Kids Health Galaxy

Yay!!! A site I worked on for over a year as Information Architect and Usability Coordinator has been graced with a Webby nomination in the Family/Parenting category:

http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10

Kids Health Galaxy
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
http://www.kidshealthgalaxy.com

Makes me extremely happy and am very lucky to work with a great bunch of people on it.

By the way, do an erratic blogger a favor and vote for this puppy in the People's Voice Awards section?

http://peoplesvoice.webbyawards.com/

Much obliged!

Don't call it a comeback...

Well,

I have not followed through on my promise to revive this place, but it is time to make ammends. The blog has been a bit barren these past few months because I have been pulled in by some other interests -- some worthwhile, some not so much.

Information Architecture Summit 2005
I attended this summit in Montreal recently. The bulk of the presentations were, either, focused on covering some of the fundamentals that I already had a strong background in or served to confirm that some of my undertakings at the hospital are in the right path.  There were, however, three excellent sessions:

Sorting out Social Classification
A traditional task for people working in any mode of content cataloguing, indexing and retrieval involves creating a categorization scheme and labels designed to assist the task of finding the relevant content as quickly as possible. This involved the usage of controlled vocabularies and hierarchical structures that, either, relied on existing standards or were created to address internal needs (taxonomies).

As the amount and availability of content (especially digital content) has increased dramatically, the job of cataloguing, indexing and retrieving has increased in complexity. In addition to this, a wider range of people now have the tools to search for content readily available. This has spawned the creation of tools allowing anyone to tag, label and organize content they find with their own vocabulary and organization scheme. In essence, these tools allow people to create their own "folksonomies" in order to catalog, index and retrieve according to their own individual needs.

The current debate in the field has to do with the expected tension that ensues -- identifying what is gained when you allow organic classification and tagging of content and what is lost when you allow too much of this organic growth to occur without appropriate control. The field is trying to find the appropriate balance.

For an example of an application allowing its users to tag, index and categorize freely, take a look at Flickr.

Content Packaging and Metadata: A Change in the Approach to Content Production
This presentation by the BBC gave us a preview of how the application of metadata on digital television and radio programming will alter the ways we interact with such multimedia programming. In essence, the BBC is working to create a granular metadata system that would allow users greater control over the choice and access of programming.

If you are not too crazy about a certain television program that includes several narrative threads within it but are intrigued by one of those threads, you could, under this proposed system, search and isolate the characters and narrative threads you are interested in and simply access those. So, if you hate Saturday Night Live, for instance, but have a predilection for Will Ferrell characters, you could simply separate the wheat from the chaff and extract what you need, on-demand. TiVo on crack.

Traversing the Corporate Web: IA and Taxonomy at IBM
The rare thing: a presentation that demonstrates how the relatively academic concepts of a controlled vocabulary, taxonomy and metadata have been applied and produced tangible results for a sizeable group of users. The panel was not stingy or reticent showing details of their implementation -- a rare peek behind the curtain. You can find this presentation at Subway Love.

What does a gaggle of information architects look like? A sampling can be seen here.

World of Warcraft
It seems that there is one game every year that sticks its hooks into me and won't let go until it drains out of my system. This year's winner is World of Warcraft. If you play this game, why don't you drop by, say "hi" and try an intervention?

Character:  Morrissey
Race:  Night Elf
Class: Druid
Level: 57
Guild: Gnomeland Security
Server: Eonar

Help me....

Second Life economy

I had not logged in to Second Life in about six months or so and I recently came back to see what was going on. I ended up buying new land near the waterfront, building a home on it, being seduced by the recently opened "snowy sims" a week later, buying snowy land, building another house there and selling the initial waterfront land.

The interesting aspect of all this activity is that:

• Given the accumulation of a weekly stipend over six months,
• Given that I sold the land I bought for a 20% markup, and
• Given that the currency exchange rate for Lindens has been skyrocketing,

it looks as if I have made a real world profit from playing the game.

I did not intend to join this game with an eye toward real world profiteering, but it has happened that way. Well, at least until this point. As quarterly fees and monthly land-use fees kick in, I will probably break even within the next three months or so unless I engage in additional commercial / financial operations.

| New World Notes |
| Second Edition |
| "The Philosophy of Second Life: The Bodega Dialogues" |
| USA Today on Second Life |

Second Life Addiction?

Perhaps it is part of the regular pattern of becoming acquainted with a new computer game, but I have been addicted recently to Second Life. This may explain the spotty blog entries this past week.

It is not exactly a "game" and it may not be a new concept (since "The Sims Online" was one of the originators). However, the execution of Second Life is, I believe, quite stunning and unique. In a nutshell, a company in San Francisco has created a digital world and allowed you to populate it with your avatar.

Once you have you alter ego online, you simply roam around, chat with people, play games, buy land, build homes, create objects you may want to sell for the local currency (Linden Dollars) and so on. What makes this unique -- there is no ultimate goal or quest; people simply form emerging social and dwelling systems and economies: a laissez-faire experiment in a digital petrie dish.

The objects you create can involve complex scripting -- for instance, you may create a doorbell on your Second Life home that triggers an e-mail and/or IM alert in your First Life. The world comes pre-populated with a roster of such objects but intrepid scripters and builders have been creating their own inventions and distributing them or selling them. This creativity has caused the company hosting the world to address intellectual/digital property rights -- good news: you make it, it's yours...digitally, at least.

In the past few days, my character has bought land, designed and built a home, had guests over, gone to a strip club, gone to a dance club, bid for new land in an auction, participated in movie trivia games for Linden Dollars, and much more.

Have a look -- don't get too addicted.

| PC Magazine review of Second Life  | 
|  Article on Second Life and legal issues from LawMeme @ Yale University  |
|  Wired Magazine article  |