A collaborative mind-mapping application online. Free for limited use. Might be worth trying out.

The Poynter Online folks have been doing some really fascinating work in tracking eye movements of news readers online vs. tabloids and broadsheets. If you follow the link, you should check out the video and the PDFs, both are useful.

Some of the key findings are:

- People actually read more complete articles online, meaning they read them all the way through.

- There are two types of readers: methodical and scanner.

- Alternative story forms seem to work better than consistent formatting. Adding visual display of information, FAQs, sidebars, helps retention.

- Online, people look at nav bars and teasers much more than in print. Print, big photos and headlines are the way to go.

- Action photos draw attention. Small mugshots do not.

redotted from: McToonish

This is a very useful layout of some concepts we've been discussing internally for some time. Online participation broken down into 4 categories (consumer, commentor, contributor, commentator). The movement up towards the commentator is a worthy goal but it IS a very small percentage of the online community.

idiomag is launching an interactive music magazine. The user screencast makes it look great! You basically select how interested you are in certain musical genres and they automatically create the magazine for you. As you rate and read articles, it will automatically update your original selections so that it's always an accurate reflection of your tastes and preferences.

I like it!

Did you know that there are several online classes you can take through UW for free? Once I get moved, I might try out one of these...

Quoted: Free courses from the University of Washington Online Learning program.

Quoted: Play Sudoku online in the cool new MULTIPLAYER mode (2 players). SudokuCombat provides puzzles in easy, medium and hard levels. SudokuCombat is free and fully web 2.0. No subscription required, no crappy java applets, no advertising. Just fun!

Quoted: Here comes "The Pains," by me, John Damien Sundman, with illustrations by Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming, known to some k3vvl kiDz on teh intarweb as Sir Cheeseburger Brown. Feel free to read, save, print, copy and share among your friends. When you purchase the printed book—available summer, 2006, — I think you will find the format much nicer and easier to read. And also Cheeseburger & I will make some money, and I think we'll all feel good about that, won't we? Which, while we're on the subject, "pre-ordering" is really the way to go. We're starting with Chapters 1 and 2. More will follow on as close to a biweekly schedule as I can manage.