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One central feature of our real-time world is the flood of data it generates. It used to be only financial markets (stocks, commodities, futures) that generated this much data. Now things everywhere are generating continuous and growing streams of data. Cars, planes and trains generate data from their onboard computers; companies generate data from their internal application networks; satellites beam down data from orbit; and the Internet moves all this data from anywhere to anywhere.
It's creating a huge need to turn data into information and make it easy for people to understand what's happening. Systems can't just show data dumps anymore. If it takes more than a moment to understand what the data means, then it's useless, because situations change so quickly and there's so much new data coming at us.
We need effective user interface designs if we're going to rise above this swamp of data and make sense of it all. We need to quickly understand and act, not spend lots of time analyzing. That's what it takes to be agile - just ask a stock trader - he who hesitates is lost.
There are lots of people who claim to be designers and they create lots of user interfaces for lots of systems. What makes some of them good and others not so good? Who's to say if one design is better than another?
The reigning Grand Poobah of user interface design is Edward Tufte. In 1983 he published The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and he's followed that book with several more and with many lectures and seminars since then (check out his recent critique of the iPhone user interface).
I've read his books and taken some of his seminars and I come away feeling like I studied at the feet of the master, feeling like I heard great truth, and feeling pretty overwhelmed about how to start using what I heard. So I supplement my learning by talking to working designers who apply his principles and some of their own insights to create real-time user interfaces.
One such designer is Roy Nakashima. In an email recently, he articulated five points he calls "inspirations for turning data into information". I love short and well articulated lists of pointers, so I'm quoting Roy's email here:
2008 CIO Summit
19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.
The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.
Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.
Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'
Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).
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Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Best Western forced to play defense on data breach disclosure 29 August, 2008 08:08:00
Could hotel chain have done a better job of defusing story about system intrusion?The headline in this week's Glasgow Sunday Herald -- "Revealed: 8 million victims in the world's biggest cyber heist" -- was a grabber. - +
US Terror threat system crippled by technical flaws 28 August, 2008 09:53:00
US Congress charges that US$500m project to prevent another 9/11 is a complete failure.A US House subcommittee is charging that a US$500 million IT project intended to "connect the dots" on terrorists and help prevent another 9/11 is a failure; it can't even handle basic Boolean search terms, such as "and, or and not." - +
Malware infects space station laptops 28 August, 2008 08:15:00
Not the first time, says NASA; astronauts load up Norton AntiVirusMalware has managed to get off the planet and onto the International Space Station, NASA confirmed yesterday. And it's not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit. - +
Separation of duties and IT security 28 August, 2008 09:40:00
Muddied responsibilities create unwanted risk. Kevin Coleman says auditors may start labeling poorly defined IT duties as a material deficiency.Separation of duties is a key concept of internal controls and is the most difficult and sometimes the most costly one to achieve. This objective is achieved by disseminating the tasks and associated privileges for a specific security process among multiple people. - +
How to recruit and retain the best young security employees 27 August, 2008 08:32:00
Today's youngest generation of workers, known as Generation Y, have different career goals than their parents did. What do you need to know to get them to work for you?The final installment in a series of articles about generational differences and security. Part one looked at managing workers in different age groups. Part two examined the types of security concerns that are most commonly associated with different generations in the general workforce. This article provides recruiting and retention advice for security employees.
Tumbleweed appoints O2 Networks to its Australian Channel Partner Program 29 August, 2008 12:31:00
HP ProCurve Brings Big Business Gigabit Switching Features to Small Businesses 29 August, 2008 12:00:00
GlobalConnect Provides Treatment for Healthcare Provider’s Contact Support Requirements 29 August, 2008 09:59:00
Sybase and Logica Partner To Mobilise The Supply Chain 29 August, 2008 09:47:00
New global landscape for qualitative researchers with Spanish and Chinese software releases 29 August, 2008 09:34:00
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Radicati Market Quadrant 2008 on Corporate Web Security
An Analysis of the Market for Corporate Web Security Solutions, revealing Top Players, Mature Players, Specialists and Trail Blazers. Read on to discover who makes the grade.
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