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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 »