John | Web Directions - Part 3

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Microsoft Surface at Web Directions!

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 16, 2008

A couple of weeks back we announced a keynote presentation by August de los Reyes, chief experience architect for the Surface project. Well, not only will we have August speaking, but you’ll be able to get your hands on the Surface itself, in a rare public outing.

Not sure how … Read more »

the World Wide Web Foundation

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 16, 2008

Sir Tim Berners-​​Lee has announced a new organization, the World Wide Web Foundation, whose goals are

• to advance One Web that is free and open
• to expand the Web’s capability and robustness
• to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet

Clearly the foundation is meant to complement the technical … Read more »

Adobe’s CS4 launch date — September 23rd

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 15, 2008

It’s been widely reported that CS4 is to be launched on September 23rd.

And, Adobe is exhibiting at Web Directions South on September 25th and 26th.

So, I’m wondering what folks might be able to se at the Adobe stand at Web Directions South?

Just speculating wildly is all ;-)

Jobs at our job board

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 15, 2008

Jut a little reminder that if you are looking for employees — part tim, full time, or contractors, or looking for a job, or contract, the Web Directions Job board now has over 40 jobs for web professionals, covering a wide range of job titles.

Posting jobs and applying for … Read more »

Web Directions South — Discount ends tomorrow!

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 9, 2008

Only one more day to get the $100 discount for Web Directions South. Don’t miss out!

Introducing Aconex, our student scholarship sponsor

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 9, 2008

Since we started Web Directions, we’ve tried to make the conference accessible as possible. Which doesn’t just mean accessible to people with special needs, but also as affordable as possible. One way we do this is by making the conference as reasonably priced as possible. Now, you might say $1050 … Read more »

The history of touch interfaces

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 8, 2008

Via Web Directions speaker Gabriel White’s blog “Small Surfaces”, is a detailed article of the history of touch technology in user interfaces, going back into the dark ages early 1970s, in the Economist magazine’s quarterly Technology Review. Well worth a read ahead of Web Directions, where both … Read more »

Thanks to our significant supporters — Opera

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 8, 2008

All of us in the web industry know about Opera, the browser, and probably have installed it for testing, and maybe even our everyday web use. What many of us don’t really realize is the sheer reach of the Opera platform.

The browser in the Wii is powered by Opera

Hundreds … Read more »

JavaScript libraries roundup

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 8, 2008

Keeping up with developments in the world of JavaScript libraries is increasingly a challenge — with new libraries seemingly springing up by the week. If you are interested in what’s out there beyond “the usual suspects” of JQuery, Prototype and so on, Six Revisions has a round up of … Read more »

Discount period extended ’til next Wednesday

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 5, 2008

In what appears to have become something of a tradition, we’ve extended the discount period, which was to end tonight, until next Wednesday. So, if you still need to make arrangements, bribe the boss and so on, you have a few more days.

This year looks set to be even better … Read more »

Many thanks to our Key Sponsor, Adobe

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 5, 2008

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 »

Cappuccino arrives

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 5, 2008

I’m more of a latté kind of guy (well, not really), but today sees the arrival of the long anticipated Cappucino framework, from 280 North, makers of the beautiful web based presentation application (think Keynote for the Web) 280 Slides.

280 Slides particularly excited me as a web app, … Read more »

Web Directions Expo almost full

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 4, 2008

There’s only a place or so left for this year’s Expo — so if your company might be interested in exhibiting to what is doubtless the finest audience of web professionals in the country, then let the right people in your organisation know, as there’s not much time left. … Read more »

Campaign Monitor 2.0 sneak peak at WDS08

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 4, 2008

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 »

Wireless access at Web Directions South — the past and the future

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 4, 2008

In 2004, at the first conference we ran, there was no wireless access — and I think barely a single person even mentioned it to us.

In 2005, we organized wifi connectivity at UTS, which worked fine if you were on a Mac, but caused major headaches if you were using … Read more »

SitePoint interview with Jeffrey Veen (and more)

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 2, 2008

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 »

The Google Browser

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 2, 2008

It appears that the long fabled browser from Google is indeed real, and will be coming soon to a desktop near you. Soon it would seem as in tomorrow according to Google themselves.

There are plenty of posts round the the intarwebs about this, including a 38 page … Read more »

Discount pricing ends this Friday — Save $100

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 1, 2008

Another quick note about time running out, this time for our $100 discount, which ends Friday.

If you are keen to come, and haven’t signed up, make sure you do so before Friday night!

If you know someone keen to come, please let them know they can save $100 before … Read more »

McFarlane Prize nominations close midnight

• In: Blog
• By: John
• September 1, 2008

A final reminder that nominations for this year’s McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australian Web Design close tonight at midnight.

Nominating is as simple as filling in a two field form.

As usual we are having a late rush on nominations. So, don’t miss out on the opportunity to have … Read more »

McFarlane Prize closing date looming

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 26, 2008

The closing date for this year’s McFarlane for Excellence in Australian Web Design prize is next Monday, so you only have a few days to nominate your site, or someone else’s site for the prize.

The McFarlane prize was inaugurated in 2006 in memory of Nigel McFarlane. The goal … Read more »

Federal disability commissioner threatens to “name and shame” government departments and agencies

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 25, 2008

Via our friends at PropellerGlobal we read at Yahoo!7 that

The federal disability commissioner has threatened to “name and shame” government departments and agencies which do not make public information accessible to people with disabilities.

Commissioner Graeme Innis said

Making information as socially important and highly publicised as the … Read more »

Web Directions Jobs update

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 25, 2008

We launched our web industry focussed jobs site, Jobs.WebDirections only a couple of weeks back, and we’ve already got 27 jobs from the likes of Atlassian, Freshview, NAB, Yahoo!7 and many other fantastic companies to work for. There are full time and freelance jobs for developers, designers, managers, marketers … Read more »

Announcing Web Directions East

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 25, 2008

In 2007 Web Directions headed offshore to Vancouver for our first Web Directions North. Now, we are really excited to announce Web Directions East, to be held in Tokyo, Japan in November of this year, in conjunction with leading local web design and training companies Actlink and … Read more »

Shock Second Life news — no one much seems to use it

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 21, 2008

Well, it’s probably not much of a shock, but much touted research by QUT postgraduate student Kim Mackenzie, (reports in SMH, Australian, SmartCompany and elsewhere) suggests that

companies that rushed to set up bases within the cult virtual world of Second Life appear to have wasted their … Read more »

August de los Reyes , principal experience architect for Surface, our final keynote presenter for 2008

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 20, 2008

Unless you have been asleep for the last 2 years or so, then you’ll almost certainly have heard of two pieces of technology.

The iPhone is one of course, but also getting people everywhere excited has been Surface, the table top based, muti-​​user, multi-​​touch device from Microsoft.

Right now, probably … Read more »

JavaScript/​ECMAScript — the current state of standards development

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 20, 2008

Javascript is increasingly playing an important role for all web developers and designers, and obviously at Web Directions as well. Our favourite Ajax focussed blog, Ajaxian, has a post today detailing the current state of pay when it comes to the next generation of the JavaScript standard, ECMAScript 3.1/4. … Read more »

The return of font embedding to the web?

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 15, 2008

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 inline

Most web designers and developers will be familiar with Image Replacement techniques, … Read more »

New Workshop — Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 14, 2008

Web Directions started out with very much a designer and developer focus. But, based on feedback, and our general observations about the industry, we recognised that there was a need for a wider focus on the web — not just the practicalities of implementation, but the strategic and business side … Read more »

On cue — web browsing phone debt fears newstories

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 14, 2008

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 »

On deafness and Deafness

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 13, 2008

The wonderful Lisa Herrod, who has spoken at a number of our events, has just had a detailed article focussing on deafness (capital and lower case D — read about the difference in her article) at A List Apart — the pre-​​eminent online journal for web professionals.

The lessons … Read more »

A big thank you to our Key Supporters, Microsoft

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 13, 2008

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 »

Web site security in the New York Times

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 11, 2008

The New York Times has a worthwhile read today on password security (and its serious limitations), with a focus on among other things OpenID (which Myles Eftos will be focussing on at Web Directions South)

I think almost all of us would admit to not adhering to best … Read more »

Grocerychoice — Accessibility disaster (to put it kindly)

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 8, 2008

The Australian Federal government recently launched grocerychoice, a website whose goal is to

[help] consumers find the cheapest supermarket chain in their area without having to compare hundreds of prices.

A laudable goal no doubt. But sadly, as our friends over at PropellerGlobal note, quoting news​.com​.au, it’s … Read more »

Painless cross browser vector graphics with Dmitry Baranovskiy’s Raphael Javascript Library

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 8, 2008

If you’ve not heard of Dmitry Baranovskiy yet, well, you will soon. Now at Atlassian Dmitry has only been in Australia a handful of years, coming here with his young family from the Ukraine.

Dmitry is not only very smart, he’s very imaginative, having wowed the crowd at … Read more »

Digital Futures report — how do Australians use the web?

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 4, 2008

The rather cumbersomely named “ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)” has just released the findings of its Digital Futures project.

The report looks at internet and web use in Australia. It can be downloaded as a PDF (about 3.5MB), and at first glance makes for … Read more »

Australian Mobile Data Plans get a touch more realistic

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 1, 2008

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting (as flagged by Cheryl in a comment yesterday) that Virgin Mobile, who will begin selling the iPhone shortly, is offering 1GB data plans with very generous call, text and other caps, for $70 (including no upfront charge for the phone … Read more »

No liquids or iPods

• In: Blog
• By: John
• August 1, 2008

Wired (and multiple other sites) is reporting that News​.com​.au is reporting that “Music fans might soon have their iPods searched by Customs officers at airport checks and face jail if a large amount of pirated music is found on them.”

Under a treaty — the Anti-​​Counterfeiting Trade Agreement … Read more »

Australian Anthill

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 31, 2008

One of the things we try to encourage with Web Directions is a more entrepreneurial approach to development. We recognize that there are a great many Australian success stories out there — from the originally Australian Google Maps to folks like high tech bag company STM, to Freshview, … Read more »

jobs.webdirections — a job site for web professionals

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 31, 2008

Just about ever since we started web directions, people have been asking us to help them find just the right developer, designer, or other web professional. Often we’ve posted a job description on our blog, or put people directly in touch with folks we might think fit the bill (provided … Read more »

The second annual A List Apart Web Industry survey

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 31, 2008

After last years amazingly successful survey of web professionals, which saw over 33,000 folks take part, the second annual survey conducted by our friends at A List Apart is now up and running.

This aims to take a snapshot of the industry around the world.

So head over and take part … Read more »

Want to come to Web Directions for free?

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 28, 2008

In all the excitement a couple of weeks back, you might have missed the mention of a competition we are running with Digital Web Magazine, long time friends and supporters of Web Directions here and round the world. For Web Directions North, they’ve run a “design a snowboard” competition … Read more »

Javascript — the good bits

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 26, 2008

I know many folks are looking forward to seeing Douglas Crockford at Web Directions South as much as we are. One of the drawbacks of running a conference is that you simply don’t get the chance to attend a whole workshop, and this year, I’d definitely be doing Douglas’s … Read more »

Australian Tax Office — online tax lodging is (still) Windows only

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 24, 2008

BuilderAU and The Sydney Morning Herald are both reporting on the ongoing disgrace that is online tax lodgement in Australia.

In short, only Windows users can lodge tax forms online. If you use Linux, Mac OS, or any other device, then you are out of luck.

Various groups are … Read more »

The Australian Design Federation

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 24, 2008

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 »

Silverback — your guerilla user testing prayers answered

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 24, 2008

Our good friends over at Clearleft (home of Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter) have just released Silverback — a tool to help you do user testing quickly and effectively. When Andy was out here for Web Directions UX he gave a sneak preview to those doing his … Read more »

iPhone native Apps redux

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 24, 2008

Again, my apologies to those many who posted long, (or not so long) well thought out responses to my initial post. Like Hendrik, I found the level if discourse commendable.

One thing I didn’t actually talk about in my original article is that even if I wanted to, I can’t … Read more »

Introducing our media partner — Web Designer magazine

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 23, 2008

Curiously, the world over, there is only a handful of print magazines for web designers. Japan has several, but elsewhere there are few if any magazines focussing specifically on the web design and development industry. Bucking this trend, Web Designer magazine was recently launched in Australia. The magazine covers … Read more »

Australian consumer watchdog and data pricing plans

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 21, 2008

After last week’s (very popular) post here about mobile data pricing plans in Australia, it’s encouraging to read The Sydney Morning Herald reporting that the ACCC — the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission — has been prompted to “investigate whether carriers are misleading consumers into a trap … Read more »

New York Times on small screens and the web

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 20, 2008

Via Small Surfaces, Web Directions South speaker Gabriel White’s website focussing on designing for mobile technology (well worth a place in your RSS feeds) is a story in today’s New York Times on how well web sites often work on small screens. Yes, it specifically focusses on … Read more »

iPhone native Apps: the great leap backwards?

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 20, 2008

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 »

Early bird discount extended to next Wednesday at midnight

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 17, 2008

Registrations for the conference have been going really well — thanks so much to all you who have signed up already. For those who still need a little incentive, our early bird which was to finish tonight at midnight, will now finish Wednesday night at midnight. So, if you need … Read more »

There other other mobile browsers out there you know

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 17, 2008

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but there are mobile web devices other than the iPhone out there, and other browsers than Safari. A real leader in this area for many years has been Opera, and a new beta of opera 9.5 for Windows Mobile is now out. Tech supersite … Read more »

Introducing our media partners Desktop Magazine

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 14, 2008

At Web Directions, while we don’t want to be jingoistic, we definitely like to recognise Australian success stories. It’s too easy to think all the good stuff happens “over there”. To that end, it’s great to work with local industry media like Desktop Magazine. Now 20 years old (or … Read more »

Teaching Web Standards

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 8, 2008

One of the recognised challenges in educating new web designers and developers is putting together a good curriculum. This is something many folks have talked about over the last several years, but now Opera, spearheaded by Chris Mills (formerly an editor at Friends of Ed, publishers of many fine web … Read more »

UI Developer job at Atlassian

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 8, 2008

Our friends over at Aussie success story Atlassian are looking for a UI developer. By all accounts it’s a great place to work, and definitely a company on the rise. So, if you are looking for a UI developer job, take a look, and if you think this position suits … Read more »

iPhone in Australia — now for the bad news

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 3, 2008

Welcome folks from round the interwebs — this article seems to be getting widely read.

If you want to know a little more about what we do (run conferences for Web Professionals) take a look at our upcoming Sydney Conference. And please leave your thoughts on the issue of mobile … Read more »

When business week does special edition on web design…

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 2, 2008

Via our good friend Dan Cederholm (we’ll get him out to Australia to speak one day soon we promise!) here’s a whole section at Business Week, the venerable US business magazine, on Web Design. Aussie web super success story, Remember the Milk get a nice mention as … Read more »

9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 1, 2008

Via Slashdot (described cruelly but amusingly as “women’s weekly for geeks” by one mart young developer I know), we find this article at CIO magazine — 9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless.

Having been the CIO and main developer most of the time at westciv, I … Read more »

Welcoming our media partner BuilderAU

• In: Blog
• By: John
• July 1, 2008

BuilderAU has been a media partner, supporter since the first Web Directions conference, providing us with much appreciated publicity, and covering the conferences in no small detail — with audio, video and text based stories, interviews and more. You can find all their coverage of our past events here.

While … Read more »

via BuilderAU — ICANN’s custom TLD will be a ‘nightmare’

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 29, 2008

Further to my little Friday afternoon rant, BuilderAU has a more detailed and thought out piece on the new Arbitrary TLD issue.

Read more at BuilderAU.

I still think it is a stupid idea.

Does anyone care about domain names anymore?

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 26, 2008

Various news outlets are breathlessly reporting that ICANN (the organization responsible for managing internet domain names) will effectively allow any top level domain (TLD) (for example “.com” and “.org” are TLDs).

Am I alone in wondering why anyone gives a rat’s? In fact, in thinking that this is a usability … Read more »

New speaker announced — Mike ™ Smith — co-​​chair of the HTML5 Working Group

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 22, 2008

As noted, there are still a small number of speaker slots we are filling — hunting down the very best experts we can from around the globe on the subjects we think are of most pressing interest to you. So, we are very excited to be able to announce … Read more »

The Ajax Experience

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 20, 2008

If you are a web developer, particularly with a programming focus, and Sydney is too far for you to come, or your companies training budget doesn’t quite run to international airfares, them you could do a lot worse than check out the recently announced Ajaxian Experience, curated by the … Read more »

McFarlane Prize for 2008

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 18, 2008

Nominations for this year’s McFarlane Prize, which we founded in memory of Australian web and open source pioneer Nigel McFarlane in 2006, will open on July 1, and close on August 31st of this year.

The prize aims to recognise “excellence is Australian web design” — and focusses on … Read more »

Opera 9.5 launches

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 18, 2008

A big week for browser launches — with Opera 9.5 now out of a long alpha and beta program. With great browsers on just about any device that plugs in, (in Japan you can get TVs with Opera browsers in them), Opera has been taking the web places no … Read more »

Firefox 3 launches

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 17, 2008

Firefox 3 is released today — a huge improvement in terms of performance, User Experience, and standards support over what was already in version 2 a fantastic, browser — and arguably the most important browser ever released. Without it, one wonders what the browser landscape of today, a vibrant and … Read more »

Keynote for the web

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 6, 2008

If you’ve been to one of our conferences, you would have seen many presentations put together using Keynote, the presentation software for Mac OS X by Apple. Now a small team have put together what is effectively a Keynote clone, but done entirely on the web — all HTML, … Read more »

Marketing as a service

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 4, 2008

Marketing and advertising seem to be almost at odds with the idea of a service — most of us associate advertising with intrusive interruptions to things we’d rather be doing — like reading a web site, watching TV, listening to music, or just walking down the street.

On the web … Read more »

Australia’s Networked readiness — a World Economic Forum report

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 3, 2008

Via Business Week’s excellent innovation blog, by Bruce Nussbaum, we came across the World Economic Forum’s latest “Networked Readiness” report, the aim of which is to rank nations by “measuring economies’capacity to fully leverage ICT for increased competitiveness and development”.

Australia ranks a healthy 14th, ahead of Austria, Germany, … Read more »

Web Directions speakers in the press — Jina Bolton

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 3, 2008

CSS guru, and speaker at Web Directions South this year, Jina Bolton has an article published in this edition of the venerable A List Apart — Writing an Interface Style Guide

From the article

Unfortunately, it’s also common that beautiful interfaces don’t stay beautiful. An interface’s design disintegration can be frustrating to … Read more »

W3C’s new eGovernment initiative

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 3, 2008

During his recent visit to Australia for Web Directions Government, Jose Alonso made reference to the upcoming vote on the World Wide Web Consortium’s proposed eGovernment initiative. Today it was announced that thw W3C will indeed charter an eGovernment Activity, open to public participation.

The group will identify … Read more »

Good usability is a feature you may not even notice

• In: Blog
• By: John
• June 1, 2008

After weeks of 530am starts with my daughter last year, and living where the local cafes don’t open ’til 800am, I couldn’t face another 3 hour stint before my first coffee, and so took myself off to the nearest purveyor of fine espresso makers, and as luck would have it, … Read more »

Time to stop using images as link anchors

• In: Blog
• By: John
• May 27, 2008

Looks like using images as link anchors is patented.

This madness has got to end sometime soon no?

Top user experience annoyances

• In: Blog
• By: John
• May 27, 2008

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