News from August 2008
Memories and articles from back in the day
A smarter, simpler phone — can this Australian team invent one?
Interesting story in today’s SMH technology section. Queensland based company Orange Dot are on a mission to design a mobile phone for adults with intellectual disabilities, many of whom find modern phones too complex and difficult to use.
That was the experience of a 34-year-old man with Down’s Syndrome, who having … Read more »
McFarlane Prize closing date looming
The closing date for this year’s McFarlane for Excellence in Australian Web Design prize is next Monday, so you only have a few days to nominate your site, or someone else’s site for the prize.
The McFarlane prize was inaugurated in 2006 in memory of Nigel McFarlane. The goal … Read more »
Federal disability commissioner threatens to “name and shame” government departments and agencies
Via our friends at PropellerGlobal we read at Yahoo!7 that
The federal disability commissioner has threatened to “name and shame” government departments and agencies which do not make public information accessible to people with disabilities.
Commissioner Graeme Innis said
Making information as socially important and highly publicised as the … Read more »
Web Directions Jobs update
We launched our web industry focussed jobs site, Jobs.WebDirections only a couple of weeks back, and we’ve already got 27 jobs from the likes of Atlassian, Freshview, NAB, Yahoo!7 and many other fantastic companies to work for. There are full time and freelance jobs for developers, designers, managers, marketers … Read more »
Announcing Web Directions East
In 2007 Web Directions headed offshore to Vancouver for our first Web Directions North. Now, we are really excited to announce Web Directions East, to be held in Tokyo, Japan in November of this year, in conjunction with leading local web design and training companies Actlink and … Read more »
Our very own Baby Name Explorer
No doubt you’ve all whiled away the odd hour putting your name, and that of all your friends into the famous Baby Name Explorer. But it was always a bit artificial from an Aussie point of view I felt, because the data was from the US. What, no … Read more »
Shock Second Life news — no one much seems to use it
Well, it’s probably not much of a shock, but much touted research by QUT postgraduate student Kim Mackenzie, (reports in SMH, Australian, SmartCompany and elsewhere) suggests that
companies that rushed to set up bases within the cult virtual world of Second Life appear to have wasted their … Read more »
August de los Reyes , principal experience architect for Surface, our final keynote presenter for 2008
Unless you have been asleep for the last 2 years or so, then you’ll almost certainly have heard of two pieces of technology.
The iPhone is one of course, but also getting people everywhere excited has been Surface, the table top based, muti-user, multi-touch device from Microsoft.
Right now, probably … Read more »
JavaScript/ECMAScript — the current state of standards development
Javascript is increasingly playing an important role for all web developers and designers, and obviously at Web Directions as well. Our favourite Ajax focussed blog, Ajaxian, has a post today detailing the current state of pay when it comes to the next generation of the JavaScript standard, ECMAScript 3.1/4. … Read more »
ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition
Got a great idea for a video game? I know I do. You get these two sticks which you can move vertically up and down the screen to hit a square ball back and forth. As the ball hits the stick, it makes a really cool, lifelike beeping sound.….(if you’re … Read more »
What are the local internet gurus excited about?
If you happened upon a copy of yesterday’s Icon in the Sydney Morning Herald you may have noticed “Dopple Your Fun” — where five local internet gurus — Cheryl Lead, Virginia Murdoch, John Allsopp, Lachlan Hardy and Tim Lucas were asked by the Herald’s Nick Galvan … Read more »
Interview with Mark Pesce at The Alcove
Local web visionary Mark Pesce has become a fixture as our closing keynote at Web Directions South. He spoke a couple of months back at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, where he was also interviewed on The Alcove. Here’s the interview in full. Mark speaks at … Read more »
Get a free t shirt from our supporter molt:n
Words? Code? Design? Which are you? And do you want a free t-shirt so you can let the world know? It’s easy to get your hands on one — all you need to do is blog or Flickr something about Web Directions and tag it ‘moltnWD’.
Wear your passion at … Read more »
The return of font embedding to the web?
Sadly, quite a bit of what I wrote in this article is based on out of date information, and on my own testing that had a fatal flaw. I’ve left the article as it is, and added corrections inline
Most web designers and developers will be familiar with Image Replacement techniques, … Read more »
New Workshop — Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp
Web Directions started out with very much a designer and developer focus. But, based on feedback, and our general observations about the industry, we recognised that there was a need for a wider focus on the web — not just the practicalities of implementation, but the strategic and business side … Read more »
On cue — web browsing phone debt fears newstories
Well, it didn’t take long for, as we predicted, the first reports of “unexpectedly high debt from bills for excess data usage” for users of “fast web-browsing phones, such as the new Apple iPhone” (Sydney Morning Herald.)
I’m not sure whether this affects a lot of people, or only a … Read more »
Web Directions South 2008 Schedule Published
Let the decision making begin: Developing for iPhone or Strategies for Social Media Engagement, Creating Sexy Style Sheets or Choosing the Right Web App Framework. Because the official schedule for Web Directions South 2008 has now been set in stone and handed down.
I’ve laboured over … Read more »
Deafness — our next big accessibility challenge?
Further to John’s post on Lisa’s article on A List Apart — Deafness and the User Experience — I just wanted to point out a little initiative we have started over the last couple of weeks here at Web Directions.
We’ve been publishing podcasts after our events for some years … Read more »
On deafness and Deafness
The wonderful Lisa Herrod, who has spoken at a number of our events, has just had a detailed article focussing on deafness (capital and lower case D — read about the difference in her article) at A List Apart — the pre-eminent online journal for web professionals.
The lessons … Read more »
A big thank you to our Key Supporters, Microsoft
After last year’s Web Directions South we did a survey of attendees to get a sense of what you liked, and where we might improve. It was anonymous, which meant, hopefully, we got very honest answers. The responses were overwhelmingly positive — about the speakers and content, and about … Read more »
Web site security in the New York Times
The New York Times has a worthwhile read today on password security (and its serious limitations), with a focus on among other things OpenID (which Myles Eftos will be focussing on at Web Directions South)
I think almost all of us would admit to not adhering to best … Read more »
Aussies at SXSWi 2009
With our country yet again in the grip of that four yearly frenzy of jingoistic nationalism that is The Olympics, even I can’t help but come over all patriotic. In that spirit I encourage you all to head on over to the SXSW panel picker and give your vote … Read more »
Grocerychoice — Accessibility disaster (to put it kindly)
The Australian Federal government recently launched grocerychoice, a website whose goal is to
[help] consumers find the cheapest supermarket chain in their area without having to compare hundreds of prices.
A laudable goal no doubt. But sadly, as our friends over at PropellerGlobal note, quoting news.com.au, it’s … Read more »
Painless cross browser vector graphics with Dmitry Baranovskiy’s Raphael Javascript Library
If you’ve not heard of Dmitry Baranovskiy yet, well, you will soon. Now at Atlassian Dmitry has only been in Australia a handful of years, coming here with his young family from the Ukraine.
Dmitry is not only very smart, he’s very imaginative, having wowed the crowd at … Read more »
Thinking about going to SXSW 2009?
Attending SXSW interactive at least once in your life is a must for any web professional, no matter how far you have to travel to get there. You’ll get to see what some of the most interesting people in the industry have been working on for the last 12 … Read more »
Edge of the Web — Perth is the place to be
Time’s running out to take advantage of early bird pricing for Perth’s long awaited web industry event: Edge of the Web, brought to you by the Australian Web Industry Association.
On the 6th of November there will be a full day two track conference featuring
- Derek Featherstone, who’ll be delivering … Read more »
Digital Futures report — how do Australians use the web?
The rather cumbersomely named “ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)” has just released the findings of its Digital Futures project.
The report looks at internet and web use in Australia. It can be downloaded as a PDF (about 3.5MB), and at first glance makes for … Read more »
Australian Mobile Data Plans get a touch more realistic
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting (as flagged by Cheryl in a comment yesterday) that Virgin Mobile, who will begin selling the iPhone shortly, is offering 1GB data plans with very generous call, text and other caps, for $70 (including no upfront charge for the phone … Read more »
No liquids or iPods
Wired (and multiple other sites) is reporting that News.com.au is reporting that “Music fans might soon have their iPods searched by Customs officers at airport checks and face jail if a large amount of pirated music is found on them.”
Under a treaty — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement … Read more »