http://dystmesis.net the insertion of a word into the middle of another word in an unlikely or unexpected place Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:16:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Before I [left my last job][1], a colleague asked me to impart whatever wisdom I had. Here's what I said. ## Being a Consultant Everything I know about consulting can be summed up in the following: 1. Listen to your customers. 2. Understand your customers. 3. Be their trusted advisor. **Listen to your customers.** A consultant's ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/06/11/and-thats-alls-i-know/ While I'm getting back on the blogging horse... I realize this is old news now, but LibraryThing announced an [API for work data][1]. This is great. But what's *really* awesome? This little tidbit from the post: > **Scope.** This is an API to work information. Once I've worked through the kinks here, ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/06/09/librarything-api/ It's been a looooong time since I've blogged, and I'm finally dusting this thing off and getting back to it. Lots of changes have happened. Most notably, I've changed jobs. Formerly doing [information architecture and content management consulting][1], I've sidestepped fields slightly into web analytics at another consulting firm, [LunaMetrics][2], also ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/06/09/changes/ I spent Monday--Wednesday of last week in Las Vegas at the [Gartner Summit on Portals, Content, and Collaboration][gartner]. The highlight for me was a talk by [Jakob Nielsen][jakob] on usability in intranets. I even got to ask him a question pertaining to his [eye-tracking research][eyes] (users don't look at ads) ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/09/24/where-i-was-last-week-and-thoughts-on-federation/ Is anyone out there using Yahoo Pipes, Google Mashups, or something like Dapper or Coghead on a library website or for library services? If so, I want to talk to you! I'm writing an article. Email me at . http://dystmesis.net/2007/07/19/yahoo-pipes-google-mashups-etc/ You've no doubt already heard about the [Open Library demo site][1] from the Internet Archive, brainchild of Brewster Kahle and Aaron Swartz. I think it's a really exciting project, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about it soon. One thing that struck me as interesting is a technical detail. ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/07/18/open-library-architecture/ The biblioblogosphere is fluttering with talk about the [fluffy librarian-image piece in the New York Times style section][1]. On one hand, it's one of those "Librarians: we're cooler than you think we are" articles, and as those go, it's not a half bad one. I mean, [Jessamyn][2] gets mentioned, so ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/07/08/karen-schneider-hip-old-lady/ My [last post](http://dystmesis.net/2007/04/10/fuel-economy-then-now-and-in-the-future/) was an email I'd just written to a friend. As I was writing the email, I thought, "I should blog this", largely because I'd read this just an hour before: >When people tell me they’re too busy to blog, I ask them to count up their output of ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/04/10/too-busy-to-blog/ A friend just emailed me this link. MSN Autos has an [article showing that the highest fuel efficiency models in 1992 were more efficient than 2007's most efficient (non-hybrid) models][1]. [1]: http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx?contentid=4024682 "Fuel Economy: Then and Now" I wrote the following in response: On its face, this looks really awful, and I do ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/04/10/fuel-economy-then-now-and-in-the-future/ When thinking about bibliographic data (for example) and social applications using taggings, it's pretty easy to think that the data (title, author, and so on) is highly structured and therefore very different from tags, which are freeform and all that jazz. In many ways, that's true, and it's especially important ... http://dystmesis.net/2007/01/26/fields-are-from-mars-and-tags-are-from-venus-oh-really/