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Extracting the Essentials of the Web

Archive for April, 2006

Redesigned TeleInterpreters Corporate Website Launched

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 by Joel

Extractable today recognized the launch of the redesigned TeleInterpreters corporate website. In addition to providing an end-to-end website redesign solution, we also designed the new TeleInterpreters logo, which is featured across the site.

TeleInterpreters Home Page

Congratulations, Extractable!

IA and UI as building blocks of SEO

Monday, April 24th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

In SEO, Information Architecture and Interface Design, Shari Thurow writes:

The most important building block of SEO is the information architecture. If you want your HTML/XHTML, audio, video, and image files to generate qualified search engine traffic, the key ingredient to making these files appear relevant are the information architecture and the interface that communicates this architecture.

(Hat tip to Peter Morville.)

Craig McLaughlin to Judge 2006 WebAwards

Friday, April 21st, 2006 by Joel

Congratulations to Craig for being selected as a judge for the 10th annual Web Marketing Association International WebAwards!

The WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site. It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals who create and maintain outstanding Web sites. The 2006 WebAward judges consist of a select group of Internet professionals who have direct experience designing and managing Web sites – including members of the media, interactive creative directors, corporate marketing managers, site designers, content providers and webmasters – each with an in-depth understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Web site development and technology. Judging for this year’s awards will take place in July and August, with winners announced in September.

IA Summit Wrapup at Boxes and Arrows

Thursday, April 20th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

The venerable user experience webzine Boxes and Arrows has come out with its comprehensive wrapup of the 2006 IA Summit. A few of the writeups there are by me (coverage of a pre-conference session on prototyping with comics that I first wrote about here on this blog, coverage of two presentations, and coverage of a panel on tagging that I first wrote about over at You’re It!.

You can start reading the B+A coverage with the article called Learning, Doing, Selling: 2006 IA Summit Wrapup: Overview and Pre-conference sessions. Then continue on to Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Cleaned a lot plates in Memphis

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

Young Avenue Deli (in Memphis, TN)

Philip, Anjali, Gaven, Dan, Chris, Marsha, Joel, and I had dinner at the Young Avenue Deli tonight. Great food and nice divey atmosphere.

We also played a little Galaga (vintage video game) and pocket billiards, although the cue ball kept going down into the coin-op vault.

I briefly had the high score on Galaga

UX Magazine hot off the presses

Monday, April 17th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

UX Magazine - The User Experience Magazine writes about getting Dugg after their launch and having to locate a new webhost to deal with the influx of traffic. Not bad for a fledgling webzine.

Fundamentally, the magazine is a blog. The articles are short and the site is powered by TextPattern. But the homepage presents more of a magazine look and feel, with featured articles, departments, and a pretty layout offering multiple links to past entries. I’ve added it to my aggregator.

Yahoo! Next lets you preview what’s to come

Friday, April 14th, 2006 by Dan Harrelson

I stumbled across Yahoo! Next last night. Similar to Google Labs, this is a glimpse into what Yahoo! is working on. It’s a collection of some pretty nifty beta services. I particularly like the Open Shortcuts.

First page of search results, please

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

Todd just sent around this BBC News article discussing a US study that found thatsearch users stop at page three and that, in fact, “Most people using a search engine expect to find what they are looking for on the first page of results.” This jibes with my own personal experience. I rarely even go past the second page. I wonder if some people don’t even go below the fold.

Also: “41% of consumers changed engines or their search term if they did not find what they were searching for on the first page.”

Social and Personal Search (at BayCHI)

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

Dan and I are heading down to PARC this evening for Beyond Search - Social & Personal Ways of Finding Information, a BayCHI event:

Several exciting developments in social search and personalization help users find information: recommendations based on personal tastes, social trends, tags, ratings, popularity, and friends tastes. These methods go beyond the classic search paradigm of relevance and flat lists of results, resulting in different user experience challenges. This panel brings Neil Hunt (Netflix), David Porter (Live365), Tom Conrad (Pandora), Kevin Rose (digg), and Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) to explore trends in social search.

We’ll report back tomorrow!

DCamp is BarCamp for Experience Design

Friday, April 7th, 2006 by Christian Crumlish

I’ve been itching to attend an unconference since I heard about the first BarCamp, but they were mostly very heavily coder oriented and I’m a floaty-on-the-surface presentation-layer kind of guy, but then I read Rashi Sinha’s announcement of DCamp (or maybe I saw the announcement in the BayCHI newsletter first) and I decided this sounds like my kind of party networking opportunity workshop conference. It’s the weekend of May 12-13 and the planning is collaborative, like everything else. Visit the wiki if this sounds like your bag too.