 995 sits quite nicely on top, and I also have rigged a Bogen Mini Clamp to one of the tripod legs to hold my Quantum Battery off-camera. The $99 tripod comes complete with a ball head and carrying case.
Noticing two weeks
I'm sitting here on the steps of the New York location of The Museum of the American Indian, which is by Bowling Green Park's free wireless. I had dinner again with old pal Chris, who told me more about the big project he's doing with Boeing. The aerospace giant is prototyping the placement of tasteful ad murals on the overhead storage bin doors of airliners. Chris' design firm is doing all the corporate identity and mural design, as well as lining up major ad sponsors. They hope to have the first ad-enabled plane aloft in the fall. It's hard to believe I've got less than two weeks left of my current routine of working and living in New York Monday through Fridays. My last day at AIG for a while is May 23rd. I'm coming back to New York for a week at the end of June or early July to orient my successor to the newly-created permanent role of information architect at AIG Corporate eBusiness. As a way of just settling back into life in Baltimore, I'm taking a week vacation as soon as I get back in town. This week and next, I have a lot of meetings with various teams to wrap up my current projects, and I have a bunch of books and gadgets to ship home. There are a thousand and one things in New York I'll miss—especially all the new friends I've made. But as Morry reminds me, New York isn't that far away from Baltimore, and it's not like I'm leaving forever. Before I plot a return, I'm going to enjoy sleeping in my own bed for a while.
Monday, May 12, 2003
City Hall wireless
 Here's another stop in my ongoing tour of WiFi hotspots. City Hall Park is one of the three new free hotspots in Manhattan sponsored by The Downtown Alliance. The fountain was restored in 1999, and is surrounded by four functioning replicas of gas lamps. I felt safe here and at Bowling Green with my laptop since both parks have city police assigned on foot patrol. The park is open until 1am, but next time, I'm going to stop in much earlier than midnight on a Sunday.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
America 24/7
 May recently posted in a couple places about a new project by the team that created the Day in the Life series of photography books. In an extension of the concept of professional photojournalists shooting intensively on a theme for one day, America 24/7 runs for a week all over the United States and invites amateurs and students to contribute to a national family album of American life. I'm pretty busy this week at AIG, but not too busy to try getting up a couple hours early one or more days to try the photo assignments. I've poked around the house for some extra pieces of photo gear to take back to Manhattan tonight. The project starts right after midnight tonight, so I'll be signing up as an amateur photographer, reviewing the suggested story ideas (I actually have a couple ideas already), and printing out some of the web resources such as the logo to carry around as pseudo press ID. If you visit the project site, be sure to check out the How It Works diagram. The Amateur Photographer's Toolkit page on the project site is actually a really good summary of the basic skills and procedures required to work as a photojournalist. If I can get my juices going to do this project, it will bring me back to the high I had in the mid-80s when I interned at National Geographic, and 1989 when I photographed Baltimore City for the Mayor's annual report. Saturday, May 10, 2003
E-mail warms the heart
Patricia Foy's 7th period business education class From: p.foy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Friday, May 09, 2003
Urban evenings
 It's a nice coincidence that this week's Photo Friday theme Urban applies to the photo of The Empire State Building I was prepping on the train tonight to post here. What I did in the last week of urban evenings in New York City: Sunday night: arrived at Penn Station and took a taxi down the West Side Highway to The Club Quarters Hotel. Waited for my luggage to come out of storage, and then crashed. Monday night: had take out chinese dinner, posted to Hiptop Nation about room 2003, made artsy autotraced images of some of my Sidekick photos, and did laundry. Tuesday night: went to Tanya's place in the Upper West Side for this month's IA Salon. Present were Bella, Anders, Karen (for the first time since last summer), and James. Bella and I have a cute schtick going now. Someone will pass around a new book, and when Bella gets it, she immediately flips to the back to inspect the quality of the index. There's always an interesting detail in the index or a problem, so she asks me to photograph a page to e-mail to her. The honor's all mine. Tanya realized that next month is the salon's one-year anniversary. Our fearless leader Victor is on travel. Wednesday night: had dinner at Cookies & Couscous with Morry Galonoy, who almost single-handedly runs WebProducers.org, and teaches at The New School University's Parsons School of Design. It turns out Morry's from Baltimore, and we know some of the same Baltimore web folks. We also kicked around the idea of my doing a workshop at Parsons. The night's conversation was deep and wide-ranging and lasted a few hours. I'm looking forward to our next mind meld. Thursday night: got lost in Queens on the E train, but eventually made it to Pashas for another dinner with Brenda and Chris. Chris gushed about the interesting new design project he's working on for Boeing. On the taxi ride back to my hotel, I flipped open my PowerBook, launched Macstumbler and did some wardriving. Here's my log file. Tonight: a team meeting ran late so I had to take a later train. I was really washed out when I finally got on board the Acela Express to head home to Baltimore. While tweaking the photo for this post, I chatted with the lady next to me who happened to be a broker with Aon Insurance. We talked shop for a while, and she asked me to e-mail her one of the fisheye photos of the Brooklyn Bridge that I'm using as my desktop wallpaper. Now: sleep so deep... Thursday, May 08, 2003
Smarties do artsy
Mike Popovic, creator of Hiptop Nation, tried out the artsy effect on some of his own Sidekick Images. I am particularly enchanted by his twilight image of tree branches (second one). Then interaction designer May Woo converted her famous hubcap photos, which resulted in contoured compositions that scream out to be reproduced at poster size. I think what tickles me about this trick is the transformation of these tiny iconized moments into impressionistic scenes that can be enlarged to monumental scale without additional loss of detail. It's a refreshing reversal in an age of relentless miniaturization. I just got access to a 42" poster printer at work today, so I am itching to run off some prints.
Monday, May 05, 2003
Tiny cell phone photos made artsy
Tired of the crappy quality of your cell phone camera images? Try autotracing them into posterized/vector format in a program like Flash MX. Other software that will work include Adobe Streamline, Macromedia Freehand, and CorelDraw. The results are quite pleasant! The links above are to the original Hiptop Nation mobile posts. A sample before and after image plus settings are in this 80k PDF file. Using the zoom tool in Acrobat Reader, you'll realize that the converted files would print beautifully in large formats.
The next sidekick
CNET brings news that the color version of T-mobile's Sidekick will arrive at the end of June. They also got their hands on a unit to write a review. Some of the new features include a faster processor, more RAM, somewhat longer battery life, color screen, and an optional camera attachment with a higher image resolution of 320x240 pixels. While the Handspring Treo 300 has much nicer build quality, I'm hooked on the very roomy Sidekick keyboard and will likely upgrade to the color unit. Plus my Sidekick is well worn from hundreds of miles of travel and much walking around New York City.
GEL wraps
Anil Dash offers up his impressions of the Good Experience Live Conference (more links to notes) held last Friday at The New York Historical Society. I heard lots of good stories about the day over dinner with wife Amy at Al Dente Restaurant. And as I had hoped, Amy took some notes of her own. Next month, she's off to DUX while I sleep for two weeks straight after my gig here in New York ends.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
WiFi is no bull!
 Wow, the CornerCast free wireless access is up and running on schedule here in Bowling Green Park in Lower Manhattan. I'm posting from one of the benches in the center of the park hoping to get this done before they kick me out when the park closes at 9pm. It's a nice, breezy night.  The signal even reaches all the way over to the bull sculpture! I've managed to post to Hiptop Nation too.
Usability testing in question
Via Ziya's post on the IA list, I just read Larry Constantine's excellent report on a panel held at CHI 2003 which questioned the role of usability testing. I am all over this: One major conclusion from the panel and the conference might be that usability testing is so entrenched in the canon of usability practice that no amount of counter-evidence will shake the faith of its true believers. An unbiased reading of the research results would suggest that no amount of testing is enough, a conclusion already well-established a quarter century ago within the software quality movement. The focus of software quality improvement is now on reducing the so-called injection rate, that is, avoiding problems in the first place. There is a limit to how many defects can be uncovered, cataloged, and analysed in a given number of sessions no matter what protocols one follows or how rapidly one iterates. The more problems lurking in the system to be tested, the more hopeless the fate of those who put their faith in testing.
Street access
 Lately, it's been easier to get WiFi access on the street than at the hotel where I haven't been able to connect with my laptop for the last two nights. Yesterday, I finally got a chance during lunch to walk over to Dean Betz's free wireless access point in the neighborhood behind our offices (roughly behind the big Goldman Sachs tower on the Jersey City waterfront). I tested out the signal with my laptop and PocketPC, and both worked fine. I watched the new Charlie's Angels trailer while standing on the street corner. It was a beautiful day out, but unfortunately, there are no convenient places to sit and surf around the corner of Washington and Essex. I'm taking the ferry over to the World Financial Center to see if the Downtown Alliance's free access nodes are ready at City Hall, Bowling Green, or Rector Place.
SUAC to you too
The managers in our eBusiness group (which include our creative director) enjoyed Jeff Veen's IA Jargon Watch post, but one correction came back: the acronym SUAC should not stand for "Shut Up And Color," but rather "Shut Up And Code."
Flat-out desire
In his new column in Metropolis Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes about his new love for flat panel LCD screens: Flat-panel screens have a kind of magical aura. Even though you knew there was nothing except a picture tube and wires in that bulky mass behind a conventional television, there was still something inherently logical about having a three-dimensional mass to back up a three-dimensional image on the screen. TV is somewhat mysterious anyway. It was an accepted understanding that the big box contained all the weird gizmos that made it possible--like the unseen stuff inside the magician's cabinet that sits underneath the woman he saws in half. But a flat-panel screen just appears. It is the woman not only being sawed in half but floating simultaneously in midair. The flat panel is the illusion of depth with nothing to support it--a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface floating in three-dimensional space. When you ponder the metaphysics of it, it's a much more interesting Chinese box than a regular television. And it isn't being projected from the front or back, above or below. The image just dances on the screen as if it created itself. And what a wonderful image it is--crisp and intensely colored (as long as you don't look at it from an angle).I feel the same illusion of depth without visible means of support when I flip open the screen of my PowerBook at a wireless access node. The screen image opens into a vast online world much like Wile E. Coyote's Acme Portable Hole could create a temporary opening through solid objects.
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