Manuel Castells lecture: Cities in the Information Age
This afternoon, I attended a lecture at Berkeley given by Manuel Castells. He’s is a charming chubby-cheeked little man. Somehow, I’ve gone this long in life without ever having read anything by him, though he’s written a trilogy titled The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture and is an urban design wonk.
As he spoke. [...]
I Have Seen The Future of Annotating Space, and My, Is It Del.icio.us!
Anne links to a piece from the Institute for the Future’s blog on annotating space. The core paragraph is is:
Everyone one of these personal geo-annotations boils down to “I was here” or “You are here”. People will take the time to compose a message and tag that message to a place because they want [...]
Living Design Case Study – Flickr.com
With all the hullaballoo around web applications, there’s one site that is continuing to delight — Flickr.com. They’re doing great design work in providing what is by far the best photo-sharing site on the Web.
I’m posting today because of a recent, simple, change. They’ve added a task-oriented sitemap to the bottom of every screen.
Click for [...]
Tag – You’re It!
I’ve tried, a bit, to popularize ethnoclassifications and freetagging in an essay just posted to the Adaptive Path site, Metadata for the Masses.
I have heaps more I want to say about it, and will over time. This essay was a challenge — trying to figure out how to talk taxonomies without getting mired in information [...]
Puppets are Less Wooden than CG
A few nights ago, we went to see TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. I wasn’t expecting much — it’s gotten lukewarm reviews, and not everything these guys touch turns to mirth.
I was delightfully surprised by just how funny this film is. It’s crass, obvious, low-brow, and stupid. But I laughed. Lots. In some ways, this film [...]
Pity the Poor User
I’ve begun reading Tracing Genres through Organizations by Clay Spinuzzi. I bought it because I think genre theory is potentially the most-important-yet-least-appreciated topic in information architecture.
Clay approaches the issue from his background in rhetoric, and the practice of technical communication. Still, he spends his first chapter laying out a cogent and fairly persuasive critique [...]
My current favorite Flickr tag.
me.
Poontang update.
A informative email has lead to updating my “What I Know about Poontang” page, which retains it’s Classic Peterme style.
FBI: Celebrating Fanatical Suspicion
I continue to be appalled at the lionizing inherent in naming the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Hoover was, let’s face it, an evil man, or, if not evil, deserving of no end of contempt. The Chronicle today has an article on how Hoover targeted Mario Savio, the spokesicon for [...]
Does Cluster Analysis Cut the Mustard?
Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “The Ketchup Conundrum” offers an intriguing look at the intersection of marketing and cognitive science. The basic thesis revolves around how a seemingly infinite variety of products have emerged to satisfy discrete differences in consumers’ desires — so whereas 40 years ago, if you wanted mustard, you got French’s, now the mustard [...]
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