on usability....

Just passing along an interesting post about usability.

Creating digital art via touch

Touch screens aren't the only way of doing this. Shillito is leading a team that has developed software that allows artists to receive physical feedback when designing virtual 3D objects.The team's approach uses a haptic device called Falcon, which vibrates and moves to allow users to "feel" virtual objects. Originally developed for 3D gaming, Falcon is a cross between a joystick and a mouse. As

Tips to eek out web performance

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/ yslow from yahoo is a great site, as is some of the firebug stuff.

RDA webinar & tools

“RDA is being developed as a new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world.” A webinar/presentation about RDA, which the cataloging world has been abuzz about is located here http://tinyurl.com/yexxlynAlso, a couple of demos out (just demos, not product):A small demo example for what "open development" could do:http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/content.htmVery

3D modeling using a webcam

Pretty cool....http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/humble-webcam-t.php

w3c cheat sheet

http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/11/w3c_cheatsheet_for_developers.html"This cheatsheet aims at providing in a very compact and mobile-friendly format a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications — at this time, CSS, HTML, SVG and XPath —, completed by summaries of guidelines developed at W3C, in particular the WCAG2 accessibility guidelines, the Mobile Web Best Practices, and a

Virtual identity / authority file

Well, this would seem to be a match made in heaven for the goals of the semantic web -- because regardless of the schema and mapping, I think there is going to have be some kind of established form/identity.... and considering my cataloger tendencies (lol), well, I can't help but love this project.... ---------------The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) has moved to beta phase and is

What's up with wolfram alpha?

Interesting little post about wolfram alpha and plans for the future:But Alpha may yet confound the sceptics. Last month, Wolfram released an application programming interface, or API, that allows anybody to build software or websites that use Alpha's abilities. "Alpha is a technology platform that allows one to inject computable knowledge into any application or computer system," says

Google Key Word Significance -- new webmaster tool

Well, this is interesting... some thoughts on a new tool in the google webmaster's toolbox.... Just goes to show that mining content doesn't always tell you relevance. Sometimes controlled vocabularies (subject headings) and taxonomies (categories) are a GOOD thing... Sigh...Here is what Google says the keyword significance list is for: Below are the most common keywords Google found when

Blue beanie day -- support the semantic web

Arches @ noon. Nov. 30.The 3rd annual Blue Beanie Day will be celebrated on Monday, November 30th, 2009see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136079874938On Monday, November 30, 2009 thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.Join the fun!The 2009 event page is here:http://www.facebook.com/