AIfIA is doing a follow up IA salary survey. Go now: Salaries and Benefits for Information Architects.

[Poorbuthappy Guide to Ease]

interesting enough, i also found boxes and arrows on their site

The Network is My Archive. For the past couple of weeks I've been pretty intensively engaged with my book, doing research and writing related to one particular electronic text that promulgated rapidly across the Internet in the early 1990s. I hope to post some of… [Matthew G. Kirschenbaum]

this was just said on fibreculture too, but the problem is that the network isn't the archive, the nodes are the archive, the network is just a means to get to the nodes.

AO: software development goes abroad for good..

An Always On discussion thread. Hold on to your IDEs, American programers: the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. And the Chinese. And the Indians. And the Irish. I wrote:

If you can move work to the next building because of IM, email, file sharing, SCM, etc., you can move it a thousand miles.

[a klog apart]

well the death of the american programmer is old news…. there are even a few books on it, now the real question is whether the death is due to cheap labor overseas or some other reason, my current idea is that the scientization and professionalization of the programmer has lead to the demise of precisely the type of programmer that makes a business successful, and allows for the rise of the type of programmer that programs as a profession, as a job, for money alone….. and that led to higher pay scales, etc. which then has the effect of making cost effective choices to 'train' foreign programmers to have the same outcome… rant rant.

Well, since i already do PHP fairly well, and i do perl with occasional competence, and i've mangled some python in my time, i decided that I should start learning Ruby too. Ruby is installed on OS X right from the start…. why? well here's to finding out… yesterday i nabbed some other people's projects and some libraries(did not install mod_ruby) though… i also have a tendency for eclectic tools and things, so ruby seems perfect

i wonder though whether it will be as nifty/simple as REBOL, which if it was just free, would be one of my favorite languages.

SOFTWARE ECONOMICS. Fresh off the controversy over Orrin Hatch's failure to register software, we have an interesting post from Kevin on the problems of open source software:… [OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY]

This is an interesting post and set of comments, but I think some of the comments are somewhat biased. Such is life, I'm just happy that people discuss such things in public.

A TOY (paper) ROBOT!!!!!. Roll Fold your own giant paper robots! Many delightful designs, including the Whale-Copter(?), the Kanga-Bot, and a suprisingly familiar little guy. Hours of fun, at least until you pass out from blood loss following massive paper cuts. (Link courtesy Pixelsurgeon by way of Veer.) [MetaFilter]

origami and robots, that's two tastes that go great together!

Web as Exhibitions. WebExhibits is like buttah. Parts of WebExhibits have been linked to before. But the place itself is about much more than time and art, with an incredible library of high quality links that one can get pleasurably lost in for quite a while. [MetaFilter]

sharing the wealth with this one, if you haven't clicked here and surfed a while, you are missing out.

We have to fight for our right to party.. The Right to Party. “This time, for real, I‰??m calling for the establishment of a Party Party, or, at the very least, for a Party Party attitude. I‰??m issuing a call to arms for those of us always in need of, as the great Jeff Spicoli once said, tasty waves and a cool buzz.” Hedonists and libertines, unite! [MetaFilter]

This says something about the nature of freedom and privacy, I think. To me it indicates that people see that both are necessary for the enjoyment of life.

Favorite island in the South Pacific? Place to stop in Europe?.

Let's see whether the blog works in reverse…

At the end of July I must give a talk in Sydney, Australia.  The plan is to fly west around the world.  It would be possible to stop somewhere in the South Pacific, perhaps most easily in Fiji.  On the way back I am planning to stop in Western Australia and then St. Petersburg, Russia.

The questions:

1) best place to stop in the South Pacific for a few days?  Is there a great place to sit in a hotel and snorkel from the beach in Fiji?

2) interesting place to stop in mid-August between Perth, Australia and Russia?

Constraints:  (a) I have an Israeli stamp in my U.S. passport from my recent trip to Tel Aviv and therefore would be denied entry to almost any Muslim country; (b) I want to take reasonably direct flights (and therefore Africa seems to be out of the question; you can't get there except by connecting through Europe or Dubai (which might be a problem with that Israeli passport stamp)).

Please put your suggestions in the comments or email if you prefer.

Thanks!

[Philip Greenspun Weblog]
stop in bombay

it is a nice stop, and don't assume that you would be denied entrance based on an isreali stamp… though you very well might…