Anniversary of my first permanent

Anniversary of my first permanent London job, 1997. Currently on my third one.

Recommended sites, magazines and events for new media students

A colleague asked,

I’m putting together a short piece that advises students on how to get into new media — all aspects of it e.g. technology, creative, commercial… I would therefore be eternally grateful if you could please send me all your hot tips including:

• Sites to subscribe to / contribute to
• Magazines to read
• Networking events to attend

I often find myself wondering what advice I could give students starting out. I know what I’d want to steer them away from is further wallowing in and emulation of the work of currently fashionable design celebrities that constitutes much of a typical design education and career. (Required reading here: Zeldman on Style vs. Design.) The interesting things happen where busy craftspeople discuss and share their work and knowledge. So with that in mind…

Sites to subscribe to / contribute to

Whatever you’re interested in, find a community dedicated to it. Peer-to-peer content will always beat “official” publications, and largely renders traditional magazines obsolete. You can quickly get specific answers to your specific questions. What’s more, your own contribution enriches that community (and there are few better ways to learn than by teaching others).

This often means mailing lists. Two of the best, on web design and computer-human interaction, are Webdesign-L and CHI-WEB, but it’s easy to find lists on even more focused topics. Lizst.com is one place to look for them. (Not forgetting Google Groups.)

The following are essential destinations for new media designers. Most have a community aspect. Check as often as possible:

• A List Apart
  “for people who make websites. From pixels to prose, coding to content”
• Evolt
  “Evolt.org is a world community for web developers, promoting the mutual free exchange of ideas, skills and experiences.”
• Webmonkey
  “the web developer’s resource”
• Webgraphics
  “a resource and search engine for web design and development”
• Usable Web
  “1423 links about web usability”
• e-Consultancy
  “Thought leadership for the digital economy”

Some other sites whose newsletters are worth subscribing to:

• Cooper Interaction Design
• Creative Good (less frequent these days unfortunately)
• Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox (still relevant)

To get a feel of the how the internet community works, and to know of stuff before anyone else does:

• Metafilter
  "community weblog”
• Memepool
  “disinfotainment”
  “first on the scene, because we’re the victim”
• Red Rock Eater News Service
  "These days most of the messages concern the social and political aspects of computing and networking."

Magazines to read

I don’t read many (dead medium), but Webtechniques is a very good one (very hands-on, but more aimed at developers than designers). Every monthly issue is available online in its entirety, so it’s easy to check if it’s right for you. Update 1/4/02: Webtechniques is now New Architect. I trust its quality is unaltered.

Networking events to attend

AIGA Experience Design London (used to be known as Advance for Design), meets monthly at the Design Council. Interesting discussions, excellent for networking, free beer: Subscribe here.

Been adding some stuff to

Been adding some stuff to the site. For example the Opinions section, in which will be stuffed opinions of mine I wanted to save from a dusty fate in old email archives, to face an even crueller fate in the harsh glare of public (all 3 of you) scrutiny. Hopefully this will teach me to write and think more rigorously in future.

There are now also more postcards and drawings.

Installed new version of Textpad,

Installed new version of Textpad, my favourite text editor, today. I was intrigued to find its Search buffer (previous search queries) not empty:

Also in the search buffer was

capital gains photoshop quark to hell

(Update to previous post about

(Update to previous post about Google:The Effects of September 11 on the Leading Search Engine)

The web has been extremely

The web has been extremely quiet about google's redesign. No word on the CHI-WEB or WebDesign-L mailing lists either. (Perhaps proof of the aphorism that nobody notices good design, only bad design.) A Google search on "Google redesign" found nothing, and only "Google tabs" found this generally positive article from Searchenginewatch. The article also mentions, usefully, a new search command:

A relatively new power command also lets you narrow your search to find documents in particular formats. The command is filetype:, and you follow it with the extension you want to search for. For instance: california power crisis filetype:pdf brings back PDF files that contain the words "california power crisis." In contrast: california power crisis filetype:asp brings back Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) files, while california power crisis filetype:html brings back ordinary HTML files that end in .html, that contain the words.

Posted from work using flexwindow :).

The future of book publication?

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Open Support for Open Content. Andamooka hosts open content books for reading, annotation, and discussion.

And this was posted, via

And this was posted, via email, from work. Just checking to see whether it works.

While I'm blogging, here's a note to myself and anyone else to read all Scott Berkun's excellent essays on UI design.

Believe it or not, this

Believe it or not, this text was placed here by sending an email. Courtesy of flexwindow.

Unfortunately, if I want to add to this, I'll have to keep on re-editing the same ever-growing chunk of HTML, and of course I'm not getting any automated datestamping or archiving with it.

I also can't share posts like these with other people, as it's in HTML format! Damn, seems like it's useless after all. Could be OK for CV details and the like, but not for blogging.

The site is changing. Too

The site is changing. Too soon yet to say how much.

Four years ago today we moved into Brendon Grove, East Finchley. Second home in London. Both Kelly and I seem to have blotted those three months from memory. I've lived in London exactly four and a half years. And three days.