It’s now fixed, so you should have no trouble getting future podcasts.

If you haven’t been listening to our podcasts and would like to hear the great things we’re talking about, just click here if you use iTunes or copy this link into your podcast application. A third option is to look at all the great interviews, presentations, and tips we’ve recorded and play them directly from your browser.

Do you have ideas for future recordings? Have you been enjoying the recordings we’ve made so far?

Let us know your thoughts right here on the blog.

[Many thanks to Josh Porter at Bokardo Design for helping us fix the problem.]

This week Josh and I talk about all the ways we get in trouble. Whether its speaking in public or writing on our blogs, sometimes we kick up a sandstorm unintentionally.

» I attended a conference for the Society of Technical Communication. While I was attending the conference, I blogged that I saw technical writing as an art I see slowly morphing away. Is it telling that the two most popular topics at the annual conference are user experience and interaction design?

» Josh has designers and artists riled up with his blog series on Design is not Art. Both sides are represented in his comments, from designers who think design done right is art, and from designers who think design reveals while art conceals.

» We also discussed the new FaceBook Platform Apps. These are an interesting case study as more sites consider making a public API to expand their offerings. APIs create an ecology where some sites can expand their usefulness, while other shops can extend their services to an existing community instead fighting the uphill battle of creating one from scratch.

We may create more questions than we answer, but never the less it was an interesting discussion. I think you’ll enjoy it.

The Josh and Jared Show: Episode #2
with Joshua Porter and Jared Spool
Brian Christiansen, UIE Podcast Producer
Recorded: April 26, 2007 at the studios of User Interface Engineering
Duration: 49 Min | File size: 23 MB
[ Click here to subscribe to our podcast via iTunes. This link will launch the iTunes application. ]
[ Click here to subscribe with other podcast applications. ]

Welcome to the second episode of the Josh and Jared Show, where Joshua Porter and I get together and discuss the interesting happenings in the world of experience design.

This episode touched upon:

» The design of MySpace and big reactions we hear

» The effect of life stages on design, judging value for different age groups

» Virb: “a beautiful MySpace” or “MySpace done tastefully?” Will it catch on?

» The communal feeling of Flickr and Twitter

» Social Design field research: What kind of social interaction is already happening?

» Starting from scratch vs. mining things like Del.icio.us tags for pre-existing useful content

We invite you to participate in the show. Send us your thoughts and questions. You can post them as a comment to this blog post, send them via email, or use the feedback feature of uie.com. If you’re really adventurous, send us a short (30 seconds or less) audio comment as an MP3 file and we’ll try to include it in a future episode.

(If you’d like to get all of the Brain Sparks Audio Library in iTunes, just paste this link into the Subscribe to Podcast feature.)

This is the inaugural episode of a new show we’re temporarily calling The Josh and Jared Show. Every few weeks, my colleague Joshua Porter and I will get together and discuss the interesting happenings in the world of experience design.

This episode focused on the role of information architecture and some of the changes the discipline is undergoing. Among the things Josh and I discussed in this episode are:

• Josh’s post: Why do People Tag?
• Gene Smith’s Tagging Cheat Sheet
• Differences in tagging on Del.icio.us and Flickr
• How important is the categorization of items on Amazon?
• The weak way Best Buy for Business does categories
• Josh’s war on information architecture
• When is completeness necessary for an information taxonomy?
• Will there be an evolutionary change in how law firms organize electronic information?
• Would you call the people working on Netflix’s movie recommendation system Information Architects?
• The difference between Specialists and Generalists

We want this show to be interactive. Send us your thoughts and questions. You can post them as a comment to this blog, send them in email, or use the feedback feature of uie.com. If you’re really adventurous, send us a short (30 seconds or less) audio comment as an MP3 file and we’ll include it in a future episode.

One way you can help us is to suggest new names for the show. While Josh & I are both fond of our names, we think the show could be named something more creative. What do you think?