Back in Blog
I am a blogging perfectionist. That is my excuse for not having an entry for alsmost three weeks. I want each entry to be a perfect capsule of comment and links. And as busy as I have been over the last couple weeks, I have not had the time to mull over each post.
My other excuse: I was in Phoenix for thanksgiving and my cousin's computer had dial-up access, which was soooo slow compared to the broadband access I am used to at home and work. Spoiled.
Doggie is still with me. My brother Mimo has named her Husku. She looks like a small husky. I have no idea what breed she is. Mimo's girlfriend has named her Goosfand Sag - Farsi for swan dog - she finds the names of animals in Farsi amusing. I still call her Doggie.
I will be on my way to Bombay in less than 24 hours. Three and a half weeks of down-time, family-time, friend-time. I am going to read Tolkien's Return of the King. I only read the first few chapters of Fellowship - the first book. But I would really like to read through a full book before I come back and watch Return of the King. I will also carry along The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (click the link to read the review by one of my favorite reviewers - Michiko Kakutani of the NY Times).
I will also have a whole load of unread New Yorkers that have been sitting on my kitchen table. There are so many good articles that I don't want to miss. I try each week to read the Comment section, the poems and cartoons. And then over time, I try to get to the longer articles.
I am debating whether I will take along my book on Information Architecture that I began reading a few weeks ago to get myself up to speed for my current project (redesiging our Intranet). Have I told you - I am really enjoying this project! I have always wanted to work on a web project. I was an early adopter of the web and am so in love with it. You know how people say that they watch too much TV. Well, I spend a lot of time on the web and don't watch TV. Yesterday as I was driving home from work I was thinking, you know, I can't judge people for how much TV they watch. I spend a lot of time on the web and that is not particularly "better" that watching TV.
Anyhow, I digress. I am looking forward to all the work we are going to put into redesigning our Intranet. I did some Usability testing this week (go here for the Guru of usability) and it was so great to get feedback on our early designs. There were a number of small changes and adjustments we made that has improved our design. We are going to do a lot more usability testing as the project progresses, and if anything, it will help us develop a site that will be useful as well as easy to use.
As I have written before, I am all for breaking down heirarchies, and the democratic sharing of information is one way to do it. Web based techologies allow the sharing of information in a powerful way. The web is not a bunch of pages and links - it is about the connections and the relationships between people and things. And a well designed intranet with good content and tools will help break down some organizational barriers and improve productivity here at LCRA.