Semantic Web: Trends, Projects, Links

Some acronyms that will rock the Web (or maybe not):

Technologies:
• FOFA (Software)
• GGG
• RDF
• RDFa
• URI
• SPARQL

Projects:
• DBPedia
• openID
• Google Social Graph
• Linking Open Data
• MOAT (Meaning Of A Tag)
• SIOC

BBC related Projects:

• Honeypot
• Prestospace
• Semedia
• NoTube

Services:
• QDOS (London)
• Friendfeed
• identi.Ca

Other:
• The Semantic Web Index
• Linked Data
• Tim Berners-Lee: Design Issues (re Semantic Web)

Advertisements

User Interviews (2)

Seven Interview Best Practices:

1. Set proper expectations
2. Shut up and listen
3. Minimize biased questions
4. Be friendly
5. Turn off your assumptions
6. Avoid generalizations
7. Don’t forget the non-verbal cues

From Michael Hawley: Preparing for User Research Interviews: Seven Things to Remember

Interviewing users (1)

… in their book User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, Hackos and Redish devote an entire section to the formulation of unbiased questions. They advise interviewers to

• avoid asking leading questions, to
• ask questions that are based on a participant’s experience, and
• to avoid overly complex, lengthy questions.

Michael Hawley in Preparing for User Research Interviews: Seven Things to Remember

The trade-offs between elements adjacent in space versus stacked in time

The trade-offs between elements adjacent in space versus stacked in time are always in the mind of a UI designer. Placing many elements on the same screen reduces the need for navigation and gives users a comprehensive feeling of “it’s all at my command.” Moving focus from one element to another is instant and seamless. On the flip side, separating elements onto different screens slows things down with navigation while increasing clarity. There is more room for explanation and luxurious space when fewer elements occupy the page. The eye has less to filter through. The course of action is more obvious.

From Ryan in the Article ‘Learning from bad UI‘

Omni Outliner Printing Trouble

I faced serious problems when it came to printing an OmniOutliner 3(pointsomething) document with multiple columns. Preview and print-to-pdf documents showed only (random?) enlarged details of the document, such as the column headers. Tinkering with the print optioons and/or app. preferences did not help. The solution that I found 16 desperate hours later: Export to Omni Outliner 2, re-import, and save the new document by overwriting the old one. This procedure apparently removes the bug – printing the document worked just fine!