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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 »

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

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 »

Sydney Workshop with Indi Young in November

I'm sure I've spoken about Indi's excellent presentation from Web Directions North earlier this year before. It was such a clear headed explanation of her Mental Models methodology for aligning your design strategy with how people actually work. ... Read more »

What does it all mean?

I laughed out loud the moment I saw the very first iteration of Carla's idea for the Web Directions T Shirt. It always appeals to my sense of humour to reflect on those painful moments of misunderstanding you have to go through if you are going to participate in that ... 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 »

Web Directions South 2008 t shirts by Carla Hackett

UpdateOur first remix, by Gary Barber....the whale puts in his inevitable appearance.And here's a cute one from Susan MacGillivray - Cloud vs TweetThis year we wanted ... Read more »

Discount pricing ends this Friday — Save $100

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

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

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

Via our friends at PropellerGlobal we read at Yahoo!7 thatThe 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 saidMaking information as socially important and highly publicised as the ... Read more »

Web Directions Jobs update

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 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 »

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

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 »

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 »

Interview with Mark Pesce at The Alcove

Local web visionary Mark Pesce has become a fixture as our closing keynote at Web Directions South. He spoke a couple of months back at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, where he was also interviewed on The Alcove. Here's the interview in full. Mark speaks at ... Read more »

Get a free t shirt from our supporter molt:n

Words? Code? Design? Which are you? And do you want a free t-shirt so you can let the world know? It’s easy to get your hands on one - all you need to do is blog or Flickr something about Web Directions and tag it 'moltnWD'.Wear your passion at ... 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 »

New Workshop — Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp

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 »

Web Directions South 2008 Schedule Published

Let the decision making begin: Developing for iPhone or Strategies for Social Media Engagement, Creating Sexy Style Sheets or Choosing the Right Web App Framework. Because the official schedule for Web Directions South 2008 has now been set in stone and handed down.I've laboured over ... Read more »

Deafness — our next big accessibility challenge?

Further to John's post on Lisa's article on A List Apart - Deafness and the User Experience - I just wanted to point out a little initiative we have started over the last couple of weeks here at Web Directions.We've been publishing podcasts after our events for some years ... 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 »

Web site security in the New York Times

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)

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

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 »

Thinking about going to SXSW 2009?

Attending SXSW interactive at least once in your life is a must for any web professional, no matter how far you have to travel to get there. You'll get to see what some of the most interesting people in the industry have been working on for the last 12 ... Read more »

Australian Mobile Data Plans get a touch more realistic

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 »

Australian Anthill

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

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 »

Javascript Libraries session

This year at Web Directions South we're trying something new. Craig Sharkie will be using a panel type approach to explore the pros and cons, ins and outs of Javascript libraries in what will be both an entertaining and edifying session. I say "panel type approach" because I definitely ... 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 »

Want to come to Web Directions for free?

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 »

OpenAustralia — Interview with Matthew Landauer

A while back I blogged about the launch of OpenAustralia.org, which essentially remixes Hansard to allow you to more easily track all the debates in the House of Representatives, and keep an eye on your local representative.There's nothing at OpenAustralia that isn't available elsewhere, however, it's the way the ... Read more »

Javascript — the good bits

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 »

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 »

Silverback — your guerilla user testing prayers answered

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

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

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 »

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 »

Web on the Piste: got a hankering for a bit of snowboarding?

Yesterday I caught up with Todd Trevillion and Mark Stanton of Gruden - those of you who came to the very first Web Essentials way back when will recall that Mark gave a presentation on semantic markup - it all seems so quaint now! Sadly pre podcasting, so we ... Read more »

Australian consumer watchdog and data pricing plans

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

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?

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 »

Lynne d Johnson — Opening keynote: New media — new business

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 9.10am Lynne will set the tone of the conference this year with insights into the future of media drawn from her wealth of experience in business, media and online communities as Senior Editor ... Read more »

Early bird discount extended to next Wednesday at midnight

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 »

New session: Developing for iPhone

We couldn't let this year go by without doing a session on the perils and joys of developing for the iPhone, but we wanted to wait and see what secret projects might crop up in the aftermath of the release of the 3G phone in Australia.Plenty of people have been ... Read more »

Win a ticket to Web Directions South 2008

One competition ends, another begins.Echoing the "Design a Snowboard" competition we have run for the last couple of years for Web Directions North, this year our partners at Digital Web are hosting Desgn a Surfboard and win a ticket to Web Directions South. There's also some cool ... 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 »

Introducing our media partners Desktop Magazine

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 »

McFarlane Prize for 2008 launches

Nominations are now open for the McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australian Web Design for 2008.Now in its third year, the prize recognizes and encourages excellence in web design by Australian web professionals. We're really proud of having created and nurtured the prize - it's been extremely rewarding over ... Read more »

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