tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53640582009-12-05T16:09:00.191ZA collection of stuff on making information useful, covering information architecture, writing, information design, user experience, intranets, content management, knowledge management, social networks and other related issues...(including trying to meet people with similar interests in London)Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.comBlogger255125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-91108017310508082032009-11-22T17:15:00.001Z2009-11-22T17:15:27.369Z

Originally submitted at O'ReillyIs your site easy to find, simple to navigate, and enticing enough to convert prospects into buyers? Website Optimization shows you how. It reveals a comprehensive set of techniques to improve your site's performance by boosting search engine visibility for more traffic, increasing con... Website OptimizationDiverse, related topics in one

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-40611748394831492512009-10-06T17:22:00.003Z2009-10-06T17:34:34.285Z

I've worked for a number of blue-chips for a number of years, and am continually surprised by the fact that - since online is not a primary or secondary revenue base - sensible, value-driven approaches to managing a Web portfolio are few and far between.Many larger companies play lip service to the concept that the Web is (or can be) a hugely important component in the process of "doing business"

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-32919287421406601702009-02-22T11:33:00.002Z2009-02-22T11:38:20.432Z

Having just been working on a project where workforce and audience acceptance of a mix of new hardware, software and content needed to be assessed & tested, I'm keen to find out the best way of gaining a blended system acceptance view without confusing the feedback for the separate elements. I know this should focus on asking precise questions, and directing users to complete specific targeted

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-50245102491923821972009-02-08T13:49:00.003Z2009-02-08T13:58:24.429Z

...just.Having just logged into Blogger, I now realise that it is only a week shy of a year since I last posted to my blog.In case anyone is still out there occasionally reading the blog (it's been a while since I checked out the analytics also), the main reason behind this has been moving countries, and then trying to move house.While this isn't inline with previous post content, I suppose it

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-60743006949385758252008-02-13T17:43:00.003Z2008-02-13T17:54:01.216Z

Over the past couple of years, I've dabbled around the fringes of agile programming/project management mostly looking at XP, but I have to confess that I've always struggled to reconcile agility and the structured control delivered by PRINCE2. I've always erred towards early, hands-on prototypes (whether paper or digital), prioritised requirements lists, and facilitated, collaborative meetings,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-37231493577931400832007-08-25T16:28:00.000Z2007-08-25T16:46:25.875Z

I'm on holiday and paternity leave at the moment, enjoying the French Alps, and learning to live without sleep (I'd love to know when babies biorhythms start to match those of their parents). A couple of days before departing, a colleague in our Human Resources department asked me to deliver a presentation on the corporate intranet (as a communications and knowledge management tool) to our

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-16317543303193367602007-07-11T16:03:00.000Z2007-07-11T16:08:25.238Z

I haven't had the opportunity yet to write up my thoughts on KCUK, as my wife and I have been busy with our new son, Theodore, who chose the auspicious date of 07/07/07 to mark his entry into the world.There are very few "Thristan"s in the world (obviously not including the Christian name), so I think Theodore may take us up to a count of about 15 worldwide.I will blog on KCUK and other things

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-84530915325021903462007-06-29T15:26:00.000Z2007-06-29T15:36:24.790Z

I was over at Ark Group's Knowledge and Content UK this week, along with a colleague, and will try to write up a lengthy post regarding this within the next few days. However, given that it's my wife's due date tomorrow, and she has already been having contractions, it may take me a few days to find time to gather my thoughts and reflections and get them up on the blog.My presentation went pretty

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-13625772162273667002007-05-26T20:31:00.000Z2007-05-26T20:49:39.113Z

Idly meandering through the Yahoo Developer Network, I clicked on MyBlogLog - which I signed up for ages ago, but never did anything with. It's an interesting conceit - so if you do read my blog, feel free to sign up to say you do...Likewise, I'm trying to sort out a Wink profile as I like its use of MicroID - again, feel free to engage!

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-34013940293280061802007-05-14T14:36:00.000Z2007-05-17T09:53:38.436Z

I was contacted to take part in an e-consultancy review of Online Project Management a short while ago, and received a link to their report on best practice in this area today. [UPDATE 16/05/07 - Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research at e-consultancy, let me know I was pointing to a link for survey participants only, so - just in case you have bookmarked this, the link has now switched.] I have to

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-69992143013202155712007-04-16T14:27:00.000Z2007-04-16T14:36:13.096Z

I'll probably write this up in more detail when I have two minutes to myself, but reading a recent copy of Wired last night on the plane from Geneva to London, I was just very aware of one very major strength in the human psyche, and another - related - weakness. It's not a surprising revelation, but I feel that sometimes it is worth stating the obvious: people are great at recognising patterns,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-88478337132063787192007-03-09T13:02:00.000Z2007-03-09T13:13:16.267Z

Via Mike Kuniavsky, here's an interesting toy which allows you to interactively project drawings in real-time. I know the intended audience is for kids, but this is a very cool way to make a big drawing in real-time when you don't have a whiteboard available. Just project on the wall.This very much reminds me of a play of a Neil Gaiman book called "The Wolves in the Walls" which my wife did some

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-66048102898956037392007-02-27T17:08:00.000Z2007-05-26T20:28:45.670Z

Via Bim Egan of the RNIB, and passed on to me by my colleague, Sonia Carter, is this nice little accessible solution to multiple checkbox selections and saving space (i.e. "making it look good") at the same time.This was, as pointed out by Bim, discussed on the webaim discussion board a while ago - to be honest, I was stuck back in the days of thinking that CTRL+ multiple option selection was

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-32707780967926423222007-02-07T17:01:00.001Z2007-02-07T17:01:50.671Z

Having trialled Techsmith Camtasia Studio as well as Adobe Captivate (both great tools, fully featured, but costing $200 plus), I've been on the look out for lower cost replacements for a while. While I haven't fully trialled this yet, Blueberry Software's Flashback Express looks like it could be a useful alternative (at $49) if you're interested in recording .swf or .avi demos. It's been pretty

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-87428424774455750762007-01-22T07:34:00.000Z2007-01-22T19:44:13.905Z

In a perfect example as to how to make the best of a bad deal, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambrige (UK) - my personal favourite museum - has launched a jigsaw postcard. "So what?" you may be thinking to yourself: well, the genius behind this is that the two priceless Chinese vases (I forget which dynasty) were accidentally shattered into hundreds of pieces by a clumsy/unlucky visitor. This

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-21336371479632095632007-01-16T13:51:00.000Z2007-01-16T14:08:18.692Z

Via Headshift and via Marc's voice, I came across Social networking: Time for a silver bullet, which comes to some similar conclusions that I came to a couple of years ago. Namely, personal profiles (secure, of course) to represent a changing "you" and XFN or some other standard to establish the connections (or "predicates" in RDF speech, "verbs" to the rest of the world!) between them. It would

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-28060867706472829772006-12-23T22:48:00.000Z2006-12-23T22:57:30.957Z

I'm still at home in London, having been supposed to be flying out with my wife to Geneva on Thursday to visit her mother for Christmas. Personally, I blame the fog! But, seriously, I have been fairly unimpressed with the airline and airport integrated communications systems: airport sites held rudimentary messages pointing you to airline sites for more information, unfortunately, Swiss (

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-54134975302310456772006-12-14T19:21:00.000Z2006-12-14T19:31:37.670Z

I'm an inveterate fiddler with online tools - I sign up for betas when I can, and have a fiddle and a play, and - to be honest - a number of online applications have worked their way into my everyday way of working. Some of these I've mentioned on my blog, and others I just get on with and use.Just recently, I've been thinking that I ought to review all the social software and online applications

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-84310590296401010482006-11-20T11:51:00.000Z2007-05-26T20:29:59.533Z

Via the Web Standards Project, I just discovered Douglas Crockford's "Theory of the DOM" (this is part 1). I've just sat down and watched part one, and it's great - succinct and clear, and helps to clarify a number of issues in your mind.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-56124093689533724432006-11-14T15:03:00.001Z2006-11-14T15:03:42.604Z

I'm just having a fiddle with Windows Live Writer to post a message to my blog. I have used a Word plug-in occasionally (and have never bothered with emailing in posts - I always figured it would be useful if I had a Blackberry!) but usually stick to logging in directly through Blogger (or Blogger Beta as is the case at the moment). It hasn't managed to download my styles, but hey - it doesn't

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-75920325968933931172006-11-10T19:17:00.000Z2007-05-26T20:30:21.547Z

I haven't posted in a while, partly owing to some major problems in getting a broadband connection to my new flat in Blackheath. The nub of the problem appears to have been an LLU marker remaining on the line for the previous tenants broadband/phone package. I have discovered in the process that there is major confusion between service providers and BT , not helped by the division of BT into

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-92000283287027110132006-10-12T08:39:00.000Z2006-10-12T08:44:44.203Z

After looking decidedly in need of some attention for several months, the look-and-feel of this blog, has just had a 30-second overhaul care of the new Blogger Beta. In the spirit of Bertrand Russel's In Praise of Idleness, this involved using one of the Blogger pre-packaged templates! I'll be playing around with this to make the site a little more unique when I get the chance, so do expect a few

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-1160493821683042782006-10-10T15:15:00.000Z2006-10-12T08:45:01.782Z

I haven't played about with this too much, but this set of Wordpress meets Yahoo UI comments from Jack Slocum is simply too cool for school. I like it because it gets away from the web page as a document model - and moves towards content chunking ("I'm interested in this bit, thank you")...

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-1159439962102537122006-09-28T10:16:00.000Z2006-09-28T10:39:22.123Z

I'm still trying to find the ideal note taking tool that can hold all my thoughts together. I tried TiddlyWiki for a while, until it lost two separate sets of conference notes (despite a rigorous saving routine), and am now having a fiddle with Google Notebook - which looks like it is great for online research, but very specific to that. But I was surprised that I had never heard of Microsoft

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5364058.post-1159285261606640012006-09-26T15:36:00.000Z2006-09-26T15:41:01.650Z

I'm probably slow getting to this, and doubtless this has been blogged already, but I noticed in today's Financial pages of The Guardian (I've noticed a few things in its hallowed pages today) that the article "bulking up in the drugs industry" contained blue, underlined keywords which were then further defined in a call-out box. I think it's really interesting that a print publication is using

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12870416406574109081noreply@blogger.com0