Technology

Wearable Computers… Crazy Talk? July 30th, 2010

With a fresh topic in mind this morning, and a few free minutes, I did some research into a topic that’s intrigued me for quite some time: wearable computers.

Application Development, Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development, Browsers, software, Tools

Tools for Troubleshooting Web Sites and CMS Systems July 28th, 2010

Over the years I’ve learned that sometimes trouble comes where you least expect it.

Content Management Systems (CMS) have many different touch points: the physical servers, the server software, connections between servers, the Internet pipe to the user, and the end users’ computers are all involved. Any number of these could be a potential trouble area if there are issues. There are a number of fantastic tools to help isolate bottlenecks, and anyone involved in using, deploying, or maintaining a Web site should be aware of them because it will just make life easier.

Internet Strategy, Technology

A Whole of Government Information Sharing Space July 26th, 2010

I’m impressed by the Obama administration’s efforts to improve government information sharing as discussed in the Politico article Bringing Government Up to Data. However, I would like to see more focus placed on developing a platform-as-service model for the government rather than on data management or application development. Individual government agencies and offices have resources tied up in an IT infrastructure and information classification systems that are based on policies and legacy applications that are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Social Networking, Technology, Web Content Management

Social Stream Aggregation Site – Cliqset July 16th, 2010

Like everyone else, I wanted to find a way to look at all of my friends’ online activities without having to surf between the myriad of different social sites. There are quite a few out there, but a recently updated Cliqset has caught my eye. It aggregates over 80 social services including Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, and of course YouTube (among many more!).

Technology, Usability, Web Content Management, Web Development, Webcast

Why Could Your Content Management System Implementation Fail? June 30th, 2010

Are you about to invest in a new CMS? Or are you struggling to salvage your current system? So many CMS implementations fail, don’t let it happen to you.  In this live Webinar, I explored the reasons why so many fail, and focused on how to make your CMS work for you.

If you missed it, check out the slides on Slide Share, below, or listen to the recording.

Technology, Web Development, Browsers, CSS, HTML5, JavaScript

Learning All About HTML5 June 25th, 2010

So one of the latest and greatest buzzwords in Web Development Land is “HTML5″ and some folks may be wondering exactly what the deal is. Long story short, it’s a work in progress, it’s being created in the open, and it’s features are being tested by browser vendors already. Mozilla, Apple, Google, Opera, and Microsoft all have their efforts going at the same time, some of them with overlap, some of them without. Finally, there are features which can be reliably used today. There’s plenty of information out there if you’re looking.

Social Networking, Technology

Peer Persuasion: Driving Your Business Without Driving You Crazy June 8th, 2010

For all the aspects of modern life that have been irrevocably changed by the digital tsunami, happily some of the crucial drivers of human behavior have remained stubbornly the same. We’re seeing lots of clients wrestling to understand dynamics that can incent certain audience segments to persuade peer groups to support ideas, activities, and commercial transactions. According to our friends at McKinsey & Company, “word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20%-50% of all purchasing decisions and is the only factor that ranks among the top three at every stage of the buying process.” They argue that the influence of word-of-mouth is most pronounced when consumers are buying for the first time or when the product /service is perceived to be a premium tier, expensive product.

Peer persuasion is another way of thinking about an activity that is frequently (mis)labeled word-of-mouth marketing. This term typically refers to consumer-to-consumer communications that have occurred with no exchange of economic incentives. More and more, the mouth has less and less to do with how such behavior is promoted. Web technologies have amplified and accelerated the power of such peer persuasion by shifting the model first from a one-to-one to a one-to-many, and more recently to a many-to-many model.  In this environment, the real or perceived strengths (or failings) of a product are posted on countless Web sites and blogs or disseminated through social networks with almost instantaneous impact, burnishing or bruising brands in the process.

Application Development, Internet Strategy, Technology, Web Content Management, Dynamic URLs, SEO, Sitecore

SEO-friendly URLs in Sitecore June 1st, 2010

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical feature of any Web site. One aspect of SEO is the URL itself – there are certain best practices to follow when it comes to URLs so that they can be best interpreted by search engines, and are built in the best way possible to increase their rankings. When your site is being run by a CMS, you have to make sure that it’s creating SEO-friendly URLs for you.

Technology, Usability, User Experience Design, User Research, Visual Design

Integrated Solutions: Part 2 – Why User Experience Design is Important May 25th, 2010

User Experience Design (UXD) considers interaction flows, user research, usability, efficiency, visual design, navigation and technology.  It incorporates aspects of human performance factors and usability and focuses on the interaction between people and computer systems and the design that makes this interaction effective, optimal and valuable.

At NavigationArts,

UXD = IA + Visual Design + Technology

Social Networking, Technology, Web Content Management

Web Engagement Management: Crowdsourcing for Businesses May 12th, 2010

I recently blogged about “Web Experience Management” tools being offered by Fatwire’s new CMS feature sets and wanted to extend the concept to the Web as a whole. It seems that Fatwire is keeping up with the industries latest trend, Web Engagement Management (WEM).

Social Networking, Technology, User Research

Design Research Conference 2010: Day 1 May 11th, 2010

Two years ago I attended the IIT Institute of Design’s Design Research Conference and I had such a great experience learning from and meeting fellow researchers that I had to come back and see what new research methods are in the mix now.

I just finished up a workshop this afternoon with Martha Cotton of gravitytank called Self-documentation 2.0.  Technology is now becoming more portable, smaller and an even bigger part of our everyday lives (especially with social networking sites).  So how do we utilize these tools to gather data from participants in conducting our research?

Application Development, Social Networking, Technology, Web Content Management

Web Experience Management May 5th, 2010

Having worked heavily with the Open Market’s Content Server at another organization (prior and during its transition to FatWire), I was a bit dismayed to hear FatWire rushing to be at the head of the Social stampede.  Often this type of feature set is designed to be able to check off a box on an evaluators checklist, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in this instance.  I’ve yet to play with it first hand, but the offering seems to be a one-stop-shop should your site need an integrated social solution.

Information Architecture, Insight Article, Internet Strategy, Social Networking, Technology, Usability, Web Content Management

Digital Consolidation : Growing Urgency to Rationalize the Business Web May 3rd, 2010

When I pose the question “What’s keeping you up at night?” anywhere in the C-Suite these days, the conversation inevitably turns to issues of measuring and managing their extended Web enterprise.  In all sectors of business, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies, the Web has rapidly and thoroughly become the undisputed platform for communications, commerce, and community building.  But while many execs celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit that has blossomed in their respective organizations around the Web, the proliferation of sites, applications, microsites, tools, widgets, and social media connections has confounded many user segments and placed growing strain on the ability of organizations to manage this distended organism.  Of course, it has also greatly complicated the challenge of extracting meaningful performance metrics from this platform which could indicate how cost effectively (or not) the organization’s business needs are being supported online.

As we dive into the depths of some of these large enterprises, we see symptoms of unplanned and unconstrained organic growth.  The benefits of time-to-market advantage are obvious, but the risks less so. I’m reminded of a comment made to me by Dr. Max Coppes, Head of Oncology at Children’s National Medical Center; he said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell.”  That’s hardly the analog we’d hope for when inventorying a business Web enterprise.  But in many offices the idea still prevails that “If I can build it, I should build it.”  So as we watch organizations innovate, add new product lines, and expand their global markets, we see their technologies and business processes proliferate, and any vestiges of coherent discipline seem to vanish in that euphoria of growth.

Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development

Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference: Part Three – Unified Page Editor April 30th, 2010

The second session I attended at Sitecore’s North America Dreamcore 2010 was for the Unified Page Editor on the Developer Track, presented by Kerry Bellerose, VP of Product Management.

To recap some highlights:

Application Development, Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development

Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference: Part Two – Sitecore Intranet Portal April 29th, 2010

At the North America Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Developer and Partner conference last week, the first session I participated in was for the Sitecore Intranet Portal, part of the Developer Track.  I’d like to share some interesting points from that session:

Application Development, Technology, Web Development

Mobile and App Testing Tools April 23rd, 2010

As the count of mobile devices multiplies, so does the difficulty in checking your web apps and mobile apps against them.  Here’s an excellent collection of testing tools to help you wade through the mountain of devices as needed.  The example applications range from the iPhone to the Blackberry to the Android and all the way back again to the Palm OS.

One of note to many will be the iPad Peek that lets you see how a web page will render on the iPad.

Hat Tip: SpeckyBoy

Application Development, Technology, Usability

How to Gather Better Requirements for Custom Software Development April 21st, 2010

I’ve been building software applications for about 15 years and I have come to one inescapable conclusion: the best apps are the ones that I think of myself and build myself!

Sounds quite pompous doesn’t it? I guess what I meant by “best” apps is that the custom apps that worked the best, fulfilled requirements the best and solved the intended problems the best were the ones that I thought of myself and built myself. Why is this?

I think this is because the most difficult part of custom software development is not writing the code or building the architecture or picking the tools – it’s describing what you want. It’s figuring out the requirements. The hardest part is translating the needs and desires of the customer to the developer. When I write software for myself I am both the customer and the developer so there is no translation needed! But when I write software for someone else there is a transfer of knowledge, needs, desires and requirements that is required.

Why is this so difficult and what can we do to make it easier?

Interaction Design, Technology, Visual Design, Web Development, Flash, Full-screen mode

Flash Full-Screen Mode April 7th, 2010

The release of Flash Player 9 has given Flash Developers the ability to view the Flash in full-screen mode, whether it be a movie or the Flash Animation itself. Here are two great examples of Web sites utilizing the full-screen mode to display something other than a movie: Nicola Walbeck and Waterlife. On a large monitor, the experience of a full-screen mode is something very engaging and eye-catching, at a quick glance, people can easily mistake it as a screen saver.
There are pros and cons when considering full-screen mode:

Technology, Usability

The Apple iPad: Just Hype? Or a Glimpse into the Future? April 6th, 2010

Ok, I admit it I bought into the hype and I preordered an iPad on March the 12th, with a guarantee it would arrive on Saturday the 3^rd of April.  I patiently waited Saturday morning for the UPS truck to arrive.  It arrived and my first impression, I was surprised by its small size.  Upon closer inspection I promptly noticed it is another in a long line of beautifully designed Apple products, thanks Dieter Rams.

Application Development, Technology, Web Content Management, Drupal, open source, SEO

Web Content Mavens on Open Source CMS April 1st, 2010

Meredith Casey and I of the NavigationArts Marketing team along with Pete Rose from the Business Development team attended the Web Content Mavens meeting at Il Mulino this past Tuesday night to discuss “Open Source CMS – Is it right for your Organization?”

We heard from Jeff Walpole of Phase II comparing and contrasting different Open Source CMS’s and on why he uses Drupal for so many of his projects, including WhiteHouse.gov.   We heard from Mike Vertal of RivetLogic on Alfresco and why it works so well for some of his clients (enterprises mostly) but that it is not for everyone.  And lastly we heard from Martin Ringlein of nclud on how the popularity of WordPress has positively influenced its SEO capabilities and simlified things such as application development.

Application Development, Technology, Web Development, AS3, Flash, iPhone

Flash on the iPhone March 31st, 2010

Ever since the first release of the iPhone, people have been eagerly wondering when Apple would provide a Flash plug-in. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought the iPhone would be the perfect platform for the interactive nature of Flash.

From this article a while back, it seemed it would never happen because of Apple’s licensing issues about third-party applications, which dismayed many Flash Developers.  It appeared the only way to develop iPhone Apps was to download the software development kit and learn Objective- C.

Much has changed since then….

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Web Development, HTML5, IE9, Microsoft

Microsoft MIX10: Day Two March 18th, 2010

Day two at MIX10 and the information overload continues:

Keynote Highlights:

IE9 and HTML 5

IE9 has true support for HTML 5 including HTML 5 video. Reduced processing capacity required for JavaScript and HTML 5 video. The demo provided was truly amazing. The demo ran on Windows 7. This made me wonder what the performance would be like on older versions of Windows as well as other OS platforms.

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development, Microsoft, SharePoint2010, Silverlight

Microsoft MIX10: Day One March 17th, 2010

There’s a lot going on at MIX10, here are my thoughts on day one:

Keynote introduced the design and development community to the new Windows phone. The interface is interesting. As with most new concepts, there are some good things and some bad. Also introduced the Pivot Control for Silverlight 4, which uses content type attributes and values to help winnow down a large set of similar content types down to a narrow set.

Application Development, Insight Article, Interaction Design, Technology, Web Development, ASP.NET, ViewState

Dynamic Web Controls in ASP.NET March 16th, 2010

ASP.NET’s ability to populate controls into pages at runtime is a very powerful feature. Instead of knowing exactly what the structure and content of a page is at compile time, webpages can be made to be more programmatic, adjusting to situations on the fly. There are certain amazing things that can be done with CSS, such as controlling the styling and positioning of webpage content, but an ASP.NET programmer can literally add and remove controls on the fly as they see fit.

Interaction Design, Technology, Web Development, Flash

Flash Beyond the Web February 17th, 2010

Adobe Flash was developed to be an interactive platform. For the longest time, we’ve seen it mostly on the web, whether for aesthetic animation purposes or to provide rich interactivity. This YouTube video provides a glimpse into the future use of Flash as a way to create a “Living Surface” that steps out of the web and into the real world.

Although the video provides little background information, a little Googling reveals that it was developed in an ActionScript framework known as FIVe3D that was developed by Mathieu Badimon. You can see other exmaples on the FIVe3D website

Just imagine the possibilities: interactive walkways at the mall where shoppers can interact with storefront displays just by walking in front of them, or play areas that interact with children as they hop and run around.

Insight Article, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Visual Design

The Web Typographers Essential Toolkit – 22 Tutorials, Tools, and Resources February 12th, 2010

This collection is for those of you who have already gulped down the typesetters Kool-Aid. You know who you are; the crowd who grimaces at badly kerned movie credits, who get misty-eyed about old motel signs, and who think comic-sans was created by fascists hell-bent on making your Chinese food menu look festive. It goes without saying, in any discipline you have to know the rules before you can break them, yet among young designers there is a perpetual debate revolving around the use of grids and scales. The bottom line is if you’re serious about your craft, these are fundamental tools. As a designer they are as crucial as internalizing the gestalt principles of perception or the basic tenants of color psychology.

Technology, User Experience Design, mobile

Windows Mobile 7 January 19th, 2010

At CES 2010 Microsoft announced that Windows Mobile 7 would be much more of a “revolution” in terms of user experience, compared with past versions of the mobile OS (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/windows-mobile-7-coming-to-mwc-in-february-not-just-evolutiona/). To mobile enthusiasts like myself this initially sounds like a good thing. For years Microsoft’s Windows CE, Pocket PC and Windows Mobile OS’s frustrated users and spawned a legion of dedicated hackers and developers bent on making it better (if only for themselves). I was one of those Windows Mobile die-hards until succumbing to iPhone hegemony 2 years ago.

Technology

Digital Readers November 19th, 2009

When I worked for an online education company, I was quick to tell people that we also shipped books because at the time a 100% online curriculum had a slightly negative perception in the market. Most of my company’s curriculum relied on book-based learning. Books provided a certain immediacy, flexibility and ease of use that a Web page did not have. The idea was that the online portion would complement the offline version. The online learning could offer things that the paper version could not.

Technology, Flash

Flash CS5 and Multi-Touch November 10th, 2009

Has anyone seen the movie “Minority Report”? In it Tom Cruise plays a cop of the future who uses a computer that is touch screen based and voice activated. The vision of this futuristic computer shows the obsolescence of the keyboard. The level of interaction that is possible using a virtual touch screen is visually stunning. This isn’t anything new since Microsoft’s Surface has been around for a little while, but what’s new is that with the latest release of CS5, Flash will now support multi-touch and open the doors to a new level of interaction with Flash.

Inside RIA has a great primer for it: http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/getting-started-with-multitouc.html.