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Popout Prism

http://www2.parc.com/csl/projects/popoutprism/ “What is Popout Prism?
Popout Prism is an intuitive, elegant tool to reduce the amount of time users spend looking for information in Web pages. By creating visual “popouts” that emphasize critical elements in Web pages, Popout Prism draws users’ attention to the right information.”

Proof positive that education doesn’t necessarily make you smarter - the Popout Prism folks choose to demonstrate their nifty new browser with a whopping 27 MB demo video.  It’s probably a bad sign when your demo file is larger than the product file that it demonstrates.

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Metadata for the Web

Metadata is essential web writing skill: Part 1: June 02, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: “Metadata is the: who, what, where, when and how, of your content. It is that 30 second elevator description. Metadata may include: heading/title, summary/description, author name, date of publication, geographic classification, subject classification, keywords. “

My experience is that thinking about content in a “meta” sort of way is tough to do for many people.  Actually, just talking (and thinking) about content in a generic way is not something that comes naturally to many people.  People see newsletters, press releases, and other already existing pieces of content, and have a tough time visualizing how that same information might be pulled apart and communicated differently on a web site still in development, for example.

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The Magic Number

Guardian Unlimited | Online | 1.618 is the magic number “What’s the significance of this number? It’s the “golden ratio” and, arguably, it crops up in more places in art, music and so on than any number except pi.”

First I’ve heard of this, but interesting stuff.

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R U A Geek?

The Geek Test

“Geekish tendancies” here - but I didn’t know that watching Junkyard Wars would ever get me Geek points..wink

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Human Frailties Overlooked by Designers

Alinta Thornton shows how human frailties are often overlooked by technology designers - On Line Opinion 12/5/03: “It’s often more productive to take more notice of what people do than what they say they do. For that you need to watch people using your designs doing real tasks.”

Always a good reminder.

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