Perhaps it is the summer effect, but it has been hard to stay in the office. Conferences, lectures, books, and trips are filling out the schedule:
------At the beginning of the year the folks at WebGuild have been kind enough to invite me to participate in a panel titled: "The Future of Site Design". Bill Scott from Yahoo, Alex Limi from Google, and I discussed lessons learned, process challenges, and future trends related to web application development. One of the threads where the panelists were able to come together was a recommendation to implement AJAX-style user interfaces with caution. A number of companies are jumping in, but this is not always in the best interest of the user. Drag and drop is not always the optimal solution. A "select and act" metaphor sometimes works better in certain domains. This was recently highlighted in an article discussing Windows Live Mail, where the new application reverted to an older ("non-AJAX") selection model, already familiar to users of HotMail (web-style check boxes to select rows vs. shift and control-click combinations from the desktop).
"Classic mode wasn't the only bitter pill the development team had to swallow. Even in the full version, it turned out that many customers still wanted to select messages using check boxes rather than a mouse click or keyboard shortcut, much to the dismay of Microsoft's programmers.
"They were digging in their heels," Sim said."
------I have already covered Spark 2.0 in a previous post, but I have recently come across a video of the interview with Lou Rosenfeld and I in Half Moon Bay. The link is posted on Channel 9.
-------CHI2007 (the main Human Computer Interaction conference) was in San Jose this year. I will be attending HCII2007 in Beijing, so I was saving my energy for that trip, but I unashamedly took advantage of the evening CHI receptions and managed to catch a few out of towners for dinners. I had the pleasure of meeting Bonnie John, one of the most innovative thinkers and prolific publishers in the HCI field. She is at Carnegie Mellon University, already renowned for contributions to this field. Len Bass, George Hackman, and Alex Eiser were also present at this particular dinner and I am happy to pass on a dining recommendation. Thea at Santana Row offers great Mediterranean food. If you happen to have a watch fetish a visit to Tourneau nearby serves as an excellent appetizer.
--------The Oracle User Experience brownbags are an internal resource that serves as an information exchange. In addition to internal speakers and divisional updates we also feature external speakers. We have had folks from Yahoo, Google, but two of the most recent included Bill Moggridge and Ron Baecker. Bill talked about his excellent new book, Designing Interactions. It included interviews with the most prominent Silicon Valley personalities, and he played and narrated a few of those for our audience of designers and usability engineers. Ron Baecker presented an excellent overview of the work done in the collaboration space, with particular attention paid to webcasting.
-------Upcoming is a trip to Stockholm, where I get to hang with the ISO guys, as one of the US representatives (through HFES). One of the assignments will be to look at taxonomies, or classifications, a pretty hot topic with guys involved with design patterns, or any other guidelines.
--------The Oracle bloggers are getting more prolific. Steve Muench recently posted links to some cool Fusion Jdeveloper demos. This is all in context of Oracle donating around 80 rich client, Java Server Faces based widgets, as well as enhancements to Jdeveloper that include a Flash renderkit. Oracle Press Release.
-----On the non-professional front, there are two events of note. One was the Wine Country Century. For some strange reason (middle age denial) I spent 100 miles on a bike one Saturday, some of it uphill. The wives spent the day in a limo, on a tour of the local wineries, but they deserved the break after watching the kids during the Sunday morning training sessions. It stayed in the 70s all day, and I am proud to say I actually finished the event, well ahead of the organizers clearing the course.
J
------The second happening involved fast cars, Ferrari's 60th anniversary, and run up to Bodega Bay. My car was probably the slowest and the oldest of the bunch, but being a bottom dweller in that club is fun, too. The event was covered by the San Francisco Chronicle. A police escort closed down the access points for the Golden Gate Bridge, and a caravan was able to proceed without being broken up. 3 hours of driving ended with a party at the official San Francisco dealer in Marin. I am still grinning. Shell was one of the anniversary sponsors (thanks for the gas card), and if you like cars, you will love this Shell/Ferrari video.
The summer is just beginning, so expect a few more out and about posts.
