Presentation for the day
This brief post by Jon Hicks about icon design contains a link to an incredibly useful and instructive PDF file of his presentation. Though there’s no audio, all 89 pages (18MB) are worth a peek.
More On Google Wave
Sitepoint has an interview with web avatar Cameron Adams, who’s working with Google on Google Wave. It’s interesting to see his comments on testing at Google:
“For testing stuff hot off the presses, we basically walk around the office with a few prototypes, tackle people to the ground, and force them to use the application. This could either be in the form of static mockups or sketches, coupled with questions like: What do you think will happen if you click this? Or, the process that I find most valuable for an application like this is to create a simplified prototype of the behavior that we’re thinking of and let people have a go on at it.
It’s quite different to have an image that requires people to use their imagination than it is to present them with what the engineers will build after two months. So, I have a bunch of different interactive prototypes that focus on one area each — scrolling, typing, inserting, dragging, and so on. And we’ll tune these until we like what we have and users get the optimal experience. Then we hand it off to the engineers to build it properly.”
Telework Or Die! The Flu Pandemic
Bad news from the Florida CIO Council Pandemic Preparedness Committee today. According to the Florida DOACS Pandemic Planning Toolkit,
- “Susceptibility to the pandemic influenza virus will be universal.
- Illness rates will be highest among school aged children (about 40%) and decline with age
- Among working adults, an average of 20% will become ill during a community outbreak
- Per HHS planning guidance, Florida is planning for a severe influenza pandemic similar to 1918, as compared to a moderate pandemic similar to 1957, 1968. Either one could happe.
- Persons who become ill may shed the virus and can transmit infection for up to one day before the onset of illness. Viral shedding and the risk of transmission will be greatest during the first 2 days of illness
- Multiple waves (periods during which community outbreaks occur across the country) of illness could occur with each wave lasting two to three months
- A future influenza pandemic in humans is considered a certainty by the scientific community. When it will happen is entirely uncertain
- In a severe pandemic, absenteeism attributable, to illness, the need to care for ill family members, and fear of infection may reach 40% during the peak weeks of a community outbreak, with lower rates of absenteeism during the weeks before and after the peak.
- Governmental and business planning should include contingencies for worker absenteeism of 20% to 50% during the several-week height of a pandemic wave“
Page 9 of the Planning Toolkit contains a plan for the impact of a pandemic on businesses and government. This includes
- “Train and prepare ancillary workforce (e.g., contractors, employees in other job titles/descriptions, retirees)” (and let’s not forget those dedicated OPS workers!)
- “Establish policies for flexible worksite (e.g., telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g., staggered shifts)”
Looks like there could be lots of rapid promotions in the future, like on Omaha Beach on D-Day.
The 4-Hour Workweek
Just got a copy of Timothy Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“. There’s some interesting stuff here, particularly for those of us who already work some or most of our hours as teleworkers. A sample:
“What separates the New Rich (NR), characterized by options, from the Deferrers (D), those who save it all for the end only to find that life has passed them by?
D: To work for yourself
NR: To have others work for you
D: To work when you want to
NR: To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect
D: To retire early or young
NR: To distribute recovery periods and adventures (mini-retirements) throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.”
Video for the day
Hartmut Esslinger, founder and former CEO of Frog Design offers a few sound bytes from his new book A Fine Line.
Open Web Education Alliance
The Open Web Education Alliance is the W3C’s attempt to “help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals”. More from the charter:”Because of significantly differing curricula and standards of quality between educational facilities, students are often not adequately prepared to immediately enter the Web development profession, and prospective employers do not have sufficient information to judge applicants’ knowledge and skills. … the wide scope of the profession, ranging from presentational design, to user interface design, to client-side and server-side programming, makes comprehensive education more difficult.”
