News from May 2009
Memories and articles from back in the day
New Jobs at Web Directions Jobs
In an encouraging sign given the largely poor economic news we’ve been hearing of late, this week has seen several high profile new jobs posted to our jobs site.
News Digital Media/TrueLocal and looking for a Senior Front-end Developer
Gruden are looking for an Online Project Manager / Producer
Different … Read more »
Google Wave — the next big Aussie success story at Google?
As far too few people know, Google Maps started life here in Australia, and Google continue to have a large Australian engineering presence. Now, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, two of the founders of what became Google Maps have announced Google Wave — built here in Australia by all indications.
What … Read more »
The dawning of real fonts on the web?
Regular readers will know of my near fixation with embeddable/downloadable fonts on the web, as now supported in Safari, Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10, and long supported (in a somewhat incompatible way with these other browsers) in Internet Explorer.
But the technology has never taken off. Foundries and many type … Read more »
Usability — the word on everyone’s lips this week
Lisa Herrod has been breathing a bit of life into the local scene by turning the Social Usability Professionals Association meetups into a regular event at The Arthouse in Pitt St. If you haven’t been before, these are a great opportunity to mix with other local usability and UX people … Read more »
Mark Pesce kicks of the first ever “What’s the Big Idea”
Anyone who’s been to one of the Web Directions South conferences will have seen Mark Pesce, inventor of VRML, judge on the ABC’s New Inventors, big thinker, and all round guru, speak.
While he gracefully retired from our final keynote role after (in fact during) last year’s keynote (like John Farnham … Read more »
Happy anniversary DailyKos
I’m not sure how many Australians will be familiar with DailyKos, an enormously influential and highly trafficked politically liberal online community in the US.
DailyKos, frequently singled out by right wing commentators in the mainstream media for vitriolic abuse (which seems to only benefit DK), is an example of an … Read more »
JavaScript and Website performance
Techworld has a detailed summary of Google’s high performance guru Steve Souder’s recent Tech Ed presentation on web site performance, where he singles out JavaScript as a particular culprit in slowing down sites.
With Amazon reporting that a 10th of a second slow down in overall page loading reduced sales … Read more »
Great moments in User Experience?
News from Autoweek, that BMW will now offer full internet access in the dashboard, well. provided your car is travelling at less than 5 kph.
One wonders whether the kind of folks with a BMW budget won’t already have a web enabled phone, and whether dedicated in car web access … Read more »
Data.gov
Announced a few weeks ago, via Stephen Collins we learn that America’s service to
increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
has been launched.
To me, a hugely important step in the transformation of the concept of government to greater … Read more »
How do you solve a problem like IE6?
(As astute, more likely female readers might guess, Sound of Music is now the new favourite movie at chez Allsopp for the 3 year old)
We might forget it, but once IE6 represented a great leap forward for the web. At the time, its support for CSS was really as good … Read more »
We ❤ Adrian Holovaty
As regular readers and Web Directions attendees will know, we are big big fans of Adrian Holovaty here at WD!
Adrian’s latest short post summarizes I think much of why we are such big fans. Highly relevant to the current widespread debate about the future of news and journalism, … Read more »
Microsoft REMIX coming in June
Each year in March, Microsoft hold MIX, their web focussed conference. For the last three years, Microsoft Australia has been holding REMIX, a one day event bringing focussing on the web, from Microsoft’s perspective. This year’s event is a few weeks off, in Sydney June 11.
Clearly Microsoft, and their … Read more »
Port80 May 2009 Roadtrip Meetups
It’s really great to see industry meetups taking off again. The latest I have heard is that the Australian Web Industry Association are hitting the road — bringing Port80 Drinks to Sydney and Melbourne this May.
Founded … Read more »
Data driven design — a debate that isn’t going away?
You’ll all remember the mini fracas a month or so back when Doug Bowman pulled up stumps at Google, and moved on to the role of Creative Director at Twitter.
John and I thought there was definitely enough meat … Read more »
WDS09 — off to a great start
Thanks to all those who have already registered — WDS09 is off to a great start!
We’re also very happy to announce our first exhibitors for 2009 — long time supporters of Web Directions, Campaign Monitor, and XERO, providers of a very popular web based accountancy system. XERO … Read more »
Announcing Web Directions South 2009
After a very frenzied two weeks of finalising speakers and pulling all the content together for the site, Web Directions South 2009 is now open for business. And, we’re just a bit excited about what’s going to be happening on October 6 — 9 this year.
From our humble beginnings … Read more »