Web Directions - Part 14

Each year thousands of web professionals come together at Web Directions conferences in Australia, the US, the UK and Japan to learn, connect and share their passion. Experience the web with us.

Morning coffee for you web workers News Feed Podcast Follow Us

Usability — the word on everyone’s lips this week

• By: Maxine
• May 28, 2009

Lisa Herrod has been breathing a bit of life into the local scene by turning the Social Usability Professionals Association meetups into a regular event at The Arthouse in Pitt St. If you haven’t been before, these are a great opportunity to mix with other local usability and UX people … Read more »

Mark Pesce kicks of the first ever “What’s the Big Idea”

• By: John
• May 27, 2009

Anyone who’s been to one of the Web Directions South conferences will have seen Mark Pesce, inventor of VRML, judge on the ABC’s New Inventors, big thinker, and all round guru, speak.

While he gracefully retired from our final keynote role after (in fact during) last year’s keynote (like John Farnham … Read more »

Happy anniversary DailyKos

• By: John
• May 27, 2009

I’m not sure how many Australians will be familiar with DailyKos, an enormously influential and highly trafficked politically liberal online community in the US.

DailyKos, frequently singled out by right wing commentators in the mainstream media for vitriolic abuse (which seems to only benefit DK), is an example of an … Read more »

JavaScript and Website performance

• By: John
• May 26, 2009

Techworld has a detailed summary of Google’s high performance guru Steve Souder’s recent Tech Ed presentation on web site performance, where he singles out JavaScript as a particular culprit in slowing down sites.

With Amazon reporting that a 10th of a second slow down in overall page loading reduced sales … Read more »

Great moments in User Experience?

• By: John
• May 26, 2009

News from Autoweek, that BMW will now offer full internet access in the dashboard, well. provided your car is travelling at less than 5 kph.

One wonders whether the kind of folks with a BMW budget won’t already have a web enabled phone, and whether dedicated in car web access … Read more »

Data​.gov

• By: John
• May 22, 2009

Announced a few weeks ago, via Stephen Collins we learn that America’s service to

increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

has been launched.

To me, a hugely important step in the transformation of the concept of government to greater … Read more »

How do you solve a problem like IE6?

• By: John
• May 22, 2009

(As astute, more likely female readers might guess, Sound of Music is now the new favourite movie at chez Allsopp for the 3 year old)

We might forget it, but once IE6 represented a great leap forward for the web. At the time, its support for CSS was really as good … Read more »

We ❤ Adrian Holovaty

• By: John
• May 22, 2009

As regular readers and Web Directions attendees will know, we are big big fans of Adrian Holovaty here at WD!

Adrian’s latest short post summarizes I think much of why we are such big fans. Highly relevant to the current widespread debate about the future of news and journalism, … Read more »

Microsoft REMIX coming in June

• By: John
• May 22, 2009

Each year in March, Microsoft hold MIX, their web focussed conference. For the last three years, Microsoft Australia has been holding REMIX, a one day event bringing focussing on the web, from Microsoft’s perspective. This year’s event is a few weeks off, in Sydney June 11.

Clearly Microsoft, and their … Read more »

Port80 May 2009 Roadtrip Meetups

• By: Maxine
• May 13, 2009

It’s really great to see industry meetups taking off again. The latest I have heard is that the Australian Web Industry Association are hitting the road — bringing Port80 Drinks to Sydney and Melbourne this May.

Founded … Read more »

« Further reading Previous page »

Images:

The images are downsized due to limited space here. The original dimensions may differ.
Click on the image to open it on a new tab.