Via Anne Galloway: “Control is not discipline. You do not confine people with a highway. But by making highways, you multiply the means of control. I am not saying this is the only aim of highways, but people can travel infinitely and ‘freely’ without being confined while being perfectly controlled. That is our future.”

Awesome quote, it made me think. So so-called “freedom” can be used to impose control. Made me think of travelguides.

Heavy stuff, that bible!

Tastespotting is pretty awesome.

The second issue of the Journal of Information Architecture is out :) (via Lou on FB, which I can’t link to, which is one of the reasons that makes me think that whole FB thing is gonna blow over, just another walled garden, which is why I keep blogging, which is why this is here, although it gets crossposted I believe.)

Don Norman: “I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.“

I don’t think that’s so disconcerting, although it goes against much of the common UX babble.

I wonder why they felt they had to add that?

When a feature is confusing enough to warrant you having to add rather heavy explanatory UI, you might wanna rethink it.

Lou is thinking about a combined index for his books, I think that’s an awesome idea.

Mail used to be like email! “By the late 19th century, there were between six and twelve mail deliveries per day in London, permitting correspondents to exchange multiple letters within a single day.“ Six to twelve times a day checking your mail, sound familiar?

Fascinating: “The approach taken at Facebook is to set a cookie on user update requests that will redirect all subsequent requests from that user to the West coast master for some configurable time period to ensure that read operations do not return inconsistent results.“

Google realtime results are pretty interesting. Just goes to show how fast Google moves. I’m very curious to see how this evolves over time, I don’t think they have the UI and relevance stuff totally correct just yet.

The same way that I am a fan of the “everything else” label, I am becoming a fan of the “more – even more” label as its being pioneered (as far as I can tell) by Google:

As the Nielsman says: progressive disclosure is awesome!

Kevin Kelly on hunter-gatherer tribes: (because they didn’t live beyond 30-ish) “Imagine a world without grandparents: there’s nobody to pass on what you do learn.”

Received two emails in the past few days asking about reprints or second editions of my IA book. No reprints or second editions planned though.