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Monday, February 11, 2002 |
Battling Bush's digital divide. "Three prominent civil rights organizations will hold an emergency meeting to combat a proposal to eliminate two programs they say are "crucial" to reducing the digital divide." [News.com]
This is just so wrong I don't even know where to start.
11:19:07 PM 
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Seven Tricks that Web Users Don't Know "Web developers have all sorts of browsing tricks that they have gained from years of experience, to the point where they can't even imagine not knowing them -- right-clicking to open a new browser window, for instance, or using the arrow keys to navigate a list. To Web veterans, these things are so familiar that they seem obvious. The fact that many people don't know these tricks -- and can get completely stuck as a result -- comes as a shock. This article describes seven Web site features that typical non-technical users aren't familiar with, based on data collected from the author's own usability studies." [via Dane Carlson's Weblog]
Although this article is from last June, it's not a surprise to librarians. We see this first-hand, and we're the ones that are still teaching folks how to use a mouse, whether it's in a public, school, or special library. This is what I was getting at yesterday.
10:28:13 PM
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"New Yahoo ads and promotions point to the increasing marginalization of this once central portal. It is starting to look like Excite. The obvious evolutionary step in the Web portal saga was to take the experience to the desktop. Connect up Web Services and grow from there, slowly absorbing more and more of the users time. A virtual AOL (without the connectivity). However, that didn't happen so they are slowly fading into the background." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
And then on the opposite side of the spectrum from Google we have Yahoo. I agree with John that Yahoo has peaked and is on its way down. They could have innovated like Google and stayed out front, but instead they just bought up other companies and services in the hopes of integrating it all into one big honking catch-all. Well, it didn't work, but then I'm not sure where they expected to end up because I never got a sense of a specific plan and direction in which they wanted to go.
Even with the "My Yahoo" service that I use at home, it could have been so much more if Yahoo had concentrated on providing a specific service focused on user control (like NewsIsFree), rather than a way to push its own partnerships and services. Yahoo could have been the center of the blogging universe, too, but they are no longer innovating. Like so many of the bigcos, they're watching behind them and reacting instead of looking forward and creating.
8:31:28 PM
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The Secret Lives of Numbers "The authors conducted an exhaustive empirical study, with the aid of custom software, public search engines and powerful statistical techniques, in order to determine the relative popularity of every integer between 0 and one million. The resulting information exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect and refract our culture, our minds, and our bodies. For example, certain numbers, such as 212, 486, 911, 1040, 1492, 1776, 68040, or 90210, occur more frequently than their neighbors because they are used to denominate the phone numbers, tax forms, computer chips, famous dates, or television programs that figure prominently in our culture." [via MeFi]
The consensus seems to be that the search engine is Google. I think Google is single-handedly responsible for an Internet renaissance of its own. Its inspiring people to use search engines, manipulate data, and do research in entirely new ways. The name itself has become a verb, and it's responsible for new Internet-based sports (Googlewhacking and Google Instant Messaging anyone?). Offhand, I can't think of another site that has been used in such wildly different ways from its intended purpose to become an integral part of the collective Internet consciousness. And it will only continue. At least, I hope it will.
Note: The site listed above is a Java applet recommended for Windows and IE users with higher-end machines with lots of RAM and a broadband connection.
8:19:17 PM
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Fellow Flash trainees, take a gander at Macromedia's Flash Inspiration site. Ooooh. Aaaah. Ohhhh.
The Intro to Flash training I was at last week was excellent. Trista was a great instructor, and she did what I consider to be the most important thing a trainer can do: she used humor to keep us awake! I'm totally bummed that I won't be able to attend the second session. I understand its potential a lot better now.
At SLS, Kate and I have what we call "revolutions" every so often. When we took Crystal Reports training a few years ago, we had a lot of "A-ha!" moments, and afterwards we wrote a manifesto about the coming revolution. (It passed us by, but that wasn't our fault.) This same thing happened after our SQL and PL/SQL training, and for me it happened again after I saw a presentation by Alison Atkins Denton about GIS. I felt this way again on Friday, but unfortunately I won't have any time to play with Flash until at least March, and that's if I'm lucky.
Don't worry, though. I won't be turning the SLS sites into a big honking Flash swf, but I will have some fun with it, especially on the SLS intranet.
9:22:44 AM
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Comments by: YACCS
© Copyright 2002 Jenny Levine.
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