Kristofer D. Layon

A $6 million settlement was announced yesterday— perhaps this signals an era where more attention will be paid to web accessibility?

Related link:

• NYTimes article

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I have my good friend and colleague Tim Kunau to thank for referring me to TED Talks. Today, I'm watching a great one about the history of computing. Enjoy, and be enlightened.

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Aside from my MFA thesis project, this was my most involved and best-developed project from graduate school (2001-2004). I am reposting it in observation of the 5th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Note that total soldier and civilian casualty estimates now range from a conservative 34,000 (President Bush's estimate) to more than 650,000 (based on a 2006 epidemiological study that also includes deaths due to disease and other non-military violence resulting from war).

On the other hand, there are stories of hope, such as this NPR story that documents a less violent area of Iraq that had formerly been known for unthinkable atrocities.

We can only hope that more stories of hope like this emerge over time, to ensure that all of the war-related deaths did not happen in vain. But with 34,000-650,000 deaths to assuage, it's difficult to imagine there ever being enough hope or success.

• Play video (note: adjust your speaker volume accordingly).
• Original project posting

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As I work on some new podcasts for University Counseling and Consulting Services (UCCS), I just need to give a shout-out to Colin McFadden in CLA, who manages Media Mill. It is by far my favorite multimedia web application! It is elegantly designed, easy to use, and powerful. How could it be any better?

Well, I do see that it will soon allow content creators to select their own still frame for videos. Very cool!

Thanks again, Colin!

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I'm part of the U's New Media Research Network, and today's research breakfast included an excellent presentation on YouTube by Julie Jones, PhD candidate. She characterized YouTube's presence and success as comprising a "media metropolis", a place that people visit much in the way that they visit a city like New York, where a large variety of activities, content types, and cultures are concentrated in one location and result in a vibrant community.

Yet, for all of its richness and size, YouTube is successful for three more simple reasons: it is easy to find, easy to share, and easy to participate in. Compare this to other sites or applications that are either not easy to find, share, or participate in, and their lack of popularity is not a surprise.

I look forward to keeping up with Jones as she continues her YouTube research, as it is in the category of "social media" that continues to interest me a great deal. And while I do not expect to design media that are as wildly successful as YouTube, I do want to model my project goals on similar criteria, as I believe they are the foundation for success in today's Social Web.

• More about Jones' presentation here
• Related: Dave Gray's illustration of Social Media
• Related: Dave Gray's Communication Nation blog

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I just returned from an invigorating two days in San Diego, immersing myself in the latest social networking developments and talking to industry experts. My head is still reeling....it was a fabulous professional development experience. I also made a lot of valuable contacts for MinneWebCon, including securing O'Reilly as a co-sponsor.

I'll be writing more on what I learned soon...

Last week, one of my readings* in Internet Law was by Lawrence Lessig, who I learned is a leading scholar in the area of cyberlaw and, especially, evolving copyright law as it pertains to cyberspace. As part of his groundbreaking work, he founded the Center for Internet and Society at the Stanford Law School.

But as befits the quickly changing landscape of the Internet, today a colleague of mine mentioned that Lessig just gave his last lecture on the topic; he is refocusing his work on government corruption.

Fortunately for me, even with him bowing out of the Internet law arena, I still have more than a lifetime's worth of legal analyses to catch up on at the CIS website...not to mention at Lessig's blog.

* - The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach. 113 Harvard Law Review, Rev. 501 (1999).

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Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.

The frequent unreliability of the Twitter server (it was down again today for over an hour) underscores its irrelevance as a social networking platform, which should not only empower people to exchange ideas and develop meaningful networks, but should be reliable enough so that this process is not interrupted. Twitter absolutely fails on both counts.

Continue reading "The Death of Twitter" »

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As a designer, I've always loved typography— I guess most designers do. The trouble with web design, though, is that it's often assumed that it cannot incorporate richly-designed typography.

The I Love Typography web site reminds us that this doesn't need to be the case. Wow.

Seeing this today reminds me of how powerful typography can be, and how beautiful. Note to self: don't accept limitations on type too quickly, and live a little! Yes, I need to ramp up my typography a bit. And even though many people tell me that I have a strong and clean web type style, I don't want to rest on my laurels. I want to be strong, clean, and fun, too.

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Google Street View has come to the Twin Cities. It looks like the photos were taken sometime this past July. One clue is that my yard looks a bit parched.

Another, and more poignant, clue is the view shown above (click to enlarge): my exit, to work, off the 35W bridge before its collapse. Interesting to contemplate how Google now has this bridge preserved in a very detailed and interactive manner.

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The two web sites represented in the micro-graphic above have had my attention in recent weeks:

• UMD Web Design References: As our University strives to be ever more world-class, I think Laura Carlson, editor of this amazing site, must already be doing her part. To say that this is a jaw-dropping collection of design references is a gross understatement. Visit, and click on the site map, if you dare.
• An Event Apart: This conference series, founded by Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, looks to be fabulous, and I also have a colleague who attended and confirmed. I hope to register for one next year as soon as details are posted on the site.

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The New York Times covers graphic design again! This time it's an op-ed piece, and presented graphically as well. Bias disclosure: I've always liked the political cartoon work of Ward Sutton, who is a fellow St. Olaf alum ('89).

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Since hosting some sites with a new central service, Contribute started acting strangely when I was trying to set up the sites for distributed content management. Each time I tried establishing a new connection in Contribute, I was given the message that I already had a connection to that site. How could this be?

After deleting all of Contribute's site files and starting to set up all connections again from scratch, things went fine with the first site...and then I got the message yet again!

It was not until I looked closely at the web server > web addresses > alternate web addresses panel of Administration (click on image above to enlarge) that I spotted the problem. Contribute was pulling in other URLs from the previously-established connections into these new accounts. Why, I still have not figured out. But once I deleted these, there was no more conflict and Contribute started to play nice with new connections once again.

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Today the New York Times features a fabulous article about typography and highway signage. The slide show is particularly nice. The writing and graphic examples are quite compelling, and really make you think about how much typography design can influence our world...not just in advertising, but also in matters of safety.

• Link to NYT article
• Link to NYT slide show

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When I listen to discussions about branding at the University, they often tend to focus on visual concepts: graphic design, graphic standards, page templates, etc. And I do not disagree that these items are parts of a successful branding effort.

Today I received a marketing email about the above book, and reading about it reminded me that the primary focus of branding should not be on graphics but rather on emotions. An excerpt from the book review notes:

Web sites must be able to connect with people on a number of different emotional levels - - and to do so very quickly. I absolutely believe that if a Web site can establish a set of emotional states that are truly reflective of the particular brand, it can subsequently influence those emotions to reach a desired outcome.

Again, graphics obviously play a role in this emotional negotiation. But the many variables of the web experience--- accessibility, text, image (still and moving), video, audio, input/output--- are all very important considerations that can easily be pushed aside when too great of an importance is placed on what color is this pixel, and is it in the right location?

Continue reading "The Art of Digital Branding" »

Yesterday I attended a New Media Research Network presentation entitled Second Life, Second Body: Microethnographic Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in the Virtual Environment (try saying that ten times fast!). I don't know...I'm still a skeptic of Second Life, even though it has companies in it making money, bands playing concerts, etc.

(the graphic above shows 'HealthInfo Island')

I am particularly skeptical of Ms. Antonijevic's ability to study the body language of avatars. Other attendees clearly doubted this, too, and raised questions about how we could even know to what extent various users could manipulate their avatars' gestures, and how the entire interface issue limits what is really communicated. For example, real facial microgestures can be mere microseconds in length, and we are not consciously perceiving them but rather do this subconsciously. If realtime, realspace interactions are this subtle (and not even consciously controlled or perceived), wouldn't these meaningful gestures be entirely absent in Second Life? Or, when they are there, how do we know they are intentional versus accidental?

Is this a case where the research proposal was inherently flawed?

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