Author Archives: Darrel Austin

How to List all SharePoint Databases

I know, I know…you’ve all been patiently waiting for the next SharePoint post from Darrel. Sorry to keep you waiting! Yes, I know…SharePoint is thrilling and I’m sure you’ve been wearing out your F5 key waiting for this post. (Why does SharePoint drive me to such thick, dripping sarcasm?)
Anyhow, here’s a quick tip that, as […]

Minnebar was fun.

I managed to FINALLY be talked into dragging myself out on a spring Saturday to Minnebar this past week thanks to Ben who asked me to be on a panel to discuss the age old Designers vs. Coders issue that still seems to plague way too many web projects. Seems as if we’re still talking […]

Nice/modern/interesting cabin rentals?

This is completely off topic, but, hey, it’s Friday.
We’d like to rent a cabin this summer somewhere in the MN/Iowa/WI region not TOO far from the Twin Cities.
In the past we’ve visited Madeline Island which has always had a very nice selection of homes and cabins that, while perhaps not ‘modern’ are certainly well designed, […]

$17 an hour? Seriously?

I was perusing the latest HOW Design Annual and came across an article on pricing trends. It was a report on the data HOW collected via their pricing survey. Two numbers popped out at me. The first was the low range of hourly graphic design work in the Midwest: $17. Wow. That person must have […]

Ugh. Another CAPTCHA. I hate th…oh! Puppies and Kitties!

We all loathe CAPTCHAs, but at least RapidShare tries to make a) it more legible and b) cute:

You can’t hate kitties and puppies!

.gov Web design and Usability Guidelines

The US Dept. of Health and Human Services have a ‘Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines’ publication available on their web site. It’s a 161mb PDF file. That is ironic, isn’t it?
I’m skimming through this as a prerequisite for a project. Some of it is good common sense. But there’s also some scary specifics in […]

Paper News

Some quickie news bits re: local paper-based content design:

The Pioneer Press has a new design. It’s narrower with a new headline typeface and a bigger crosswords puzzle. Definitely different, but doesn’t feel fully thought out. The comic page still sucks.
The Rake is done with its paper version. Bummer.

The SharePoint ‘but…’ list

One of the frustrations with a lot of software these days is that the bullet-point feature list in the brochure doesn’t usually tell the whole truth. It omits the ‘but…’ statements that are often critical to have a full understanding of the capabilities of a particular feature.
MOSS is full of these omitted ‘but…’ statements, so […]

MinneWebCon

Awkward name. Cool logo. Affordable, local, interesting-looking web conference: http://www.minnewebcon.umn.edu/

Apple’s new marketing slogan: Touch it.

Well, that’s what it should be. I’ve been paying attention to the past year’s worth of new stuff from Apple, but most of it was met with a reaction by me of ‘Oh, that’s kind of neat’ but nothing really more than that. We had to go to the Apple Store last night at the […]