Category Archives: design

The useful convergence of data

Posted on January 3, 2008 by

I have only one prediction for 2008. I think we’re finally about to see the useful combination of the 4 W’s – Who, What, Where, and When. Marc Davis has done some interesting research in this area at Yahoo!, and … Continue reading →

Posted in behavior, community, data, design, future, ideas, identity, innovation, local, marketing, personalization, programmableweb, recommendations, semanticweb, social, theory, trends | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Internet’s secret sauce: surfacing coincidence

Posted on December 14, 2007 by

What is it that makes my favorite online services so compelling? I’m talking about the whole family of services that includes Dopplr, Wesabe, Twitter, Flickr, and del.icio.us among others. I find it interesting that people don’t generally refer to any … Continue reading →

Posted in behavior, community, creativity, data, delicious, design, dopplr, edge, flickr, future, ideas, innovation, internet, models, network effects, platform, programmableweb, recommendations, social media, strategy, transparency, trends, twitter, visualization, web services, wesabe | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Oakland Trib’s Not-Just-A-Number improves on crime data visualization

Posted on November 20, 2007 by

OJR’s Jim Wayne dives into Oakland Tribune’s “Not Just A Number” web site. The service won the Service Journalism Award from ONA for an amazingly powerful view of crime data. The basic premise was to create a data visualization for … Continue reading →

Posted in crime, data, design, guns, journalism, law, los angeles, oakland, violence, visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Ikea ruined my floors

Posted on September 6, 2007 by

My second child is due next week. I intended to reconfigure our 1-bedroom house to create 2-bedrooms so that all 4 of us and the dog could spread out a bit. Some amazing software from Google and Ikea made me … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture, construction, design, strategy, visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to fix building construction bureaucracy

Posted on May 31, 2007 by

Sometimes I forget to step outside of our little bubble here and see how people use or in fact don’t use the Internet. When I get that chance I often wonder if anything I’m doing in my career actually matters … Continue reading →

Posted in business, collaboration, community, construction, data, design, development, government, how to, ideas, innovation, manufacturing, peer production, san francisco | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Crime data stories

Posted on May 17, 2007 by

My Potrero Hill neighbors tell me that the sweet song of crackling firearms in the evening always begins again in May as the days get longer, hotter and schoolless. Recently, I witnessed a sample of the gun play happening in … Continue reading →

Posted in 94107, chicago, crime, data, denver, design, guns, law, maps, mashups, new orleans, politics, potrero hill, visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Micah Laaker joins us on YDN

Posted on February 28, 2007 by

Friend and colleague Micah Laaker just joined us on the YDN team. You may recognize his name from the classic ACLU Pizza video that he directed. Here it is in case you haven’t seen it or forgot how great it … Continue reading →

Posted in design, identity, yahoo, ydn | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

eWeek doesn’t want me to visit eweek.com

Posted on January 4, 2007 by

I saw a link to an eWeek story and visited in part because I hadn’t been there in so long. Ugh. Now I remember why. Here’s a 30 second screencast showing you why I’m not a regular reader. Link to … Continue reading →

Posted in advertising, design, eweek, greasemonkey, intellitxt | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Scaffolding web sites with Ruby on Rails

Posted on October 24, 2006 by

I started messing around with Ruby on Rails for the first time on Sunday. This was after spending all day Saturday tearing down kitchen cupboards, tiled sinks and entire walls for a friend who is remodeling his house, so I … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, design, development, fashion, innovation, open source, programming, rubyonrails, web services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Switching my default browser home page, again

Posted on September 13, 2006 by

I’ve probably changed my browser’s default home page about 10 times in the last year. Something about working here at Yahoo! has made me very picky about start pages. I most recently was using Netvibes which had a couple of … Continue reading →

Posted in aggregation, design, personalization, yahoo | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments