I know you’ve seen this page before:

This means that for some reason the page you are trying to view doesn’t exist. It could be that the page was deleted, the link is broken, or it’s a bad address.

404 errors are usually boring and ugly, but a recent trend in web design are custom 404 errors.

When done well, they can be quite cool… except for that whole not getting the information you’re looking for part. That still sucks.

You can see a tons of these neat 404’s on WDL.

Thanks to Mark of JerseyStyle Photography for sending the WDL link my way.

My guilty pleasure Survivor, came to another spectacular end this evening. If you are mocking me in my head right now, all I’ve got to say is don’t judge it till you try it. The show is awesome and contagious.

This season was especially killer.

During tonight’s finale, they teased next season, Survivor Heroes vs. Villains. Starting February 11th, 20 past survivors will be split into two tribes. One will have 10 past survivors who were known for virtue, and 10 who were known for vice.

I googled to see if I could find a list, and I think I found one. If this is it, I am pretty pumped. It has a lot of my favorites from the past few years.

There be Tweets in my Google

While googling the subject I noticed live tweets being pumped into my Google search results. It was interesting to see, and a good move on Google’s part. I’m curious if this will be common place on Google or if it will only be for trending topics.

I love Survivor, and the comic geek in me is easily excited by the prospect of a battle of good and evil (or misunderstood).

I’ve been insanely busy, but I promise regular content updates will return tomorrow.

In the mean time, here’s a sketch from Gaping Void that really speaks to me.

If you are unfimilar with Gaping Void, I strongly recommend you take some time and acquaint yourself with his work (they aren’t for people who are easily offended).

Gaping Void

Special thanks to Adriana for sharing this one with me

Oh Onion News Network, how I love thee:

The Mystery Google is a pretty cool idea… with very little functional benefit other than a fun waste of a minute.

You go to the website MysteryGoogle.com, and type in any search phrase. I recommend you search “geek whisperer.”

Then you search, however you will not see the search results for “geek whisperer,” you will see something completely different.

The way it works is that you will always see the search query that the person before you input. So the next person to run a Mystery Search will see your “geek whisperer” search results.

Not functional, but interesting.

But wait, there’s more. I’m going to try and turn this into something that is functional.

If you search “geek whisperer” on the Mystery Search, you will be doing me a favor because you will be funneling traffic to my site (provided the searcher after you clicks the link).

Think of it as a tiny holiday gift for your friendly neighborhood Geek Whisperer.

MysteryGoogle.com

The brand new Mac beta for Google’s web browser Chrome is really smooth and fast. I mean really really smooth and fast… when it doesn’t crash. It’s a beta, things will improve.

Give it a try: Google Chrome Beta

The MythBusters website offers a ton of quizzes to test your ability to determine fact from fiction.

Here are some geeky ones worth a few minutes of your day.

Computer Myths

Going Green Myths

Music Myths

Tech Myths

A ton more are available on their website.

One of my favorite advocacy groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new website called Copyright Watch. The site allows users to see the latest news in copyright law. The effort is to inform the general public about the threat that looming copyright laws poses to individual freedom, and maintaining an open Internet.

In other related news, here’s a quote from BoingBoing for you… I can’t improve upon their words:

“Two US Senators, Bernie Sanders (I-VI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have written to the US Trade Representative demanding that the text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement be made public. This is the treaty that allows for criminal sanctions against noncommercial file-sharers, demands border-searches of laptop hard-drives and personal media players and phones for pirated material, requires ISPs to spy on their users, and gives movie and record companies the right to take whole households off the Internet with unsubstantiated allegations of piracy.”*

This secret copyright treaty is pretty black and white to me; we must crush it. The consequences of this treaty are unimaginably dreadful.

For more information you can visit the following links:

The Geek Whisperer: Scary Secret Copyright Treaty: From Music to Purses, This is Bad News

Copyright Watch

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

* BoingBoing: Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

First, I would like to issue a very special thanks to Melissa Penta. Melissa your absence from this conference is my gain… but I think you would have gotten more out of the jQuery session that you signed up for than I am. More on that later.

The Millennium Broadway Hotel, New York

I’m here. I was able to find my way through the hotel to the conference by following the trail of dudes dressed like bums in the nice Midtown Hotel.

My first impression is annoyance. The Future of Web Design Conference doesn’t have wi-fi because the hotel charges for it.

Cheap bastards.

Seriously though, it is pretty pathetic and it reflects poorly on both the Conference and the Millennium Broadway Hotel.

Kristina Halvorson’s Content Strategy Session

Kristina Halvorson is the President of a content writing/ information architecture agency known as Brain Traffic based out of Minnesota. Coincidentally, my childhood friend Chris Farrar works for Kristina.

Kristina’s session was enlightening. I do a lot of web writing and information architecture, so this was right up my alley. I didn’t feel like I learned much that was new, but she put a lot of things I know and do into concrete terms. I found the whole presentation rather soothing.

Here are a few key takeaways about content strategy and information architecture:

• People read print differently than they read the Internet (I will be writing more on this at a later date).
• Readers of your company’s website don’t care about your company. They don’t care about your “about us” page, or all of the time and effort you put into creating everything. They want what they are looking for.
• All to often pages are designed for the company, not the reader.
• Content is often an afterthought. It should be part of information architecture and design.
• It’s very hard to make good content out of processed, legalistic, techno-babble or other forms of soulless garbage.
• Good web content doesn’t win awards. It conveys information efficiently.
• You aren’t a copywriter on the web, you’re a publisher. People expect you to take care of what you create and publish.

Like I said, I didn’t learn a lot of new things, but Kristina did point out a few things that I would like to improve in myself. So you should see some small changes and improvements in my writing.

The Group Project From Hell

Kristina broke us up into groups to redesign Quicken’s homepage. I was grouped with three designers. They were very nice, but they didn’t seem to understand information architecture (or at least their understanding was different than mine), and they especially didn’t get writing. After 16 minutes of circular debate where they never articulated anything past their initial ideas, or made any decisions we rushed to finish something… and didn’t finish much. Fortunately no one actually looked at our “finished product.”

This made me really appreciate the team I work with, especially our lead designer RJay. He designs with copy and architecture, not around or over them.

Karl Swedberg – How to Use jQuery to Enhance Web Design

To pull a bit from Karl’s blog, “In the words of jQuery’s principal developer, John Resig, ‘jQuery is a simple JavaScript library that helps you to write the code that you want to write and really simplifies the interaction between JavaScript and HTML.’” Basically jQuery helps developers code cool stuff. 

I’m not a web developer. At all. My coding background was pretty much limited to desktop software, and I haven’t seriously coded in nearly a decade.

Needless to say I didn’t get much of anything out of this session. Karl seems like a very nice and knowledgeable guy. The people in the room seem like they are learning. He is making code jokes, and people are laughing… and I’m scratching my head wondering what was so funny. Everyone has limits.

At least this session is giving me a chance to write this post. Unfortunately I will have to publish tonight because of the aforementioned wi-fi situation.

Learn more:

The Future of Web Design

Kristina Halvorson & Brain Traffic

Karl Swedberg – Learning jQuery

I’m off to the Future of Web Design Conference in NYC with a few of my coworkers.

I’ll write about all of the interesting happenings and misadventures I have along the way.