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Australian Film Industry emulates last centuries failed business models — suing ISPs

Well, at least (for now) it's not users, but news today via the Sydney Morning Herald that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), the histrionically named consortium of Australian Film and Television companies such as Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, ... Read more »

First batch of slides available!

The moment you've (perhaps) been eagerly awaiting: we've added in the slideshows for 10 of the presentations from the recent Web Directions South to the Resources section of this site. We'll be adding more as time goes by, along with podcasts of the sessions. Check 'em out:Jeffrey ... Read more »

Many thanks to our Key Sponsor, Adobe

Last year, Adobe became involved with Web Directions, as a key supporter. For those of your who'd been to previous conferences, I hope you felt that across the board, the quality of the conference had improved - from the venue, to the number of sessions and tracks, to the ... Read more »

Campaign Monitor 2.0 sneak peak at WDS08

For those many folks who use Campaign Monitor, the great email campaign management tool built specifically with designers in mind (we've used it for some years here at Web Directions!), then make sure you check out their stand at the Web Directions Expo, where they'll be showing off sneak ... Read more »

SitePoint interview with Jeffrey Veen (and more)

Long time supporters, and media partners with Web Directions, the great Aussie based publishers of web and print based books articles, and much more for web designers and developers are currently running an interview with keynote speaker, Jeffrey Veen, by Josh Catone.Once again Sitepoint are showing their support for ... Read more »

ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition

Got a great idea for a video game? I know I do. You get these two sticks which you can move vertically up and down the screen to hit a square ball back and forth. As the ball hits the stick, it makes a really cool, lifelike beeping sound.....(if you're ... Read more »

The return of font embedding to the web?

Sadly, quite a bit of what I wrote in this article is based on out of date information, and on my own testing that had a fatal flaw. I've left the article as it is, and added corrections inlineMost web designers and developers will be familiar with Image Replacement techniques, ... Read more »

On cue — web browsing phone debt fears newstories

Well, it didn't take long for, as we predicted, the first reports of "unexpectedly high debt from bills for excess data usage" for users of "fast web-browsing phones, such as the new Apple iPhone" (Sydney Morning Herald.)I'm not sure whether this affects a lot of people, or only a ... Read more »

A big thank you to our Key Supporters, Microsoft

After last year's Web Directions South we did a survey of attendees to get a sense of what you liked, and where we might improve. It was anonymous, which meant, hopefully, we got very honest answers. The responses were overwhelmingly positive - about the speakers and content, and about ... Read more »

Events

Information on upcoming events; Resources from past eventsSince 2004, Web Directions has been organizing world leading conferences for web professionals. Upcoming eventsTokyo: November 13–16 2010 London: May 26–27 2011 Sydney: October 11–14 2011Previous eventsWe have dozens of presentations online from previous conferences. To ... Read more »

The Australian Design Federation

The Australian Design Federation is a web based community for the Australian design and new media industries. It features news, interviews, competitions (currently you can win a ticket to web directions!), reviews of shows and exhibitions, and lots of other cool stuff.The Design Federation are on board ... Read more »

Joomla developer? Keen to participate in a panel at WDS08?

We're looking for a Joomla expert to help us out with one of the panels in the development track at Web Directions South this year. This session, to be run by Lucas Chan, is going to showcase the strengths and weaknesses of a number of backend frameworks in a ... Read more »

iPhone native Apps: the great leap backwards?

As did many others, I greeted the arrival of version 2.0 of the iPhone operating system no little enthusiasm. To be fair, in the world of endless betas that is the web these days, as a version 1 the iPhone OS was pretty amazing. But what would Apple do with ... Read more »

iPhone 3G — and the winner is…

Yesterday, I got to make someone's Monday: and that person was Matthew Patton, who came to Web Directions last year and liked it so much he made sure he got his registration in pretty quick smart this year. Congratulations Matthew!Now I get to play Santa and go out there and ... Read more »

Mark Pesce — Closing keynote: This, that, and the other thing

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 4.05pm. This is what it feels like to be hyperconnected: a new kind of community – pervasive, continuous, yet strangely tense and tenuous, like a balloon inflated to the point of bursting. The ... Read more »

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

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 ... Read more »

Gabriel White — Sensing context in mobile design

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 ... Read more »

The 5 Elements of Great Sign Up Experiences

This is an excellent collection of articles from Robert Hoekman Jr who spoke for us recently at our Melbourne and Canberra events.We all know how critical it is to get the sign up aspect of any web experience right - yet vast tracts of the web still get it ... Read more »

Thank you

Thanks to all who helped make both Web Directions UX and Web Directions Government fantastic successes. The turnouts were wonderful, presentations world class, and the vibe at both conferences enthusiastic and excited.Based on the success of both these events, I'm sure we'll be seeing them return.You'll find slideshows from a ... Read more »

Poor form

Today I've had need not once but twice to use complex form based interfaces from two enormous multinational companies. Each was a spectacularly frustrating experience, and goes to show just how far we are from designing decent web experiences much of the time. In order to salvage at least some ... Read more »

Cubescape — Cameron Adam’s latest masterpiece

Cameron Adams, known worldwide as "the man in blue", has done it again. His latest masterpiece is cubescape, a javascript tour de force, showing just how rich and interactive javascript based applications can be.It's also fun to play with. So go and marvel at what you can do ... Read more »

Sleeveface — Amusing Flickr Meme

OK, the purpose of this exercise isn't really to show you this meme, which you've probably seen anyway: Sleeveface.What I'm pondering here, for my own reasons is, why do some memes work and others do not? With about 1300 entries (a lot of them from the same people), I'd ... Read more »

Resources from Web Directions North

We've just gone live with a whole bunch of resource pages from Web Directions North 2008. For reasons too elaborate to bore you with here I decided to date stamp these back in February, so they might not be showing up in your reader.Here's those we have published so far ... Read more »

Early Bird pricing extension for Web Directions Government and User Experience

It is hard to push through funding approvals to get to something like Web Directions. There's been a bit of clamour about there simply not being enough time before early bird pricing ended, so we've decided to extend the cutoff date until next Thursday April 17 at midnight.So now you ... Read more »

Sebastian Chan: DJ by night, web pioneer by day

Years ago I used to love listening to 2SER Radio in the afternoons, I think it was between 1pm and 4pm, when every afternoon a couple of different presenters would come in and play some of the finest music radio I have ever heard. Just good, interesting, largely dance ... Read more »

Reminder — Early bird pricing for Melbourne and Canberra runs out April 11

We know it can take forever to get those approvals to go through, but don't forget that to take advantage of the early bird price of just $495 for Web Directions Government or Web Directions User Experience, you need to get that registration in by Friday April 11. ... Read more »

Two new one day Web Directions Conferences in May — Melbourne and Canberra

Along with our brand new site, we are even more excited to announce two brand new, one day conferences for Canberra and Melbourne in May - in addition of course to Web Directions South, set down for September 23-25 in Sydney again at the Convention Centre.First up, ... Read more »

Patrick Lee — One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript

A presentation given at at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008. Whoever you are, if you're writing JavaScript, there's some aspect of your development that you would love to change if you had the chance. But the reality is ... Read more »

Donna Spencer — Getting content right

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008. We all know that great content is a core part of the website user experience. So why is it so hard to find content that isn't dull, lifeless ... Read more »

Resources intro

Podcasts, slides and other presentation materialsWe have dozens of presentations online from previous conferences. Explore the links below to see slideshows and hear podcasts from leading experts in:

Anil Dash — Serious business: Putting social media to work

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.You know what blogs and wikis are, and you know your YouTube from your Facebook. But do you know how to make a compelling business case for these technologies? Social media ... Read more »

Eric Rodenbeck — Information visualization as a medium

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.Information visualization is becoming more than a set of tools and technologies and techniques to understand large data sets. It is emerging as a medium in its own right, with ... Read more »

Jared Spool – What Makes a Design Seem Intuitive?

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 30 2008. Everyone wants an “intuitive” interface: the users, the designers, and the content publishers. But building them is hard. User Interface Engineering’s recent research has given insight into why it’s hard ... Read more »

Indi Young — Innovation With Mental Models

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008. In his recent book, The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun argues that innovation does not happen in a flash of inspiration. Instead, it takes years of research to deeply understand a ... Read more »

John Allsopp & Dave Shea – Where’s Your Web At? Designing for the Web Beyond the Desktop

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008. Since the advent of personal computing, we’ve been tied to one place — typically sitting at a desk, with a keyboard ... Read more »

Validation: coming soon to a web site near you

Ben Buchanan got in touch a few weeks back, excited to let me know that after a long struggle over at News Digital Media, they'd got the Aus IT home page to validate. Other people over at NDM have written in the past about the long march ... Read more »

Looking for shared office space in Sydney?

After too many years trapped inside the four walls of my own home, I'm bustin' loose later this month and moving Web Directions Global HQ to Surry Hills, into what I think will be some very sweet office space - check the photo here.The good news is that for ... Read more »

Veerle Pieters & Dave Shea — Finding Creativity in the Design Process

A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 8, 2007. Independent designers don’t have the luxury of specialized roles — they wear multiple hats. Those working on the web today are expected to speak the language of programmers and other technical types, on top of building valid and well-coded web sites ... Read more »

Molly E. Holzschlag — WSI:Vancouver — Crimes Against Web Standards

A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 7, 2007. Web standards investigators: Get your crime scene gear on and help Molly dig up the dirt on crimes committed against web standards. Molly will demonstrate code samples from her own felonious work dating back to 1993, as well as ... Read more »

What don’t you want for Christmas?

Yes, it's true, those crazy lads Tim Lucas and Cameron Adams have way too much time on their hands, but let's indulge them in a bit of silliness shall we?Don't let that acidic Chirstmas vitriol fester in your stomach until it explodes in a shower of turkey giblets on December ... Read more »

New blog at the Powerhouse Museum

Just launched is a new blog at Australia's own Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day, showcasing some of the incredible photography created on a day by day basis by the museum's photographers. Here you will see photography that goes far beyond that which simply documents museum's collection, or ... Read more »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Andrew Downie and Grant Focas — Javascript and other coding for good or evil

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned ... Read more »

Rashmi Sinha — The perils of popularity

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007. Can web-based social systems with their wide reach, user-generated and user-filtered content harness the wisdom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent experiments reveal how popularity based web social systems can throw up ... Read more »

Scott Berkun — The myths of innovation

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007. Much of what we know about innovation is wrong. That’s the bet this entertaining keynote takes as it romps through the history of innovation, dispelling the mythologies we’ve constructed about how ... Read more »

Mark Pesce — Mob Rules

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.Sometime shortly after Web Directions South concludes, somebody (probably a somebody in the “developing” world) will become the three billionth mobile phone subscriber. Good for the providers, of course - but ... Read more »

Laurel Papworth — Social networks and mobiles

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.It's not just about email and Twitter: industry analysts agree, virtually every online social network application will develop a mobile feature in the next year or two. From Flickr pre-installed on ... Read more »

Jonathan Boutelle — Ajax or Flash: what’s right for you?

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.The web is finally moving beyond simple html. How can you make rich web-based user experiences that don’t surprise or aggravate your users? When should you use AJAX, when should you ... Read more »

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