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Wds08 | Web Directions

Podcasts, slides and other presentation materials

David Peterson - Semantic web for distributed social networks

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.

/Hear how Drupal, Semantic MediaWiki and other bleeding edge tech were enlisted along with pixie dust, FOAF, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Linked Data (basically all the Semantic Web stuff) to build a distributed social network. The focus will be not on evangelism (I don’t really care about that) but how disparate open source platforms can talk and work together. This stuff actually works and makes development more fluid. These technologies make local development easier, but when it is time to broaden your scope, classic search is still king. How can you leverage this? Newcomers such as Yahoo Searchmonkey can play an important role in the creation of a truly distributed information system.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• APIs
• coding
• mashups
• open source
• social networks
• wds08
• web apps
• web standards
• web2.0

Douglas Crockford - Ajax security

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.

Douglas Crockford

Security design is an important, but often neglected, component of system design. In this session, Douglas Crockford, creator of Javascript Object Notation, will outline the security issues that must be considered in the architecture of Ajax applications.

The design of the browser did not anticipate the needs of multiparty applications. The browser’s security model frustrates useful activities and allows some very dangerous activities. This talk will look at the small set of options before us that will determine the future of the Web.

During this session, attendees will:

• Learn why effective security is an inherent feature of good design;
• Experience a real-time demo of a Ajax client/server system based on sound security principles
• See how to apply secure design to rich web applications.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• javascript
• security
• wds08

Myles Byrne - Internationalization - a guide to dealing with the web’s favorite 20-letter word

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.

So, you’ve decided to tap into a whole new world of business oppportunities by stepping outside the anglocentric world. That’s great! But the process of internationalisaton can be a genuine minefield for the unitiated, so take a few tips from someone who’s been there before. In this talk Myles will cover what internationalization is, when to do it, and how to implement it. Topics include: localization, organising your content for translation, finding and managing translators, and dealing with the unexpected technical issues that inevitably arise.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• management
• strategy
• wds08

Daniel Burka - Changing successfully: Adapting your interface over time

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.

User interface design is an iterative process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled.

The case studies will examine specific user interface challenges that have arisen and will chop them up into their various bits. How do I identify a challenge? What is the best approach for getting started? How do I solve the problem conceptually and technically? How will I know if I solved the challenge successfully? Case studies have been selected that are especially pertinent outside of their specific contexts to help you in your everyday UI design.

The presentation will focus on design inspiration, decision-making processes, technical solutions, and learning from missteps as part of a designer’s iterative process.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• interface design
• testing
• user experience
• user research
• visual design
• wds08

Diana Mounter - Custom V CMS - don’t take sides

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 11.45am.

When I was introduced into the role of managing web projects, I naively believed a Content Management System would solve all my problems. Growing my little empire of content authors I had little idea of what was to come- before I knew it I had created a monster.

I went searching for a white knight to slay this monster and was tempted by the delights of custom builds, agile development, and ruby on rails. And off I went following the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest eating them as I went, but then oh, how do I get back to my old friend CMS? Hmmm.

This session will help you know how to make the choice between the sweet delights of custom builds and the faithful workhorse CMS. How to get them to play nice, grow gracefully, and present together as a seamless front-end user experience.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• agile methodology
• CMS
• CMSs
• coding
• content management systems
• wds08

Michael ™ Smith - A jungle cruise through the wild regions of HTML5 and surrounding territories

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 11.45am.

You’re invited to join a narrated exploration into the exotic regions of HTML5 and surrounding territories. Your journey will begin with a preparatory briefing about what to expect from HTML5 - what’s different, what’s new, what to look forward to, what to watch out for. During the cruise, we’ll make some short excursions into surrounding territories adjoining HTML5, and you’ll learn a bit about their history and relationship to HTML5.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• html
• wds08
• web standards

Laurel Papworth - The business of being social

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 10.45am.

It’s not true that there are no proven monetisation models for online communities; in fact, there are distinct revenue streams that have been successful over many years. This session looks at the soft returns on investment for engaging with user generated content, communication and collaboration with the consumer and then moves into how social networks earn money for their investors and developers.

The aim of this session is to limit the slapping of banner ads on every niche community online - you might be surprised to learn that the least profitable revenue model is… Advertising! Come, spend an hour on the Dark Side, and find out which social networks are making money, how much and by what means and learn about the business models in this growth industry.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• business
• online communities
• strategy
• user generated content
• wds08

Panel - Choosing the right web application framework

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

The new era of web applications has introduced to us a number of frameworks designed to aid in rapid development. But, no matter what your preferred language, finding a suitable framework is not usually an easy task.

In this intensive 2 hour session you’ll hear from several developers who’ll discuss which frameworks they chose, why they love them; why they hate them, and gain valuable insights to help you choose the right tools for your job. We will focus primarily on Rails (Ruby), Joomla! (PHP), Struts/Spring (Java) and Django (Python).

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• CMS
• CMSs
• coding
• frameworks
• wds08

Jeffrey Veen - Designing our way through data

• In: Resources, trends
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 9.10am.

The hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more:

• What can we learn from the rich history of data visualization to inform our designs today?
• How can we do amazing work while battle the constant constraints we find ourselves up against?
• How do we really incorporate users into our practice of user experience?

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• data
• design
• interface design
• user experience
• visual design
• wds08

Jeff Croft - Elegant web typography

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 2.40pm.

Even in our day of web videos and podcasts, text is still the king of content on the web. Great typographic sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of sites that exude a professional confidence. From type sizing and coloring to leading, kerning, and measures to proper usage of quotes, dashes, and bullets, to choosing appropriate typefaces, this session will demonstrate using CSS and other modern web technologies to display type on screen with elegance and impact.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• content
• css
• typography
• visual design
• wds08

Hurol Inan - Informing experience architecture with quantitative insights

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.

Quantitative insights gathered through online analytics can contribute greatly to the design and optimisation of online experience architectures.

The success of an Experience Architect depends on the business impact of their architecture. Quantitative techniques can be used in benchmarking before and after performances of a website demonstrating the impact of the new architecture.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• data
• interaction design
• user research
• wds08

Gabriel White - Sensing context in mobile design

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.

Mainstream mobile devices are being loaded with sensors. These devices can be used to create experiences that are tailored, adaptive and responsive to the way people live and work. Location-awareness allows devices to respond to place, networked address books enable socially rich communication experiences, and motion and gestural sensors empower designers to respond to context of use. All these elements are creating a ’sensitive ecosystem’; mobile devices that adapt gracefully to context and use.

This presentation will explore some of the design and technology trends that are shaping design for mobile devices, show examples of devices and services that are starting to take advantage of these trends, then explain how designers need to rethink design problems to take advantage of this technological ground-shift.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• innovation
• mobile
• wds08

Pete Ottery & Tim Lucas - Developing for iPhone

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.

The release of Apple’s iPhone brings new opportunities for web sites and web apps on handheld devices, though not without its share of challenges and best practices.

Tim and Pete will look at the best examples out in the wild and share their experience creating iphone.news.com.au - one of Australia’s largest news sites, news.com.au, tailored to the iPhone.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• coding
• mobile
• wds08
• web standards

Dmitry Baranovskiy - Start using web vector graphics today

• In: Resources
• By: jessie
• June 19th, 2008

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.

With the growth of interactivity in web applications we are pushing Javascript to its limits, not to mention the limits of HTML and CSS. And so we spend our days resorting to Flash, waiting for that distant time when browser support for CSS3 will come to our rescue and allow us to create the UIs we dream of. But this is not the way it has to be: there is a little known secret weapon right here in most modern browsers. Yes, even in IE6.

Dmitry Baranovskiy is here to tell you about Canvas, SVG and VML. Come along and be amazed by standards based UI wizardry you can start implementing in projects right here, right now.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• coding
• flash
• frameworks
• javascript
• RIAs
• wds08