I will just call it a blog - is there a better term for a place where I can post my random IT/IS thoughts, ideas, recommendations, etc.? If I can later develop more thoughtful and organized articles based on these random words, I will probably setup separate pages for them - but that takes much more time and effort.

Cubicle H - an Information Systems/Technology blog

"Cubicle H" is a blog on various information systems/technology topics including web development, information architecture, business intelligence, etc. Blog entries are presented as casual thoughts and ideas, reviews and recommendations of concepts, tools, practices, books, etc., and sharing of tips and experiences.

This blog is hosted on BlogSpot.com: cubicle-h.blogspot.com

Recent Posts:

[2009-11-19] Web 2.0 User Interface and Interaction

Here I summarize (and envision) some major features of "web 2.0" rich web user interfaces. The question is what features are usually considered to be rich and usable. Let us know if there are things missing. Dynamic content changes and animations: auto-fill, marquee, slides, etc.Traditional GUI controls and interactions: drop-down/pop-up, expanding/collapsing, selection, highlighting, ...

[2009-10-09] Web UI Integration via REST

My previous blog mentioned about web slice, which can be integrated to IE nicely. Now, can such nice web slices be integrated (mashed-up) to web pages? It's easy to do it on the receiving end, through manipulating XHTML DOM dynamically. What's difficult now is the publishing end. I am not aware of any neat way to just get a particular web slice. Maybe webpage scraping does work but not ideal.Here ...

[2009-09-20] An analyst's problem

I read this from my student's blog: "as a technical person, stop telling me what you want and tell me what your problem is."I think it applies more to an (system) analyst. So "as an analyst, stop telling me what you want and tell me what your problem is." The quote is a bit dramatic but it's got a point, even in my daily life. One day after I wrote that comment - a Sunday morning - my wife ...

[2009-09-18] Free XML/XSLT Tools

I have tried and used a number of free XML/XSLT editors and tools (listed below). But none of them are completely satisfying. If you have a different view or a better free tool to suggest, please let us know.XMLPad: a pretty powerful XML editor with XSLT support; providing multiple views for XML content.Notepad++: a general editor for many languages including XML.XMLFox: a nice tool to view and ...

[2009-08-31] Multi-Point/Input Computer System

One computer supports multiple sets of keyboards, mice and monitors. Sounds cool. Just like 4 cursors on the Wii game screen. Why don't we make it widely available? (Well, then perhaps we don't need to buy that many computers because one computer can be used like two!) Imagine about these scenarios:While I am working on my paper, my wife wants to check her email. I don't want to stop because I am ...

[2009-07-30] Web 3.0 in My Mind

Now web 2.0 is no longer a new trend. People are starting to talk about web 3.0. The features people imagine are usually: personalized, high speed, pervasive, smart, knowing everything, and do everything as told. There are different perspectives to view the evolution of the web. One of my perspectives is the people's need/want:Web 1.0: the need for access - the need to find information and ...

[2009-06-19] Web Slice - Good but Not Enough

IE 8 Web Slices (and other gadgets, widgets, etc.) deliver an important idea: focused content delivery. Users can get only what they want, not a complete page with all kinds of other content. This is a good separation and customization. It's like buying one piece of furniture vs. buying rooms-to-go.But it can be better. After the separation, users also have the need of integration. Is there a way ...

[2009-06-15] Webpage Link Usability

A link points to a different page. That's a common perception. But wait, does this link point to a page of the same site, or an external site? Is the page open in the same window/tab, or in a new window/tab? Will the link change my current course of action? In addition, as AJAX technology has been adopted, many links actually bring up contents in a pop-up panel. We can see links do show different ...

[2009-05-31] So, Bing is coming

Microsoft Bing (to me, Bingo is a better name) is coming - another search engine. What's different? Let's preview it at bing.com. Well, the interface is improved and is user friendly to some extend (the interface looks better than Google's). Nice cover story (just like live search); nice categories; nice search history; nice pop-up preview; nice search suggestion; nice image index; nice video ...

[2009-03-20] Internet Explorer 8 is developer friendly

IE8 is out now. For me as a user, I don't see dramatic changes; there are new features, and they are nice; but there is nothing really new and exciting. For me as a developer, IE 8 has improved a lot; it is now much developer friendly. By the way, the web slice idea is good, but not good enough. I think they should be able to stick to a custom webpage (not just a icon on the toolbar), just like ...

[2009-03-07] Social Network Site (SNS) and BBS/Forum

What is the major difference between the online social sites for the Americans and those for the Chinese? The most popular SNS in the US are MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The most popular ones for the Chinese (in the US) are MITBBS, Tianya, Huaren, etc. The biggest difference of these two types of online social styles is: SNS is centered around individuals, but BBS is topic and ...

[2009-01-20] Between-Page and Within-Page Web Navigation

Traditional web navigation model is based on web pages: clicking on a link (pointing to a another page) takes you to another page (url) and the browser refreshes the whole page. Most of the time, the new content will replace the previous content in the same browser window (or tab). I label this navigation model as "between-page web navigation/action". An alternative model is "within-page based ...

[2008-10-10] Web Desktop and Portal

[Update] Now it is coming with the virtualization technology: http://www.windows4all.com/ amazing!Today I got an email from FanBox - but what interests me is not its community idea, but its implication to web interface design. It is a type of web desktop, new presentation style for website or web based information systems. Traditional websites focuses on content and followa print media layout ...

[2008-08-30] Social Bookmarking

Del.icio.us (delicious.com) is a very interesting Web 2.0 site. Besides its social element, there are two other elements worth noticing. First, the tagging idea is very similar to multi-categorization. This means any resource can be tagged using multiple keywords, or in other words, can be organized in multiple categories. This is very different from Open Directory where only a single best ...

[2008-05-02] Side Search

Lycos Sidesearch is done. What a pity! I think it is a great idea in terms of usability - arranging search results on the side for easy navigation and results comparison, without opening separate windows or browser tabs. None of the major search providers have seen its merit. What a disappointment! Fortunately, recently I did find such an style in Microsoft's Live Search for images. All image ...

[2008-01-15] .netCharting

Charting tools in Microsoft Office are really helpful for common users. For casual or common business developers, they need some kind of charting APIs to easily present data so they don't have to immerse themselves in graphics processing. .netCharting is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for this purpose, for both Windows and web environment. It is free for personal development use (with a small ...

[2007-08-20] Online Freelancing, Crowd-sourcing and Witkey

If you need to find someone to translate a short article, or design a logo, or plan a party, or collect some data, etc., where can you find one, reasonably priced, quickly and confidently? Or if you have some free time and want to do some paid knowledge work, where do you advertise yourself and where do you find such work? Google? Craigslist? Hotjobs? Linkedin? Whitepages? Here is a better answer ...

[2007-03-20] Web Navigation Design

Often people think web design is to make web pages beautiful, using colors, graphics, icons and animations to astonish users. But web design is much more than just beauty. Of many things we need to design besides beauty, navigation is the one that we cannot ignore. Navigation systemdesign is a site level design with combinations of presentation, information structure and functionality. A good ...

[2006-10-14] The beginning of all understanding is classification." -- Hayden White.

I first read this in the book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (the Polar Bear book), by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (1998); of course this is another good book on web development (the 3rd edition is the most recent one).Hayden White is a historian and professor at UC Santa Cruz and Stanford. This simple statement reflects classification's role in information management and ...

[2006-07-24] Web Engineering Book Recommendation

Web Engineering: The Discipline of Systematic Development of WebApplicationsEditors: Gerti Kappel, Birgit Pröll, Siegried Reich, Werner RetschitzeggerISBN: 0-470-01554-3, published in July 2006This is a great book on web engineering. It is not a pure web programming book, nor is it an interface design book; rather it is a book covering the complete life cycle of website development from an ...