links for 2011-08-08

"My heart sinks when I see the latest flurry of tweets about some new “HTML5″ demo. As someone else said, it’s usually a warning that you’re about to visit a browser-freezing lump of JavaScript without a hyperlink in sight. I feel the same way when I see someone draw an image of the IE logo, a map of Paraguay showing every branch of Greggs, or a gyrating representation of Konnie Huq’s spleen using only CSS"

"Storytelling continues to gain popularity as an educational activity as it stimulates a deep thinking process, it provides opportunities for reflection and it enhances and enriches the learning experience for our students...So here are a number of apps that provide the tools for students to participate in the long and rich history of storytelling". Hmm, also useful for story-telling user flows perhaps?

Argues that you can't make a pleasing overall experience out of A/B testing small components from the whole.

"With the current interest in data journalism, this would be a great time to revisit one of the seminal moments of data journalism carried out by Philip Meyer in the wake of the 1967 riots in Detroit."

"As I interview hundreds of kids all over the world, it has become clear that a growing number are rethinking the role of electronic connectivity in their lives. They see their parents' dependency close up, and reject this 21st-century addiction to gadgets. They don't want to take their BlackBerrys to bed, nor do they want to take a back seat to whatever electronic impulse interrupts their dinner."

"Mil­lions of new web­sites sur­face on the web cur­rently use slid­ers. The pub­lish­ers of those sites are miss­ing out on the chance to have an au­then­tic, valu­able con­nec­tion with their read­ers, in­stead choos­ing to annoy and ir­ri­tate them with flashy, un­help­ful fea­tures. But the users aren’t the only one suf­fer­ing: slid­ers dra­mat­i­cally lower con­ver­sion and ease of use, re­duc­ing prof­its and lim­it­ing the abil­ity of brands and busi­nesses to clearly pre­sent their mes­sage to users."

"This used to be called merchandising, but now we must use the term 'transmedia storytelling'"