We are taking off today, to head up to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. My mother-in-law booked a timeshare there and we're going to spend a week relaxing. I hope you also feel (like I did) that this photo of a whale's tale going "down" is a good illustration of this concept. :)
Error messages are dreaded as much by web site visitors as they are by web site owners and web designers. But it seems that the dread on the part of owners and designers leads them to occasionally overlook their importance, thus resulting in a less-than-optimal user experience when site visitors make a mistake (something that never happens, as we all know).
So, how to go about the process of making mistakes "well" (as put by 37Signals). Here are some tips:
* Learn how to make good 404 pages, courtesy of the 404 Pros.
Put all of this together and take a realistic look at your site, with your hand on your heart. Chances are you will encounter many more places than you imagined, where you can do something simple to make your visitor's experience more pleasant, so that (even if they get an error message or don't correctly fill out a form) they will still want to come back.
Hoy cumplimos 6 años de matrimonio. El 29 de Diciembre del 2000 fue cuando unimos nuestros caminos por siempre. Nos habiamos conocido un 27 de Febrero del 99, un dia antes de su cumpleaños y nos hicimos novios el 3 de Marzo... desde entonces hemos vivido retos y momentos de alegria juntos y no he dudado ni un instante lo afortunado que soy al tener a Andreina a mi lado.
Andreina ha sido mi balance y compañera, mi amiga y mas. Su sonrisa me saca de cualquier hueco en que me pueda encontrar, y acudir a ayudarla cuando lo necesita es un orgullo que siento al estar juntos. Sutil y hermosa, brillante e ingenua a la vez, Andre me complementa y me llena.
Cielo: gracias por estar a mi lado, por tu paciencia cuando estoy metido en "mi mundo" de blogs y cosas online. Gracias por tu amor y tu apoyo. A tu lado, me siento feliz y pleno.
The Internet Archive started collecting web sites sitting "out there" back in 1996, so it turned ten this year.
Today, I ran into a site that captured a few screenshots of some "heavyweights" such as New York Times, Best Buy, Pepsi, Coke and Lego, showing their 1996 web sites as reflected by the Internet Archive.
The results were, how do I say it... interesting. :)
In the past few years most of us have gotten to accumulate several IM accounts (in my case, I started with MSN and ICQ and eventually also signed up for AIM, Yahoo! IM, Skype and Google Talk), so keeping multiple IM clients installed on the computer dragged machine resources big time, among other annoyances. So I ended up settling on MSN and Skype at home and Jabber (configured to only chat with other people in the company) at work.
I've learned to love a relatively new web-based IM client that lets you connect to to all your IM networks from within the same umbrella. It's called Meebo. For bloggers and other site owners, you can add a little widget (they call it Meebo Me) to your sidebars allowing folks to conveniently IM you.
And to top things off, in a very Wiki way, they are having armies of volunteers assist with the translation of the system messages to a ton of languages. It doesn't get any cooler...
An embargoed Gerald Ford interview by Bob Woodward dating back to 2004, where the former U.S. President disagreed with the Iraq War has surfaced today, after his death two days ago. It is not without irony, considering part of his staff while he was President was the same surrounding Bush (Rumsfeld and Cheney were Ford's White House chief of staff and Pentagon chief, respectively).
On a lighter note, I ran into this hilarious SNL skit recorded ten years ago, where Dana Carvey was impersonating Tom Brokaw doing a multitude of possible "just-in-case" breaking news announcements about Gerald Ford's death, so that he could go off on a long vacation to Barbados without missing the "exclusive".
Gracias a la gente de Te.Acuerdas.De me entere que Plumrose saco un nuevo comercial estas navidades, reviviendo aquel legendario comercial donde la niñita se iba a la casa con las manos vacias, porque al señor del abasto no le quedaban jamones Plumrose. A ver si pillan el detalle...
I am going to go ahead and take advantage of it. I have never used the Microsoft Network for my ads before, but it never hurts to get $200 worth of free free ad clicks.
Just go to Microsoft AdCenter and use promo code DM-2-1106 before 1/15/07.
People getting married have traditionally resorted to department stores or household-specialty stores to build their wedding registries. But what if you are getting married and you pretty much have your home set? People getting married (or re-married) later in life easily fall in this category, so what's to do? Ask for money instead? Some people don't like that.
So Minneapolis-based TheHoneyMoon.com found a way for people to not feel so alienated when essentially giving money to the couple: to pitch in towards the honeymoon. The concept is similar to that of a registry: you designate what things you want, etc. but instead of them being items for your house, they are portions of your airfare, tour costs, stays in hotels, etc.
I thought I'd share about it, since it feels like a very good idea to have in mind (if you're planning to get married or know someone who will). I just bought the gift for a friend at work that used this service and loved the concept: we contributed toward their airfare to Rome and their tour of the city.
I am seriously thinking of having a second honeymoon, anyone ready to pitch? ;)
P.S. Seriously speaking, this Friday is our sixth wedding anniversary.
After Time's cover for Person of The Year acknowledging the control users now have in terms of publishing, storytelling and impacting others through the use of Web 2.0 tools, today I learned about the list of top Google searches in 2006.
Social Networking sites (in the UK and in the US) topped the list. With the exception of the world's biggest sports event (the World Cup) and a Mexican telenovela, all the other top searches were in one way or another related to Web 2.0: Wikis, Video-centric sites and tools that empower users to generate and distribute content (whether streamed or in the form of a torrent).
This is not an editorial phenomenon where media are pushing a fad. Google search results reveal user intent to great extent. So the positioning of these top searches speaks volumes about what people are after these days.
I just learned about YET ANOTHER tool made available by Google. This one is a search focused on patents, so if you have an idea you'd like to patent, you can take it out for a test drive and see if someone has gotten ahead of you. ;)
Acabamos de terminar de ver La Pelota De Letras, un video de tres horas de duracion del comediante stand-up colombiano Andres Lopez, en el que hace una perfecta diseccion de las generaciones que van desde nuestros padres hasta nuestros hijos (generacion W, X, Y, Z, AA y los mas pequeños), de manera perfecta.
En el proceso, Lopez logra que a uno se le vayan volando las horas, mientras se rie sin parar, viendo como uno cuadra mas de lo que se imagina con los estereotipos que han caracterizado nuestras generaciones.
Resulta impresionante su capacidad de capturar detalles impresionates que capturan la esencia de cada grupo, como los relaciona todos y en el proceso, mantiene un hilo perfecto a lo largo de 180 minutos de delivery solido.
Crazy... how things happen, the hardest working man in show biz or the godfather of soul, two titles that he sported, has died of pneumonia today. James Brown, one of the most influential figures in 20th century pop music, is no longer among us.
Acabo de revivir un capitulo de mi infancia, escuchando el tema de Capitan Centella. Junto a Mazinger Z y Heidi, fue una de mis comiquitas favoritas de chamo. Aqui tienen el video con el tema principal de la serie, para que revivan el momento.
Santiago got a little guitar from his grandma this Christmas and I had no clue as to how to tune it, so what did I do? You guessed correctly. I resorted to Google and typed in "guitar tuning" and the results I got led me to this MIDI-based resource called 8notes.com that lets you click on the string you want to tune, and plays its sound repetitively.
Well... we only got around to setting up our home's Christmas lights this morning, which I was able to do thanks to the help of my brother-in-law, Ciro. Here is a very sexy photo he took of me wearing dark socks with my sneakers, while we were busy taking care of the Christmas lights. :)
Earlier this year, we found out about International Children Care, a non-profit that helps underprivileged orphan kids across the world. We signed up to help and back in our mailbox a few weeks later, we had a whole kit explaining how to do it.
We began sending our assistance to a six-year old girl in Congo, called Rachel Baganiza (they sent us the cutest picture of her, which I prefer to not publish, since she is a young girl). One of the times we sent our assistance, we sent her a letter and Camila my sister-in-law, draw a great freehand illustration for her, that you can enjoy here. That meant the world to her, I am sure...
My message to you today is: this Christmas, think beyond your circle of friends and family and share! We are all doing just fine, if you come to think of it. At the same time, there are so many people out there that need your help. So, help someone that really needs it.
El 2006 vio el regreso al estudio de rock en espanol Aterciopelados, de Colombia. El album se llama Oye. En general, es un album bien adaptado a los tiempos, que muestra una clara evolucion de la banda, de manera comparable al trabajo de Gustavo Cerati.
Aqui tienen el video del primer single, llamado "Complemento":
Chatting with Luis this past week, it became obvious that we've been missing something from the definitions of Web 2.0 we've been passing around.
Ultimately, the whole slew of Web 2.0 sites we've seen pop up in recent times do something very well: they hide complex functionality from the user through a combination of deceptively simple (minimal) design that caters to the user and very cleverly thought copy that is easy to understand.
Sounds like what we should have been doing all the way, no? At least we're getting "there" now. So, what's next, in your opinion? I would say, keep on serving user needs as they continue to evolve (they will), with the same good design and good copy approach. It's harder than it sounds... :)
Depending on your web surfing habits, if you've been attentive in 2006, most likely you will have noticed that popups are gradually starting to be on their way out (HURRAY!!!)
Some new generation alternatives to popups are appearing in the webscape (does that word exist, anyway?) -you can see one of them in NetFlix, when you add a movie to your queue, for instance and vastly implemented throughout Wufoo, a very useful form-creation tool.
At least three variations have taken on new life: lightboxes (the most popular ones), greyboxes and thickboxes, but the concept is pretty much the same in all: to offer a way to focus the attention of the user "away" from other background activity of the page, on to an activity (login, selection, etc.) taking place on top.
Though usability experts in general are not in love with modal windows (lightboxes are an example of this), besides the fact that they do not conflict with pop-up blockers (a big enough benefit), I honestly find them useful as long as they are not abused, like everything.
As some airlines (guess which ones...) announced a hike in fares, other ones such as Spirit Airlines had on their web sites tickets as cheap as $29 each way (Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale, specifically).
Actually, my friend Gustavo in the office was telling me he was having over a bunch of family members visiting over the Christmas weekend from Dominican Republic for $8 each ticket! He said he saw it on their web site and I do believe him. So, after all, there are airlines with a Christmas spirit... :)
Best of 2006: Dream Pop is alive and well I loved Cocteau Twins. I loved Slowdive. I loved My Bloody Valentine. So what to do now they are gone? Love Robin Guthrie. Love Hammock. Love A Shoreline Dream. 2006 seems to be one of the best years ever for Dream Pop and Shoegazing music since the genres came to be, back in the eighties and nineties. And this album can be thanked for being a part of that.
Jumping between calm, lush guitarscapes and animated passages the album does more than fulfilling a need for more good music. Continental, by Cocteau Twins co-founder, Robin Guthrie, is a piece of music to live and dream by. It's become a permanent part of my bedtime routine, to help me calm the thoughts of my day and get me in the mood for dreaming. Happy to have learned about it, I have no doubt it's one of the best albums of 2006.
Fantastic to get you started with BitTorrent I've always been a fan of "For Dummies" books. I can't get enough of them, and learning there was one of these titles about BitTorrent made my day, since I had been very much in the dark about this technology... in general in the dark about anything remotely related to Peer-to-Peer for more than three years. So I gave the book by Susannah Gardner and Kris Krug a shot, and it was all that I expected.
After a primer on the technology, the purpose of BitTorrent in the spectrum of peer-to-peer protocols out there and tools to find, download and manage torrents, the book deals head on with the copyright implications of downloading illegal torrents, offering resources to help find legal (and fun) torrent material.
While a few of the chapters were about topics that were slightly peripheral to the main subject (production and promotion of torrents, for instance), the bulk of "BitTorrent For Dummies" was fantastic for the newbie (a.k.a. ME!) to get on the know about BitTorrent and start getting my first streams of torrent juice flowing into my machine's hard drive. Legal juice, in case you're wondering! (http://www.legaltorrents.com)
Un video impresionante de dos chamos de 15 años, interpretando el clasico "Rio Ancho". No es perfecto, pero es muy respetable dado lo complejo del tema.
La primera vez que escuche este tema fue en el album grabado en vivo Friday Night in San Francisco, intepretado por Paco de Lucia, Al Di Meola y John McLaughlin.
Most of us know about Christmas, but not as many understand Kwanzaa fully. This holiday season, in Full Sail's Student Portal, we will be celebrating both holidays along with Hanukkah the way we know how to do it: through illustrations and design.
The last illustration we'll feature before the end of this year was crafted by RG Lacandola, a very talented Full Sail grad from the Digital Media program, who now works with us as a full-time illustrator.
He captured the three holidays in this gorgeous piece! The way he conveyed movement with the dreidel in the middle just blew me away!
Archives tend to be dead ends, places where content just goes and lies down, as a dog in front of a house. They tend to not be the most user friendly of places in a web site, but today I ran into an archive that I found interesting. It was the result of a redesign made by Dave Shea (the mastermind behind CSS Zen Garden), to his site, MezzoBlue .
His visually appealing archives are inspired by the way some magazines group up articles around captivating images. Still, I am not sure it’s the most usable way to access old content, though. Nothing beats a search box (which he has on his site, anyway) to get to old content quickly.
Any other suggestions for smart ways to archive content?
I had the fortune to hear Cameron Moll speak at the recent Web Design World conference in Boston, and was deeply impressed not just with his knowledge of the topic he covered, but also with his dexterity as a presenter.
His discussion of interface design, opening the last day of the conference was brilliant and gave us tons of ideas and references to go back to. One example of the type of handy things he'd do is his very useful image of a grid for 960px-width design.
This grid reminded me a bit of a similar grid (for 640x480 and 800x600) I saw "back in the day", put together by Paul Krey, former Art Director of Quepasa.com. Aren't you glad we're thinking of 1024x768 these days? :)
Hace casi diez años, monte una pagina en GeoCities un monton de contenido que me he propuesto republicar en este blog, para darle nueva vida.
Una de las series que escribi se titulo "La Magia de los 70's", y era una serie de articulos sobre bandas que admiraba (y sigo respetando profundamente) que trascendieron durante esa decada.
Empiezo la serie con la primera parte del articulo que escribi sobre King Crimson, una de mis bandas favoritas de todos los tiempos.
================================== En 1967 surgía en Inglaterra un grupo con el nombre de Giles, Giles & Fripp, llamado así por sus integrantes Michael y Peter Giles, y Robert Fripp. Su vanguardismo excesivo los condenó inevitablemente a no tener éxito en una época que aún no estaba lista para escuchar el tipo de música a que la agrupación King Crimson nos tendría acostumbrados en lo adelante. El único disco que editan, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp pasa, podría decirse sin duda, sin pena ni gloria. Para el gusto de muchos (ingleses incluso) era demasiado inglés en su concepto, y la verdad es que las fotos de la portada y el interior no favorecían demasiado la deteriorada imagen musical del grupo, con un Fripp en una de las fotos en una pose algo "deforme".
Procedentes del experimento musical Giles,Giles & Fripp, Michael Giles y Robert Fripp fundan en Enero de 1969 la agrupación King Crimson, la cual podría perfectamente considerarse como Escuela del Rock Sinfónico, pues por ella pasaron muchos de los grandes nombres de este género. Sin embargo hay un nombre en común en todas las producciones de esta super-banda: Robert Fripp. Guitarrista de profesión, experimentador por vocación, Fripp guió a sus colaboradores a través de tres etapas musicales que en todo momento tuvieron la huella de su virtuosismo y creatividad.
PRIMERA ETAPA En su primera etapa, desde 1969 hasta 1971, la tendencia del grupo fue marcadamente sinfónica con un sonido bastante siniestro. La profusión de los teclados, guitarras tocadas como teclados y melotrón caracterizaron los álbumes In The Court Of The Crimson King (Epitaph) (Octubre 1969) , In The Wake Of Poseidon (Mayo 1970), Lizard (Diciembre 1970) y en cierta medida, Islands (Diciembre 1971). Al mismo tiempo, puede observarse en ellos una de las características principales de la agrupación: la improvisación, esto debido en gran parte a la influencia de músicos con formación de Jazz. Otra característica es "el orden en medio del desorden", heredada de la Psicodelia de finales de los ´60. Durante esos dos años pasaron la mayor cantidad de músicos que ha podido pasar por banda alguna.
La alineación del primer album la conformaron: Greg Lake, vocalista y bajista posteriormente de la legendaria banda de los 70 Emerson, Lake &Palmer ; Michael Giles, baterista, quien junto con su hermano Peter Giles y Ian McDonald (saxofonista, también ex-King Crimson, y posterior miembro fundador de... ¡sorpresa! Foreigner, en 1976), formarían el muy bluesoso McDonald & Giles, con un sonido muy parecido al de la primera etapa del Crimson. La alineación la completaba el Sr. Peter Sinfield, quien participaba en la banda como "letrista y encargado de la iluminación" (?). Sinfield tuvo contribuciones posteriores con EL&P en calidad de letrista y productor también. Once meses después de estar agrupados, McDonald parte. Esta alineación dio vida a los temas más delicados de la época sinfónica del Crimson: "I talk to the wind", "Epitaph" y el espectacular "The Court of the Crimson King". "21st Century Schizoid Man", la canción que abre el album, estaba más en línea con lo que serían los trabajos posteriores del grupo.
Lleno de deudas, Fripp se vio obligado a contratar músicos de sesión para llenar los vacíos. Keith Tippet fue una de las adiciones más importantes al equipo. Posteriormente se consolidaría como uno de los pianistas de jazz más respetados que hay, con una gran cantidad de proyectos como solista. Pete Giles, hermano de Michael contribuyó como bajista (durante escasos dos meses) en las canciones que interpretaba la voz de Gordon Haskell, en tanto que las demás eran vocalizadas y contaban con el bajo de Lake. Michael Giles contribuyó la batería en el segundo album, para después agruparse con su hermano y McDonald. Mel Collins completaba llenando la sección de viento y metales.
En esta época Peter Banks abandonaba Yes, razón por la cual Fripp fue invitado a unírseles. Su respuesta fue negativa debido a que por su seguridad acerca de su dirección musical, sólo podía ser el líder de la banda... Esta alineación generó el disco In the wake of Poseidon, cuyo modelo musical está fundamentalmente basado en el primer album. De especial belleza son la canción "Cadence and Cascade", y el trío de temas "Peace", y de interés musical, la pieza en ritmo de Bolero, "El Triángulo del Diablo", la cual representó el trabajo musical más ambicioso que Fripp había concebido hasta la fecha. Después de tres meses más con la banda, Lake se uniría con Keith Emerson y Carl Palmer para formar Emerson, Lake & Palmer (Marzo 1970).
Para el siguiente album, Lizard, Andy McCulloch ocupa la batería; Gordon Haskell repite en la voz y bajo ahora; y Mel Collins se "consolida" como saxofonista y tecladista (junto con Fripp, que compartía su tiempo entre la guitarra y el Mellotron) de la banda. ¡Lizard cuenta hasta con la participación de Jon Anderson de Yes en una de las canciones! Es un mosaico musical donde los elementos que lo componen bien podrían formar parte de obras totalmente diversas. El comentario de Fripp respecto al album es simplement e único:
"Hemos hecho [el album] de forma que a la vez 24 que se escucha empieza a tener sentido..."
todavía estoy por conocer a alguien que lo haya escuchado más de tres o cuatro... Si existe algún disco que se pueda catalogar de "no pain, no gain" para ser escuchado, es posible que sea éste. Quizás sea el resultado de lo que sería el comienzo del final de la relación musical entre Fripp y Sinfield.
El cuarto disco de la "banda" (ya que para el momento Haskell y McCulloch habían partido también) contó con Ian Wallace como baterista y Boz Burrell como bajista/vocalista. Keith Tippett, junto con Marc Charig (ambos, ex-Soft Machine, una de las bandas más psicodélicas que hubo, junto con Pink Floyd) engrosaron entre otros la lista de músicos invitados. Islands fue catalogado por muchos como un disco "raro" (uno más, tal vez...) que sacó Fripp, y esta expresión puede tomarse literalmente. De acuerdo con algunos de los músicos, la música "debía ser interpretada como él quería. No había espacio para hacer variaciones." Esto dice mucho de Fripp: ¿genio o loco? Sin embargo, el album es ampliamente más "digerible"que el anterior, y es adicionalmente el último en el que Fripp y Sinfield colaborarían musicalmente. La alineación de Fripp, Burrell, Collins y Wallace emprendió una gira después de este disco (fines de 1971), la cual quedó registrada en el album Earthbound (Junio 1972), cuya calidad de grabación es bastante deficiente (fue capturado con un grabador de uno de los miembros de la banda). En Abril de 1972, estaría terminando esta etapa de Crimson, con la huida de los integrantes de la banda. De ellos Collins sería el único que alcanzaría algún reconocimiento significativo posterior, interviniendo como músico de sesión con una serie de bandas (Camel y Clannad entre ellas). ======
Proximamente estare compartiendo las dos partes restantes de este articulo y posiblemente reviviendo un par de articulos mas que escribi como parte de esta misma serie, sobre las bandas Yes y Emerson, Lake & Palmer, asi como un ultimo articulo de 1992, sobre Peter Gabriel pre- y post-Genesis.
Everyone who has worked with more than one designer in a project knows that workflow and asset management is a critical element of keeping your sanity. Managing files in a way that everyone is clear with so that you can easily identify what file you are looking at, who touched it last, etc. is essential to working efficiently.
Recently, in the office, we were looking at options to do our workflow with the three designers involved in the biggest project I am working on now. After considering some amazing web-based solutions, such as Fluxiom and client-centric options, such as Extensis Portfolio, we ended up settling on a simple rule-based system that entails standards-based filenaming and foldernaming conventions to ensure anyone involved in the project can easily retrieve things and make sense of them.
This may sound as a simple solution (it is), but it's one that many agencies advocate nowadays. My question to those reading this blog is what is your approach to asset management? Web-based, client-based or manual-based via use of standards?
I had no clue that Time had made "You" the Person of the Year, when I was writing my previous post. They got that right. 2006 is about people, as it's always been. It's just that this is the year that we've seen the most tools (web 2.0 or not) made available to empower users to be themselves, publish, create content, be heard...
Makes you wonder what lies ahead. A wild bet would be a presidential political candidate, like Wired magazine predicted after the 2004 election, coming out of nowhere, thanks to the power of you, the power of tools that give individuals a stronger voice than ever.
"In a 5-Billion channel universe, who’s listening? Does it matter? Change your frame of reference. What you want is people talking about you, not listening to you."
Many of his comments brought to mind a book I read a little over a year ago, titled Don't Just Relate -Advocate! by Glen Urban. In the book Urban begins by acknowledging that we are living a new age, where customers are in power and traditional marketing paradigms, such as push/pull schemes or more recent CRM-based approaches fail to succeed as they used to before.
In his presentation, Fergusson makes a case against extending copyright for longer periods of time, arguing that "... culture belongs to the people who express it, ... not the companies that try to profit from it..." I see where he's coming from and indeed feel that, regardless of where things head to in the copyright world, winning companies in the long run will be those who empower their customers to talk among themselves and get involved in the conversation to learn more from them.
Of course, this is a revolutionary concept, because it means letting go for companies, not being in control of the message. What it forces innovative companies to do is to create a user experience worth talking about, involving customers early on in the design of products and remaining flexible enough to adapt products based on fresh customer feedback.
What you want is people talking about you, not listening to you. What a powerful concept! What are your thoughts on this?
I recently came back from Web Design World 2006 in Boston, where I learned a whole lot. A friend of mine asked me if I could share some tips on conferences and how to make the most of them. Well... I am not the person who attends the most conferences there is, but I figured I'd do my best to share what I can to save him (and whoever reads this) some hassle.
Choose the right conference Seems simple enough, but it's super-important. There are conferences and then there are conferences. Depending on your goal, you may be in the perfect place or scratching your head wondering how on earth could you land there. For example, if you want to go to a conference about gaming, you need to go one level deeper, because there's too many around. If you are a game developer, you need to go to GDC, but if you are interested in the consumer side of gaming, and therefore want/need to attend a marketing-oriented conference, E3 is your thing. One has a technical focus, while the other one showcases products and has a marketing focus.
Arrive a day before, book in a nearby hotel $hit happens, and one of the things that can happen is that your flight gets delayed. You don't want to miss the opening keynote (typically) because there was snow impeeding planes from landing, etc. so plan ahead and try to book your flight a day before. On a similar note, try to book yourself a room in the hotel closest to the conference (or where the conference is held, if possible). It will save you commuting time to and from the conference every day and give you a good 30 more minutes of sleep which will pay off when you are in the thick of things, halfway through the first session after lunch.
Arrive early to the sessions Latecomers not only may not get a seat at times. You may end up seating so far that if you have a private question for the presenter after the session, you may be beat by 10-15 other people who get to the podium before you, which may make the difference between getting your question answered or having to e-mail the presenter with a good chance of never getting an answer (s/he may be too busy to get back to you). Also, if you have to seat wherever you can find a spot, chances are the seat you find may be empty for a good reason: too far, poor visibility, no connection, etc. In order to be able to arrive with time, it is important that you have a plan of which sessions you want to attend (if there are multiple tracks going on simultaneously) ahead of time. It helps to Google presenters and find out about past presentations they may have made: the topic may sound great, but the presentation may not meet your expectations, so it pays to do a little bit of research ahead of time.
Charge your laptop and have an extra battery if you can If you want to take notes with your laptop, make sure it's fully charged before each session or at least before the sessions that are most important to you. If you can, bring along a spare battery. Why? I don't know why, but every conference I've been to in the past 3 years has had a lack of nearby power outlets where I could be plugged throughout a presentation. So I typically ran out of juice before the end of every day.
Network One of the most important things at a conference is to network. Yet many people stay within their comfort circle. Go out and talk to others. Introduce yourself (have plenty of business cards at hand) and ask around about perceptions and thoughts about the presentation that just ended and the conference at large. It may not lead anywhere, but there's a good chance that you may meet some very interesting people that way. When/if they give you a business card, make sure to write behind it details about your conversation so you can remember it later: you will easily forget who is who at the end of a large enough conference, so these notes will help you track things so you can reconnect with them meaningfully later on.
Register early, check out before the end of the day The first day, try to register before you go get breakfast. You will beat the crowd this way. In the same fashion, the last day, plan to check out before the end of the day. You could -for example- check out at noon (most hotels will actually expect you to do so, anyway), and leave your bags with the concierge, to make sure you can get out of the hotel on time to get to the airport. If noon is the checkout time, plan to check out first thing, before breakfast.
SWAG, bags and junk Depending on the conference you attend, you could easily leave the exhibit halls with tons of junk you will end up wanting to get rid of later. Avoid yourself the hassle (and minimize waste) by picking up only what you will be using. This not only will be good for you (and the planet): it will also show respect to the exhibitors.
I could probably think of a few more tips, but I will defer to these other sites, for more advice on the topic: -Conference Tips, from Stephen's Lighthouse. -SEO Conference Tips and Tricks, from Stuntdubl
The book, which takes a little under 300 pages, combines the medical knowledge of Dr. Jackson with the real life experience of Amy, who dedicated herself to writing about diabetes after being diagnosed with type I diabetes in May 2003, in her mid-thirties. The result is an amazing title aimed at focusing the diabetic patient on five fundamental factors to help him/her lead a long and healthy life. These factors are: your A1C, your blood pressure, your lipids, your microalbumin and your eye exam, to discard retinopathy.
After showing readers through the five main indicators, the authors present courses of action to track them and maintain them in control through exercise, food/diet, medications and monitoring. Towards the end of the book, there are chapters dedicated to the understanding of both type II and type I diabetes, as well as the so-called metabolic syndrome and the actual dangers faced by children of diabetics. The last few chapters deal with travel, feet and mouth care, emotional care and alternative treatment options for diabetics.
Though the book has a slight emphasis on type II diabetes, honestly all diabetics can find useful information in it. Since the publishing of Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, I haven't encountered such a compelling and intuitive title for diabetics. I highly recommend it.
This year Andreina did it again. She handmade most of our Holiday cards. The card has a unique oil-based piece signed by her in the cover. I have to admit I loved them, like I love all her work.
She may be "coming out" soon to exhibit it, but I am not going to push, because she needs her time to feel ready for it. :)
I have found my computers coming to a point where almost no memory is left enough times now, to have realized Firefox 2.0 has a memory leak problem: it will take all the memory available it can find. And that is not good.
Besides the "Restore Session" functionality, I can't think of any other good reason to keep it installed, so I am reverting back to Firefox 1.5. In case you choose to do the same, here's where you can get the program for download.
Every time my mom says she prays for a cure for diabetes, I tell her it's OK, I am living a healthy lifestyle so I can deal with it. In spite of that, I secretly hope for a cure, for not having to inject myself (even if it's just changing my infusing site every three days), for being able to be truly be free again to live a normal life.
Yesterday, a HUGE announcement came out of Toronto Hospital: they found proof in mice that the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes. This is a major change in paradigm, since all this time it had been "known" that the body's immune system killing the beta cells in the pancreas was to be blamed for diabetes type I.
I guess I am afraid to hope for a cure, because this is just working for mice only and I have a hard time imagining life without insulin any more. But results in humans -said the article- are expected in about a year. So, let's see what's expecting us. :)
P.S. I can't believe I didn't take two minutes to read the article yesterday. I received two e-mails about it throughout the day, and was too busy to learn about this amazing piece of news.
A few days ago, I was reading an article on You Tube in Wired 14.12. In it, a company called Magnify.net was mentioned numerous times, so I earmarked the page where I read about them, because they called my attention. Ironically enough, during the recent Web Design World conference in Boston, one of their Marketing/Business Development persons sat next to me and we chatted for a bit.
They offer a free service, in exchange for allowing them to present contextual advertising, allowing site owners to offer user-generated video, fast and easily. They provide full integration at the front- and back-end level to make the user experience transparent, not having users leave the environment where they are. They also offer tagging and peer review into means to filter videos collaboratively, if you need that type of service.
Overall, they seem like a great service in an age where video-centric sites are simply exploding in volume.
Towards the end of the day yesterday, I heard in the office some first impressions from designers who had downloaded and installed the Adobe CS3 Beta released by Adobe. As stated by Adobe:
"You will need to provide your Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get a Photoshop CS3 beta serial number, enabling you to activate the Photoshop beta and use it beyond the two-day grace period."
so CS users (and users of older versions) are not eligible to get the beta.
To me, the most important new thing that CS3 accomplishes is releasing Intel-based Macs from the need to "translate" the software using Rosetta, which results in slower performance. They are now claiming as much as a 40% increase in speed while doing most of the common operations (the speed tests I read about where resulting from a 64MB file). The user interface also changed a bit, for instance, with palettes getting streamlined for a maximized workspace.
Folks that installed CS3 yesterday back in the office encountered some quirks when attempting to run it alongside CS2, as well as when trying to save in legacy formats and trying to open the files again in the older versions. I wrote to Adobe to see if that's a behavior they'd expect to see and why, because I just fear adding a beta product into production.
At the end of the day, it's still a beta, which means: things can go wrong with it, and the final product may very well not look like this one. But, like this article mentions, it's well worth the installation to get a feel for what's coming.
For a list with more resources about the beta, training, etc. visit the Photoshop CS3 beta category set up by John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop.
Before the end of our trip to Boston, we took a stroll through MIT. We were able to sneak into the Media Lab and check out a couple of amazing exhibits they had going on in the MIT List Visual Arts Center (LVAC). The two best ones were: -Canadians Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, presenting Opera for a Small Room. "Their installation is an elaborate theatrical fiction based on a found stack of opera records in Salmon Arm, British Columbia." (from the LVAC web site)
-Japanese sound artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda's installation, Spectra II. The exhibit uses "random strobe lights and a pure architectonic sound to create a powerful, disturbing synesthetic effect as viewers move toward an alluring laser target." (from the LVAC web site)
On the way out, I took this photo of one of the buildings facing the Charles River, with DaVinci's name on it. I must confess I love the shot.
One of the presenters at Web Design World 2006 was the author of the book "Publish and Prosper: Blogging for your Business". Prior to his presentation I had had the chance to read this title, so most of the presentation he gave I was familiar with.
As a longtime blogger and an entrepreneur I approached this title from New Riders with interest. Interestingly enough, though the focus of the book is on blogging for businesses, the elements it presents are not limited to the business world. As a matter of fact, there at times throughout the book that you forget about the title of the book and get sunk into it due to the usefulness of the knowledge the authors share from their experience.
The framework the book offer makes perfect sense, taking the reader through a natural progression to make sure the resulting blog is a success. From determining the focus of the blog, how much to write and how to design and implement it; to getting down to the task of posting, getting traffic and monitoring it, the book is thorough in spite of the fact of being less than 200 pages in length.
Aquellos que conocen a Luis, no necesitan saber mucho mas. Luis Emiro tiene su propio blog personal (en español): 'nuf said.
Para los que no lo conocen, ahi les va un sumario de 3 bullets: -Un tipo super-inteligente; Ingeniero de Sistemas con MBA de Duke University: hasta los taxistas de Boston saben lo inteligente que es! :) -Un tipo super-outspoken: va a dar su opinion sobre lo que piensa y cuando la de va a ser bien opinionated, asi que no esperen posts "mamita" en su blog. -Un tipo super-pana y buena gente: tengo la fortuna de conocerlo desde 1989 y me honro de tenerlo como amigo y como jefe... (Epa, Luis! Asi me quedo bien, para lo del aumento?) ;)
Everyone, enjoy...
Luis: Welcome to the world of addictive blogging! :P (no es que no escribieras antes, pero no como ahora)
Yesterday we had our best day yet at the Web Design World 2006 conference here in Boston.
The day started with a very good keynote by the Product Manager from Microsoft that is responsible for upholding the side of the developers for Internet Explorer. Pete LePage spoke at length about the new product and how it's always walking a fine line between standards compliance and "not breaking the Internet". As shocking as this last comment may sound, it is indeed very true, in a world where still well over 85% of the (PC) users use IE and where millions of web sites are "hacked" to work with older browser versions they want to support.
Two very interesting things I took away from his presentation: 1) The availability of IE VPC, i.e. a VPC Hard Disk Image for testing websites on IE6 SP2, while you have IE 7 installed. This was not just fascinating to hear about (you HAVE to be doing it, obviously) but also comforting.
2) Pete confirmed to me the perception that something may indeed be changing in Redmond. I started having this impression back when I read the Wired article that spoke about the paradigm changes Ray Ozzie was introducing in Microsoft. Pete was humble to admit his company's mistakes from the past and confident enough to know IE still holds a solid lead in the browser market, but at the same time, respectful when making remarks about his competitors and Microsoft's ability to be all things to all people. 100 points for PEte, for this!
Today, as part of the Web Design World conference, I was exposed to Social Picks, a social network "for stock market investors to share investment ideas, exchange market research, and track peers' investment performance." Seems like a perfect fit for someone like my friend Henkel.
As time goes by more and more of these niche networks start to arise, to serve specific needs. These are very interesting times indeed...
I recently finished Steve Mulder's book and today, I had the privilege of seeing him speak at Web Design World 2006 in Boston. His approach to capturing the essence of users and taking this knowledge all the way through design and marketing, into strategic business decisions not only makes good sense: one wonders how much of a web-based operation is pure luck without taking this framework into consideration.
Mulder presents various options depending on the level of time and investment you can afford to make, ranging from strictly qualitative approaches that take relatively little to gather user data and come up with some form of segmentation, to all-out statistically-loaded qualitative studies with the end goal of defining a user as clearly as possible, giving him/her a name, traits, goals and a whole personality that your organization can relate to.
After personas have been defined, the book helps you use them to drive decision making about site structure, content and design, so as to ensure success getting the users they represent to accomplish their goals, while you make your company money. This makes this book a must-read for all people involved in the early stages of conceptualizing for a web site design or redesign, whether you are a designer, product manager or simply in charge of changes to a web site.
The first day of the Web Design World conference went by already. Things were pretty interesting, in spite of the small size of the audience (we all fit in a banquet hall of the Sheraton hotel in downtown Boston).
Opening things up with the keynote, was Jared Spool. From the moment he hit the stage until the last of the sessions I attended, I must have heard the word "Web 2.0" a good 100 times. And it is so. It still is the buzzword of the moment, but listening to him and other speakers talk about it makes you remember that there's more to it than plain marketing fluff.
In short, he summarized Web 2.0 as a shift to design for the total experience of the user, helping small pieces contributed by different parties come together seamlessly, often without the knowledge of the other parties. He spent a good deal of time talking about the four main components of Web 2.0: -APIs -RSS Feeds -Social Networks -Folksonomies (notice he didn't mention AJAX as a component, but rather as a supporting technology)
APIs As defined by Wikipedia, "an application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides in order to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program." In short, it is making tools available to third parties so that they can manipulate your data and either transform it or present it in ways you hadn't thought of (or had time for) or do a mashup with data made available through other APIs, resulting in a set of staggering new tools that offer information that none of the individual data sets was able to offer the user before.
Example: What comes out of combining public domain crime information from the city of Chicago, with Google Maps of Chicago? A free-to-browse database of crimes reported in Chicago, displayed on top of a city map. It's called ChicagoCrime.org.
RSS Feeds Data that changes frequently that you need to be able to have "pushed" to you, such as news articles, updates on people, new images published, etc. are ideal candidates for RSS syndication. While still misunderstood by many (I don't see my mom subscribing to any RSS feeds any time soon), it's an avenue for many to have relevant information presented to them in the RSS Reader of their choice. Jared Spool felt Google Reader was the best option for this, and I agree with him, with the sole exception of the integration offered by Netvibes. But for heavy RSS users, Google Reader is quite likely the best way to go.
Folksonomies Otherwise, known as tagging, this is a means of collaboratively categorizing things to make sense of them. Flickr photos get tagged with keywords that describe them (conference, web, design, boston, etc.) Del.icio.us links get tagged as a means of sharing with other users what a particular site is about, or what it's good for (blog, design, web 2.0, etc.) Done at the user level, the most powerful value of folksonomies lies at the impact it causes at the network level: what you tag helps me make sense of things that are new to me; you were there before, and leave a footprint, showing me the way, so I can understand what I am in front of.
Social Networks Heard the term too, huh? These are sites that leverage the "wisdom of the crowds" (several of the sites mentioned so far do this in one way or another) through tools to help people share their opinions and feelings about a wide range of matters (product reviews on Amazon, two cents comments made on Netflix) or simply collaborate like they never had been able to before, in the way Wikipedia or Google Docs and Spreadsheets do today. Yet another nice example of a Social Netowrk, with a focus on art and creativity, is Real2Reels.
After Jared, we had a couple of speakers that are worth mentioning, but I will be talking about them in a post later tonight.
La Diferencia Entre Filosofia e Ideologia A mi siempre me ha encantado un debate de nivel con gente que puede razonar y ser razonable, gente que -independiente de su tendencia politica o religiosa- este realmente abierta a escuchar otros puntos de vista. De esa misma manera, cuando veo alguien asi, abierto, yo reacciono positivamente y, si me cuestionan, escucho y doy un paso atras, preguntandome si puedo estar perdiendo de vista parte de la historia.
Recientemente Luis, mi jefe y amigo, me comentaba de un discurso que dio Bill Clinton no hace mucho, donde hablaba de algo asi:
"We believe in a politics...dominated by evidence and argument. There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning. And you are certainly open to debate the practical applications of your philosophy."
"The problem with ideology is if you got an ideology, you already got your mind made up, you know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack. The problem with that is that discourages thinking and gives you bad results."
Aqui tienen el video donde sale este comentario (el cual consegui gracias a este excelente blog):
A donde quiero llegar con este largo preambulo? A revisar un tanto mas en detalle, si me permiten, mi vision con respecto a la situacion de Venezuela hoy en dia, sobre todo porque un bloguero a quien no conozco en persona, pero a quien he aprendido a respetar, comento en la refleccion que pegue aqui hace un par de dias cosas que me hicieron pensar.
Los Dos Paises Existe un grupo muy grande de personas en Venezuela que no espera que le den, sino que busca. Gente que lucha y no se conforma con las barreras y limitaciones de su entorno. Esta gente ha logrado de una u otra forma salir adelante y en buena medida ha sido por esfuerzo propio, y es gente que lo ha logrado en muchas ocasiones no gracias al Estado sino a pesar del mismo.
El autor (autora?) del comentario se refiere de forma un tanto superior a los "modernos" como la clase productiva de Venezuela, la que tiene "el trabajo, la empresa, la familia y la educacion" como su poder.
Esto basicamente descalifica como persona trabajadora, persona de familia o persona educada cualquier persona que no haya votado por Rosales y me pone a preguntarme donde quedan las millones de madres (por dar un ejemplo) que se levantan de la cama a horas casi absurdas, para ponerse a cocinar comida para que sus familias puedan salir unas horas mas tarde: unos quizas a vender la comida para mantener el resto de la familia, otros desayunados felizmente a trabajar o estudiar. No son tan trabajadores y gente de familia los unos como los otros? Quizas la unica diferencia entre ellos sea de educacion.
Pero mientras nos peleamos como pendejos por cosas de este tipo, el mundo sigue avanzando con paso seguro. Y dentro de no mucho, una "simple" educacion de bachillerato va a ser poco mas de lo que hoy en dia puede ser el analfabetismo, si no se suma a una exposicion a tecnologias de comunicacion e investigacion que pongan en manos de todos por igual las herramientas para superarse y salir del rancho fisico (los que no tienen recursos) y mental (los que tienen con que, pero no quieren). Asi que la diferencia de educacion entre quienes pasan trabajo y quienes tienen recursos no debe ser una variable de division sino de union. Un pais educado debe ser un objetivo de largo plazo al que se inyecten de manera seria y programatica recursos, para asegurar que podamos ser competitivos a nivel global en el largo plazo.
Quiero creer que un plan educativo serio con la finalidad de elevarnos de la dependencia del petroleo es algo mas que una quimera en la mente de unos pocos, pero lamentablemente no alcanzo a tener suficiente informacion confiable que me haga creer que asi es, informacion que corrobore que los planes comunitarios grassroots de este gobierno no son pañitos calientes, y que en el fondo no es "mas de lo mismo" (el mismo musiu con distinta cachimba, no era que decia el refran?).
Now What? Si vamos a lograr hacer progreso en el pais, y poner las divisiones de lado, para hacer pais, deberiamos tomar como ejemplo de la frase de Bill Clinton y pensar mas en terminos de filosofias y menos en terminos de ideologias, ya que unas dejan la puerta abierta al cambio y a ser flexible, mientras las otras se cierran a cualquier punto de vista que no sea el propio.
Ya dimos el primer paso en firme, y es quizas lo que mas me guste de Rosales como lider (honestamente, no me "mataba" su discurso de camino a las elecciones, ya que me recordaba demasiado al discurso de un candidato populista, pero eso es tema de otro post...) La oposicion unida, participo en las elecciones y se encontro que la mayoria del pais quiere a Chavez a la cabeza. Cuando la oposicion perdio, como indico el Mapologo, admitio la derrota. Esto es un gran paso para lograr ese progreso del que hablamos.
Del lado de Chavez, es importante que hable menos pendejadas: del "diablo", del "coco" y cuanta vaina rara se le ocurre soltar en sus alocusiones. Basta ya de culpar a los Estados Unidos de los problemas del pais, creando cortinas de humo que no llevan a nada y parecen desinflarse por su propia falta de sentido. Como dicen los gringos: "it gets old!" (es decir, con el tiempo, se nota que es pura paja...) Los Estados Unidos no son perfectos (lejos de eso -con Bush a la cabeza, el pais tiene años en un espiral desenfrenado de malas decisiones, que han tumbado por el piso la reputacion que tenia a nivel global). Pero mal puede Venezuela atribuirle la culpa de sus errores historicos, muchos de los cuales seguimos cometiendo.
Del lado de la oposicion, seguir unidos si estan convencidos de que tienen la razon. Seguir la lucha con votos y seguir trabajando por construir un pais en los espacios que nunca hemos logrado llenar. Seguir trabajando en la construccion de una democracia mas solida y transparente, porque lo que es igual no es trampa. A Globovision, como medio de oposicion, por ejemplo, no le caeria mal hacer una revision profunda dentro de si misma, para ver a quien terminan ayudando de verdad, enfatizando un lado del discurso solamente, y tergiversando verdades de la misma manera que culpan a Chavez, solo que a la inversa. Se me hacen tan parecidos a CNN en los ultimos tiempos, que se me retuerce el estomago de pensarlo.
Tolerancia y Sembrar El Petroleo Tenemos que entrar en una epoca de mayor tolerancia, de lado y lado. Cuanto me gustaria volver a ver la que una vez fue la empresa perla del pais, PDVSA! Ver la empresa volver a sus tiempos de gloria en que fue ejemplo a nivel Latinoamericano! Recuerdo que no tenia casi competencia año tras año, en la publicacion America Economia, cuando publicaban sus ranking de empresas de la region. Pero miles de los antiguos empleados de la empresa fueron despedidos por television o por prensa, de una manera dificil de olvidar y poco justa.
Ya aprendio la oposicion a tolerar la derrota. Sera que Chavez puede aprender a ser tolerante tambien? Sera que algun dia podran volver al pais sin miedo de caer presos, los que se tuvieron que ir por ser perseguidos? Y sera que ese dia (o antes), realmente vamos a ponernos una meta de pais, una de esas metas que suscribamos todos, gobierno y oposicion, de diversificar la economia del pais, de hacer como los paises del primer mundo, que buscan independizarse cuanto antes del consumo petrolero... y tratar que la economia del pais no baile al compaz de los precios del petroleo
Un dia en un futuro a no mas de dos decadas de distancia, Venezuela va a caer muy, pero muy profundo, si no corregimos el rumbo hoy y realmente invertimos la cantidad de dinero inconmensurable que esta percibiendo el pais por concepto de ingresos petroleros de forma parecida a otros paises como los Emiratos Arabes Unidos (se acuerdan de las construcciones en Dubai?)... si no sembramos el petroleo, como Uslar Pietri dijo hace mucho tiempo atras.
Quizas sea asi la mejor forma de cerrar este infinitamente largo post, citando al sabio Venezolano, usando sus palabras que resultan casi tan vigentes hoy como lo fueron en 1936, cuando las escribio en un editorial de un diario en Caracas:
"Urge aprovechar la riqueza transitoria de la actual economía destructiva para crear las bases sanas y amplias y coordinadas de esa futura economía progresiva que será nuestra verdadera acta de independencia. Es menester sacar la mayor renta de las minas para invertirla totalmente en ayudas, facilidades y estímulos a la agricultura, la cría y las industrias nacionales. Que en lugar de ser el petróleo una maldición que haya de convertirnos en un pueblo parásito e inútil, sea la afortunada coyuntura que permita con su súbita riqueza acelerar y fortificar la evolución productora del pueblo venezolano en condiciones excepcionales."
Estamos por aqui en Boston, hasta el miercoles, con motivo de la conferencia Web Design World. Llegamos esta tarde y el clima ha sido bastante benevolo hasta ahora. Lo poco que hemos podido ver de la ciudad es super-espectacular.
Esta foto lo tomo Luis Emiro esta noche, mientras ibamos del aeropuerto de Boston al hotel, en el metro (el "T"). Las fotos que yo tome no las he podido montar en Flickr, por problemas tecnicos (se me olvido el "cablecito"). Espero mañana, rodeado de tantos geeks, poder conseguir una solucion a tan lamentable olvido. :\
After reading about it what seems like a dozen times in recent weeks, I finally decided to give a shot to Flock. It's yet another web 2.0 app that I suspect I will be becoming addicted to as well. It's a browser written with Mozilla technology under the hood, with three main objective: 1) Facilitate the experience of Flickr and Photobucket users to batch upload photos, something that there are clients for already, but hey! Anything to facilitate life! 2) Once uploaded, it makes adding photos as part of comments in social networks around the place an easier process, saving a lot of copy/pasting and HTML writing. 3) It keeps a tab on the photos of your contacts, so you can see the latest material they have published. Also something that there are plug-ins out there for, but then again, if it's all under the umbrella of a browser, it may be interesting to see at work.
Anybody out there using Flock, that feels like sharing the experience? Any recommendations about it?
Update: I installed it today on both, the Mac and the PC laptop, and I've found problems getting to set up the Blogger connection. It may be something to do with the Blogger API, but I was wondering if anyone else is having this same problem. It simply "sits" there, after I enter my username and password and doesn't do anything.
A couple of nights ago, I was outside, waiting for Andreina to be done with a class she was attending and the shuttle launch was supposed to take place any minute... so I stepped outside of the car, staring at the eastern night, with a level of expectation that is hard to describe. I was expecting the bright light that would make the night look like day, with a little lump on my throat, produced by the fear of an unintended fireworks show in the middle of the night (I can recall the explosion of the Challenger very vividly -saw it on TV as the launch was broadcasted). And then... there was nothing. It got cancelled.
Tonight, the shuttle went up in the air, and though I'd read about the final decision to launch it at 8:47 EST... I totally forgot about it, and never went out to see it up in the air. I jumped into Flickr and found some amazing pictures, this being one of them. I guess it will have to be another time.
-Marillion, Brave: as the guys in the band say in the booklet, "Play it loud, and with the lights off!" Disclaimer: it was hard to choose a Marillion album, being a huge fan of the band as a I am, but I think Brave would have to be it. -Mark Isham, Crash: this soundtrack just entered my life this year, but it marked me. -The Mars Volta, De-Loused in the Comatorium: it wasn't their first album I heard, but definitely their best one. -Mecano, Aidalai: the last full album they released as a band. One of Spain's best products ever. -Miles Davis, Kind of Blue: if you only have one jazz album, this is it. -Natalie Merchant, Tigerlily. 10,000 Maniacs gave her a platform on which to grow wings and become one of the most amazing female singers of the 90s. -Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile. The Downward Spiral was also amazing, but this one would be my favorite. -Pat Metheny, Letter From Home. "Dream of the Return" will give you the chills... -Peter Gabriel, So and Passion. It's hard to come up with a single must-have PG album, so I would say you need to listen to at least So and Passion. -Peter Murphy, Love Hysteria. My favorite track, "Time Has Got Nothing to Do With It". -Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here. Another tough choice. -R.E.M., Automatic For The People. Everybody hurts... -Radiohead, OK Computer. From the day I listened to it the first time, I knew my life would never be the same. -Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Majik. Another life-changing album. "Breaking the girl" will always remind me of the best of times. -Ruben Blades, Live! The songs, the musicians, the solos... perfection in Salsa. -Ryan Adams, Love Is Hell, Pt. 1. Somewhere between Elliott Adams and Thom York. -Seal, self-titled album. His introduction to the world meant the world to many. -Seru Giran, La Grasa De Las Capitales. Because you never imagined four guys could produce such amazing music. -Sigur Ros, Takk. The most amazing album to have been recorded in a very long time. -Silvio Rodriguez, Al Final De Este Viaje. My favorite Silvio album... and there's so much good music he's made. -Slowdive, Souvlaki. Peaceful shoegazing. -Soda Stereo, Cancion Animal. A classic. -Stateless, The Bloodstream. Found about them just this year. -Sting, The Soul Cages. Written in memory of his dad, full of touching moments. -Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans. Folk is alive and kicking. -Sui Generis, Pequeñas anécdotas sobre las instituciones. Where Charly Garcia started making great music. -The Cure, Disintegration. It will never get old. -Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes. Yet another life-changing album. -U2, Achtung Baby. Their most interesting album ever. -Vangelis, Bladerunner. The Greek master nailed it with this score for the sci-fi cult classic. -Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The first album I heard by the Chicago-based band. "Poor Places" did it for me. -Yes, Close To The Edge. Released the year I was born, I only came to listen to it 25 years leater.
Every web producer has faced this dilemma. Every content manager sees this problem once in a while. You typically design a web site and its sections, to sustain content elements that fill the spaces you designate for them with color and letters, leaving little or nothing to chance. But reality challenges you, event if you're careful, specially if you are working on a site whose content is managed my many people outside your immediate circle of influence.
I am talking about the case we encounter when a page designed around the content it's supposed to house, has simply no content, because a person who may be responsible for managing the content either didn't do it out of choice or forgetfulness. What's left is a big white space, with nothing to justify the hours spent polishing the design, usability, behaviors and tons of features you thought of. But the real problem comes when a user visits this page: what is s/he supposed to do? Does the blank page look like a "natural" blank page or a page that didn't finish loading?
Addressing this case has become a need that you have to address, while designing or redesigning web sites, since it can and most likely at some point, it will occur. So how do you go about it? As usual, the folks at 37Signals came up with a handful of solutions, all of which made it to their flagship product, Basecamp. They present users with samples of how all the sections look when they are being used/when they are full, as well as with a brief summary of what the sections are for and what role they are meant to play in the user experience, leaving close to nothing to chance, so that the user can help him/herself and ultimately have a pleasant experience on the site.
This approach has come in handy for us, as we're tackling the redesign of a big section on our student portal at Full Sail, to add a number of new areas to it, many of which will be empty initially. Do any of you have any interesting stories to share about this type of web design challenge?
En dias recientes me llego esta refleccion sobre las recientes elecciones de Venezuela por tres vias distintas. Estoy de acuerdo con muchos de los puntos emitidos, sobre todo ahora que recientemente termine de leer un libro llamado The World Is Flat, el cual recomiendo ampliamente, que maneja conceptos semejantes.
==== Mis Queridos: Anoche el Pueblo habló. La Venezuela que estableció la mayoría de votos ayer Domingo es la Venezuela que tenemos, la que en cierta forma heredamos. Ya es hora de aceptarlo. Es nuestra realidad. Sin duda cada Pueblo tiene el Gobernante que se merece. Quizás lo que más nos molesta es que hay dos países y lamentablemente Chávez quiere uno solo. 60% de los venezolanos se merecen a Chávez.
Eso tiene una explicación. 60% de los venezolanos son Tradicionales y 40% son Modernos. Esta segmentación está claramente tipificada en el libro "Detrás de la Pobreza" de Luis Pedro España y otros excelentes autores. Les recomiendo de corazón que compren y lean este libro en esta Navidad. Creo que es la mejor forma de entender la Venezuela de hoy y de los próximos años. Es una obra maestra.
Los Tradicionales en general se resisten a la modernidad y consideran que no tienen control sobre su realidad y su destino. Piensan que las oportunidades llegan y no se buscan, dependen de la suerte y del azar. También sienten que para lograr algo se necesita la ayuda de alguien. Tienen muy poca educación formal, la mayoría no han terminado bachillerato. Para ellos al tutoría del Estado es fundamental para cambiar su situación. Para ellos Chávez es el Estado y lo ven como a un padre que impone disciplina con autoritarismo. Según el estudio "Detrás de la Pobreza" ellos son el 60%.
Los Modernos reconocen que hay un control personal sobre su destino y su futuro. Son confiados en si mismos y en los demás como individuos. Confían parcialmente en las Instituciones y eso los hace desarraigados, con una orientación claramente individualista. El Modernismo es consecuencia de un proceso de crianza en familia, socialización y educación. El modernismo se afianza en la interacción del individuo con ambientes colectivos como el laboral y el público. Los Modernos aprenden a competir y aceptan sus consecuencias. Han aprendido a ganar y a perder. Según el estudio "Detrás de la Pobreza" somos el 40%.
Para nosotros los Modernos es muy difícil aceptar lo que pasó anoche. Por eso los invito a entender que Chávez gobierna para los Tradicionales y desprecia a los Modernos. Todo lo hace para los Tradicionales. Sin embargo esos mismos tradicionales rechazan a Cuba y al Comunismo en un 90%.
Pienso que Chávez atrae a los Tradicionales despreciando a los Modernos y por eso nos ataca constantemente. A los Modernos no nos gusta que nos digan lo que tenemos que hacer y mucho menos viniendo del Estado. Eso nos molesta y nos hace reaccionar emotivamente en vez de racionalmente. Chávez mantiene a los Modernos a raya atemorizándolos con conceptos como comunismo, adoctrinamiento, guerra, violencia, restricción de libertades etc. Y a los Modernos nos encanta comer casquillo con esos conceptos porque los rechazamos profundamente. Eso nos hace reaccionar exagerada y emotivamente. Ese es el poder que Chávez tiene sobre nosotros y lo usa a diario. No aprendemos... Nos tiene aterrorizados sicológicamente. Eso nos hace erráticos e irracionales.
Les propongo que seamos más racionales y menos emotivos para enfrentar lo que viene. Por más que Chávez quiera que haya un sólo País los Modernos seguirán existiendo y serán la clase Productiva de Venezuela. Ese es nuestro poder: el trabajo, la empresa, la familia, la educación. Una vez que Chávez les de a probar a los Tradicionales alguno de estos ingredientes, se volverán Modernos y dejarán de apoyarlo.
Personalmente creo que no vamos al comunismo, que no van a adoctrinar a nuestros hijos, que no nos quitarán la propiedad privada ni la libertad de expresión. Sin duda habrán ataques quirúrgicos a ciertos grupos empresariales y políticos porque son inconvenientes para el régimen. Pero aparte de eso pienso que viene más de lo mismo.... Pura paja, ineficiencia, incapacidad, corruptela, incoherencia y estupidez!!!
El gran problema de Chávez es que tiene un gran rancho en la cabeza!!! Es un hombre brillante, pero lamentablemente es mediocre y acomplejado. Esa es su gran debilidad. Puro sudor y Peo como dicen los gochos. Un fenómeno electoral y político que no sabe gobernar ni gerenciar. Esa es su desgracia. De los tradicionales es el más Tradicional de todos!! Por eso se rodea de tanta mediocridad e incompetencia. El Modernismo lo aterra!!
Gracias a Dios los Modernos tenemos ahora un nuevo líder que nos une y nos proyecta. Que nos entiende y nos ayuda. Esa es nuestra gran ganancia de ayer. Después de una campaña tan exitosa (Rosales empezó con 5% y llegó a 40% en 4 meses) no hay dudas, ya tenemos a quien seguir. Esto nos hará una oposición mucho más coherente y racional para los próximos años. Vamos a dejar entonces que Rosales y su nuevo y joven equipo se ocupen de la política y vamos a ocuparnos nosotros de preservar y predicar la Modernidad haciendo lo que sabemos hacer... Trabajar, producir, estudiar, socializar y hacer familia. Eso sí, ahora más que nunca tenemos que hacer Responsabilidad Social para ayudar de muchas más formas a los Tradicionales, para inyectarles Modernidad. No descuidemos eso... Se lo debemos a Venezuela.
Aceptemos nuestra realidad, seamos ahora más racionales y no aceptemos más distracciones de Chávez... El no las merece!!
Seamos ahora la mayor de las minorías. La del trabajo silente pero muy efectivo. La del bajo perfil pero de alto calibre. Vamos a defender nuestros territorios y espacios y vamos a crear nuevos. Vamos a evangelizar la Modernidad para transformar a Venezuela.
Sé que estamos todos muy tristes, pero ánimo que llegó la Navidad y la Familia nos necesita....
