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Web Directions in Desktop Magazine

Dur­ing Web Direc­tions South, Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of Site­Point, and long time Web Direc­tions sup­porter Matt Mag­ain inter­views me about the con­fer­ence, its goals, and so on, for Desk­top Mag­a­zine. If you don’t have access to the mag­a­zine (issue 234!) then you can read it online now, thanks to … Read more »

The Future of Email Design

Yeah look, I can be irked by an HTML email as much as the next per­son, but step out­side the rar­efied atmos­phere we all live and breathe for a moment and talk to some friends who work in just about any other sec­tor and you’ll under­stand why they just aren’t … Read more »

Why wikipedia does not run ads

I’m kind of guess­ing that all of you who have looked up any­thing on Wikipedia in the last 24hrs will have seen the link to Why Wikipedia Does Not Run Ads. Check it out if not.

It has some really strong argu­ments about how destruc­tive the injec­tion of cash could … Read more »

Ghost Town — another reason to check out Perth’s ByteMe! festival

Web Direc­tions attendee Kate Raynes-​​Goldie has started a per­va­sive gam­ing com­pany over in Perth — Giant Dice. Their first Perth ven­ture, a mobile loca­tive game called Ghost Town, will be held from Decem­ber 2 – 9, as part of the ByteMe! Fes­ti­val of dig­i­tal content.

Mobile loca­tive games are an … Read more »

Cricket action via twitter

OK, let me pref­ace this by say­ing that my care fac­tor for cricket per se is barely mea­sur­able on on the non quan­tum level. What does inter­est me though is people’s obses­sive fas­ci­na­tion with the game.

An obses­sive fas­ci­na­tion that leads to this fine bit of work by Myles Eftos, an … Read more »

Off to Perth again

Isn’t it funny how you will have never been to a par­tic­u­lar city in your life, and then you find your­self going there twice in just a few months?

I had a great time check­ing out Perth and Mar­garet River back in August when the good peo­ple from West­ern Aus­tralian … Read more »

Relive Mark Pesce’s Mob Rules at Youtube

Mark Pesce’s clos­ing keynote, Mob Rules, was def­i­nitely one of the high points of Web Direc­tions South this year. Most of you have prob­a­bly had a look at the tran­script, and maybe even lis­tened to the MP3. But what’s really great is that Mark has gone to the … Read more »

First Slidecast available

I’d say you’ve been fol­low­ing the pod­casts of the pre­sen­ta­tions from Web Direc­tions South as they come onstream, and we’ve also gath­ered together a lot of the slides into the resources site.

But some­thing new and super­cool has just come online: Scott Gled­hill has gone the extra mile and … Read more »

Make the world a better place, one micropayment at the time

Got wind of a really cool Aussie project today: The Foot­prints Network.

This is a great lit­tle sys­tem to eas­ily fun­nel micro­pay­ments from any online store’s cus­tomers to gen­uinely needy organ­i­sa­tions the world over.

There’s an approval process to join the net­work, but then you get an API that you can … Read more »

Web Directions Speakers in the New: Mike Cannon-​​Brookes

Co-​​founder of Atlass­ian, Mike Cannon-​​Brookes, who spoke at WDS07, [slides online now, pre­sen­ta­tion pod­cast to come] this week announced that Atlass­ian is part­ner­ing with Microsoft to enable Atlassian’s enter­prise wiki con­flu­ence to be inte­grated with Microsoft’s Share­Point. More details includ­ing an inter­view with fel­low antipodean Richard McManus at … Read more »

A bit of co-​​working in Sydney?

Hard on the heals of Perths planned “Free­lance Fri­day”, Syd­ney boys Tim Lucas, Cam Adams and Michael Kouk­oullis announce Sydney’s first ‘Jelly’ cow-​​working day, both on Fri­day 26th Octo­ber. So head over to one of these places for some shared inspiration.

Web Directions at Builder AU

The fine folks at Builder AU, CNET’s great local devel­oper site, have a great wrap up of Web Direc­tions, includ­ing sev­eral video inter­views with speak­ers Rashmi Sinha, Adrian Holo­vaty, Mike Cannon-​​Brookes and Chris Wil­son, as well as in depth inter­views with Andy Clarke, Scott Gled­hill, Rob Man­son and … Read more »

Web Directions Wrap up — the podcasts commence

With 28 pre­sen­ta­tions by over 30 pre­sen­ters, get­ting the pod­casts orga­nized this year has been quite a task. There’s per­mis­sions to get from every author, CDs to rip and down­sam­ple (unless you want to down­load 60MB per pre­sen­ta­tion), the pod­cast RSS to cre­ate, site changes to make, and more.

This year, … Read more »

Come to Web Directions Free, from anywhere in the world!

This year some lucky per­son will get to go to Web Direc­tions North for free, from any­where in the world. Join our affil­i­ates pro­gram and it could be you.

Here’s how it works. Get in touch with us and we’ll set you up as an affil­i­ate. Use your affil­i­ate link, … Read more »

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your mashups

Via Builder AU, we learn that the Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics is plan­ning to open up it’s data for mashups.

As part of an ongo­ing plan to make more of its data avail­able in a vari­ety of for­mats, the ABS is work­ing to enable users to gen­er­ate their own tables … Read more »

Web Directions Wrap up — the blogosphere

Over at Tech­no­rati you’ll find about 1000 in bound links to Web Direc­tions — so we aren’t quite Engad­get, but I think that’s pretty cool. Here’s some of the posts I found with wrapups, com­ments, sug­ges­tions and thoughts that you might be inter­ested in. There are plenty more … Read more »

Powerhouse Museum — Jobs

Folk­sonomies, mashups, data visu­al­i­sa­tion, UCD, usabil­ity, experimentation?

One of the speak­ers from Web Direc­tions South this year, Sebas­t­ian Chan from the Pow­er­house Museum, just got in touch this morn­ing to say his team is look­ing to fill a cou­ple of devel­oper roles.

Sebastian’s pre­sen­ta­tion — Social Media and Gov­ern­ment 2.0 — … Read more »

Freelance Friday/Work@Jelly

Work from home, and some­times like to mix it with folks like you? Want to bounce ideas and tech­niques off sim­i­lar minded peo­ple? In Syd­ney or Perth? Then mark down Octo­ber 26th as the first “free­lance fri­day” (or in Syd­ney Work@Jelly) day.

Check out Myles Eftos’s blog if you are … Read more »

Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire

Wig meets Web (2.0): har­ness­ing the law to com­mer­cialise and pro­tect your IP

  • MP3 of pre­sen­ta­tion — to come
  • Pre­sen­ta­tion slides — to come
  • Ses­sion description
  • About Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire

Ses­sion description

Inno­va­tion and devel­op­ment in web 2.0 moves ever faster, the law as slow as always. So how can you … Read more »

Web Design Job in Perth, WA

Our good friends in Perth, BAM Cre­ative, are look­ing for a stan­dards based designer. So, if you are look­ing for a job over that way, check out their offering.

Adrian Holovaty interview at SitePoint

Site­Point con­tin­ues their cov­er­age of Web Direc­tions South with a just posted inter­view with Adrian Holo­vaty. I hap­pen to think Adrian is one of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple on the web, with major involve­ment in Django, Mashups, Grease­Mon­key, online jour­nal­ism, and more.

We’ll have the pod­cast of his pre­sen­ta­tion … Read more »

Making Links — Special Offer for Web Directions delegates

Mak­ing Links 2007 is one of Aus­trali­aís lead­ing forums for work­ers and activists in the not-​​for-​​profit sec­tor to share skills and infor­ma­tion relat­ing to web­site devel­op­ment, online cam­paign­ing, online social net­work­ing and com­mu­nity build­ing, and other ICT issues. The con­fer­ence is in Syd­ney, Octo­ber 30th — 31st

This year the … Read more »

Accessibility is about people, not compliance

As devel­op­ers, design­ers, archi­tects, any­one really who designs and builds things that peo­ple rely on to get on with their lives, often think about acces­si­bil­ity is very the­o­ret­i­cal terms. In the case of the built envi­ron­ment, it’s about com­ply­ing with build­ing codes. On the web it’s about meet­ing WCAG level … Read more »

BuilderAU Web Directions features

Builder AU, the local edi­tion of CNET Net­works Aus­tralia site for devel­op­ers was our online part­ner for the con­fer­ence, and were there in force cov­er­ing Web Direc­tions. The fruit of their efforts is now com­ing online, includ­ing video inter­views with speak­ers (cur­rently there are inter­views with Adrian Holo­vaty and … Read more »

Speaker Interviews at SitePoint

At Web Direc­tions Kevin Yank from Site­Point spoke with some of our speak­ers, and there are now a cou­ple of these audio inter­views online.

First up, there’s an inter­view with Andy Clarke, and Cameron Adams, two of our most pop­u­lar speak­ers (peo­ple were stand­ing in the hall­way out­side the room … Read more »

iPod Touch winner from SitePoint

Matt Mag­ain from Site­Point got in touch to let me know the win­ner of the iPod Touch in their recent “Why do you love the Web” competition .

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Teresa Ko, and I know you’ll love you iPod too — I sure do!

Slides and podcasts

Just a quick note for all those who have been email­ing us ask­ing after these.

As many of them as we can gather together will be posted at the site real soon now. It does take a lit­tle time to con­tact all the speak­ers and get their slides and notes from … Read more »

More Jobs — Developer/​Designer at Glass Onion

Great sup­port­ers of Web Direc­tions, and strong pro­po­nents of stan­dards based design, Glass Onion, are look­ing for a Web Designer/​Developer.

Web Designer

Excel­lent writ­ten and com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills

Able to work Pho­to­shop, Illus­tra­tor and Flash

Knowl­edge of standards-​​based HTML and CSS coding

Glass Onion is a Syd­ney based web design, devel­op­ment, intranet, extranet, search and … Read more »

win an iPod Touch, or get a Job, at SitePoint

Site­Point, excel­lent Aus­tralian based web design and devel­op­ment pub­lish­ing com­pany and com­mu­nity have an iPod touch to give away. Just head over to their site and tell them why you love the web by Fri­day, and you could win one of these fan­tas­tic devices (I got one last week. … Read more »

Gilmore’s Law

Gilmore's Law

Fans sab­o­tag­ing scalpers’ auctions

Pace Mark Pesce WDS07 Clos­ing Keynote.

2007 McFarlane Prize

Apolo­gies for the slightly belated announce­ment of the win­ners of this years prize.

As announced last week, the short­list for this year’s prize were

  • EQASRM by Angela Bonfato Cre­ative and Spoon Media
  • Occu­pa­tional Psy­chi­a­try by August
  • Andrews Must Resign by Michael Koukoullis
  • Site­Point Design Con­tests by SitePoint
  • … Read more »

    Thank you

    This is not the end, by any means, but just for the moment, a huge thank you to all who came to the con­fer­ence, to make it the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence it was. 600 web folk from around the world, saw 30 won­der­ful speak­ers, and with­out doubt the best Web Direc­tions … Read more »

    Microsoft Mini presentations in the breaks

    If you are here at the con­fer­ence, check out the Microsoft area in the breaks, where all kinds of folks are doing inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions on tech­nol­ogy. They’ve also got loads of inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions on map­ping, mashups, mobile, sil­verlight, and more. There’s a timetable in your lap­top bag, so check that … Read more »

    Introducing meetweaver​.com

    The fan­tas­ti­cally tal­ented dynamic duo of Tim Lucas and Cam Adams, builder of last year’s web con­nec­tions, have taken the wraps this morn­ing off meetweaver a social site focussing on par­tic­i­pants at con­fer­ences. Too hard to describe in a few words, so visit, and take a look — and … Read more »

    WDS07 Kicks off

    Web Direc­tions 2007 is under­way, kicked off with a fan­tas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion on social media, sys­tems and soft­ware by Rashmi Sinha, CEO of Uzanto, who built SlideShare.

    Much more to come, mean­time check out pho­tos on Flickr, blog posts at Tech­no­rati, the slides at SlideShare, and else­where online.

    [tags]wds07[/tags]

    What’s going on at Web Directions?

    Can’t make it to Web Direc­tions? Can’t get enough any­way? Keep up to date with people’s lat­est pho­tos on Flickr (al those tagged WDS07), with our lit­tle app which updates the lat­est pho­tos every 15 min­utes or so.

    So if you upload pho­tos to Flickr, make sure you tag them … Read more »

    Closing night party news

    rooftop altitude bar

    If you are com­ing to Web Direc­tions — great news. If not, you have two days to get your act together, because, Microsoft has just come though as the clos­ing night party spon­sor. That means loads of food, loads to drink (in mod­er­a­tion, respon­si­bly, and so … Read more »

    McFarlane Prize shortlist

    After an ardu­ous deci­sion mak­ing process, the Jury in this years McFar­lane Prize has decided on the short­list. The short­listed sites this year are

    EQASRM by Angela Bonfato Cre­ative and Spoon Media

    Occu­pa­tional Psy­chi­a­try by August

    Andrews Must Resign by Michael Koukoullis

    Site­Point Design Con­tests by … Read more »

    SitePoint, Australian based Web tech book company is hiring

    Our good friends at Site­Point are look­ing to fill a num­ber of posi­tions. So if you are look­ing for an inter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing job in the web tech world, take a look.

    Do you enjoy tin­ker­ing with the lat­est web tech­nolo­gies? Fancy your­self as a gun coder, a gifted com­mu­ni­ca­tor, … Read more »

    Is your website greenhouse friendly?

    Car­bon off­set­ting and green energy are ideas that have really gained trac­tion over the last 8 months or so.

    Have you con­sid­ered the impact your web­site activ­i­ties might be hav­ing on the environment?

    Per­haps your web­site is already hosted on a green server pow­ered by renew­able energy or with a host­ing com­pany … Read more »

    WDS Speaker interviews

    Scott Gled­hill, who’s speak­ing on “is SEO evil” at this year’s con­fer­ence is inter­viewed in builderAU today. A good inter­view on some key SEO issues for devel­op­ers and design­ers. So for a primer on SEO, head over to BuilderAU.

    Wifi at Web Directions South

    One of the hard­est things to get right at a con­fer­ence is wifi inter­net access. You’d think it would be easy — after­all, set­ting up a net­work at home is sim­ple stuff, right?

    Trust us, it is hard. Wifi and inter­net access don’t nec­es­sar­ily scale as eas­ily as you’d think. Get … Read more »

    Following Web Directions on Twitter, Flickr and more

    The divide between the ‘vir­tual’ and ‘real’ worlds is some­thing we’ve long tried to address at our con­fer­ences. To me, the online world aug­ments our ‘real’ lives — it’s not sep­a­rate, nor even an exten­sion of our phys­i­cal lives, they are part and par­cel of the same life. And at … Read more »

    Thanks to our sponsor W3C Australia

    Since our very first con­fer­ence, we’ve been for­tu­nate to have the sup­port of the W3C’s Aus­tralia Office. Since last year, the office has been hosted by CSIRO, and this year, their sup­port has grown yet again. Not only have W3C Aus­tralia ensured that we can entice Bert Bos … Read more »

    Workshops updates — a sell out, and a few places left

    Well, it’s a week and a day ’til our work­shops, and we’ve just had our first sell out — ‘Dr. Nic’ William’s Begin­ning Ruby on Rails.

    Mean­while, we have just a hand­ful of places left for Andy Clarke’s Tran­scend­ing CSS, so if you want to get a day’s insight … Read more »

    A botnet the most powerful supercomputer

    Via BuilderAU, our online part­ner at the con­fer­ence, the thrilling, fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­turb­ing story that sug­gests the most pow­er­ful super­com­puter on earth (and that means ever) may be a bot­net, of PCs infected with the Storm Worm.

    Dis­trib­uted pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions like SETI@home have set a prece­dent for such mas­sive, par­al­lel … Read more »

    2 weeks to go

    Tomor­row it’s just two weeks ’til Web Direc­tions South 2007. Already an audi­ence of close to 600 is expected, from all over Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific, the US, South Amer­ica and Europe. The only con­ti­nent miss­ing in Antarc­tica. So, first per­son who signs up from Antarc­tica gets a great … Read more »

    Geeks on the Grass

    All you Syd­ney web folks, keen to catch up with peers in a relaxed set­ting? Well, Fri­day the 21st of Sep­tem­ber sees the first Geeks on the Grass.

    One of the rea­sons we started doing the con­fer­ences in the first place is that hav­ing started to meet fel­low design­ers and … Read more »

    Designers, start your engines — a Web Directions competition

    For those com­ing to Web Direc­tions, we’ve got some fun stuff planned. One of those is the use of var­i­ous screens around the con­fer­ence to show real time con­tent from the audi­ence (blog posts, pho­tos and more) to see what oth­ers are say­ing, think­ing and doing at Web Directions.

    Right now, … Read more »

    Standards in email clients

    I must admit I’m old school when it comes to email — I like it plain and vanilla. I read it and write it vanilla stylee. I use *this* for empha­sis. But, that’s my taste and choice (OK, so I have been using email, I kid you not, since 1985). … Read more »

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