Article The Quantified Worker by Christopher Butler on February 10, 2009 Pictured to the right is a visualization of my own time data from mid-October until today (I listed the breakdown by category underneath the graph). I chose mid-October because we started using a tweaked version of our system then, so I didn't want to include a mix of data from the new and old system. This data is a bit skewed since I took a couple of weeks off for Christmas, but in general it shows a clear breakdown of my time across 14 different internal categories... Read Now About
Article The Slow Information Movement by Christopher Butler on February 9, 2009 I've noticed in my reading lately a trend toward a returning appreciation for print from those immersed in online technology. As I was thinking about tracing at least one thread of this meme, I was able to construct this progression (which has much more to do with how I've found these ideas online, rather than the order in which they actually came about)... Read Now About
Article Screens Within Screens by Christopher Butler on February 9, 2009 In a New York Times Digital Domain column from this week, author Randall Stross writes: "And yet television stands out as the one old-media business with surprising resilience. Though we are spending a record amount of time online, including a record amount of time watching video, we are also watching record amounts of very old-fashioned television, according to Nielsen Media Research..." The article, Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens, stresses that though online video has become a major player in the world of advertising, it is still subservient to the value of traditional television... Read Now About
Article The Internet’s Librarian is Us by Christopher Butler on February 6, 2009 The Paleo-future blog quotes a passage from a 1997 book, Predicting the Future, which was skeptical toward Bill Gates idea that the internet would be conducive to self-publishing, mostly due to a lack of a meta-organizational structure like the Dewey Decimal System: "The lack of an equivalent to the Dewey decimal system on the Internet is a different matter. While it is true that experienced Internet users can eventually find what they're looking for, [Clifford] Stoll and other critics insist that it takes more expertise and time than Internet enthusiasts are willing to admit...." Read Now About
Article Can Any Problem Be Solved? by Christopher Butler on February 6, 2009 Bill Gates asks this question (specifically toward the problem of Malaria) in his TED conference talk from this week (video after the jump), but I'm interested in the question in general. I like his optimism, and wish I shared it in general. He says that as an optimist, he believes any problem can be solved. But I wonder, given what? Read Now About
Article What is Our Tribe About? by Christopher Butler on February 5, 2009 Author Seth Godin had this to say in a recent interview in the WIRED Epicenter blog: "Big world-changing ideas have had three cycles. The first cycle was that you could change the world by building a factory the way Henry Ford did... The second cycle had to do with advertising and TV and media and promotion... The third idea, the one that I think is really available to a large number of people now without a lot of resources, is this idea of finding and connecting like-minded people and leading them to a place they want to go..." Read Now About
Article Resource of the Month: Newfangled’s Website Profile by Justin Kerr on February 4, 2009 Normally, I look outside of Newfangled for RotM candidates, but this month I want to shine a light on one of our web development tools: the Website Profile. This brief questionnaire is given to the client early in the development process and is valuable to us in several ways:1) It helps us collect information and materials regarding the client's branding (logo files, style guides, imagery). 2) In conjunction with the prototype, the client's responses on the form help us combine their site's structure, content and design into a meaningful whole. The Profile also shows our clients we believe that design is not just window dressing for their site but an integral component.3) It helps the client carefully consider their website in light of who they are and what they do (who is your audience? who is your competition? what is your organization's personality?)If you're interested in how the Website Profile fits into the rest of our development process, check out our Project Anatomy. Read Now About
Article Graceful Degradation vs. Progressive Enhancement by Justin Kerr on February 4, 2009 Great article by Aaron Gustafson about one of the hot-button issues regarding browser compliance and web standards: graceful degradation. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design You Must Give Up Control by Christopher Butler on February 4, 2009 A recent call with a client brought to mind something that I think is critical for any agency trying to adapt to technological change: You Must Give Up Control. Agencies are notorious for wanting to control every possible thing: their space (down to the most granular detail), their work, their clients, and of course, their own image. That approach used to work, but I really think it is no longer feasible... Read Now About
Article History According to the ‘Net, Part 2 by Christopher Butler on February 4, 2009 I mentioned him in my previous post on archiving internet history and long-term thinking, but here is a video of Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle speaking at the 2007 TED conference: Read Now About
