According to this Kevin Kelly article the number of hyperlinks on the web is fast approaching the number of synapses in a human brain. Lots of implications of this, but it's comforting that he also points out
Just as the One Machine's hardware is assembled from our myriad devices, its ... 
Further to my little Friday afternoon rant, BuilderAU has a more detailed and thought out piece on the new Arbitrary TLD issue.
Read more at BuilderAU.
I still think it is a stupid idea.
Various news outlets are breathlessly reporting that ICANN (the organization responsible for managing internet domain names) will effectively allow any top level domain (TLD) (for example ".com" and ".org" are TLDs).
Am I alone in wondering why anyone gives a rat's? In fact, in thinking that this is a usability ...
This is the hard part right? All of us have got the social media bug and can think of dozens of great projects we could implement this afternoon, if only our boss, or client, would go for it. This really clear headed article over at Digital Web, Integrating Social ...
First of all, check out Australia's own Patrick Lee who very deftly writes about a few things that a UI developer working in JavaScript and interacting with the DOM can and should do to maintain UI responsiveness, all couched in terms of the three basic thresholds from Robert Miller’s ...
I know I shouldn't distract all you hard working souls out there with such things, but, I just cried with laughter, and I know you wouldn't want me to cry alone.
Yes, it's that time of the year again. Time to take stock of your finances and 'fess it all up to the good people at the ATO. Time to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.
And time to get that Web Directions South 08 registration into the 2007/08 budget ...
Christian Heilman has just announced this truly cool event. Scripting Enabled will be a two day conference and workshop held in London with the aim of making the web a more accessible place. Sound like the same-old-same-old? It's not. The two days will be all about
making those in the ...
Adaptive Path have very generously made available some extensive video coverage of presentations at MX San Francisco in April.
Check out
Matt Jones of Dopplr - recent trends in social software, object-centered sociality, the beginnings of social infrastructure (opensocial, xfn, hcard, openID), personal informatics, and approaches for baking social ettiquette ...
We're very pleased to announce the addition of local web analytics expert Hurol Inan to the line up for Web Directions South 2008. Web analytics have been used for valuable feedback about marketing campaigns as well as to see which products within your site are holding visitors' attention best. ...
Most of the slides and podcasts we gathered together after Web Directions Government back in May are now available at our site. Check them out below and pass them on to others who weren't able to make it there on the day.
José Manuel Alonso - Improving Government through better ...
This year as part of our workshop series run on the days before the conference, for the second year running, we will be hosting a W3C SIG day organised by the Australian office of the W3C.
If you want to hear all about new and emerging standards, as well as ...
As noted, there are still a small number of speaker slots we are filling - hunting down the very best experts we can from around the globe on the subjects we think are of most pressing interest to you. So, we are very excited to be able to announce ...
All the podcasts and slides available to us from our recent Melbourne event, Web Directions User Experience, are now available online.
Andy Budd - Designing the experience curve
Robert Hoekman Jr - The essential elements of great web applications
Oliver Weidlich - The mobile web user experience
Mathew Patterson - ...
If you are a web developer, particularly with a programming focus, and Sydney is too far for you to come, or your companies training budget doesn't quite run to international airfares, them you could do a lot worse than check out the recently announced Ajaxian Experience, curated by the ...
He's the world's foremost living authority on Javascript and he has some very strong and cogent thoughts Ajax Security which he'll be sharing with us here in Sydney in September. But it's not all stern warnings: check out this amusing blog post on the train ride home this ...
Myself and the guys from Agency Rainford were just slavish enough to brave the miserable conditions in Sydney last night and get on down to "the first Apple Store in the Southern Hemisphere". But just a little bit too self aware to cue in the rain for the privilege of ... Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 4.05pm.
This is what it feels like to be hyperconnected: a new kind of community – pervasive, continuous, yet strangely tense and tenuous, like a balloon inflated to the point of bursting. The limits of the neocortex meeting the amplifier of the Human Network. That creates unique opportunities: we can come together at a word, self-organize around or against a blog post, a live-streamed video, an automated reply from a faceless, rent-seeking organization. Nothing can stop us. We can’t even stop ourselves. But what do we want? And the other thing? You’ll need to be at Web Directions South, for the closing keynote, if you want to find out.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.
/Hear how Drupal, Semantic MediaWiki and other bleeding edge tech were enlisted along with pixie dust, FOAF, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Linked Data (basically all the Semantic Web stuff) to build a distributed social network. The focus will be not on evangelism (I don’t really care about that) but how disparate open source platforms can talk and work together. This stuff actually works and makes development more fluid. These technologies make local development easier, but when it is time to broaden your scope, classic search is still king. How can you leverage this? Newcomers such as Yahoo Searchmonkey can play an important role in the creation of a truly distributed information system.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.
When developing websites or web applications, we often follow the principles of web standards, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other accessibility guidelines. But is this enough? In this session, Ruth will look at how we can develop accessible web products by taking a holistic approach to web accessibility. She will look at different ways of incorporating accessibility into the design process to produce accessible and useful user experiences. This presentation will focus on the user experience design process by drawing on examples and learnings from Ruth’s work in Government.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.
Douglas Crockford
Security design is an important, but often neglected, component of system design. In this session, Douglas Crockford, creator of Javascript Object Notation, will outline the security issues that must be considered in the architecture of Ajax applications.
The design of the browser did not anticipate the needs of multiparty applications. The browser’s security model frustrates useful activities and allows some very dangerous activities. This talk will look at the small set of options before us that will determine the future of the Web.
During this session, attendees will:
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.
So, you’ve decided to tap into a whole new world of business oppportunities by stepping outside the anglocentric world. That’s great! But the process of internationalisaton can be a genuine minefield for the unitiated, so take a few tips from someone who’s been there before. In this talk Myles will cover what internationalization is, when to do it, and how to implement it. Topics include: localization, organising your content for translation, finding and managing translators, and dealing with the unexpected technical issues that inevitably arise.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.
Online web applications are big business, with many people relying on the cloud for data storage and workflow. These days, an API is an essential part of any online system, but this presents authentication and authorisation issues for the humble web developer. Learn how to create Web APIs, how OpenID and Oauth works and what you need to do to implement them.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.
User interface design is an iterative process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled.
The case studies will examine specific user interface challenges that have arisen and will chop them up into their various bits. How do I identify a challenge? What is the best approach for getting started? How do I solve the problem conceptually and technically? How will I know if I solved the challenge successfully? Case studies have been selected that are especially pertinent outside of their specific contexts to help you in your everyday UI design.
The presentation will focus on design inspiration, decision-making processes, technical solutions, and learning from missteps as part of a designer’s iterative process.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 11.45am.
When I was introduced into the role of managing web projects, I naively believed a Content Management System would solve all my problems. Growing my little empire of content authors I had little idea of what was to come- before I knew it I had created a monster.
I went searching for a white knight to slay this monster and was tempted by the delights of custom builds, agile development, and ruby on rails. And off I went following the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest eating them as I went, but then oh, how do I get back to my old friend CMS? Hmmm.
This session will help you know how to make the choice between the sweet delights of custom builds and the faithful workhorse CMS. How to get them to play nice, grow gracefully, and present together as a seamless front-end user experience.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 11.45am.
You’re invited to join a narrated exploration into the exotic regions of HTML5 and surrounding territories. Your journey will begin with a preparatory briefing about what to expect from HTML5 - what’s different, what’s new, what to look forward to, what to watch out for. During the cruise, we’ll make some short excursions into surrounding territories adjoining HTML5, and you’ll learn a bit about their history and relationship to HTML5.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 10.45am.
It’s not true that there are no proven monetisation models for online communities; in fact, there are distinct revenue streams that have been successful over many years. This session looks at the soft returns on investment for engaging with user generated content, communication and collaboration with the consumer and then moves into how social networks earn money for their investors and developers.
The aim of this session is to limit the slapping of banner ads on every niche community online - you might be surprised to learn that the least profitable revenue model is… Advertising! Come, spend an hour on the Dark Side, and find out which social networks are making money, how much and by what means and learn about the business models in this growth industry.
The new era of web applications has introduced to us a number of frameworks designed to aid in rapid development. But, no matter what your preferred language, finding a suitable framework is not usually an easy task.
In this intensive 2 hour session you’ll hear from several developers who’ll discuss which frameworks they chose, why they love them; why they hate them, and gain valuable insights to help you choose the right tools for your job. We will focus primarily on Rails (Ruby), Joomla! (PHP), Struts/Spring (Java) and Django (Python).
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 10.45am.
Being a CSS expert is about more than just memorizing selectors. It’s also about working to improve the maintainability and efficiency of your style sheets, planning for the future, and mastering your workflow. This session will look at pushing the limits of CSS to create stunning interfaces using clean, meaningful markup. We’ll also look at CSS 3 and at what the future of Web design could look like when CSS 3 finally becomes mainstream.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 9.10am.
The hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more:
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 4.05pm.
A new inflection point in human-computer interaction is upon us. Along with other technologies, Microsoft Surface marks a departure from graphical user interface or GUI into the world of Natural User Interface or NUI. This talk begins with discussion of emotional design and its importance in the future of society. The lens shifts to how one design team is thinking about designing for a new era in which emotional intent and intuitive interaction are the imperative. Using theoretical models drawn from a mix of history, science, philosophy, and even video game design, this presentation reveals principles behind experience design for Microsoft Surface and beyond.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 2.40pm.
Internet video has come a long way from the postage stamp generic media player to the commercial success it is today.
This session looks at this journey, and examines the multitude of online video options available. We will look at content creation (simple single piece, to multi-platform, and user generated), distribution methods and publishing strategies.
Then once the video is published, how do you justify it (the ROI), commercialise it (leverage the content) and monetise it through syndication, advertising, sponsorship, or pay-per-view/subscription. There will be real time demos and case studies.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 2.40pm.
Even in our day of web videos and podcasts, text is still the king of content on the web. Great typographic sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of sites that exude a professional confidence. From type sizing and coloring to leading, kerning, and measures to proper usage of quotes, dashes, and bullets, to choosing appropriate typefaces, this session will demonstrate using CSS and other modern web technologies to display type on screen with elegance and impact.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.
Quantitative insights gathered through online analytics can contribute greatly to the design and optimisation of online experience architectures.
The success of an Experience Architect depends on the business impact of their architecture. Quantitative techniques can be used in benchmarking before and after performances of a website demonstrating the impact of the new architecture.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.
No longer are search engines the main contenders when you’re shopping for JavaScript solutions. For sophisticated, cross-browser effects which degrade gracefully and don’t impede accessibility, libraries are the new heavy weights. But which library do you want in your corner?
The crop of polished, opensource libraries bring a vast array of visual effects and functionality to leverage in your projects and we’ll introduce you to the power houses. We’ll run jQuery, the YUI, and Prototype up against pure Javascript in a tag team event that will challenge even the hardiest code warriors.
In this special 2 hour session local and international developers will run libraries through their paces giving you real world insights in to how a library can help you knockout the toughest scripting challenge.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.
Mainstream mobile devices are being loaded with sensors. These devices can be used to create experiences that are tailored, adaptive and responsive to the way people live and work. Location-awareness allows devices to respond to place, networked address books enable socially rich communication experiences, and motion and gestural sensors empower designers to respond to context of use. All these elements are creating a ’sensitive ecosystem’; mobile devices that adapt gracefully to context and use.
This presentation will explore some of the design and technology trends that are shaping design for mobile devices, show examples of devices and services that are starting to take advantage of these trends, then explain how designers need to rethink design problems to take advantage of this technological ground-shift.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.
With so many social networks blooming, all with different participants and methods of interaction, it can be hard to determine where to invest your energy, time and $$.
The session will provide ideas and a “background briefing” to help you answer the question:
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.
Usability practice closely resembles the traditional software development approach in its formality and insistence on up-front analysis and design. Usability and design is an iterative process, but not agile. So how can design and usability be effectively embedded into an agile development environment? In this presentation, the tension between agile development and usability is examined and how Suncorp design and development teams overcame the challenges to bridge the gulf between these approaches.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.
The release of Apple’s iPhone brings new opportunities for web sites and web apps on handheld devices, though not without its share of challenges and best practices.
Tim and Pete will look at the best examples out in the wild and share their experience creating iphone.news.com.au - one of Australia’s largest news sites, news.com.au, tailored to the iPhone.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.
Working for yourself is a dream that many web designers and developers have. You can pick and choose your clients, work in your pajamas, and sleep in until 10am every day if you want to. But there’s a more serious side to starting a business, and lots of factors to consider if you decide to head out on your own. Kay will share the story of Clever Starfish’s journey from a seed of an idea to a thriving small business, with lots of handy hints for both things to do, and things not to do, along the way.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.
With the growth of interactivity in web applications we are pushing Javascript to its limits, not to mention the limits of HTML and CSS. And so we spend our days resorting to Flash, waiting for that distant time when browser support for CSS3 will come to our rescue and allow us to create the UIs we dream of. But this is not the way it has to be: there is a little known secret weapon right here in most modern browsers. Yes, even in IE6.
Dmitry Baranovskiy is here to tell you about Canvas, SVG and VML. Come along and be amazed by standards based UI wizardry you can start implementing in projects right here, right now.
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.
New technologies for web applications open up interactions to a highly sophisticated level. Learn how these new technologies can help designers move beyond simply complying with accessibility rules to create applications that work for everyone.
Nominations for this year's McFarlane Prize, which we founded in memory of Australian web and open source pioneer Nigel McFarlane in 2006, will open on July 1, and close on August 31st of this year.
The prize aims to recognise "excellence is Australian web design" - and focusses on ...
A big week for browser launches - with Opera 9.5 now out of a long alpha and beta program. With great browsers on just about any device that plugs in, (in Japan you can get TVs with Opera browsers in them), Opera has been taking the web places no ...
Firefox 3 is released today - a huge improvement in terms of performance, User Experience, and standards support over what was already in version 2 a fantastic, browser - and arguably the most important browser ever released. Without it, one wonders what the browser landscape of today, a vibrant and ...
Believe me, I'd be the first to say there is a lot of hot air that flies around about Twitter. But it strikes me that genuinely valuable ways of using it as an organisation do appear to be emerging. There's a collection of practical suggestions, as well as a succinct ...
First he gave you the opportunity to buy a magazine for which you had provided the content, with JPG. Now he's giving you the chance to create your own magazine which others can buy. Derek Powazek's latest project, MagCloud, is a joint venture with HP Labs, the people ...
This is an excellent collection of articles from Robert Hoekman Jr who spoke for us recently at our Melbourne and Canberra events.
We all know how critical it is to get the sign up aspect of any web experience right - yet vast tracts of the web still get it ...
With the launch last night of OpenAustralia.org, we now have our very own edition of TheyWorkForYou, thanks to the hard work of a group of local volunteers, plus the good people of mySociety, who build the technology on which the system is based.
OpenAustralia combines Hansard (the official ...
According to its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, speaking last week at the Future of the Web Debate,
In the future, the web should be able to connect people's ideas in such a way that one person could store his partly formed ideas and leave a trail of his thinking for ...
We appreciate that for a lot of our attendees coming to Web Directions costs quite a bit more than just the price of admission. Apart from the chance to win an iPhone, this is another good reason to get stuck into sorting your registration out now while flights are ...
My other favourite Aussie web app just goes from strength to strength. Congratulations to Emily and Omar at Remember the Milk for taking out the category of Best iPhone Web Application in the Apple Design Awards recently announced at WWDC.
I know this will be rubbing the curmudgeons out ...
An ongoing saga from the annals of cluelessness. For a good laugh, or cry, really, if you are in fact considering getting an iPhone here in Australia, do be sure to read the comments.
This is yet another great idea from Web Directions South 08 speaker Jeff Veen.
Someone smart, enterprising, hard working and crazy should do such a thing in Australia.
Or maybe they should use their talents more fruitfully.
Going to SXSW interactive in Austin is a great experience, but anyone will tell you that it's even better if you go as a panelist. If you've got an idea for a panel you'd like to chair, in my opinion it's well worth your while to take a few minutes ...
It's too easy for the rest of the world to sit around and be cynical and sigh a big "whatever" at the release of the 3G iPhone 2. Dammit, we southern hemispherites need something to get excited about as the deep of Winter approaches, so, upgraded camera or not, the ...
If you've been to one of our conferences, you would have seen many presentations put together using Keynote, the presentation software for Mac OS X by Apple. Now a small team have put together what is effectively a Keynote clone, but done entirely on the web - all HTML, ...
Marketing and advertising seem to be almost at odds with the idea of a service - most of us associate advertising with intrusive interruptions to things we'd rather be doing - like reading a web site, watching TV, listening to music, or just walking down the street.
On the web ...
Via Business Week's excellent innovation blog, by Bruce Nussbaum, we came across the World Economic Forum's latest "Networked Readiness" report, the aim of which is to rank nations by "measuring economies’capacity to fully leverage ICT for increased competitiveness and development".
Australia ranks a healthy 14th, ahead of Austria, Germany, ...
CSS guru, and speaker at Web Directions South this year, Jina Bolton has an article published in this edition of the venerable A List Apart - Writing an Interface Style Guide
From the article
Unfortunately, it’s also common that beautiful interfaces don’t stay beautiful. An interface’s design disintegration can be frustrating to ...
During his recent visit to Australia for Web Directions Government, Jose Alonso made reference to the upcoming vote on the World Wide Web Consortium's proposed eGovernment initiative. Today it was announced that thw W3C will indeed charter an eGovernment Activity, open to public participation.
The group will identify ...
After weeks of 530am starts with my daughter last year, and living where the local cafes don't open 'til 800am, I couldn't face another 3 hour stint before my first coffee, and so took myself off to the nearest purveyor of fine espresso makers, and as luck would have it, ...