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Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Lots of interesting stuff lately that I haven't been able to blog since our phone service was out at the old apartment. (Of all the criminally bad telecoms in the world, could Deutsche Telekom be the worst? They manage to retain the old state-run attitude toward customers (they hate them), and to be so vast and cumbersome that it's impossible to get even the simplest questions answered in one or two interactions with them.)
Anyway, this article about ROI in the Knowledge Management world might be of interest to the IA community as it tries to figure out if it's worth anything to the corporate world. In glancing at a couple of KM-related blogs, I notice that the KM community is also struggling to figure out how to justify themselves money-wise.
An interesting article at evolt.org analyzes the developments of the last year or so at Macromedia, particularly the arrival of the MX series. Some of the comments at the end are typical bitchy listserv stuff, but there are some really interesting perspectives there as well. Are Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX examples of software that sounds good on paper, but just doesn't match with real users' needs? Poor old Director still gets left out of the party, though.
Ok, we're moved into our new apartment in Berlin with...DSL. This is the first time I've had an always-on, fast connection at home. Hooray!
Friday, October 18, 2002
Colormatch is a nifty little tool for the pallette-impaired like me that helps choose..er. colors that match.
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Things I won't miss about Germany: not being able to buy contact lens stuff at the grocery store. In fact, you can only buy it at a drug store (as in where you buy real prescription drugs, not the same place where you buy shampoo and soap). I have to personally speak to a pharmacist to buy what is basically sterile soapy water. They keep it behind the counter, for goodness sake! By the way, this week at the supermarket you can buy a computer or a router, but no contact lens supplies.
Monday, October 14, 2002
Wired has gone all-CSS. Nice redesign, too.
We're just back from a weekend with Zac in Malmö and Copenhagen. Aside from some crummy weather, it was really great. Those Scandinavians have got design figured out, that's for sure. We visited the Danish Design Center (well, the bookstore) in Copenhagen, where Zac and I both picked up a bunch of free back issuses of the Danish Design Council magazine. I wasn't able to get that 2000€ sofa I saw in Copenhagen, but maybe IKEA has a rip-off of it.
Thursday, October 03, 2002
An interesting discussion between the developer of the Mac OSX application NetNewsWire, Dave Winer, and several others on the economics of developing for the Mac. There's really a lot of interesting information in the comments people have posted, and it's sort of amazing that it stays pretty cival all the way through. Look also at Joel Spolsky's post that set this discussion off, and another comment on Joel's essay.
