Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Digital ads entangle

CNET: Digital ads entangle "Spider-Man"

Ummm... DUH! It's a MOOOOOVIE. It's FIIIICTION. It's not REEEEAL.

What next, is the NYPD going to sue because they're depicting a superhero fighting crime in NY when in reality it's the men-in-blue who do all the work?

Oilers out of the playoffs

My beloved Edmonton Oilers lost tonight. Coupled with a Phoenix win, that eliminates Edmonton from playoff contention and clinches playoff spots for Los Angeles, Phoenix, and (I'll never hear the end of this one) Vancouver.

The Oilers had made the playoffs the last 5 seasons. I guess the only consolation here is that Dallas didn't make it either.

Damn.

Persistent Conversation and the Design of Babble

CHI '99 paper: Socially Translucent Systems: Social Proxies, Persistent Conversation and the Design of Babble

Doing some IA work

I got to put my Information Architect hat on this week. I'm leading the redesign of Tyrell's main website. This week's research and preparation culminated with a great meeting with the whole team to discuss our goals and wish list.

Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville's classic book, Information Architecture and the World Wide Web was (yet again) an invaluable resource for me as I reimmersed myself in this facet of internet engineering that I love so much.

The meeting was a success, and I'm really excited about the road ahead.

But the immediate road ahead is through the Calgary Flames. (Sorry to bring up hockey at a serious time like this but hey, what's more serious than a must-win game for the Oilers? )

Google Boxes are BAD BAD BAD

These "Google Boxes" that are showing up all over the place are dumb. Why? Because they're self-fulfilling prophecies.

When you put a Google box on your site showing the top 10 results for some word, you're artificially inflating the rankings of those 10 pages!

I don't see any way for Google to know that they're seeing their own results and discount their value. And people thought Googlebombs were a problem...

Stop Googleboxes now!