I’ve been looking at commenting plugins for Wordpress that extend functionality for linking to trusted commenters, that said, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who comments and doesn’t spam me at this point is trusted. So link me up here, I will follow your links.

- more on findability

- principles of universal design

- interface design – how to improve user experiences and make money by designing better rich internet applications and interfaces for everyday products. Example? I just used my Rogers cable guide and saw they changed their interface. Now it’s a lot faster and easier to turn on Treehouse On Demand movies. In 5 seconds I was able to turn the next episode of Dora on for my sons to watch so I could come back to this blog and keep writing. I will pay for Rogers above others purely because their interface is that fast and easy for me to use. Customer inertia means I will only switch to another provider if the time it takes me to use their interface makes me feel like it’s worth learning even though it takes an extra 10 minutes out of my day, because I have toddlers and this blog that need my attention right now.

If your product gets in my eyesight and proves I can learn it fast enough that it’d be worth setup time to switch, I would. If your interface doesn’t quickly and easily prove to me I can use your service just as fast and get other benefits, I won’t switch. Ever.

Otherwise I am working on launching a new blog at JuicyWebDesign. This new site will focus on applying practical tips of user experience design with CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and newer technologies like Ajax, without losing usability and accessibility. A popular term for this is “bulletproof web design”. Websites have a long way to go on improving flexibility and preventing problems caused by irresponsible use of CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, and more. I’m also going to be talking about designing rich internet application interfaces in AIR, Flex, Silverlight, etc. I hope you will check it out, if you work on the web, it’ll be invaluable.

I can feel that ol’ “buy a new domain name, dump the current one” feeling setting in. It’s inevitable. I get bored, and I think, if I just grasped this exciting new idea, and ran with it, I’d have the next big thing. This ol’ blog? No one’s reading it anyway right?

However, I can no longer claim ignorance – I know the way to build a valuable blog is to actually keep working at it, even when I feel exhausted of ideas.

So. I’m into technical communication and web design. Those are the things I love to do. Should I start writing about them here? Is there enough of a space to apply usability and experience concepts with good ol’ XHTML and CSS? Is there a way to introduce colour theory and show how to apply it in code? And should I bother?

What about technical communications? Should I dig in, share more about XML and DITA and why they’re so exciting? Should I learn about agile methodology and share what I learn? Should I grab onto Flex or .Net and make them a part of this site too?

It’s interesting because, although I want to make a valuable site, I’m not particularly interested in monetization. Yet by virtue of posting online I have to wonder, don’t I have the responsibility to post something valuable and worthwhile? Is it really fair to just litter my site with whatever crappy thoughts wander through my brain? At what point is it less about interest and excitement and more about marketing? When will I cross my own ethical line anyway?

I was in a webinar yesterday that discussed user-centric principles in technical documentation, where the speaker from IBM applied theory to examples and proposed an interesting way of building documentation. While DITA was mentioned, I was surprised to learn neither DITA nor XML single-sourcing as a whole are widely and fully accepted. Here I thought I was lightyears behind by not knowing them. So is there space for me to write about tech writing in the user experience field? Can I say something that Tom Johnson hasn’t already written better? 

I don’t want to take the value here down, but I’m sure the lack of posting isn’t increasing quality either. So, web design or technical communication in UX?

The sidebars you see at right were, as well, the only thing provided in this layout, and I’ll need to manually add category listings and other widgets later, along with actually developing the entire colour scheme and logo.

Unfortunately I need to go to bed since I’m getting up with two toddlers first thing in the a.m., so I have to leave the theme like this. At least it’s working without the horizontal scroll now, although obviously it’s bland as hell.

I’m wondering what others have seen in this theme that they found worthy of raving about.

This site is currently under construction. Watch out for falling designs and code breaking! This is all in progress, and a product of passion and excitement which shall soon be reined into architecture and development.