“Fundamentally, your intranet must be tied to value creation like other business services within your organization.” (Shiv Singh – Boxes and Arrows)

“This paper presents three proposals concerning the structure and maintenance of formal, inter–referential, digitally stored texts: (1) include abstract atomic identifiers in texts, (2) identify these identifiers with references to text objects, and (3) keep among the texts records of computationally substantiated claims about those texts. We use ‘formal’ in a narrow sense approximating computer–checkable; we are informed by informal symbolic practices used in mathematical text and program source text, which we hope to enhance and exploit explicitly. The basic management problem is how to alter texts rather freely without ruining the bases for claims depending upon them; this becomes an issue of accounting for various dependencies between texts.” (Stuart Frazier Allen – FirstMonday 9.2)

“Google has clarity and focus. Google knows that great brands serve a purpose. They are useful. Google genuinely believes in the motto: the searcher is king. It demonstrates that you can put the customer first and make a profit. Google keeps it simple and wins.” (Gerry McGovern)

Divide 4/7: Mastering Virtual Customer Service “(…) the secret to good customer service is paying attention: not allowing it to quietly slide out of focus and thus increasing the likelihood of damaging your profits and brand.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Thread, Inc.)

“What makes a great website is focus and clarity of purpose. A great website is unpretentious. It doesn’t pretend to be what it is not. It never wastes your time because it always gets to the point. A great website helps you to act.” (Gerry McGovern)

“(…) years at Microsoft, sometimes managing projects, sometimes managing people, but always with a manager above me. I think I’m smart, but many of the people who have worked for me definitely were. Over the years, I’ve experienced many mistakes and successes in both how I was managed, and how I managed others. What follows is a short distillation of some of what I’ve learned. There’s no one way to manage people, but there are some approaches that I think most good managers share.” (Scott Berkun – UIweb) – courtesy of lawrence lee

“Zzstructure is a way of representing the structure of information. Zzstructure is very different, for example the concepts of ‘file’, ‘folder’ and ‘application’ are abandoned. Because of this a bit of fantasy, creativity and an ability to forget previous knowledge is needed in order to understand Zzstructure. A Zzstructure structure consists of cells and dimensions. A cell is the basic unit of information of a Zzstructure structure. Cells containing related information can be connected with each other along dimensions, the number of which is unlimited. A Zzstructure structure is separate from its visualisation (= the way the data is presented on the screen), which means that a Zzstructure structure can have many visualisations designed for different purposes. Even though a Zzstructure structure is separate from its visualisation, a Zzstructure structure is not separate from other Zzstructure structures. Every piece of information stored in a digital device using based on Zzstructure is in the same space: the same cells can be connected on several dimensions created for different structures.” (Gzz)

“We recommend that the EU recognise the importance of developing European focused e-Portals and the addition of a more European focus to international sites and their content. The strong presence of US e-Portals that largely use the English language also has longer-term development implications for those Member States and candidate countries where English is not widely used.” (eContent Strategic Studies)

“It is well established that Web documents are ephemeral in nature. The literature now suggests that some Web objects are more ephemeral than others. Some authors describe this in terms of a Web document half-life, others use terms like ‘linkrot’ or persistence. It may be that certain ‘classes’ of Web documents are more or less likely to persist than are others. This article is based upon an evaluation of the existing literature as well as a continuing study of a set of URLs first identified in late 1996. It finds that a static collection of general Web pages tends to ‘stabilize’ somewhat after it has ‘aged’. However ‘stable’ various collections may be, their instability nevertheless pose problems for various classes of users. Based on the literature, it also finds that the stability of more specialized Web document collections (legal, educational, scientific citations) vary according to specialization. This finding, in turn, may have implications both for those who employ Web citations and for those involved in Web document collection development.” (Wallace Koehler – Information Research 9.2)

“Cognitive overload is a brute fact of modern life. It is not going to disappear. In almost every facet of our work life, and in more and more of our domestic life, the jobs we need to do and the activity spaces we have in which to perform those jobs are ecologies saturated with overload. As technology increases the omnipresence of information, both of the pushed and pulled sort, the consequence for the workplace, so far, is that we are more overwhelmed. There is little reason to suppose this trend to change.” (David Kirsh – Dept. of Cogsci, UCSD)

“The overarching lesson when considering experience design in the context of eCommerce is that we need to abandon the flatland of our screen.” (Dirk Knemeyer- Thread, Inc.)

“The average advertising agency fundamentally doesn’t get the Web. Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO Worldwide, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy are great advertising agencies. When it comes to managing their own websites, however, they are rank amateurs. They bring their print and TV thinking to the Web with embarrassing results.” (Gerry McGovern)

“The prospect of computer applications making ‘noises’ is disconcerting to some. Yet the soundscape of the real world does not usually bother us. Perhaps we only notice a nuisance? This thesis is an approach for designing sounds that are useful information rather than distracting ‘noise’.” (Stephen Barrass 1998 – The Australian National University)

“Good online experience design must accommodate real-world limitations.” (Laura S. Quinn – Boxes and Arrows)

“(…) it really comes back to the human touch. Making the interaction as personal and attentive as possible. Creating and locating content in a way that questions and concerns are answered even before they are asked, to simulate the value that an in-store salesperson brings.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Thread Inc.)

“We have only barely begun to take advantage of the opportunity presented by eCommerce. This is despite the power of broadband connection and the seemingly ubiquitous presence of personal web-enabled devices. Despite visionary and innovative eCommerce companies. Despite the best efforts of traditional companies to best leverage and even transition over to an eCommerce-centered model.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Thread Inc.)

“This is the year when web content comes of age. Organizations will slowly stop viewing content as some cost that needs to be managed. Instead, they will begin to see content as an asset that can drive profits and productivity. A new role will emerge within many organizations: the publisher/editor.” (Gerry McGovern)

“This article will speak to the issue that there are certain design considerations which are critical for successful, long-lasting community building on the web that may have no importance or may have lesser importance in a non-community-oriented web site.” (Sandra Maddox – Lazarus)

“In the modern Web economy, hyperlinks have already attained monetary value as incoming links to a Web site can increase its visibility on major search engines. Thus links can be viewed as investment instruments that can be the subject of an exchange process. In this study we build a simple model performed by rational agents, whereby links can be bought and sold. Through simulation we achieve consistent economic behaviour of the artificial Web community and provide analysis of its micro– and macro–level parameters. In our simulations we take the link economy to its extreme, where a significant number of links are exchanged, concluding that it will lead to a winner take all situation.” (Boris Galitsky and Mark Levene – First Monday 9.1)

“A compilation of issues, process and practice in design for connected interactive experiences.” (Review by Shelley Evenson – ACM Ubiquity)