Jakob has grouped his article around two issues: structure and navigation. His views around structure are the same I come across in IA projects: Why focus so much on structure when we have such an fantastic (read 'expensive') search engine? "The most notable structural problem is when designers treat a site like one big swamp with no organizing principle for individual items. Yes, users can fish the swamp using search or by following links from current promotions or outside sites. But whatever they dredge up is it. No opportunities for understanding the site's other offerings or locating related items."

Craig Bromberg writes about the recent blog entries on Content Strategy (CS) and tries to make sense of one angle: big and little CS. As far as I can see, this is the real differentiator between CS and most other content work: Unlike traditional editorial work, content strategy isn’t steeped in grand narratives so much as in bits, in data. "CS big" isn’t custom publishing (although there are definitely narrative and brand strategies one wants to be aware of). And "CS little" isn’t just those deliverables: content without context, from the container to the brand, is all essential if you want to sell in the Googlesphere.

Erick Schonfeld analyses the changing pattern of content on the web. First it was all about 'pages' and now it is about the 'stream'. It started with RSS and now its galloping ahead with Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and the like. "Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled."

Alexis Wichowski traces the emergence of tagging and how it relates to other information organization systems. "Folksonomies have emerged as a means to create order in a rapidly expanding information environment whose existing means to organize content have been strained. This paper examines folksonomies from an evolutionary perspective, viewing the changing conditions of the information environment as having given rise to organization adaptations in order to ensure information "survival" — remaining findable. This essay traces historical information organization mechanisms, the conditions that gave rise to folksonomies, and the scholarly response, review, and recommendations for the future of folksonomies."

My new article over at PebbleRoad looks at design of site structures: "A good site structure makes users happy. They can easily find, understand and use the information on your site. For the business, this makes all the difference. In this article I’ll go through principles behind good site structures and describe a methodology for creating site structures."

Web Designer Wall has put up a collection of appealing navigation systems: "Web designers always have to strike a balance between usability and visual appeal when designing a website. Without this balance, a website might be nice to look at or difficult to navigate. Or, it might be easy to navigate, but not easy on the eyes. With this in mind, balancing attractive navigation with usability does not need to be overly difficult. To help you generate new ideas and inspiration for user navigation, here are 30 great examples of attractive and usable navigation."

The just announced Google Wave is getting a lot of people interested. The Wave is not just another application, it's a whole new way of using online information. If you have not seen the demo yet, you should. The Wave takes collaboration to a whole new level. When I was watching the collaboration demo, I felt the entire experience was more like an extension into multiple minds rather than the 'switch-type' collaboration we see in the likes of Sharepoint and Lotus Notes. The engagement just felt more organic, more emergent, more fun. There are many people thinking along these lines, Gabor Cselle, for one talk about how to build a business using Wave, and he has some pretty viable suggestions. There are going to be many more ideas around the Wave in the coming days as more people come to grips with a new mental model of working online. These are definitely interesting times.

A inspiring story of how Kicker studio, which started during the recession, is trying to survive the recession. In spite of having a stellar team, they are finding it difficult to get clients. Great story for those who take clients and projects for granted.

Nice post by Seth Earley on the how Groove ended up with Sharepoint and what are we can expect now. Here's a quote worth repeating: "Don’t make this mistake. Collaboration should not be all chaos and without governance. It can be freewheeling and encourage creativity, but that does not mean there are no rules. If you let things go, it will be very difficult to bring under control."