Blogs

IBM's ThinkPlace and Dogear are both mentioned in CIO magazine's The Name Game: "tagging tools let users describe the world in their own terms as taxonomies become folksonomies."

Lou and Thomas are also quoted.

In the week following the IA research panel, I have uncovered a few more things of interest. First and foremost, I found a good place to publish your IA research. Check out the blog for people interested in contributing to the HICSS-40 minitrack on Using Information: New Technologies. The blog is being used to help coordinate the submissions for the conference.

The call for participation lists many beloved IA topics, like social tagging, content analysis, search and access mechanisms, and use of rich media. "Media literacy" - that sounds like a key item to go into the IA Research Agenda.

I think this will be a great venue for IA issues. I must admit, however, that I have never attended HICSS. It is 40 years old, but I have not looked at the proceedings much in the last decade. I am pretty sure it is one of those "every one who attends has a paper" conferences (which is fine with me). Back when I was doing research in the early 90's, I recall some decent papers from this event - not as high quality as some other conferences. With Dan Russell and Jonathan Grudin organizing this minitrack of papers, then I am sure these papers will be good.

I see lots of other things of interest to information architects. The mini-track on Using Information is part of the Digital media track with other minitracks like information retrieval and search effectiveness. There are also parts of other tracks on HCI, socialware, semantic web and many knowledge management topics. There will be lots to keep an IA engaged.

June 15, 2006 is the deadline to submit. I plan on submitting something myself, if I can get the OK to travel. Hawaii in January sounds too good to be true!

Waterfall 2006 conference:

• User Interaction: It Was Hard to Build, It Should Be Hard to Use
• User Stories and Other Lies Users Tell Us
• User Feedback: Eliminating the Main Cause of Project Overruns

I wonder if the Attorney General included a wireframe to show exactly where he wanted the "report misconduct" button placed on every MySpace.com page? Should it be a button or just a hypertext link? Could he provide the user flow of the verification process?

(See: Attorney General Jim Petro Urges Web Site Operator To Take Steps To Protect Children if you have no idea what I am talking about.)

Some of those may be good suggestions: just not clear to me what qualifications the AG has as web designer. Did he do any usability testing or rely solely on my web heuristics?

If Subodh is elected, would he appoint an "Information architect general" for the state of Ohio to help him?

I participated in the panel "Setting the IA research agenda" at the IA Summit in Vancouver yesterday. Great talks by the panelists (of course), but more importantly, excellent participation from the audience and a good birds-of-a-feather at the end of the day. See my presentation, background information, and other notes.

In a few years, will this panel be seen as an important kick-off to an IA research agenda, or will it be seen as just another event where we talked about "IA research" but did nothing about it?

A pair of alumni from where I earned my degrees, Bowling Green State University Computer Science, are visiting us over the next few weeks.

On March 30th, Shantanu Narayen, President of Adobe, will be on campus to talk about Web 2.0, Rich Internet Applications, and Adobe's strategy for innovation.

On March 21st, Brian Rudolph (now with Systems & Applications, UNLV) will share stories about being a Software Engineer at SEGA, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and life in Las Vegas. Last year I was watching some cable show about beating the odds in Vegas and was surprised to see Brian talking about slot / poker machines.

Brian will be talking at 7:30 pm in Hayes 111. Sponsored by the BGSU student ACM chapter.

It is great to see my colleagues doing well - and even better to have them coming back to BGSU to tell us about their escapades.

Magic Book looks like the newest "gadget" from IBM. Some early coverage:

• MobileMag: Magic Book: Record digitally, search effortlessly
• Gizmodo (The gadgets weblog): IBM Magic Book Audio Recorder
• Techblog (Latest tech and gadget news): IBM Magic Book

I did not even know we were in the "gadget" / "gizmo" business!

(Once I find information about this on ibm.com, I will let you know.)

I presented "ibm.com re-design and standards" last month at Internet user experience (Ann Arbor, Michigan).

Here is a the outline.

• Evolution of ibm.com over the past 10 years
• 2004 project: OneXperience
• Standards site: IA before and after
• Page elements
• Automation tools
• Relationship with other corporate standards
• Special events: Lenovo
• Business as usual
• Challenges ahead

Today, March 1st, is Michael Elledge's first day on the job as the Assistant Director, Usability & Accessibility Center, Michigan State University. Congrats Mike! Yes, this is the story of an SI grad from U of M tackling MSUsability.

My first participation in a podcast, about UXnet, with Tim and Tom of Design Critique.

• DesignCritique10_InstoneUXNet.mp3