The old debate of form vs function (known in modernism as form follows function) is given a new meaning on the web. Here we have the debate about design versus content. My thoughts around this matter relate to whether one or either or both (or neither) of these factors contribute to a user’s perception of […]

Most websites use some version of Captcha, as a kind of spam preventative measure. It makes sense, as software robots at the moment don’t have much in the way of artificial reading intelligence. The basic idea is that some sort of vaguely obscure selection of letters and numbers (sometimes words) are shown to a user […]

Information Architects have created a smart and slick Web Trend Map 2008, overlaying the most powerful and connectible websites onto a train map of Tokyo. A clickable version is available here.

We’ve all heard about or read The Tipping Point  by Malcolm Gladwell, a book that popularizes the concept of highly connected people being the nodes in the spread of information. Read an interesting article from Fastcompany about how this popular view may be a myth.

Blog frequency is a thought going through many heads consciously and unconsciously. How often should one blog, and how much should one blog. Intrinsically it seems that frequent blogging on a daily basis is good and blogging sporadically is bad.
Too much blogging is not good either. If I blogged every minute my life would suddenly […]

Google Psychic is the latest experimentation out of Google Labs. It is based on Jungian theory of the collective unconscious.  It allows us to find information by tapping into the collective knowledge of the human race. The basic premise is that the user think of a keyword or phrase in his or her head, wait […]

There are some interesting services that exploit the power of data mining in the field of news and recent events. We all know sites like Google News, which have for a while used network power to find subtle (and more often not-so-subtle) connections between news items and link them together. Google News (and sites like […]

I came across an excellent site this afternoon that allows you to edit photos online. Pixer is simple and intuitive and has all the tools you would need to upload, crop, resize, and generally edit photos without spending a fortune on offline software.
There is a movement that many people are aware of in moving applications […]

Some of us who have or have had piano (or any other classical instrument) lessons will remember the days when our teacher (usually old and bad-breathed), used to scrounge around in an old wooden drawer for a particular manuscript or piece of classical music. When they eventually found the piece they were (or weren’t) looking […]