iSchool

I'm Still the #1 Google Result for "ischool blog" - But For How Long?

May 9, 2009 - 8:26am — Michael Manoochehri

Why?For several months, my hardly-ever-used iSchool Blog has been the very first result of a Google search for "ischool blog." This has baffled me since I first noticed it while I was searching for the enigmatic UC Berkeley School of Information Blog. I rarely post anything to my iSchool blog, except for the occasional school essay, so it's not like the content is being updated in a timely manner. What is even more interesting in terms of an extremely high Google page rank having the top listing (thanks Nick!) is that nothing links back to my blog except my own pages. The Pagerank algorithm is influenced by popular sites linking to others... and yet, my blog has no incoming links.

I thought that perhaps my site's ranking was being influenced by the blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu domain as a whole... but, well, nobody is linking to blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu. Why would they? So, is it possible that simple links back to myself are inflating my pagerank?

In any case, I just recently changed the title of my iSchool Blog to "Michael Manoochehri's I School Blog," because my last name is way more fun than my first name. Will this have any effect on the result rankings? We shall see!

 

Bill Buxton: The World isn't About Optimal Efficiency, it's About Optimal Delight

February 20, 2009 - 5:12am — Michael Manoochehri

Bill Buxton encourages quick mockups of interfaces. In this exercise, our group created a simple stateful interface mockup with post-it notes and iMovie.

One of the most important thinkers in Human-Computer Interaction and Design, Bill Buxton, visited the Berkeley Institute of Design this week to give a workshop on sketching. Buxton is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft, a columnist for Businessweek, a former professor, and he previously helped develop such software tools as Maya as Chief Scientist at both SGI and Alias.

Bill advises designers not to sketch the design of a product, but rather to sketch the "experience" of using it - and to do it quickly. Sketching is not just about drawing. Buxton, who claims to be a poor draftsman, encourages his design team to employ the proper skills to "sketch" interfaces, foamcore models, and paper versions of mechanical devices.

Special thanks to Lora Oehlberg and the other organizers of the BiD Design Clinics for making this event happen!

iSchool Students visit Sun Microsystems

February 18, 2009 - 11:22pm — Michael Manoochehri

I, along with a few other iSchool students were very fortunate this week to be able to hitch a ride with the Haas School of Business to participate in an Executive Briefing visit to Sun Microsystems.

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