Pattern Books: the history of patterns

patternhistory.jpg
How “Pattern Books” Fueled England’s First Speculative Real Estate Market by William Baer in the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge (Feb. 17, 2003) provides an interesting peek into the recurring idea of patterns as an alternative to rules or theories.

The term “pattern books” was used generically for books covering a variety of specialized topics that were sold to the trades and the general public. These became quite popular in the seventeenth century and on into the eighteenth, and were part of a rapidly growing publishing industry. “Writings on trade, credit, agricultural improvements, and employment schemes” are examples of some economic and commercial topics covered by pattern books.

This link came from the History Of Patterns in the Portland Pattern Repository which is one of the major foci of the WikiWikiWeb which is arguably the first wiki.
The Dave Orme authored wiki page traces the application of pattern design to software design to 1987 when at OOPSLA 87 they reported on a project for Tektronix where they applied Alexander’s “pattern stuff they’d been studying.”

Internet Safety Day

alphadog.jpg
InSafe is a Council of Europe sponsored organization promoting Internet safety information. Did you know about Safer Internet Day? One is tempted to mock such earnestness. Or you could,

Write about your journey with friends from all over the world in the exciting and sometimes dangerous cyber world of Internet and mobile technology. Take along a magical helper from the Kingdom of Internet safety.

I’m taking Alpha Dog who is good at “digging down spam”.
But seriously, what makes this site so bizarre is that it is written for children, but designed for adults. I can’t imagine any child reading pages of this stuff without any graphics and I find it hard to imagine adults reading this without cringing. Perhaps the graphical version is coming. Compare with the Canadian Media Awareness Network (MNet) to see what I mean.
Continue reading Internet Safety Day

Sheridan Interactive Multimedia: Flash Reviews and Tutorials

Dan Zen sent me links to two neat sites put together from the work of his students in the Interactive Multimedia program. The first is a series of tutorials for Flash, Sheridan Interactive Multimedia Flash Tutorials. The second is a Flash work that gathers screen shots and short reviews of other neat Flash sites. See FlashDeck – Sheridan Interactive Multimedia Cool Flash Sites.

Vectors: Online journal for digital media

Ray Siemens pointed out to me a new journal Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular being launched by Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Communication.

In addition to creating a venue for academic research and modes of expression that go well beyond traditional text to incorporate still and moving images, sound, and interactivity, Vectors seeks to significantly redefine the parameters of scholarly publication.

The subtitle for the journal seems a strange … what is a “dynamic vernacular”? Do they mean the journal will be “interactive” in an everyday fashion?
I am excited to see a journal the recognizes the importance of publishing multimedia works, but that raises the interesting question of how they hope to mount and preserve complex interactive works. Perhaps they won’t bother trying to preserve new media work they publish and will instead focus on using the medium.
Continue reading Vectors: Online journal for digital media