High Context Consulting

Archive for June, 2002

June 27, 2002

Faceted Classification

Faceted classification of information and The business requirements for classifying content. Here’s more. (via IASlash)

These articles look great at a quick glance. I’ll pull out some nuggets later after I’ve had time to review them more closely.

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June 26, 2002

WorldCom Implosion

From a WorldCom press release:

As a result of an internal audit of the company?s capital expenditure accounting, it was determined that certain transfers from line cost expenses to capital accounts during this period were not made in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The amount of these transfers was $3.055 billion for 2001 and $797 million for first quarter 2002.

That’s rather understated, isn’t it. This is going to be huge. Lots of associations use WorldCom and subsidiaries for web hosting and ISP services. Time to start migration planning.

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June 25, 2002

klog Pilot Notes

We have started a pilot knowledge log at my office. Our team has been running a multi-author weblog on our intranet, writing about the web sites and related projects that we run.

Our original intent was to provide an easy way for other staff in the office to keep up with what’s going on with the web, updates on technical problems, major content changes, etc. We have had good feedback so far from our audience and are working on rolling out a few more klogs for other units that are interested in klogging their work. The grassroots revolution has begun! :)

Within our team, we have been surprised at how well the team klog has helped us to have a better understanding of what each of us is currently working on. We didn’t realize how much of our individual work was below the radar of our closest co-workers. No wonder we often get questions from other staff wondering what the web team does day-to-day. The klog should help with that office-wide.

My own experience returning from a week of vacation really illustrates the benefits it has had within our own team. The first thing I did yesterday was fire up our team klog and read what had been going on while I was out last week. I immediately saw a couple items that needed my attention (which I dealt with in a few minutes each) and got up to speed on what the rest of the team had been focusing. All before I had finished my first cup of coffee and long before I had made it through my backlog of 200 e-mails and a few voice mail messages. (See John Robb’s comments on the communication efficiency of klogs.)

It really took my breath away how effective it was for quickly getting me back up to speed. And I’ve been the one evangelizing this stuff! Without the team klog I would not have gotten to the critical items as quickly and I might not have ever learned about some of the other things that went on while I was out.

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June 24, 2002

klogging your career

Phil Wolff has some insightful observations on how writing a weblog could benefit your career.

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June 23, 2002

Taxonomy and RSS

The group that maintains the RSS standard is exploring the addition of some taxonomy elements. (Found via Ease.)

At first glance it looks like it will give you the ability to add pointers to related information and/or topics on your own web site or elsewhere. Taking a weblog as an example, you could add category-specific archives links to individual posts in an RSS feed. A news reader could then render links to your category archive for a particular post which the user could then follow if they want to see whatelse you have said on the overall subject.

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June 18, 2002

rc3.org Aggie Review

Rafe has posted his Aggie review. He gives it good marks.

I’ve been using Aggie for a few weeks and like it quite a bit. I have started storing my subscription list (generated by Aggie at home) on my site and then point Aggie on my work box at the list. That solved my need for a portable subscription list. I just have to remember to update the file on the web server occaisionally.

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June 18, 2002

When Lawyers Control Your Web Site

From Cory Doctorow’s blog:

NPR joins KPMG and other bastions of cluelessness by requiring that anyone who wishes to link to the NPR site fill in this form. No matter how deep or shallow your link is, NPR requires you to fill in this form.
…
Really, it beggars the imagination to think that anyone in this day and age could be this fatally stupid. If you agree, drop a note to NPR’s ombudsman.

Here is the form. Do I need to get written permission to cite an NPR program in a bibliography?

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June 18, 2002

Something to Keep in Mind

kottke.org on design:

Yeah, remember them? The end users? The ones that you’re building the software for? They don’t care about your damn cross-platform interoperability…they want fast, they want features to help them browse the Web, they want an interface that was designed by someone who knows about interface design, and they want a good user experience.

Found via Shifted Librarian.

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June 17, 2002