 |
|||
|
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
 [?] |
Saturday, March 29, 2003
Meeting the work of the master
[Some thoughts and images on the Leonardo Da Vinci show originally posted to my Hiptop Nation blog last night on my train ride home.]
I got through about two thirds of the Leonardo show before they closed the gallery. It was a privilege to soak in the breadth and brilliance of his drawings and paintings. My nose hovered in the space above paper where, over 500 years ago, the Master's fingers stroked details small and large. Most people engaged the artwork up close or with magnifying glasses, but I reveled in the oblique perspective where Da Vinci's drawing process could be seen. In the dim gallery light, I saw sketch stylus marks, compass needle holes, scuffs, and the rich textures of the paints and paper. This is a surface dimension that's impossible to perceive in book reproductions. I applaud the show organizers who worked 10 years to convince various owners to release these delicate pieces to American light. Here are some Leonardo Da Vinci-related links:
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
IA summit echoes
 Stewart Brand delivers his keynote speech in front of a projected diagram of his pace layers of change. Culture is on his mind, and nature is in his heart, but he's always mindful of the Long View. While I'm still working on my conference notes, I thought I'd post other bits as they became available. PeterV has posted some links to some folks' conference thoughts. And over on the SIGIA list, a long thread has started on the Wayfinding and Navigation in Digital Spaces research panel. I was in another parallel session, and even while the panel was in progress, Amy e-mailed me via Sidekick to say that it was a juicy one. At the Friday night reception, Mark Bernstein told me that he was going to make his "angry villagers" statement to challenge IAs' fixation on heirarchy. Well the villagers blinked and put down their torches. My lovely wife just sent me her notes from the keynote, wayfinding panel, and other sessions. With some HTML anchors sprinkled in, here are all her notes by popular request. Updated 3.27: Added a couple more links to the Wayfinding Panel section of Amy's notes, and fixed Michael Magoolaghan's name and URL. Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Sublime beauty in my takeout dinner
 While eating my udon beef noodle soup tonight, I spotted this intricate microscape in the condensation-covered plastic lid of my edamame. You can see a bean pod in the water droplets to the left. Processing and posting this image was tonight's food for the soul.
PeterMe 2.0
Peter Merholtz is popping up again with a relaunch of his long-running blog PeterMe.com. I hope this doesn't mean fewer appearances and thoughtful commentary on the SIGIA list where recently, thoughtful commentary has been a rare treat. The return of Peter's blog is actually a net gain because during his hiatus, he started a Gawker-inspired local blog for the city of Berkeley, CA called Beastblog. Now Peter's acting locally and thinking globally again.
Stockholm syndromes
Sniggle.net explains the Stockholm Syndrome and goes on to say: The [Stockholm] syndrome explains what happens in hostage-taking situations, but can also be used to understand the behavior of battered spouses, members of religious cults, Holocaust victims, household pets, and perhaps even users of Internet Explorer. I think it may also help explain the popularity of government and of the mass institutionalization of young people. I smiled to myself when I saw the reference to Microsoft Internet Explorer. Monday, March 24, 2003
Back and beat
 I'm back in New York tonight and crashing to rest up before diving back in on the vision doc and prototype of the AIG.com corporate gateway. The summit was once again an inspiring experience. I placed still more faces to names, and enjoyed a much more diverse roster of presenters. Mining my hand notes and handouts should help me draft highlights to post with more photos tomorrow night.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Summit bound
After I knock out some memos this morning, I'm heading out from Newark airport to the IA Summit in Portland, Oregon. I'm looking forward to meeting up with friends old and new, and learning from the rich lineup of presentations. For those that can't attend this year, Adam Greenfield and Joshua Ellis have generously set up a blog for the conference to which a bunch of us will be posting. Regardless of whether you are attending or not, contact Adam or Joshua via the blog if you want to contribute. As appropriate, I'll be posting here and to my Hiptop Nation blog too.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Day and night visualized
 Now that war's on, I'm more acutely aware of how the campaign is contained by the edges of day and night. To keep track, I've installed the HourWorld sun clock for Mac OS X on my laptop. There's a similar app for Windows, and a java applet on a web site. Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Information architecture deliverables go mobile!
Most of Jesse James Garrett's visual vocabulary for information architecture diagramming is finally available as a symbol palette on PocketDraw for the PocketPC platform. PocketDraw is like a baby-sized version of Visio or Omnigraffle that is designed to work with a PDA stylus and small screen interface. Thursday, March 13, 2003
The day the earth got unwired...
WiFi News reports on the kickoff of Intel's $300 million ad campaign to promote its Centrino wireless laptop chip technology. It looks like I missed the Centrino Men at the Times Square McDonalds. Slate goes on to say: If personal computers were the first stage of the digital revolution and the Internet the second, then Wi-Fi is the third stage, letting you take your computer and the 'Net wherever you go. Once you've tasted it, it's hard to go without, even if it works only at home or at the office. "It's like having sex with my computer--I'm all over the house!" a neighbor instant-messaged me after installing her own base station. Intel expects Centrino to be a Pentium-sized hit that will sell new computers, and you can't blame Wi-Fi evangelists for being excited. But to pull the plug and become a Wi-Fi evangelist yourself, you don't need a $1,500 Centrino laptop. A $50 card for your current one will do.Seeing the Centrino logo everywhere made me wonder if Matt's Warchalking symbol had become prevalent, would it have been swept away by Intel's brandchalking juggernaut?
3DMeNow for only $15
I recently rediscovered 3DMeNow which is a Windows application that takes a front and side view of a person's head and converts it into a 3D animated model that you can present on the web in a Java applet. Well now they're selling it for only $15 (down from $49). It runs really well on Virtual PC 6 and Windows 2000 on my Powerbook G4 867. My first project was an attempt at making a Talking Jakob Head, but it's not working out too well (76kb JPEG). Fair warning to my photo subjects to avoid letting me take your profile...
The new fly on the wall
 Slashdot reports on Xport, a web server that fits inside the space of an RJ-45 ethernet connector! The device supports all the basic protocols and ports you'd expect and has 384kb on board memory from which you can run Java applets. It draws 3.3 VDC, so battery power options are many. Add an image sensor module and microphone with A/D converter, and let the world bloom with nano-webcams.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Extra value surfing
I'm blogging from the McDonalds at 724 Broadway in the East Village on the first day of the free wireless access with meal purchase promotion. As I type into the Blogger interface, it occurs to me that I'm bringing a new level of meaning to the tag line that's been on this blog for the last 2 1/2 years: I surf as much as I eat. My meal of choice was the Extra Value #9 consisting of Fillet 'o Fish and Fries with Diet Coke. The manager didn't understand what I was asking for at first, but remembered that access cards were in her office out back. Signing on was a snap. I scratched the back of the card with a coin to expose the password which I entered along with the randomly-generated user name. Once on, I filled out a terms of service agreement. Clicking to agree opened a big countdown timer in a floating window and I was ready to surf in the other open browser window. As edgy as posting via WiFi from a fast food joint might be for a geek like me, the rest of the patrons are oblivious to what I'm doing. Just to complete the bridge between GPRS and WiFi, I posted to Hiptop Nation too. I'm done with this post after some fiddling in Photoshop with 15 minutes to spare.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
internet.for.the.masses...
wandering.around.the.west.side.of.manhattan
I was only able to surf the help files, and the Cometa and McDonalds web sites. Login and passwords for full access will not be distributed on scratch-off cards until tomorrrow. The promotional flyer says you can just purchase one-hour increments of access without the meal for $3 each (you need one new card for each hour). The promotion ends June 30th. More later this week if I get back to one of the restaurants.
McWiFi
I just saw that McDonalds is offering WiFi access in 10 of its stores in Manhattan. You get one hour of access with the purchase of a combo meal and then you're charged $3/hr. thereafter. The article also goes on to summarize other businesses' plans for rolling out WiFi (Borders, Hilton Hotels, etc.). This sounds like a pretty good deal given that a combo meal costs around $5. I'm only in a McDonalds a couple times a month, but it will be handy to have this additional access option (along with the many others springing up). Even if you hate the food, I suggest downing the drink and giving the meal to a homeless person.
Friday, March 07, 2003
The IA Shack
 So after being on assignment in New York City for over four months, I came back to my Baltimore office Monday to discover that I've been given the corner office with a view of The Baltimore Inner Harbor and Fells Point. The room is actually a narrow space left over next to the company president's office. The space was originally going to be used as a resource room. As you can see, there are still a bunch of boxes to be moved, but Mr. President says I'm even getting a new desk. I actually had my eye on the space a while back, and was planning to name it The IA Shack, but then when we rearranged the office last fall, the space had to be sacrificed for storage. I'll get to use The Shack maybe one or two days a week when my schedule permits me to work for the New York client from Baltimore.
A yellow arrow indicates the IA Shack's window, which overlooks a 1/4 acre promenade where water taxis stop.
Thursday, March 06, 2003
NY IA salon: books we love
At Peter's place last night, this month's information architecture salon guests brought some of their favorite books to show or share. Victor brought Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference from his office. I've already ordered my copy of this profusely-illustrated compendium of information design examples. And one of Victor's first technology book inspirations was Bruce Tognazzini's book Tog on Software Design. I distributed handouts of three pages from Paula Scher's Make It Bigger where she diagrams the design comp presentation process, and talks about the dangers of dumb people with energy. I also passed around Mario Garcia's pleasant little book Pure Design. Garcia is the Yoda of newspaper design and recently redesigned The Wall Street Journal's paper edition. Karen brought a Bottomless Bag from which she pulled an amazing pile of oldies but goodies:
Tanya offered Cognition: Exploring the Structure of the Mind and The Humane Interface. And since Peter was on home turf, he simply pulled some favorites from his bookshelf:
UPDATE: Thomas tosses a few more onto the pile. FOOTNOTE: Boxes and Arrows invited some IAs to write about their favorite books back in December.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
back to... current ... top
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
powered by... Blogger Pro. The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. [?] |
||
Update: I cleaned up this post slightly when I got back to my hotel room because the lack of word spaces caused my table layout to explode. I posted to Hiptop Nation at various times this evening from 
