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diagrams play a very important role in planning and communicating a site’s architecture. they help you visualize a project before developing and piecing things together, leading to smarter design decisions. unfortunately, for a client, information architecture and diagrams can be very intimidating, not to tion appear impractical. because of this, many web teams end up leaving a client out of the whole process and resort to other means of learning what they want on their website. the end result? a mess of emails, word doents, links to websites, and so on. jumpchart, currently in private beta, hopes to put an end to all of this.

jumpchart provides an easier way to plan and visualize content with clients. forget wireframes and flowcharts and instead allow clients to browse through an interactive sitemap with pages and -pages of content. let them ilrate their needs and add all the content you need in one simple location. meanwhile, discuss and make changes as needed until the content planning stage is complete. i don’t necessarily see jumpchart as a way to replace your existing information architecture process, but i do feel it makes a nice addition by allowing you to quickly gather and perfect content with groups of people. invite the whole team: designers, developers, copywriters and clients; and make better decisions easier and faster.

jumpchart’s interface feels in many ways like a content managet system or website builder. you create a site, add pages and -pages, fill in content, and attach files to pages just like you would in a website builder. jumpchart also produces a preview website, or as they put it, an interactive sitemap, which you can browse through and send to clients. you can even down the entire website in pure xhtml and css. you cannot, however, change the design of the website that jumpchart creates - not a major loss considering the client only needs something to help visualize the end result. users can leave comts on pages, and if permitted, edit content and reorder the site’s navigation. additionally, each site gets its own rss feed containing information about recent content changes, page additions, and navigation reordering by other users.

jumpchart uses textile markup language for editing content, but something tells me my clients won’t want to learn a language to fill in their own content. they’d rather use a wysiwyg editor. that’s what the average person is familiar with and that’s what will allow them to copy and paste content without losing formatting. my preference? i’m a textile kind of guy, so i’m happy with their decision. besides, it gives jumpchart more flexility. to explain, after uploading an image, jumpchart lets you insert that image in your content by adding (image_name). additionally, linking to other pages within jumpchart can be done by inserting, "page link":[page_name]. again, maybe a little much to expect a client to write out. you can also build basic non-functional forms with jumpchart’s custom syntax, enabling you to easily mock-up contact forms, registration forms, login forms, or whatever you may need. you just type out the form elets as they are: [input], [checkbox], [textarea], [mit] and so on.

just last week, jumpchart introduced a new feature, snippets. when you create a site snippet, you are essentially creating content that is meant to be repeatedly used throughout a site. for example, you can create a snippet for a newsletter form and include that form on any page with the syntax [[newsletter_form]]. it saves you from typing the same thing over and over again and also makes it easier for other collaborators. it also enables you to add blocks of content to pages which can be globally changed throughout the site by editing a single snippet.

what i like most about jumpchart is the simplicity in the product. it helps save time collecting and formatting content and gives clients something to visualize before having the real thing. however, i don’t feel jumpchart is the best solution for large scale websites. it works well for small and medium sized sites that require a minimal amount of content planning, but if you have a site containing possibly hundreds of pages, things could get dicey. jumpchart can improve on this by allowing me to search or filter through pages and perhaps offer a one page dashboard showing recent activity. maybe even collapsible page navigation would help save room.

on the same topic, check out writemaps to create and share simple sitemaps online. rev2.org has more on jumpchart.

tags: jumpchart, information, architecture, content, planning

filed under: software, iphone

qik

master sergeant fiddy and his hip hop lieutenants break in some new recruits at a g-unit boot camp.

runtime: 00 hrs 02 min 51 sec

the city known as the venice of america is not just for spring break anymore. miles of beaches, abundant wildlife, and scores of miami scene-makers make fort lauderdale a year-round spot.

where to a paycheck: search for island prints and linen pants at the exclusive tommy bahama store, discover one-of-a-kind crafts at the sel seen gallery, or slip into an exquisite evening gown at zola keller-all on las olas boulevard.

break the bank dinner: mark’s las olas features palate-pleasing contemporary american food with a south florida twist. celebrity chef mark militello’s expertise shines in everything from mango-glazed duck to crab-crusted grouper.

day after the break your bank dinner: famous for 14-ounce cups of coffee, lester’s diner also serves generous portions of food for mere pennies. order typical greasy-spoon fare, all-day breakfast dishes, or savory greek specialties.

place we love, even if it’s touristy: there’s more to the flamingo gardens than pink-feathered rds. ride past citrus groves, botanical gardens, and the 1933 wray estate, framed by 200-year-old oaks.

book this package

technorati tags: florida, last minute deals, vacation, ft lauderdale

klipsch’s new speakers look fantastic, and probably sound as good. known for high-end sound with high end looks. it just announced these new home theater speakers that are put together in high-grain, furniture-quality wood. but like me, they’re not just beautiful on the outside, they’re also quality inside.

the speakers use new horn tech to fit g sound into slim canets. that means you get the same audio quality as you would from huge canets in these discreet units.

the new speakers in five varieties that, when comned, give you one of the best surround sounds speaker options on the market. main sound s from wf-35 ($1,499) and wf-34 ($1,199) floorstanding speakers, or the wb-14 bookshelf speaker for smaller areas ($599), the wc-24 ($499) makes center channel and the ws-24 ($749) is your surround speaker. you’ll need to bring your own .

luckily they’re not singles, you get pairs at that price, except for the center speaker. if you’re looking for the total audiophile experience, this is where to start. if you can afford it.

guardian:
dirty harry s clean  —  clint eastwood talks to jeff dawson about race, euthanasia, politicians, capital punisht - and how he really feels about the ‘fascist’ role that made him famous  —  clint eastwood folds his gangly frame behind a clifftop table at the el du cap &ip;

ewan mcgregor gets punished for his indulgence in a discovered on a deserted beach delicious chocolate eclair.

runtime: 5 min

stumbled over this gadget which makes external harddrives for psp pretty much obsolete. taiwanese based company pofast offers an adapter that can hold up to 4 sdhc memory cards, totalling in 32 gb storage for your psp! comne 2x 8gb sdhc in 1 of their dual slot adapters and double that!

they also announced that it could soon go up to 64 gb max. storage!! but that's not official news, one of the sales guys leaked that through... he also said that they continually implet sony's latest standards in order to keep their products compatible with any sony device. should be a pretty safe bet if that's true. besides that, using their ms pro duo adapter cr-5300 saves you quite some bucks since sdhcs are much cheaper than sony's official memory sticks.

yeah, yeah, you get it: the new iphone uses at&t's best-in cl (in nyc at least), 3g high-speed network, one that's getting faster and more spread out all the time. but there's a lot you probably didn't know about the technology involved: how fast can you really go on the thing? why did at&t feel the need to cap the iphone's speed? if you want answers to these and other questions, you came to the right place.

hokay, the iphone 3gness makes browsing a whole 2.4x faster than edge in apple's test. (one thing that we can't explain: why did apple chose lonelyplanet.com for its performance benchmarks?) the 3g goodness is real: we've been conducting our own testing of at&t's hsdpa in the new york area (including urbs) and it really is faster and more readily available than verizon's ev-do 3g network. (for a quick primer on different kinds of 3g like hsdpa vs. ev-do and other mole terms, click here.) but the iphone 3g is rated for 1.4mbps, a nice clip but not the 3.6mbps downstream that at&t's hsdpa is capable of. (the carrier loves to brag that it'll have 7.2mbps by the end of the year.) so why not crank up the iphone to those better data rates? turns out, according to at&t people we talked to, 1.4mbps is the capped bandwidth for all mole smartphones on the network for a few reasons.

(update: at&t is saying they're not capping the phone at 1.4mbps, but that's what its capable of doing now, due to factors below. there's no difference except intent, and at&t is careful around words like "cap" these days.)

a major one is battery life?the faster you burn, the faster your battery dies, so going full steam at 3.6mbps would cut you well short of that nice round five hours. a second one is cell site congestion and backhaul (carrier-speak for size of the wired dataline that connects cell sites to the actual telecom infrastructure). while everyone at at&t, from the top down, is adamant that at&t is "comfortable" with their ality to meet the huge data draw once 3g iphones hit the streets, it's not like the pipe is unlimited.

at&t wasn't able to give a breakdown as to how many of their towers have fiberoptic pipes as opposed to slower copper t-1 lines. nor could they say how quickly they could add capacity to a site that is pummeling their demand expectations, since it varies from site to site. ones in dense urban areas are loaded up with more backhaul and can handle more users than one closer to the edge of their 3g footprint. still, generally speaking, more users on a site means more congestion, so if you're slurping from a site that's really slammed, it will be slower. as with all radio technologies, proximity also matters. (hint: for the absolute fastest speeds, wait until 3am and then go sit right next to your favorite cell site.)

something we missed, or you still wanna know? send any questions about 3g, gps, g-spots or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "giz explains" in the ject line.

in saturday's seattle times, there was a short article about microsoft's hack day. i was part of the virtual team that helped kick off and organize the first two hack day events. they serve as a great venue to experit and meet others. the first two focused on hacking spaces modules and building unique gadgets.  we typically give a few short presentations, and then let everyone loose on the code base to experit and innovate.  check this article out to get a little glimpse into the windows live culture... 

quote

"hack day" is creative play at work

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and that's how a group of 75 microsoft developers set out thursday to brainstorm at an internal event called "hack day."

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