Podcasts

If you, like me (and like David Weinberger, I was glad to learn) have had trouble understanding Lakoff’s Women, Fire & Dangerous Things, I suggest you listen to David’s podcast called Messiness is a virtue.

There is a terrific section in the middle about cognitive linguistics, aristotelian classification theory, prototype theory and basic level categories, all things I think are deeply important for IAs to know about.

And if you are insanely interested in this topic, get a copy of ‘Concepts: Core Readings‘. Dan Brown told me about it. It is a bit pricy, but it is a truly excellent book about cognitive linguistics and concepts. Still a hard-ish read, but very well-structured, with a great intro and the key works in the field.

I read an entire Plato essay at breakfast one day, which must be one of the oddest things I can say I have ever done.

I’ve continued to wander around with my earphones in, and here are some of my recent favourites:

• Designing for the Sandbox - PeterMe, WebVisions 2005 - I’ve been reading what Peter is writing about this, but its nice to hear it all at once
• Designing for the personal info cloud - Thomas Vander Wal, WebVisions 2005 - ditto, plus some model of attraction stuff I don’t think I’ve read
• Time is Money… Can You $pare a Minute? - Chris Bond, WebVisions 2005 - great case study for user-centred design
• Industrial Design and Convergent Devices, Luke Williams, WebVisions 2005 - the strong Australian accent was a welcome surprise, and the talk is good
• Play by Today’s Rules, or Change the Game? - Blog Her 2005 - a bunch of smart women talking about blogging. Lots of great, great one-line insights
• Alistair Cockburn - Agile Software Development - solidly good and interesting

And I did a very, very silly thing today - gave a 1.5 hour lecture on IA and forgot to record it. After Dan told me earlier this year “you get to the second bullet point and incredible stuff just comes out of your mouth” I swore to record my presentations so I could actually use that good stuff in my writing. Silly girl!

PS - Dan might have actually said ‘good shit’ or something equally colloquial, not ‘incredible stuff’.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve had the earphones in a bit this week. Here are some of my favourites:

• Being human, being unhappy - ABC radio national
• Barry Schwartz - Less is More - along similar lines to the previous, and a neat summary of some of the main themes in his book
• Will Wheaton - an interesting and funny discussion of post star-trek days and how blogging pulled him through
• How to Get Naked - BlogHer 2005 - A smart bunch of women talking about how blogging pulled them through, and the pitfalls of identity blogging
• Joel Spolsky - as good as his writing

Lots more to listen still - if you know of anything I might like, please let me know!

I’ve been cleaning the house for the last 4 hours. Very unlike me - I usually zoom through it as quickly as I can.

Know how I did it - I pulled down a whole lot of mp3 files from IT conversations stuck my earphones in and attended tech conferences all afternoon. How cool!