There's a great movie coming to town as part of a film festival. I've been telling some cousins that they have to see this film; I was going to even buy the DVD for them but it's not available. I went to the film festival's website and found the film. Great! Alright, now how do I send a link to this page (am on an iPhone.) Let's see... "Email this to a friend"? Nope. Copy and paste the URL? No, I'm on an iPhone, can't. Reddit? Delicious? StumbleUpon? Anything? No. No. No. And no.

Something to keep in mind when designing for today.

By the way, the movie is "Exile Family Movie" and it's coming to the Tiburon International Film Festival. Why don't I include a link? Because I'm moblogging.

UPDATE: Here's the link for the movie (updated via a normal browser.)

UPDATE #2: I just figured out how to send a link to a friend using Safari.

Using my iPhone, I just realized the utility of a search box or sitemaps for a site when viewed with a mobile device. Usually, if I'm looking for a keyword on a page, I'll just CTRL-F it to find it quickly. In the abscence of such functionality on the Safari browser, search and/or sitemaps become necessary.

Plans are coming along nicely. I checked out the IA Summit site to look for updates and realize that I have a lot of reading to do before March. If you're going to be there, be sure to check out my poster.

For Christmas, I got a National Geographic subscription as a gift. I'm trying to be a better citizen of the world and learn more about its geography and people. When I read a story like this one, I want a link to Ras Kamboni on Google Maps to see where it is. Sure, I'll go look it up myself (depending on how much time I have) but why not make it easier for users? Same goes for financial data. If I read a story about the new iPhone, can't I get Apple's financials alongside the story?

I checked out my situation in March and it does look like I'll be able to attend the IA Summit.

The good news is that I just got word that the poster I submitted for the IA Summit has been accepted. Entitled "Nucleus: The Authoritative Resource for Scientific and Technical Nuclear Information," the Case Study was to highlight work I've done with the IAEA on their new nuclear information initiative http://nucleus.iaea.org. The bad news is that my travel plans have changed for the coming months so I don't expect that I'll be able to present in Las Vegas.

Am happy to report that I finally finished my poster proposal for the IA Summit so wish me luck.

While taking a look at other peoples' Flickr streams, I thought the following:  "Given a photo in your photo stream, the probability that someone will browse the other photos in your photo stream is inversely proportional to the number of photos you have posted."

I recently downloaded the trial version of PlanPlus for Outlook.  I had been a die-hard Franklin Planner addict before moving to Europe but then had to ween myself off of it because, well, quite simply there aren't any Franklin Planner stores in Vienna. 

So, I felt comfortable with the Covey methodology because I had been using it for years and I was armed with Outlook so I thought "Alright, well, I'll re-create my Franklin Planner electronically using only the basic functionality of Outlook."

In so doing, I've gotten to know the functionality of Outlook pretty well and even came up with a tweak or two to make Outlook "Covey-friendly."  Even still, I recently decided to give PlanPlus for Outlook a try. 

It's only been two days and the jury's still out as to whether I'm going to buy the full version but I'm generally pleased.  The thing I like the most so far is that the interface forces me to follow the methodology.  Even though I did a pretty good job of adapting Outlook for my needs, it still wasn't the same as having a box to constrain my way of interacting with the information (i.e. full-on compact Franklin Planner.)

I just helped a friend out by reviewing a site that he's now the Webmaster for and he thanked me for doing such a thorough job.  I couldn't help but think of it like when I was young and working for my father.  Whenever we pulled an orchard out, we had to prepare the field for whatever crop would come next.   Of course, with something like a cherry orchard, you can't just plant trees the next year, you have to let the field lie dormant for a while to recoup nutrients.  One of the things you need to do before planting another crop is to "pick up rocks."  What does that entail?  Well, you need to have a tractor and trailer and at least three people:  one to drive the tractor and the other two to literally pick up those rocks that are too big to be left in the field.  What qualifies as too big?  Anything you can get your hands around, that's for sure.  Sometimes, as you're walking along, you see something that looks tiny.  As you get closer, you get the feeling that it's bigger than you think so you start brushing dirt away from it.  Often, something that looks like a paperweight turns out to be a big, unwieldy, forty-pound monster that you need to get help with and that's why it's good to at least try to turn over every stone.  In that same way, you can look at something on a website that looks like it's easy to change from a structure perspective but as you more closely examine it, you see that changing it will have broader consequences than you realized.  Even still, it's wise to "leave no stone unturned" regarding the information structure of a website in order to explore how better to serve your audience.