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This is yet another great idea from Web Directions South 08 speaker Jeff Veen.Someone smart, enterprising, hard working and crazy should do such a thing in Australia.Or maybe they should use their talents more fruitfully.

The Web Directions iphone meat tray

It's too easy for the rest of the world to sit around and be cynical and sigh a big "whatever" at the release of the 3G iPhone 2. Dammit, we southern hemispherites need something to get excited about as the deep of Winter approaches, so, upgraded camera or not, the ... Read more »

Marketing as a service

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 »

Web Directions speakers in the press — Jina Bolton

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 GuideFrom the articleUnfortunately, 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

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

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 »

Thinking about going out on your own?

Starting your own web design agency and becoming the Blue Flavor or the Happy Cog of Australia is the dream of so many who come to Web Directions every year I'm sure. Such a big step though, and not a decision to be taken lightly. Knowledge is the ... Read more »

Web Directions South 2008 — Student pricing

We appreciate that there are many people for whom the price of admission to Web Directions South 08 must seem extravagent. At the same time we are confident that we make the ticket price as reasonable as we possibly can for such an event.The addition of the Expo and more ... Read more »

And lift off…

After a few twitter induced hiccups, we've both launched Web Directions South, and managed to reboot the server which didn't seem to like a rather large spike in traffic after word got out about the launch on Twitter this am.There's a lot we could say about the lineup - ... 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 »

Podcasts — help wanted

Wondering if anyone out there might be interested in about a day's work, some time in the next week, to help us produce the podcasts from Web Directions User Experience and Government. We're all set up to manage the podcasting itself ourselves, but we need someone who canrecord a simple ... Read more »

When all else fails, blame the user

I took this photo late last year. I can't recall exactly which CD it was, or whether it was software or music. I have a feeling it might have been a game for the Wii?You can tell pretty clearly that the design doesn't work. So, how ... 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 »

Free Event in melbourne this Thursday — a reminder

Just a reminder of the free event this Thursday in Melbourne, brought to you by Web directions,the Web Standards Group and the W3C Australia Office - featuring Jose Alonso (lead of the W3C's eGovernment initiative) and Richard Ishida, the W3C's internationalization guru - and it's free. Not only that, but ... Read more »

Web Directions UX and Government fast approaching

Web Directions User Experience, and Government are now fast approaching - UX kicking off Thursday with workshops by Cameron Adams, and Andy Budd, followed by the conference Friday, and then Government Monday, and workshops Tuesday - so a busy week coming up.Some places still available for the conferences, and workshops, ... Read more »

Upload your city

Here at Web Directions we are big fans of DJ Shadow, one of the world's great DJ/Producers. Quite by accident the other day I came across a project he's doing with Nokia (incidentally this seems like a way better way of spending one's marketing budget than putting ... Read more »

Just over a week to go to WDUX and WDGov

Just over a week to go now until Web Directions UX - workshops start tomorrow week, while the conference itself is Friday week. Turnout so far has been fantastic, so thanks to all who've signed up so far, and if you don't want to miss out, you've got just ... Read more »

Free Web Directions event Melbourne May 15th

Web Directions, along with the Melbourne Web Standards Group, and proudly supported by the W3C Australia office are presenting a great free event in Melbourne on May 15th - the night before Web Directions User Experience.The event features two wonderful speakers from the W3C - Joe Manuel Alonso, the head ... Read more »

Guerilla Usability Testing with Andy Budd — Sold Out

I hope everyone who really really wanted to get along to learn about practical usability testing with Clearleft's Andy Budd next month in Melbourne has managed to get a ticket, because the news is that this workshop, very popular from the start, has now completely sold out.All of which ... Read more »

New guide to women tech speakers

At Web Directions we've always had a strong commitment to diversity among our speakers, paying particular attention to ensuring at least a reasonable representation of women speakers. Many conference organisers have lamented the difficulty of finding women speakers, something which Jen Beckman helped address some time ago.Now New Zealander ... Read more »

Thanks to our supporter Acid Labs

Stephen Collins will be known to many in the web industry in Australia as a consultant, blogger, and big thinker on all things 2.0 Stephen's also a great community contributor, having been one of the instigators of the recent BarCamp Canberra. He's also the founder of acidlabs, one of our ... 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 »

Final resource from WDN08 — Indi Young’s Innovation with Mental Models

Innovation with Mental Models was one of my favourite presentations from Web Directions North this year. Indi, not to mention the clients she did the work for, was incredibly generous with the detailed description of her mental models approach to user research and product design.Fascinating, candid content presented ... Read more »

Melbourne — Next Wave Festival

If full days at Web Directions User Experience isn't enough for you and you're hankering for more culture "after hours", check out the site for the Next Wave Festival, which starts on May 15 and goes through until May 31. Lots and lots of events, exhibitions, installations, performances and ... Read more »

Thanks to our supporters, Funnelback

A number of supporters and exhibitors are coming on board for our upcoming events, and we are very thankful for their support. We still have a number of really great value expo and sponsorship opportunities, so if your company is interested in building connections with leading Australian web professionals in ... Read more »

Upcoming RIA events from Microsoft and Adobe

Rich Internet Applications, a term increasingly used for desktop like web applications, or hybrid web applications, developed with technologies like Flash, Silverlight, AIR and others are gaining increasing attention among web designers and developers.If you are interested in learning more about these specific technologies and their use, Adobe and Microsoft ... Read more »

Web Directions Speakers in the press — Laurel Papworth

One of our very favourite Web Directions speakers, social media/network/software guru Laurel Papworth has hit the big time. No, not a gig at the 2020 Summit, but even better - an interview on morning TV. Through the magic of YouTube, see Laurel on "9am with David and Kim".... Read more »

All Web Directions North slides and podcasts now online

There was a whole host of genuinely excellent presentations at Web Directions North back in January. The good news for people who weren't there is that so many of the presenters were incredibly generous with their knowledge and expertise and have allowed us to publish their slides and podcasts.Check them ... Read more »

Who’s this Jason Ryan guy?

You might have noticed we've got an optional extra breakfast included in the program at out up coming Canberra event, Web Directions Government. If you work in government, and you have any interest at all in the exciting Government 2.0 things they have been doing ... Read more »

Early Bird closes tonight

A quick note for anyone interested in coming to Web Directions Government or User Experience. Save $100 by registering before midnight tonight.

Early Bird for Melbourne and Canberra closes Thursday at midnight

Just a couple of days to go now to take advantage of our early bird pricing of $100 off Web Directions Government and User Experience. So, to get to either of these conferences for just $495 (including GST), fully catered, with wonderful speakers like Andy Budd, Robert ... Read more »

Web Standards group Melbourne next week

Next week on the Wednesday the 23rd I have the pleasure and honour of speaking at the Melbourne Web Standards Group, along with Gerry Gaffney.Gerry will be speaking on How users really search, while I'll be presenting a variation on the session I did with Dave Shea at Web ... Read more »

Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

and cure cancer...Despite newspaper sub-editors love hyperbole (hey you are reading this aren't you) sometimes the sensationally headlined articles are worth reading.In last year's closing keynote presentation, the inspiring Mark Pesce mentioned the adoption of mobile phones in the fishing markets of Kerala in southern India, and how ... 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 »

Web Directions South 2008 survey closes

Thanks so much to the 85 people who took the time to share with us your thoughts on content for Web Directions South 2008. There are lots and lots of interesting new ideas in there - check out the spreadsheet here. In particular it was great to hear about ... Read more »

Image is everything

One serious drawback of moving house in Australia is you'll typically wait no small time to get your internet connection moved. For the last three weeks, I've been in this situation, and as connection is not an option, I've needed and alternative until someone could be bothered providing me with ... Read more »

Cameron Adams — The Man in Blue

He's presented to rooms packed with some of the toughest audiences in the business at 66% of Web Directions Conferences, and survived the horrors of building a site with me as the client.Cameron: Why have you used an anchor element with no content here when you could have added the ... Read more »

Web Directions North Podcasts

Late last week we started releasing the podcasts from Web Directions North in January. Shortly I'm going to be gathering them all together into complete resources pages, with the MP3s, slides and any other materials we have, that will be hosted here at the Web Directions site. But if ... Read more »

If I were…

If I were a fresh faced young CS undergraduate I would be onto the this opportunity to work for very good guys at Freshview (think Campaign Monitor and Mailbuild) like white on rice.If I were a woman with my finger on the pulse of the Aussie startup scene I'd ... 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 »

Reputation HQ

Sometimes I find it hard to tell the difference between a good idea badly executed and a plain old bad idea. This is one of those times.Reputation HQ is a "socialprise web application that bridges the gap between Social Media and enterprise ORM".Yes, I had to look up ORM ... Read more »

Lisa Herrod — Usability: more than skin deep

A presentation given at at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008. Web Usability is far more complex than user testing and interaction design alone. And while interface design is an important consideration, there’s more to a usable site than ... Read more »

Best tool for discussing the survey results?

I decided to go with the forms feature of Google Spreadsheets for our Have Your Say in the Web Directions South 2008 Program survey. Only 24 hours in I'm largely happy with the choice, apart fromI'd love to be able to limit which cells of the spreadsheet I share (so ... Read more »

David Hayward — Mapping

A presentation given at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008. Government has huge amounts of information but how can this be effectively managed and delivered through the web? This session will ‘lift the lid’ on web mapping technology and ... Read more »

Have your say in the Web Directions South 2008 program

Every year the Web Directions conference brings together a group of expert speakers who have been working on interesting projects and finding ingenious and practical solutions to those same challenges the attendees face in their own work.This year we'd love your help with finding out who those experts are.If you ... Read more »

Get ready for the crowdsourced conference

John and I have been thinking about ways of drawing on the great ideas for speakers and topics from the people who come to the conference ever since the closing keynote of Web Directions South 2007. Who better to tell you about what content should be there than the ... Read more »

Free event: Sebastian Chan on “New web technologies and museums”

Sydneysiders free around lunch time tomorrow should swing by the Powerhouse Museum and catch Sebastian Chan, who gave a much loved presentation at Web Directions South last year.As part of the Talks After Noon series, Sebastian will be speaking on the future of museums online and looking ... Read more »

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