vanderwal.net

A Quick Category Page Lab Update

Today I thought I may be able to tackle 2 of the 6 tasks for features and functionality I want to take care of before moving the Category page in the Lab to the production side. Well, one of the tasks (the definitions) I knew is going to be pushed out as it going to take sit down and type words time. The other sort of large task was going to break some ease of use functionality and breaking something I find helpful is a bit of a problem, but also adds odd friction.

What Got Done

I was able to knock out four of the tasks that get the Category page in a much better place than it is at the moment.

The sidebar with the “Year Range” and “Co-category” selection was cleaned up and now with fixing the line wrapping for the long category names, so they no longer go under the radio button when the line wraps.

The inconsistency of the design of the counts for the two areas of selection is fixed and now the count has a subtle light box around them so the counts are noticeable but not drawing too much attention. Working with shades of orange is always tedious, but I like orange enough to deal with it.

There is now a noticeably clear filter selections button for the sidebar and in the main content section at the top. The button at the bottom of the sidebar to submit the filter selections matches the clear the filters buttons. The sidebar radio buttons (if you have JavaScript on) don’t require the submit button, but it is there for those with JavaScript turned off. This wraps up the sidebar.

The unfiltered category page now starts with a distribution chart that is larger than the sparklines on the category listing pages and it has small demarcations every 5 years. This is generated with SVG, like the sparklines.

When you make filter selections the distribution chart goes away (until the selections are cleared) and the filters selected are now laid out properly. This section also has a clear filter selection button as well.

You can try it from the link in the category filtering test section of the Lab notes about this.

This May be Close to Pushing Live

I am going to sleep on it and possibly push it live tomorrow on on the holiday Monday.

Category Page Filtering Testing

Little by little I’ve been tackling some of the functional needs for this site. As I went through the initial look at the analytics for my blog and site related to content (see Personal Blog Data Analysis - Looking at 25 Years) I see needs from a use perspective from visitor / reader perspectives.

I have many categories (210 as of today) and most posts have at least two categories on them. Categories are a means for a reader to click on them and find more posts that are similar, or contain similar content. Some of the categories have more than 100 posts and there needs to be a means to filter those down somewhat sanely. The two options I’ve leaned into are time ranges and co-categories. I have started framing out the both of these filters in the vanderwal.net Lab and the Lab’s Category Tests :: Lab :: vanderwal.net (go to the Category Testing Page Filtering) to get to the testing of the iterations.

Filtering Options

With 25 years of blog posts and coming up on 2,200 posts breaking down the years as one filtering option is to filter by year ranges. There is a heavy volume and velocity of posts in the first 7 years and then it slowed down. Trying to get consistent year ranges and having most year ranges have posts, which still narrows the number of posts, was one of the main goals. The happy spot seemed to be around a range of 5 years with the aim of the start of the year range being the “0” and “5” year as the start of the range (this theme will resurface more with other restructurings).

The co-categories from a surfacing and selecting perspective is decent, but some categories have long lists of co-categories. Currently selecting a radio button triggers the change if the user’s browser has JavaScript on, but the filter button to select the filter at the bottom of the list works even if JavaScript is off.

I still have tweaks I want to iterate through and those will continue in the Lab. The listing of the active filters is something I need to improve as well as adding a button to clear the filters.

More Modifications for the Page

One thing that will be coming in the near future is the unfiltered category page will have a distribution chart at the top of the page, like a larger sparkline with labelling (hopefully) for years or year ranges. Once this is added and the filtering is in a good spot, the modifications will move to production from the Lab.

Farther down the line a category definition will be added to the page at some point. The database has been set for a while to handle this. The backend management needs to get built and the category pages need to get enabled for to surface the definitions. Then the definitions need to get written as the definitions are not dictionary definitions, but definitions of “the what”, but also how they are applied.

Can I See What You Are Writing

The medium for thinking and consumption is something I continually consider. I don’t consume audiobooks, they don’t work for me and I have too many foundational problems with them. But, I do enjoy podcasts, but that is a naturally spoken medium. For consumption of fiction and most non-fiction I have a strong preference for print (physical and/or electronic). Non-fiction text gives the opportunity for illustrations that help augment and anchor the meaning. Video can work for many concepts if they are done well and illustrate concepts.

Reading fiction my mind slips into vivid depictions of the story and scenes (if the book captures me). Being able to see characters in my head helps keep the storyline sorted. I really appreciate authors that are crafty with languages that trigger the visualizations as I am reading. With reading fiction my mind may also drift (if the book is good, but this also happens with non-fiction as I am framing where this new information sifts in with other things known). When my mind drifts I may still be “reading” and flipping pages, but when I snap out of it I can flip back to where my mind drifted and continue on again (as a couple of my college professor encourage this is a really good and engaging way to read). Most often the drifting is related to something in the book triggering ideas and it gets my mind going. Audio books have my mind drift out from a of lack of interest, but more problematic is there really isn’t a good way to go back and pick-up where my mind drifted (oddly podcasts my mind will drift from them triggering ideas and also from a conversation the podcast triggers, particularly when they run adjacent to things I know well or they mis-state something).

The visualization in my mind is really helpful to keep engaged and it is great for recall as well. But, when a book turns into a film or tv show it sometimes helps (when there are many characters) to anchor the “whos”. The reading of plays I find difficult, unless I have seen the play or have photos or sketches of who is playing the role and then I fully connect. But, if it a book with illustrated characters, like the Moomins (I read a lot of Moomin books when I was a kid) and that turns into tv or a movie it breaks things my mental image of the illustrations through the stories are not in alignment. The Moomins were quite off (at least in the US series). But, Paddington worked just fine. With the Moomins becoming semi-popular in the US with young adults, I’ll ask about a person’s favorite Moomin or story and I find we are talking about Moomins from different universes it seems.

Seeing is Understanding

The mental images and visualizing ideas and concepts also drive explainers in presentations and the use of animation in presentations. That same principle for my engaging also goes outward when explaining things for others. Creating images and animations, for complicated or complex ideas, models, or patterns allows for pulling them apart, seeing things interact, and also provides the ability to point and talk about something specific and makes things less abstract.

I’m thinking about text and visualizations as I’m working on creating small videos of some of the core concepts and ideas around folksonomy, Model of Attraction, InfoClouds, etc. Listening to words is a thin and ephemeral representation of the ideas. Seeing the words is a bit better. But words and seeing relationships are key to communicating far better. I’m mindful not all minds are alike nor process the same way, so having many paths for engaging works quite well.

Zeef Returning

One of the things that has been bringing enjoyment lately is seeing ZEEF coming back to life. It self-describes as: “Curated links, found by algorithms, sifted by people”. I’ve used the new version and have found it more responsive and a bit easier to use.

I have set up a curator page in the new Zeef at Thomas Vander Wal | ZEEF. If you are new to Zeef and didn’t catch it the first time around, it is a different perspective on saved and shared links. Where things like Delicious and Pinboard focus on an abundance of links which the users tags as they go, which provides a folksonomy / folksonomy - defined of terms from the bookmarker’s output, Zeef has a focus on categories on a curator’s page and the links the curator believes are appropriate for that term. From a folksonomy perspective the person adding the tag / category is very clear (which is essential), the group of links has the category, and the links are the objects being tagged / categorized. Different people have different perspectives as we each have multiple contexts from our lives and everybody has a unique set of those contexts.

This early resurfacing of Zeef is still a work in progress, but has some nice new additions. One of the pieces I like is, curators having the option of adding a “why” to the links for a term. This “why” I find valuable as knowing why a curator added a link to their collection provides increased value for those reading the collections. On my page I have started a category collection for folksonomy and I’ve captured an initial three links in the section and I’m showing an expanded the entry for the Ontology of Folksonomy (from Tom Gruber) that shows the “Curator’s Note” and the “Why” reasoning I added. The Curator’s Note provides a definition opportunity and there the link fits, whereas the “Why” is the curator’s insight as to why they believe it is worth including.

Prior Zeef Mentions

The first version of Zeef was something I enjoyed, but didn’t take full advantage of, but I had ideas of how to expand my curated sets. I was looking at it for how to handle Blogfodder and Linkfodder. I also was thinking it could help with managing What to do with Podcast Favorites.

Looking Forward to Zeef As It Move Forward

This new version of Zeef is something I am looking forward to seeing grow and get used again. I think there is a place for having solid curation of links and resources. I’ve been thinking about how Zeef could be the community space to find resources centrally, like things captured on people’s personal sites in their slash pages (slash pages) which they keep on their site, but have a place to discover centrally.

I also really like the idea of having researchers and professionals curate their list of categorized resources. One thing I really enjoy this time of year are syllabi for courses and to see reading lists for new sources, but also how professors frame the accretion of understanding build over a semester (for those professors that share these openly).

Adjusting Daily Aggregation for Less Friction

Sunday I hit a point where my daily automations (which I layout in part here - My Automations Over the Ages and Today’s View in my morning process and weekly process) and placing the outputs into my Daily Dump note sections was really making for a lot of friction in my note taking / note making. Additionally, it was breaking focus and holding my concentration on what I was trying to capture in my note’s sections.

How Daily Dump Notes are Setup

My Daily Dump has 14 sections: Plans, Thoughts, Review, Read, Talked With, Listened, Watched, Productivity, Worked, Learned, Played, Ate, Health, Bought, and Added to a wishlist.

The intent with the subheads in my note is to quickly jump to the section as I run across something or am thinking through and idea or concept and capture the thoughts or what I consumed and ideas from it, so I can get back to it later in my notes. But, since this is markdown and in Obsidian I can take the notes with its subheading and text, extract it, and then transclude it (move it out and link it back in to show it in another note). But, having each day’s note relatively clean (the exception is the Plans section for things brewing and on the front burner to do are moved from the prior day’s note to the current day’s with a python script that keeps the completed tasks on the prior day and removes things not completed and moved them to today).

Friction from Adding Aggregation to the Sections

The daily aggregations pulled in things captured from various reading and copying or favoriting tasks that get automatically captured in Instapaper and Pinboard, as well as all the files I created and modified. I also have notes from Drafts that I capture on the go and tagged to get pulled in aggregated, as well as a list of things I watched online that I want to track, but also list of videos watched where I’ve captured the transcript in Readwise I may want to review (and likely do a further clean-up step).

All of this was getting aggregated into collective notes by type and transcluded into the relevant groups in my Daily Dump note. This added a lot of friction to the intent of my Daily Dump for quick easy drop into a section and capture a note and then after sort out how I may handle it. Add to this, Sunday my Weekly Review runs and captures all of this from the week and compiles it into one note so with a heat map at the top so I can review it to see what I’ve been doing and find things to cut back on or put focus on for the upcoming week. The Weekly Review was transcluded into Productivity, which is ironic as all of this adding of aggregation transclusions was making me really unproductive.

The Fix to Bring Back Focus and Quick Capture

On Sunday I had enough of the friction and took time to sort out a solution. I liked the capture and the ability to scan through and find things I need to continue working on or make a change on, but having it in my quick capture notes area made it tough.

I added a “Review” section just under Plans and now all aggregations and transclusions go there. The best part is when I’m not reviewing it, a heading in Obsidian can be collapsed, which gives me focus on everything else.

On Sunday I did a quick manual restructuring of my note by putting everything aggregated into the Review section and then collapsed it. This was a magical focus trick.

Updating the Python Script that Automates Transclusion

Sunday I did the first edit of the python script that takes the aggregations notes created earlier in the moring and transcludes them in and repointed them to not go into the other categories, but all go into Review. This hasn’t run perfectly yesterday nor today (it works when I trigger it to run manually, but not from the trigger to run the script), but it is getting closer.

Protecting Focus is Key

Protecting focus and being able to quickly shift focus and be productive is key and has been something I’ve been working to do since I was a kid. Over the years I’ve learned the distractions and how to pull focus and calm back in. Removing the friction from abundance of information already in where I needed clean space to quickly capture created the large problem.

Now my big next step is sorting out the time to actually get a good weekly review done from what I’ve aggregated. The capture has been really good, but I just need to get better about protecting time on Sunday (or move this to Saturday) so I can sit and focus on what was done, what I can reduce and what needs focus to get done.

Halfway Through Blaugust

At the halfway point of Blaugust following my saying I was in on Blaugust and aiming for 31 post in August, it is time for a check-in. On the 16th of August I have 22 posts (counting this post), which is more than I expected. I had two personal goals for the Blaugust endeavor: 1) Get back in the habit of posting and comfortable with the workflow; 2) Make a dent on my long list of blogfodder.

Back Comfortable with My Workflow

Not only am I comfortable with my workflow, but I’ve made tweaks to it. I have a lot of Daily Dump notes with things written out in the sections that could easily turn into a blog post. Now I have a smoother flow taking those notes and quickly extracting them to their own note, immediately having it transcluded back in, add the blog note framings, as well as blogfodder tracking, which makes it very quick to extract, wrap it for a post, and run through the edit and posting steps.

I am not only more comfortable with my process, but I’m feeling like I’m back living in my site again. I am using my blog search as I prep a note to potentially post to see what I have that may be similar or nice to add to a post as a reference. I also have been finding quite a few small UI gaffs that needed fixing and knocking them out. All pages in the blog area should have “Blog Search” in the navigation. There were layout twitches in layout switching between blog main page and individual post pages, which has been there a long time. This twitch isn’t fully gone, but far less noticeable.

Another thing I did was add some categories to accommodate creative and fiction posts, which I have been trying to sort out what to do with them. I may have another option at some point, but for now I have a decent option.

Making a Dent In Blogfodder List?

Uh… On this front I have knocked out a few items on the blogfodder list, cleaned up the list a little, but the list got a bit longer. Many of the posts for Blaugust have been new ideas and not coming out of the blogfodder list. Many of the items on the list are longer pieces and need more work, but they are likely going to be posted on Personal InfoCloud, but I will note here that I’ve posted there (just like the old days).

Some of those longer pieces will cover: “folksonomy and LLMs” (this question comes up a lot and helping quite a few understand the realities and frame their needs); “My working with AI since 2008”; “My AI policy for my sites (in short nothing read was created or edited by AI)”; “AI and Social Computing (particularly around teams and organizations)”; and other topic. I have quite a few others I swore I have posted over the years, but nope, so I’ve queued those up as well.

The Insider and a Focussed Look

One of the weekly wrap-ups I enjoy, which is also sort of a weeknote, is from David Pierce on The Verge in his Installer Newsletter. I always find things I hadn’t seen and when he digs into note taking and productivity I really pay attention.

This week’s The End of Oak Street is the surprise must-see movie of the summer | The Verge (I don’t know if this takes a subscription or not) was quite good (and David’s last before his paternity leave).

What Stood Out

But, there was on gem that really stood out in the list, Ordinary Abundance, which is really enjoyable. It is a great focussed look at an apartment with focus shifting as you scroll and the item in focus put into context.

I really like pieces like this and would enjoy more.

Does the Internet Make My Type Look Small

Early in the week I was “doing a thing” that is part of future improvement to the back catalog of 25 plus years of posts and I looking at my site a lot, as well as other sites and my type looked small when comparing to most. To me my site was quite readable and keeping comfortable line lengths, but there was a size difference that I really hadn’t noticed as much.

I checked with a few fellow bloggers, whom I swore recently had type around the same rendered size mine has, but they nearly all said they hadn’t touched their type size in years (a couple had adjusted it in recent months). Their type sizes were larger.

Adjusting Type Size

The last visual adjustments I made were in 2020 and it was a bumping up of the default type size and making the page size wider, as screens were larger and could accommodate the size increase of the type (today I found my original draft of the Model of Attraction is still in the older page size - Model of Attraction - First Draft).

I still set the default font size in pixels and call Helvetica Neue to be displayed. I started working with the modifying the CSS in the Lab - vanderwal.net, as there are enough page types in there to test many of the layouts and furniture with the adjustments.

I bumped up the font size two pixels and that needed a lot of adjustments for the header, nav bar, margins, and padding. I was about halfway through the adjustments of sizing for other CSS elements when I realized the line lengths for body text were tight, like a cheap suit that “stretches”. I backed down the font size one pixel and that improved the type size nicely and kept good line lengths and reading more comfortable. One thing I needed to do was add height to the heading to let the “highly creative” heading set more clearly again. This meant adjusting the height of the heading background image (there is plenty of width).

I completed adjusting the margins and padding and the body text was breathing well. I opened a few other pages from other sites I regularly visit for blogs and new and informative sites. The type on vanderwal.net felt like it fit on the web.

Moving the CSS Out of the Lab

On Friday I took the steps to move the CSS over to this side of things.Because there are some things that are a little different on the Lab side I needed to use diff to compare the two CSS files and update this side. I turned to my trusty BBEdit to do the task (I hadn’t used the compare in BBEdit in years) and it reminded me why I like using BBEdit for the, “I wish I had something that could…” type tasks.

After about a half an hour things were sorted and most things looked as I had hoped. There are a handful of alignments that need fussing with. There is a margin and / or padding issue that has been around from the last size tweaking a few years back.

Side Benefit

There are some small benefits that have come from these adjustments. One is related to the links page and improved ease clicking Vision Pro and on iPad. I have kept the line height a bit tight as there are many links and on a laptop or desktop screen it is fine clicking. It has also improved clicking on mobile as the touch target is increase.

Updated Categories with Sparklines and Search is Now in Production

I made a couple of updates I have long wanted to make to this site. I’ve been wanting to see frequency of categories used on my blog for more than 15 years (or pretty much since I’ve had category list pages). I have also wanted to have blog search and the utter mess that Google Search has become in recent years, where my site isn’t showing at all at times has driven this. These additions will likely iterate and adapt a bit going forward.

Updates to Category Lists with Sparklines

I have basically had two category list pages for years: Category List (which is alphabetical sort) and Category List by Use. I have kept these two and added sparklines to them (Sparkline - Wikipedia). Each line now has a small line chart that covers the 25+ years and what periods had used the category and some sense of the volume of use over time. One category list view I wanted and was missing was one to show a view with the focus of most recently used categories, so there is now a Category Recently Used List that not only groups by most recently used (and in the same entry keeps the alphabetical sort) but also shows the date of the last use in the list. Personally, I have been finding this recently used list view the most helpful and interesting. Skimming through the list I know I have more recent posts that have covered or touched on a subject, but it didn’t include the category, and that becomes a quick task to fix that gap.

Sparklines?

I have been a big fan of sparklines to give quick understanding of data’s distributions at a glance, which I learned about in “recommended reading” of Edward Tufte’s book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information | Edward Tufte in grad school in social / policy quant classes. (There are are many Tufte essays and book annotations on sparklines at Edward Tufte Notebooks & Sketches | Art, Science and Sculpture).

Creating the Sparklines

In creating the sparklines for my category lists I looked initially (and have long looked at them) creating static images from the data and bringing the images in (this would mean updating the images and replacing the old with the new ones, which is relatively straight forward programmatically and something I’ve done in the past, but not optimal) and I also looked at JavaScript but it was a bit slow. I poked at using creating SVGs (which work well when printing or zooming in) and often are much quicker and less strain on a browser than JavaScript. I’ve had a few goes at SVG in the past and I get get my mind around simple shapes, but I would need a little help with sparklines. A couple years back on a sparkline spelunking I found Easy SVG sparklines | Alex Plescan which showed the how. But, I have SVGs somewhat in the same category as regex, which is I do it rarely and I’ll just use Claude Code | Anthropic’s agentic coding system \ Anthropic to assist with the creation.

Chunking the Data for a Sparkline

The other part of sparklines is they are intended to be small glimpses and I have 25+ years of posts and a monthly temporal segmentation would make for a long graphic. I played around with breaking things down to quarters, but in the end I went with two segments per year and roughly 50 data points to map out on a line chart. Running a test with the two data points a year was a reasonable enough glimpse to sort out if the category was used recently or what the variation of use was over time.

One of the interesting discoveries with the first lab run of the categories of sparklines was the rather “U shaped” distribution of the use of categories, which pretty much calls out the lull I had in blogging. This softening of blog post rhythm is something I call, “when Twitter ate my blog” (where the interesting things I would discover and want to share and interact around ended up on Twitter rather than my blog(s)). Other patterns that surfaced were limited use a category in a period when I was rather sure I had posted on the subject, some of this was I was not using the term in that way or I didn’t have the category in my system yet. One of the things that helped sort this out was using my blog search.

Search is Now Out of the Lab

One of the things I have been working on and using my my Lab at vanderwal.net is blog search. But, the modifications I made to the Category pages I found I was leaning on my blog search a fair amount to investigate things. But, the categories and blog search are both in the blog section of this site, so making the change from the lab to the production side made sense. One of the things holding back moving search over, was I had an SVG of a magnifying class in the menu bar with “Blog Search”, but no matter how small I made the image it still was messing with the vertical layout of the menubar. In removing the magnifying glass and just using text things kept to the same layout.

Bringing in Search

The search in the menu in the pages in the blog section with “Off the Top” or “random” in the URL which is where there are currently menubar links to Blog Search. I have the menu bar link to a search page to search from rather than a JavaScript drop down or other menu bar convention (again layout of the menu bar was part of the considerations).

When I was working on search in the Lab section I found I needed to make some modifications to the database to have quicker search and I needed to modify the database engine so I could have search include 3 letter terms as a minimum rather than 4 letter words. In working on search I found many of my early posts didn’t (and still don’t) have titles and I was using the title as the link. I initially thought I would just add titles, but there are around 300 posts that don’t have titles (I’m adding some as I touch the posts for other clean-up issues), but I ended up coding the search results to have the results just fill in “Blog Post #…” as a proxy for a proper title.

The initial 170 or so posts are not in the database and are therefore not in the search.

Bringing Search and Categories In

As I went to move the category list pages out of the lab and into the production side I needed to modify a few other templates and pages to add the updated links. In doing this I realized I could also easily update the menu bar to include “Blog Search”. So, I took a little bit of time and made both changes at the same time.

Not all of the links are in yet. If you see something a little off with category lists or missing blog search links let me know.

The Writing Ache

It has been a while since I’ve written here, or over at Personal InfoCloud. I have an even larger stack of things in my writing queue and it is getting to the point that I am aching to write.

Shift Happened

I have a few things I really want to and need to get out. One is to take the Shift Happened series I started and made it through 4 of 16 I have outlined and I am finding the shifts myself and others saw and were living and advising through, happened to far more and they are really lost and acting as if these shifts never happened. Still.

Complexity / Social Lenses

The other thing is my Complexity / Social Lenses are now numbering in the 70s and I need to write to frame the core 12 or so I often use as half-day or full-day workshops to help others see through the fog of complexity with social and other complex environments they work and live within. I have been hoping to get these into a book, but the timing either wasn’t right or the environment (publishing company) shifted.

Information Strata

The last of these is around information depth, which I started relabelling Information Strata, that I have been including in client work and as one of the lenses related to social objects / socially mediated objects (depending if it was Jyri Engstrom or Karin Knor Cetina as one’s entry point). Information strata gets back to the core point and realization in the early 2000s that having a discussion with the subject in clear sight drastically improves the depth of the conversation, reduces errors from lack of clarity or misunderstanding, and improve conversational (information sharing) efficiency. Somehow today that basic concept is really lost and people accept the poor communication patterns as a given or don’t think to investigate a better way.

Over the last 10 years or so I started using a point system around the layers inhibiting a person from having a clear view of what is being discussed. This concept of having a clear understanding and isn’t new, it was something I learned as a communication major in many dog years ago as an undergrad. I need to do a decent write-up of this to have something to point to when helping others. I’m also realizing Info Strata leads right back to the “Come to Me Web” and related matters where the importance of bringing things related near has prime importance when building a service and system for someone to live and work with.

Now what I need is time and stability at the same time to get these going. Oh, and to get the ever bumped side project moving forward again.

Khoi Turns Infocards into Wildcard

This past week one of my favorite designers, Khoi Vinh released a product for iOS that is a great play on information card UI called Wildcard. Khoi has a really good write-up of the journey launching Wildcard.

Wildcard is Best When Used

The real joy is in using Wildcard. Khoi created a wonderfully usable and quite intuitive UI and interaction model all based on information cards, which work wonderfully on mobile and other constrained UI devices. Wildcard is a mix of news summary and scrolling service and product finding service.

Information cards are often mis-used and misunderstood. Both Google and Twitter started in with adding infocards to their design and information structuring a few years back. Both did this as a means to surface well chunked and structured content into small chunks for mobile and other UI constrained interfaces, but also for information scanning and lite representation interfaces and interaction models, like Google Now and the Twitter stream. The model does not work as well on fuller information and content sites, as it constrains in ways that are not moving things forwards, but instead setting false arbitrary constraints.

An Interconnected Service

One of the great pleasures in Wildcard is it not only has its own hold onto for later interaction and service, but it has fully integrated sharing with others and into your own services where you track, store, and manage your information nuggets. It does a really good job of integrating into one’s own personal knowledge flows and capture services.

Far too many services (see (unfortunately) Medium as example of current balkanization from other services) have been shifting to make it difficult for the reader and user of their content to work with the content as they wish and need in their information flows. This fracturing means it is more difficult to share and attribute content (and send people to the site) when blogging or other write-ups.

Khoi has long understood the value of information relationships and information flows for use and reuse, which shows brightly here in Wildcard.

Moved Wildcard to the Front Row

After spending about 15 minutes with Wildcard in my first use of it, it moved to the front row of my “News” folder in my iOS devices. It may become one of my first go to apps to see what is happening in the world around me.

A Model Interaction App

One of the things that struck me in my first use was the intuitive interaction model and information model for moving into a collection and around and deeper in the collection and then back out. Wildcard is really well done on this front. It is one of those things where when I am done using it the ease of use (for the most part - there are one or so “wha?” moment, but for a just launched product that is great) really stands out and I start working through how it works and functions. I’m likely going to have a sit down with it not to use it, but to map out what it is doing, because for me its interaction design is really good and fluid.

It is always a joy to find an app or service that not only does its job well and seems to get out of the way, but works to augment your workflows and existing resources for use and reuse. But, when it stands out as a really easy to use service on first use and good for discovery and exploring, it is worth sitting and better understanding the how and why it does that so I can better think through options and paths for things I am working on or advising.

Kudos Khoi!

The Data Journalism Handbook is Available

The Data Journalism Handbook is finally available online and soon as the book Data Journalism Handbook - from Amazon or The Data Journalism Handbook - from O’Reilly, which is quite exciting. Why you ask?

In the October of 2010 the Guardian in the UK posted a Data Journalism How To Guide that was fantastic. This was a great resource not only for data journalists, but for anybody who has interest in finding, gathering, assessing, and doing something with the data that is shared found in the world around us. These skill are not the sort of thing that many of us grew up with nor learned in school, nor are taught in most schools today (that is another giant problem). This tutorial taught me a few things that have been of great benefit and filled in gaps I had in my tool bag that was still mostly rusty and built using the tool set I picked up in the mid-90s in grad school in public policy analysis.

In the Fall of 2011 at MozFest in London many data journalist and others of like mind got together to share their knowledge. Out of this gathering was the realization and starting point for the handbook. Journalists are not typically those who have the deep data skills, but if they can learn (not a huge mound to climb) and have it made sensible and relatively easy in bite sized chunk the journalists will be better off.

All of us can benefit from this book in our own hands. Getting to the basics of how gather and think through data and the questions around it, all the way through how to graphically display that data is incredibly beneficial. I know many people who have contributed to this Handbook and think the world of their contributions. Skimming through the version that is one the web I can quickly see this is going to be an essential reference for all, not just journalists, nor bloggers, but for everybody. This could and likely should be the book used in classes in high schools and university information essentials taught first semester first year.

Traits of Blogs with Highly Valued Content for Me

I was going through my inbound feeds of blogs, news, and articles and catching up on the week. In doing so I open things that are of potential interest in an external browser (as mentioned before in As if Had Read) and realized most have some common traits. Most don't have Twitter feed (most Twitter feeds run at a vastly different information velocity and with very different content areas that distract from the content at hand). As well, many do not have comments on them any more or have moderated comments using built-in commenting service/tool (very rarely is Disqus used).

Strong Content is the Draw

The thing in common is all are focused on the that blog post's content. The content and the focus on the idea at hand is the strength of the attraction.

Some of the blogs are back to their old ways of posting short ideas and things that flow through their lives the want to hold on to, but as also comfortable enough to share out for other's with similar interest.

Ancillary Content Can Easily Distract Attention and Value

Sorting out what the focus of a blog (personal or professional) is essential. The focus is the content and the main pieces on the page. It is good to help keep the focus there without any swirling tag cloud (these seem to be the brunt of the fun poking sticks at conferences these days as they add no value and are completely and utterly unusable, so much so those with the mike continually question what understanding somebody has to add them to their page or site) or any other moving updating object. When talking with readers most say they do not notice these objects, just like web ads have taught us to ignore their blinking and flashing and twirling. As is often said personal sites begin to look like entries in a NASCAR race, where the most anticipated outcomes are the wrecks.

I have seen many attempts at personal homepages and personal aggregation pages, which are of big interest to me (for personal archiving, searching, and review), which are a better place for pulling together the Twitter feed, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. Aggregation of this content in a feed option is good too, but keeping the blog page content to a main focus on content is good for the reader and attention on the written word.

Yes, over on the right I have my social bookmarked links. It has been my intention to pull recent items with tags related to content tags, but that has yet to happen.

Social Design for the Enterprise Workshop in Washington, DC Area

I am finally bringing workshop to my home base, the Washington, DC area. I am putting on a my "Social Design for the Enterprise" half-day workshop on the afternoon of July 17th at Viget Labs (register from this prior link).

Yes, it is a Friday in the Summer in Washington, DC area. This is the filter to sort out who really wants to improve what they offer and how successful they want their products and solutions to be.

Past Attendees have Said...

"A few hours and a few hundred dollar saved us tens of thousands, if not well into six figures dollars of value through improving our understanding" (Global insurance company intranet director)

From an in-house workshop:
"We are only an hour in, can we stop? We need to get many more people here to hear this as we have been on the wrong path as an organization" (National consumer service provider)

"Can you let us know when you give this again as we need our [big consulting firm] here, they need to hear that this is the path and focus we need" (Fortune 100 company senior manager for collaboration platforms)

"In the last 15 minutes what you walked us through helped us understand a problem we have had for 2 years and a provided manner to think about it in a way we can finally move forward and solve it" (CEO social tool product company)

Is the Workshop Only for Designers?

No, the workshop is aimed at a broad audience. The focus of the workshop gets beyond the tools' features and functionality to provide understanding of the other elements that make a giant difference in adoption, use, and value derived by people using and the system owners.

The workshop is for user experience designers (information architects, interaction designers, social interaction designers, etc.), developers, product managers, buyers, implementers, and those with social tools running already running.

Not Only for Enterprise

This workshop with address problems for designing social tools for much better adoption in the enterprise (in-house use in business, government, & non-profit), but web facing social tools.

The Workshop will Address:

Designing for social comfort requires understanding how people interact in a non-mediated environment and what realities that we know from that understanding must we include in our design and development for use and adoption of our digital social tools if we want optimal adoption and use.

• Tools do not need to be constrained by accepting the 1-9-90 myth.
• Understanding the social build order and how to use that to identify gaps that need design solutions
• Social comfort as a key component
• Matrix of Perception to better understanding who the use types are and how deeply the use the tool so to build to their needs and delivering much greater value for them, which leads to improved use and adoption
• Using the for elements for enterprise social tool success (as well as web facing) to better understand where and how to focus understanding gaps and needs for improvement.
• Ways user experience design can be implemented to increase adoption, use, and value
• How social design needs are different from Web 2.0 and what Web 2.0 could improve with this understanding

More info...

For more information and registration to to Viget Lab's Social Design for the Enterprise page.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Catching Up On Personal InfoCloud Blog Posts

Things here are a little quiet as I have been in writing mode as well as pitching new work. I have been blogging work related items over at Personal InfoCloud, but I am likely only going to be posting summaries of those pieces here from now on, rather than the full posts. I am doing this to concentrate work related posts, particularly on a platform that has commenting available. I am still running my own blogging tool here at vanderwal.net I wrote in 2001 and turned off the comments in 2006 after growing tired of dealing comment spam.

The following are recently posted over at Personal InfoCloud

SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools

SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools focusses on the myriad of discussions I have had with clients of mine, potential clients, and others from organizations sharing their views and frustrations with Microsoft SharePoint as a means to bring solid social software into the workplace. This post has been brewing for about two years and is now finally posted.

Optimizing Tagging UI for People & Search

Optimizing Tagging UI for People and Search focuses on the lessons learned and usability research myself and others have done on the various input interfaces for tagging, particularly tagging with using multi-term tags (tags with more than one word). The popular tools have inhibited adoption of tagging with poor tagging interaction design and poor patterns for humans entering tags that make sense to themselves as humans.

LinkedIn: Social Interaction Design Lessons Learned (not to follow)

I have a two part post on LinkedIn's social interaction design. LinkedIn: Social Interaction Design Lessons Learned (not to follow) - 1 of 2 looks at what LinkedIn has done well in the past and had built on top. Many people have expressed the new social interactions on LinkedIn have decreased the value of the service for them.

The second part, LinkedIn: Social Interaction Design Lessons Learned (not to follow) - 2 of 2 looks at the social interaction that has been added to LinkedIn in the last 18 months or so and what lessons have we as users of the service who pay attention to social interaction design have learned. This piece also list ways forward from what is in place currently.