d.Construct 2006

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Design is hard. The Web is complicated. How do we make things for people when all we have are the most basic understanding of what they want? Join Jeffrey Veen as he takes a broad survey of the challenges designers face today, and how we're all solving those problems with new perspectives on user research, interaction design, and information architecture.

Thomas Vander Wal provides an overview on tagging services and outline where there is value in tagging. This focuses on what is different in folksonomy that improves upon tagging, so that it becomes a powerful tool. Thomas provides insights to help answer when to use tagging and/or categories, who should be tagging, the value of a tagcloud (or lack of value) when used properly, and how to create value from tagging to improve the sites and services we build.

How can we build modern web applications that use DOM Scripting and Ajax-type technologies and ensure that they are accessible? To find the answers Derek lookd at the impact of Ajax and dynamically-generated content on people with disabilities by examining how various assistive technologies interact with modern web development techniques such as DOM Scripting and Ajax. Using those results Derek creates a strategy to make some currently popular design patterns more accessible to all users.

Can you ever go back to Ajax once you Web 2.0 with Flex 2.0? The Flex 2 framework and the Eclipse-based Flex Builder 2 IDE provide you with a superior development workflow for creating web applications. You can create rich user interfaces quickly by using features such as data binding, application states, custom components, effects, and transitions. Join Aral Balkan, the Lone Ranger of the Flash Platform at d.Construct, as he shows you how easy it is to use open data, consume web services and create mashups in Flex 2 by using open source ActionScript 3 libraries for Flickr, Mappr, Odeo, and YouTube. Warning: This session may alter your preconceptions about the Flash Platform.

Over the course of d.Construct, we've heard plenty about APIs from the people providing them: Yahoo!, Amazon, etc. But why should you, as a developer, be interested? Come on a journey with Jeremy Keith as he describes how much fun can be had from hacking around with open data. Listen to his experiences of experimenting with mashups. Find out how Web Services can rekindle the passion in your code. After some initial foreplay describing the differences between REST and SOAP, join Jeremy as he penetrates some code. Soon you'll be swinging with Amazon, Flickr, and Google Maps.

Over the last year the Yahoo! Developer Network has opened up dozens of sites and services to external software developers, with APIs for Yahoo! Search, Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Maps, and many others. More recently Yahoo! has started adopting microformats on Yahoo! Local and Upcoming.org. Simon and Paul peek behind the Yahoo! firewall, showing how these services are created and discussing some of the lessons learned in releasing them to the public. They also show how a company can make use of web services internally to solve real-world technical problems, encourage innovation, and make work more enjoyable.

Web services are changing the fundamental nature of the web, as more and more companies offer their data for free. Rather than spending millions of dollars on complicated systems, entrepreneurs can tap into the existing services of companies like Amazon, and create innovative new enterprises for a fraction of the cost; enterprises that wouldn't have been economical otherwise. In this session, Amazon Web Services Evangelist, Jeff Barr, discusses the power of open APIs and how they are helping to fuel innovation and entrepreneurship. Jeff discusses Amazon's motivation for building AWS and some of the design decisions (such as their use of XSLT) they made along the way. Jeff touches on some of Amazon's current offerings such as S3 and the Mechanical Turk, before showing demonstrations of how these services are being used in the wild.

A quick chat with Andy Budd and the Clearleft office dalek. Plus some more Odeo messages.

Mikel Maron from OpenStreetMap gives the lowdown on the workshop taking place the day after d.Construct. Also, I finally got some Odeo messages.