ia/ - Technology

Information Work Productivity Forum Notes

Fri, 06 Feb 2004 08:22:21 -0800

I attended the Information Work Productivity Forum and posted some thoughts (lengthy notes) about the presentations. The day consisted of sponsors of the council and some academics presenting their thoughts on Information Work productivity. A few speakers took the opportunity to talk about their products, which was unfortunate, but some individuals stayed on topic and discussed the real issues related to measuring information work productivity at a high level.

Web searches: are they fixed?

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 04:38:36 -0700

Interesting article in Business Week Online regarding paid placements and some potential controversy involving small businesses. I found the link at searchengineposition.com.

Web Searches: The Fix Is In
by Ben Elgin, October 6, 2003

CIO Article on Auto/Semi-categorization software

Wed, 14 May 2003 13:39:12 -0700

CIO article "Sleuthing out data" by Fred Hapgood features a couple examples of how auto-semiauto categorization enables businesses and reduce costs. There is a company list included if you're interested in this arena.

Data Management meets Unstructured Information

Thu, 08 May 2003 04:18:17 -0700

Just came back from a conference on data management(Wilshire Metadata/DAMA International 2003 Conference. A recurring topic that surfaced about data management was the relevance of their work in relation to unstructured information. A reality check for everyone was that most corporate information actually existed in semi-structured of unstructured information and not in databases. From this thought, I was directed to DM Review and in particular this article. Digging Into the Web: XML, Meta Data and Other Paths to Unstructured Data - By Robert Blumberg and Shaku Atre. I definitely see an opportunity between IA(metadata/ux) type folks cross-pollinating with data modelers and data managers. It will be interesting to see and I look forward to hearing more from here. Thoughts?

A web-based application to semi-automate site map creation

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 14:33:12 -0800

I started working with GraphViz this month and have created a web-based application that converts tab delimitted text files into diagrams. The sole purpose for the application at this point is to turn site inventories or IA hierarchies into clickable site maps like this.

Before you ask why I bothered to do this, I'll give a little history. Immediately after writing the article Automating Diagrams with Visio for Boxes and Arrows I began to see that I didn't want to draw circles, boxes, lines, etc. anymore. That hacky process I used served its purpose. But over the past year I have learned to let databases and scripting languages to the heavy work we normally do in applications like Excel, e.g. content inventories, site architecture (capturing page/node data and parent child relationships). But I still have the need to work with Excel or plain text files for some of the smaller sites I work on outside of my day job. So I still do the site architecture in Excel and now I can do the diagramming in GraphViz.

So try out the app and let me know if you are doing anything similar or see other uses for this thing.

UPDATE: Added a few options including hierachical or radial layout, box or circle shapes, fill or no fill, and shape and font coloring options so you can now create diagrams like this.

Microsoft & Digital Permissions Management

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:32:10 -0800

It looks as though Microsoft is looking into XRML for their rights management. More information at The Register:

Microsoft devs Windows Rights Management Services
By John Leyden

The Problems with CMS

Sun, 02 Feb 2003 04:53:14 -0800

There's plenty of criticism of content management systems (CMS). Discovering what bothers us most can help us start to address these problems constructively. We conducted a survey to identify the biggest obstacles to effective content management systems. View the results.

HTML's Time is Over. Let's Move On.

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 06:26:23 -0800

By David Heller in Boxes and Arrows.

As users and builders demand more and more richness from the Web, we need to re-evaluate the technology that 99% of it is built on. It seems no matter how sophisticated our back ends get, the front ends remain stagnant. What other options are there? What are the requirements that we as user experience designers face that newer technologies miss the boat on?

Can you purchase wisdom?

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 05:22:08 -0800

Peterme's recounting of an experience with a customer who believed that they could extract wisdom from a software package and vendor is really interesting.

Part of the reason they bought this software was for the "wisdom" the software was meant to have embedded within. That there was a "wisdom" in how the software presents work processes, and that the company ought to learn from that wisdom and adjust their work accordingly, taking advantage of this "wisdom."

ZING Initiative at LOC: v1.0 SRW & CQL

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 16:28:31 -0800

The ZING Initiative (Z39.50 International Next Generation), under the auspices of the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency at the Library of Congress, is pleased to announce Version 1.0 of SRW and CQL.

Election UI

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 05:02:34 -0800

webgraphics is discussing the touchscreen interface used in the Georgia elections this week. The UI is simulated on the Georgia site for your clicking pleasure (or pain).

Map of 12,647 WiFi access points in Manhattan

Sat, 02 Nov 2002 05:56:27 -0800

Julian found this info graphic showing 12,647 WiFi access points in Manhattan. The data was compiled by wardriving every street! Pretty cool. Indicates access points with red dots. Occurence of access points is dense where you might expect -- commercial areas and middle to high income residential areas.

Note that this includes private, secured, private unsecured, commercial open and public open points. It was compiled by the Public Internet Project. Also cool is the WiFi access finder on nycwireless.

Google needs people

Mon, 14 Oct 2002 07:59:00 -0700

Google Needs People by Peter Morville.

Gelertner on KM

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 04:25:47 -0700

There's a very good interview with David Gelertner in CIO Insight, in which Gelertner talks about what knowledge management means in terms of computing experiences.

Knowledge Management: When Bad Things Happen to Good Ideas

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 07:44:04 -0700

Your hard work may go for nought.