Searching versus Finding: Why Systems Need Knowledge to Find What You Really Want

Added on 14 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Read about how one would query to retrieve the longest word in the English language: is it ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’ (a possible answer) or possibly ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ (a better answer?) According to Bill: These tasks will require systems that can determine what passages are saying and reason with the resulting knowledge, and they will require additional sources of knowledge and advancements in automated reasoning. An active research area devoted to question-answering is currently pursuing such goals.” (W.A. Woods – Sun Microsystems Laboratories)

Gurus v. Boggers Design Shoutout

Added on 13 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Playing for the Gurus: Richard Saul Wurman, Bruce Tognazzi, Peter Merholz, Jakob Nielsen, Edward Tufte, Gerry McGovern, Donald Norman, and Andrei Herasimchuk. (…) Playing for the Bloggers: Jeffery Zeldman, D. Keith Robinson, Andy Budd, Didier Hilhorst, John Gruber, Greg Storey, John Hicks, and Josh Williams. (…) The Bloggers win in a shut-out, 8 to 0. A total Guru smackdown. Completely knocked out of the ring.” (Andrei Herasimchuk – Design by Fire)

Fundamental issues with open source software development

Added on 9 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software’s more intuitive interface. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core. (…) If Open Source software wishes to become widely used and embraced by the general public, all issues will have to be overcome.” (Michelle Levesque – First Monday 9.4)

The Indirect Authoring Paradigm: Bringing Hypertext into the Web

Added on 8 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Building hypertext systems to provide the required functionality to write hypertexts has always been a goal of hypertext research. The parallel development of hypertext research prototypes and the World Wide Web has resulted in repeated attempts to replace the Web or offer world-wide all-purpose services to augment the Web with ‘missing’ functionality.” (Hartmut Obendorf – Journal of Digital Information)

Information Architecture: A Rose by Any Other Name…

Added on 8 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“As more web practitioners have assumed the title of Information Architect to describe the work they do, and as more information architects (and user experience designers and user interface designers and information designers) are multitasking on reduced staffs, information architects have uncovered a wide range of ways to view both the practice and ourselves practicing.” (Lynn Stott – Boxes and Arrows)

Changing Lives Through Technology

Added on 7 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“David Nagel, CEO of PalmSource, talks about his work at NASA, Apple and AT&T, and gives examples of success and failure in human factors design. (…) The fundamental problem is that if the underlying system model incorporates abstractions that are difficult for normal human beings to understand, it’s always, always going to behave in unpredictable and non-understandable ways to them.” (ACM Ubiquity)

The Way Forward with Web Standards

Added on 6 April 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Even though Web standards are being embraced by many Web authors, some businesses are reluctant to invest in standards-based Web sites without concrete reasons to do so. To help Web authors interested in advocating Web standards, this article assembles arguments and information about Web standards into one document and explains Web standards in terms of how they affect business.” (MACCAWS) – courtesy of elearningpost