Digital Ethnography

A colleague shared this with me yesterday. Very powerful. Done by a guy at the University of Kansas of all places.
"Through our text and tagging and XML we are teaching the machine … and that the machine is us."

Very cool, but a little Orwellian.

Just a matter of time

Well, you knew this was going to happen. As we approach the 45th anniversary of Hope, our neighbours to the south are still as divided as ever. They're worried about Barack's foreign policy? Well, the current administration is doing a bang up job...

Marmaduke is an a**hole

I was reading an article in the Globe today, and found this.

Marmaduke is bi-curious. And not the least bit shy about it. Hilarious.

Immersibility

OK, so it's sort of a made up word. It comes from a model developed by Jakob Nielsen and Agency.com. I use it to do online Competitive Audits. One of six axes:

1. Accessiblity > SEO and SEM.
2. Immersibility > How easy is it for the user to immerse themselves in the experience? It's made up of heurisitics like wayfinding, status and visibility.
3. Content > Depth, breadth and recency.
4. Capability > What tools and widgets are there?
5. Community > Can the user talk to others, read reviews ask for expert opinion?
6. Commerce > If applicable, how elegant is the e-Commerce engine?

Tip of the Iceberg

You'll forgive the obvious analogy, but this is why websites sink. An interesting take on JJG's Elements of User Experience, further refined by a dude from Xplane. Then recently copied (by accident) by a guy from nForm.

Interesting model.

Forms suck

Ever tried to fill out an application for a credit card online? It can be - to put it mildly, frustrating.

Form design is an art and science, and the place where online conversion to sales can succeed or fail most readily. A new book shares recent insight...and planning.

The air is foul

I read this yesterday in the paper. I knew that I knew this little girl...and it finally clicked today. She went to school with my son. And, now she's dead.

UPDATE: I was reading Fark today and came across this. Which reminded me of this horrific case while I was living in Toronto. I don't know if there's a Hell, but I sure hope so. I may be a sinner but I've got nothing on these animals. And they're probably segregated from the population...costing us millions. You know what I'm thinking...