Uncategorized
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
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
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 »