EXTRA EXTRA! If your organization needs a kick-ass information architect with excellent management skills, an ability to communicate throughout the org chart, and a great personality, you really ought to hire this person, who lead the consulting operations at Argus. The organization that gets ahold of her will have a remarkable competitive advantage when it comes to smart Web site development, in the form of a really pleasant person to work with.

Something About Harry. After reading an article in ComputerWorld about the information visualization tool TimeFinder, I Googled Harry Hochheiser, and found his home page. Harry's work is likely of interest to peterme readers, with research in visualization and usability, and a bibliography on social navigation.

On The Pile. A number of tasty-sounding links I need the time to pursue:
Growing the Adaptive Enterprise (via Gary)
InCA issue on Design Research, (via Chad)
All of the nifty interactive artworks for MW2MW (via MW1)
VisIT, a search visualization (via Sean)
"Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth a Thousand Words" (via Andy)...

Alan Cooper Doesn't Get It. Now, I know that Alan is a smart guy, which made his latest article in the Cooper Interaction Design newsletter particularly surprising. In it, he criticizes SMS technology, saying "the innovation of being able to send alphabetic characters from one cell phone to another is largely useless, and far too difficult to be practical." His basis for this criticism? A television advertisement showcasing the technology. But just because the ad is terrible (which it is--it demonstrates SMS in a way it would never be used) is not a reason to diss the technology. SMS is great--I used it today in fact to relay a brief message to a colleague far away, whom I didn't want to hassle with a phone call. Thanks to T9, typing a message is relatively painless, and nowhere near the onerous task Alan suggests.

I'm surprised and a bit upset that Alan would display such ignorance. He should have been around the product block enough times to know how a technology is marketed often has little to do with the merits of the product. The only worthwhile subject of criticism is the marketing department at Nokia. By thoughtlessly criticizing a worthwhile technology, he makes himself and the discipline he represents (interaction design) that much easier to dismiss.

Additionally, I found that the other essay in the newsletter, "Innovating for Humans," spends many paragraphs saying nothing. Both this and Alan's piece seem to exist simply to utilize the term "Goal-Directed"... er I mean, "Goal-Directed®." Feh.

Funny, I don't have much to say. I've just been reading, mostly. I really enjoyed Imperial San Francisco, a history of my city of residence, focusing on how the development of San Francisco was performed at the expense of the landscape within 100 miles radius. Lots of stories of political corruption and media manipulation at the highest levels... Sounds like it set a pattern we still see today!

That book made me interested in social histories of the city. I'm particularly keen on learning how SF made the transition from hateful anti-immigrant Republican town in the 20s to being the most liberal city in America with more than 500,000 people in it.

Last week, I engaged on an excursion new to me. I went to a place called a "library," where you can get books, for free. And then, when you're done with them, you give them back, and they're not cluttering your apartment. Fascinating! I'm reading Strange Beauty, the biography of Murray Gell-Mann. Good stuff.