Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

This is a recent article by Jakob Nielsen published on his Website on October 17, 2005. Jakob Nielsen is an expert on Web site usability. He advocates putting usability first and practising simplicity in Web design. In this article, Nielsen pointed out the top-ten usability mistakes on weblogs.

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photos
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

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Pop!Tech 2005: Grand Challenges (to be held in Camden, Maine, USA on October 19-22, 2005)

It is an annual conference that looks at the impact of technology on people. It brings together the world’s most interesting minds and innovators in a place to share their thoughs. This year’s theme is looking at some of the greatest challenges confronting humanity, and the role that new ideas, and new technologies, will play in responding to each in the future.

If you are interested in that subject and want to know some of the big names who reach for big ideas, IT Conversations is the website to go, because it will bring you a free audio stream of the entire Pop!Tech 2005 conference. Before Pop!Tech 2005 go live via it, you can enjoy listening to the archived session audio from PopTech 2004 at IT Coversations. I have listened and enjoyed that one.

I know there are a large number of UML Modeling Tools available to suit different needs and cater for different markets. You can easily get a list of them by searching the Web, for example, here, here, and here.

In my journey of finding a good one for my Software Engineering students, I gave the following three products a try: Poseidon for UML Community Edition, Visual Paradigm for UML Community Edition, and Omondo EclipseUML Free Edition. They are all developed by large companies or organizations specialized in UML modeling software. The community edition or free edition provides the basic functionalities and is available free for non-commercial use. I gave Visual Paradigm for UML a try because it is a product by a Hong Kong company. The following details how to get and install them. (more…)

Yahoo! Podcasts Beta

Nothing needs to say. Explore it yourself. Search some podcast that interests you.

What is Podcasting?

Think of a podcast as a radio show. Each show consists of a series of individual episodes that you can listen to how you want — on your PC, using your MP3 player, or with just a web browser.

If you’ve never listened to podcasts, you’re in for a treat. Sports, comedy, movies, food, politics, music, books, speeches, walking tours, whatever — you name the topic and you’ll find podcasts about it. Not only do you have incredible choice, you can listen whenever and wherever you want.

Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services by Thomas Erl, Prentice Hall, 2004.

This is a highly-recommended book on Web services and service-oriented architecture. It can help you think differently about XML. It provides you with a step-by-step guide for succeeding with Web services. It is about software engineering with new technologies and new ways of thinking.

I have put it in my library, and will spare some time to have a go on it. Here is the website of the book: SOABooks.com, which supplements the book with a variety of resources, including a complete glossary, examples, articles, and current industry information.

What do you think about Web 2.0? The following is so far my favorite explanation on what Web 2.0 is all about, which comes from Robin Good’s recent article–Web 2.0 Examples: A Mini-Guide–dated October 6, 2005.

The article also gave six great examples of Websites that were built using this Web 2.0 approach. I also learn from it a Dutch company BackBase which has been doing a wonderful job on Web 2.0 and rich Internet applications.

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