Extranet overview
John Rhodes provides an overview of extranets and hits some great points.
...most people like self-service. An extranet facilitates this activity, if you design it correctly.
John Rhodes provides an overview of extranets and hits some great points.
...most people like self-service. An extranet facilitates this activity, if you design it correctly.
In reading Brian Livingston's Symbian cell-through, I found it contained a great intro paragraph...
I'VE traveled to this German city to cover developments of interest to Windows users at CeBit, indisputably the world's largest computer trade show. More than three-quarters of a million souls wander its 27 convention halls each year. Regrettably, only 1 percent of CeBit's visitors are Americans. That's a shame because hot technology often bursts forth in the European market first, taking a year or two to be adapted for the States.
It seems that CeBit and not Comdex is the big tech show in the world. Not only is it the biggest, but the on the leading edge.
I took a step today that I have not done in a long long time. I wrote Congress. Yes, I was a fellow in the U.S. Senate, which was a wonderful experience and gave me a strong coating of cynicism. This EFF Congressional Alert regarding the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I have a feeling I will be writing much more to my friends on The Hill (Mike you there and listening?).
To understand more read Matt's using Lincoln to rebut Michael Eisner, Scott discussing not being able to provide his music freely, Rebecca's outlining of the case against the CBDTPA, and Paul's outlining the issue and steps also.
In my note to Congress, using the online form at the Senate Judiciary site I tried to remind those in Congress that America was founded on the pursuit of freedom, the provision of a free competitive marketplace, and a fertile environment for innovation. The CBDTPA essentially is a grossly un-American pursuit as it removes competition, freedom of expression, and grossly inhibits innovation. The law does try to protect those in business that do not have the bright minds to know how to adapt and use technology to their advantage. These business have forgotten how to compete and forgotten how to innovate. The irony is Disney was founded on free content and technical innovation. Eisner is an embarrassment to the Disney tradition as he is trying to pimp Congress into protecting his inadequacy as a business leader and innovator. Congress should not be protecting the powerful that have lost their ability to stay in power.
America was built on innovators like the Edisons, the Wright Brothers, Fords, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, etc. Innovation and competition is what has kept America at the forefront of the global marketplace. Innovation and competition have provided wealth that America should share. Innovation and competition sparked the skills to conquer disease. Innovation and competition gave us great technology that allows us to investigate and advance science and learn how to take better care of the Earth.
The Bill proposed by Hollings should be called, in all honesty, "The Anti-American Way Bill".
Beginning with a discussion with Stewart on Peterme and the encouragement of Lane in another discussion to look for a metaphor other than navigation that could better explain what we do on the Web. Seeing Stewart walk by at SXSW after I had seen some of Josh Davis visual plays I combined the discussion with Stewart with the magnetic attraction Josh showed, which began my thinking about a metaphor of attraction. Magnetism seems like what happens when we put a search term in Google, it attracts information that is draw to the term on to your screen.
Come see where else this metaphor can go in this poorly written for draft of the metaphor of attraction. This is posted to begin a collaboration to dig back and move forward, if that is where this is to go. The writing will improve and the ideas will jell into a better presentation over the next few weeks.
This year's SXSW Interactive was very different than most conferences in that the best swag was the personal swag. My prized possessions are Scott's mini CD with Walkingbirds songs, a CamWorld t-shirt, a Kuro5shin t-shirt, and a ton of amazing business cards and postcards. I felt like such a loser with out anything to offer.
I am sitting in the Austin Airport using an 802.11b wireless connection to collect and read e-mail and to post here. The world of wireless connectivity has been kick ass this trip. The SXSWi guerilla wireless efforts by Cory (boingboing) Doctorow were greatly appreciated and widely used and many of us would offer our first child or at least a beer for his fine efforts.
Another observation of this trip is the insanely wide use of Apple laptops. They were everywhere at the conference, it was almost as if they were in the conference bag of goodies. Those of us on Mac had little problem grabbing wireless connections and were showing our pictures to others we had taken. By the end of the conference many of the Windows folks were cursing their non-compliant and non-easy to adopt laptops. Not only were the graphic folks using Apple, but the tech geeks were too (this is where I fit in, believe me). Even Doc Searls was Mac'n around. In the land of Dell, Apple proved to be king.
I am somewhat saddend to be heading home and leaving old and many new friends behind. SXSW is a place were passion for the Internet rules and sharing our passion, knowledge, and experience is what it is all about. Hair color, age, gender, skin color, or location is not important as the passion binds us together. We are all out to make the Web and Internet a better place to be. To a person we all have become much better people because of the free sharing and passion. Jack Vallenti and his trying to label us terrorists is not only poor sighted but a fat lie. We share to grow and learn. Jack only want to play his Anderson card and shred our reality. (There will be more later to clarify and to help you understand what I mean by these comments.) Liars and fear mongers are trying to steal the truth, but Austin let truth ring out. You bet your sweet bippy, I'll be back.
I love all those I met and whose paths I crossed and wish all safe journies home. Keep the passion alive.
The mind is functioning and also completely blown from watching and listening to Josh Davis. The world of visual, digital, mathematical, and relational information has broken more synapses than I new were functioning today and seemed to have spawned new channels for information to flow and be processed. In other words, my mind and concept of the world has just been altered again. Not only do I know have an understanding of what somebody means when they say the words that comprise the name Josh Davis, but I have a whole new way to look at information and human responses.
One of the items presented was a visual and audio presentation of network activity. Not only could one visually watch the activity and interaction of those on the network and watching what activities the users on the network were performing and showing their IP address. This visual presentation was augmented with audio that dynamically corresponded to the actions. A sys admin could sit and monitor a network aurally and not watch a monitor. Like a mother and a child, a sys admin could emotively interact with the sounds of the network. A user on the network has saturated the bandwidth the downloads, and the sounds emitted could trigger and emotive response from the sys admin to nurse the network back to a healthy state for all users. As many of us hear our cars and listen to the pitch the subway train makes pulling into the station, which indicates how full the train is so we know where to position our selves on the platform (usually lower tone>es indicate fuller trains and the lowest rumble on a seemingly empty train is the money car on the money train).
I think is it finally time to put together an edit entry tool for this tool. I have been using the MyPHPAdmin provided by my site host to go in and edit the entries when there are errors or updates needed. This has not been a great method when I lacking on sleep, as I have been here in Austin.
There are most likely going to be some small to moderate changes to this site in a few weeks. I have started working with modifying the left navigation bar to add more local and global elements (area of the site specific or applies to the whole site). The front page is also in dire need of re-contenting and possibly a small redesign. There is a CSS problem with font sizes here in Off the Top that I really want to address also. I may implement the comment system here soon, which has been running in test mode quite well. There will be a central photo page added in the very near future. A book list page for developers will also be added soon. The largest change will be to the links page, in that it will be changed from a hand built page to a content management system generated page.
One thing that I have had the benefit of viewing and discussing while at SXSWi is Flash. Folks from Macromedia have shown their soon to be released version of Flash. Flash MX (as it is named) has some very good new features, in its providing common Web development objects to help developers create scroll bars and the like very easily. The application seems to provide object or extensions to Flash that streamline the process to building something usable and consistent in Flash.
The best new feature of Flash is content can now be made accessible for those with sight disabilities. This is greatly helpful as Flash is largely a visual information development and presentation tool. The information is now usable by site readers that read information aloud stored in Flash. This has been a large hinderance for many folks who would like to adopt Flash into their development tool belt, but had restrictions that limited the use of Flash because it locked out a segment of the users who had visual disabilities.
There is one large element in Flash that is completely disappointing still. The information is not accessible for reuse. All Flash can provide is visual information presentation, which restricts a user's ability to copy and paste or to have the information machine readable. The information is locked in an unusable format for these purposes. What does this affect? If a hotel provides their phone number and address in their Flash presentation the user can not copy and paste the information out into their PIM (Outlook, Access, Palm desktop, etc.), to an e-mail, or text message that the user could read from their PDA or cell phone (given messaging capabilities). The user would also be restricted from grabbing the information to put together a matrix from which to make decisions or to supply to others to make their comparisons. The locking of information in Flash requires the user to retype the information provided, which introduces the ability for errors in the information that was carefully crafted.
Not only do human users have the inability to re-purpose the information, which is a great benefit to those providing the information, but machines are precluded from accessing the information. If the same hotel wants to be included in their city's chamber of commerce listing on the CCoC Web site the hotel information can not be easily extracted by the CCoC as it could be from HTML (using an id tag) or XML. The information is locked again in an unusable and un-reusable format. The creators of the content lose, and could possibly lose big by not having information that is easily reused. This becomes increasingly important with the growing use of Web Services that rely on machine readable or machine accessible information.
Why the hotel scenario? Macromedia used the hotel demonstration to highlight some of their great new features. As I watched the presentation I kept wondering if the information was still unusable for purposes other than reading or having the information read to the user. It was later confirmed the information was still un-reusable, but Macromedia is also aware of this strong down side to the information presentation and is working hard at fixing the issues.
The evening provided good entertainment, a wonderful gattering at the EFF party. Once again many folks adjourned to the Omni Hotel lobby for the after-hours social gathering. I spent much of the time just listening to conversation and occasionally partaking. Of intrigue was Rusty of Kuro5hin and Adam of Brian of Slashdot discussion development of site tools that will help a dynamic site fly, keep in mind all these tools are in Perl.
I think is it finally time to put together an edit entry tool for this tool. I have been using the MyPHPAdmin provided by my site host to go in and edit the entries when there are errors or updates needed. This has not been a great method when I lacking on sleep, as I have been here in Austin.
There are most likely going to be some small to moderate changes to this site in a few weeks. I have started working with modifying the left navigation bar to add more local and global elements (area of the site specific or applies to the whole site). The front page is also in dire need of re-contenting and possibly a small redesign. There is a CSS problem with font sizes here in Off the Top that I really want to address also. I may implement the comment system here soon, which has been running in test mode quite well. There will be a central photo page added in the very near future. A book list page for developers will also be added soon. The largest change will be to the links page, in that it will be changed from a hand built page to a content management system generated page.
I would gladly buy 10 more hours a day from somebody so that I could sleep and still have time to take in everything at SXSW. Last night's entertainment included Fray Cafe 2 which was utterly amazing. The stories were completely moving me to laughter, tears, joy, and understanding. It truely was a wonderful live storytelling event.
The SXSW panel that amazed me yesterday was the first independent content panel, which included Jeffery Zeldman, Derek Powazek, Josh Davis, and the creator of Born Magazine. The interaction on the panel, not only about independent content production, but design understanding pushed my small envelope. I think it was the Josh that opened my eyes farther than they have been in a while. This panel brought to life what I love about SXSW, I grow more comfortable knowing what I do know and that I definately understand more than I give myself credit for knowing, but also it kick my butt with the knowledge that I have only scratched the surface of what is possible.
I want more time to just sleep and time to hang out and absorb in the great conversations and spend more time with friends who view the world very much like they way I do. SXSW provides a wonderful feeling of belonging to a tribe of people that are passionate about this digital connectivity tool of the Web and Internet. Passion is the key and the jam packed rooms yesterday were a testament that the passion is very much alive.
There was another panel, or more aptly a discussion lead by Lane Becker revolving around the understanding of what the Internet has really brought us and how has it really changed the way we do things. The topic also drifted on to the fears of that is great about the Internet being legislated away by folks that really do not have even the most basic grasp of how this medium for interaction, information sharing and gathering, entertainment, and commerce can be moved forward. There was a lot of discussion that we only have hit the tip of the iceberg and that we really do not have a solid grasp of what just happened in the past six years.
Pictures may be up soon, or then again...
Ah, it is good to be back in Austin at SXSW. Last evening's gathering of a multitude of folks at the Iron Catus, a gathering orchestrated Brad, for dinner and drinks then on to karaoke. Austin is a tad bit humid at the moment, which is doing my allergies and infection some good.
The good conversations have begun and the mind is whurring. This is a very good thing. I am hoping to post some more while I am here and hoping to post photos, but these efforts take some time and well, this is Austin and SXSW.
Jesse has posted the final installment of his ia/recon. The whole of the series is on one page, which eases reading and following along. I like where Jesse ended up, which is with hunches and working toward building better tools. I can not say that I see things that differently. I am walking some folks through this now teaching the skills and having them grasped is not as easy as I thought. I use IA as one of the skills in my tool belt to help build sites that work better for the users. I use IA to build information applications that are easier to use and more "intuitive".
I did not know what I was doing was IA, but is was how a target audience was defined in communication and also the tasks that I had gone through to develop software (first on the client side and then used it in my own tool belt and had good results). Learning how users think about information and processes then grouping and structuring content toward the results of the research seemed like a natural step. I used to teach Sunday school and learning how to tie lessons to understandable chunks of information was a very important skill to learn. I have always looked at trying to help build a more efficient flow of information between the two or more parties involved in the data/information/knowledge transaction. The best way to ease the information flow is to understand the user and how they consume information. What is the mind set of the user that comes to the information transaction? How do they think of the information? Where will logically place the information in their personal information repository so that they may make use of that information. Half the trick to being knowledgeable if having an easy way retrieve and access the information store, be that stored in someone's mind, in a database, in a book, or on a Web site. Understanding the information transaction from the individual and personal standpoint of a user is the best place to start.
I have weighed through useless metadata repositories and been asked to fill in metadata structures that I knew I personally would not be able to retrieve information from, let a lone glean knowledge. Metadata becomes most helpful when it is seamless, not over burdensome to capture, and ties relevant items together in a means that not only one user group can easily make sense of but multiple user groups. IA is tightly tied to the Web, which is helping this young technology. The Web provides the wonderful ability to cross categorize and cross link to similar interests and store information in places that people can find related materials easily.
I am one that has continually had problems with one of the most commonly used metadata repositories, the Yellow Pages. To me the Yellow Pages are utterly useless. Nothing is ever what I think to call anything. I want to go buy pants. That becomes a task in the Yellow Pages. Even better is having to go retrieve something from a bar and trying to use the Yellow Pages to find the number of a bar name that did not stick in your head the first time by choosing a tavern, pub, or nightclub to start. None it was a bar. Not an option. I love IA and information structure because I have sympathy.
One thing about being a bi-OS kinda guy is that I now look for what OS software will run on. More often than not of late it is not easy to find. I guess I just assumed the Web was MS centric prior to my finding an OS I like much better. I never looked before and everything I downloaded ran. When I was running Linux I went to the Linux sites for software and the rest of the Web for MS.
It took Jish pointing to Araneae for this to dawn on me. Now I am wondering what is wrong with the Web sites with software that they don't tell you what OS their software will run on.