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Yesterday afternoon, I received a provocative tweet from my husband. “I have a surprise for you”, stated the first tweet.

“Is it a good surprise?”, I asked.

“Depends”, was the answer.

“Do I get more clues?”, I asked.

“It’s white, and textured and not a cat” was the reply.

Shortly after, I was picked up from work and I got to see my surprise – it was a brand new Kobo eReader from Borders book store! Here’s a brief initial review of the Kobo eReader, based upon my short use of it.

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Like any good information architect, I’ve been doing a bit of a content audit of my clothes and re-evaluating my existing clothes categories. What this has resulted in is a number of clothes that need to be given away. While there are a number of religious-base organisations that are happy to accept our donations through the charity bins or at their shop front, it’s much harder trying to find non-religious organisations.

Here’s a list of non-religious charitable organisations in Canberra that are happy to accept clothing, books and related items. Please feel free to suggest other Canberra based organisations.

• The National Brain Injury Foundation (NBIF) is one of our personal favourites. A shop front is located on Genge Street, in the Griffin Centre. You can support them by purchasing items from the shop front or dropping off a range of items in good condition (we’ve dropped off clothes and household bric-a-brac).
• Lifeline accepts books, magazines, DVD’s, Videos, CDs, computer software, and some Bric-a-Brac. They hold the very excellent Book Fair three times a year in Canberra. For more information about donating items, read Ways You Can Help or drop items off at 66 Heffernan St, Mitchell and all Video Ezy Stores.
• The Smith Family has various donation bins around Canberra. They accept clothing, footwear, blankets and linen only.

As always, please check with individual charities for up-to-date information. Please DO NOT DUMP items outside closed shop fronts or charity bins. It costs charities large amounts of money to clear items that get left out in the open plus it can be a fire hazard. It’s extremely frustrating to see items and even rubbish (including non-working electrical and computer items) dumped next to charity bins. If it’s broken and you don’t want it, neither does the charity!

Other resources:

• Giving unwanted goods to charity – list from the ACT government
• Yoink! – While Yoink! isn’t a charity, it’s a great way to recycle items that you don’t need. I’ve used it numerous times to get rid of unwanted (but functional) items. Plus, it’s been designed and developed here in Canberra!

PS: I wish the Red Cross, RSPCA and Koomarri had store fronts in Canberra!

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

This year, I’ve decided to write about someone who is relatively unknown in the broader web community but is very knowledgeable in the accessibility field. She would never blow her own horn, which means that only those of us who have had the pleasure of working with her knows how good she is. She’s a shy and quiet type, and is truly one of the nicest and most generous person I know. She has been working in the tech and user experience field for a while. She’s smart, passionate and she knows her accessibility stuff.

I want you to meet my friend and colleague, Kim Chatterjee. What I love about Kim is her willingness to share her knowledge and time to help everyone, even if it means very little sleep for her! She has a detailed understanding of accessibility and has spent quite a few years doing some cool accessibility work in Government. She’s also really great at communicating complex concepts through interesting and lovely visuals. She’s really humble about her achievements so if you do get to meet her, she won’t tell you how good she is but if you get to chat to her, you’ll soon realise the depth and breadth of her accessibility knowledge.

While others are out and about talking the talk, Kim is busy with the actual doing. She’s helped to inspire a number of people about accessibility, who have now gone on into other organisations either carrying a passion for accessibility or having an increased awareness of accessibility. Now that’s inspirational.

The highly anticipated BarCampCanberra event happened yesterday, with a large gathering of smart and passionate folks from around Canberra, Yass, Wollongong and Sydney discussing interesting topics such as Government 2.0, social innovation, collaboration, typography, hackerspaces and more.

For those unfamiliar with the BarCamp concept:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about – either something interesting they’ve been working on, an idea they’d like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people

We had over 150 people registered for the event, 46 pizzas consumed, 72 bottles of water drunk (plus the additional cups and water containers) and 39 sessions including a series of 5 minute lighting talks (I love the 5 minute lighting talk format).

The event was tweeted, flickred, livestreamed and Googled waved. We were even covered in the Canberra Times (page 8 of the Sunday 7th February newspaper).

Some of my favourite quotes about BarCampCanberra comes from @dekrazee1:

Brain is still abuzz from #bcc2010. BarCamp is the techy equivalent of a day spa. Energising and invigorating. #I<3BarCamp

@ozdj:

@RazChorev Yep. Sound ROI. That $50 of fuel (and ~8hrs of travel time) got me about $500 worth of education today. #bcc2010

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Where do you go if you want a tertiary level education in User Experience (UX) or similar? While there are numerous study options overseas, it’s a different story in Australia. For the past few years (ever since the University of Queensland shut down its Human Factors degrees), I’ve been informally looking out for UX related degrees but it’s been a challenge finding Australian tertiary intuitions that offer a formalised program of study for the UX field.

The challenge is that UX is a highly multi-disciplinary field; it draws upon a number of areas such as cognitive science, psychology, industrial design, human factors, human-computer interaction, usability, accessibility, information architecture, and more. While there are numerous universities that offer degrees and units in some of the individual areas listed above (I tutored a human-computer interaction unit at one of the universities), I can’t seem to find one that draws all the elements into one degree.

So I decided to draw on the collective wisdom of the twitterverse by putting the call out on twitter for HCI related degrees. I got a number of interesting responses, which I’ve summarised here.

University of Sydney

@smperris suggested the Interaction Design and Electronic Arts (IDEA). Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and a Masters degree is available.

Read more about the Interaction Design and Electronic Arts program.

University of Queensland

@viller suggested the Bachelor of Multimedia Design and Master of Interaction Design at UQ. Both have a strong user-centred design and usability focus.

University of Technology Sydney

@pixel8ted noted that the University of Technology Sydney are willing to cater curriculum to your specific needs but you will need to approach them directly. There are also short courses available which you might be able to get something tailored to your needs.

Murdoch University

@londonjustin noted that Murdoch University in Perth offers a Human-Computer Interaction unit (unit ICT325) which can also be done externally.

RMIT

@oliveChi suggested RMIT in Melbourne and Open University.
Note: Can someone provide a direct link to the appropriate course? I tried searching for it but am probably not using the correct terminology.

University of Tasmania

@stokely noted that the University of Tasmania has an HCI campus. I had a look and came across the Human Interface Technology Lab Australia. There are HIT Lab courses such as Bachelor of Computing, Human Interface Technology (HIT) Major , which has some UX elements.

Australian National University

@LindaPostniece noted that the ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science does some research in HCI but doesn’t seem to cover much teaching.

Edited: the following information was added after the original post was written.

Charles Stuart University

Charles Stuart University offers a Master of Information Studies with a specialisation in Information Architecture.

Further resources

• Information architecture courses from around the world from the IA Institute
• IxDA has an education topic which lists all the discussions around finding courses, moving into this field, etc.

Comments? Additions?

Got any additional suggestions? Have you completed one of the degrees mentioned in this blog post, or are you currently completing it? I’m interested in hearing about your suggestions and experiences. Please comment below. :)

I finally managed to finish my Christmas shopping yesterday, thanks to some hidden gems in Braddon, Canberra. Check out the following stores, that bring a bit of funk and designery goodness to Canberra.

The Hive Gallery

This is an old favourite of mine. It features a tiny gallery space and lots of hand crafted goodness. On my visit there yesterday, I even spotted some jewellery pieces from Polli. There is an interesting range of books, porcelain pieces, handmade cards, and other independent art works.

Online at: www.thehivegallery.com.au
Find it at: 25 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See The Hive on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6257 9700

Unit Concepts

Unit Concepts is surprisingly large, with a huge range of homewares, designer furniture, novelties and other types of design icon pieces. Personal favourites are the range of Pantone items, inspired by the Pantone Colour charts. There is also some children items, bags and clothes.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Unit Concepts on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6230 0943

Also check out: Unit Concepts from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Pocket Monster

Cute name, cute goods. Lots of gadgets and novelties such as cool ice cube trays, Minobot designer USB flash drives, t-shirts, and more.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Pocket Monster on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6230 6115

Also check out: Something for the Boys: Pocket Monster from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Bourgeois Pig

A distinctly chic shop, this is a very long narrow shop filled with jewellery pieces, bags and some clothing.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Bourgeois Pig on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6262 8607

Also check out: Chick boutique: Bourgeois Pig from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Gift Pod

This newly opened shop is situated right in the city and also carries a number of cool funky gifts, such as the Mattt bags, Pantone mugs, jewellery, kids toys and clothing, etc.

Online at: www.giftpod.com.au
Find it at: Ground Floor, Canberra Centre, Bunda Street, Canberra City ACT
Phone: (02) 6262 6968

Another Oz-IA conference has passed and it was great. There were a lot of familiar faces but also a large number of new faces. The twitter back channel were buzzing with activity for most of the conference, no doubt fuelled by the on-site barista and fruit cocktail maker.

Here’s a rundown of some of the presentations. Not every session is covered.

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Recycling and disposing of eWaste can be a challenging and expensive process. But thanks to the good folk at Apple, there will be a free recycling event this weekend in Canberra.

In conjunction with the ACT Government and Queanbeyan City Council, Apple will be holding a community e-waste recycling event on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of August 2009, from 9am until 4pm.

Computers and other e-waste can be dropped off at:

• Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre, Mugga Lane, Symonston
• Mitchell Resource Management Centre, Flemington Road, Mitchell
• Park n’ Ride car park, corner of Cowlishaw and Anketell Streets, Greenway
• Waste Minimisation Centre, 5 Lorn Road, Queanbeyan

All householders and non-commercial organisations can take part by bringing their e-waste (computers, laptop, monitor, scanner, printer and computer-related, peripherals, TVs, video players, stereos and mobile phones) to the drop off locations.

Note that whitegoods, overhead projectors, damaged e-waste, contaminated equipment or other hazardous waste are not accepted through this recycling program.

For more information:

• Phone Canberra Connect on 13 22 81
• Visit www.tams.act.gov.au
• Visit www.apple.com.au/environment/recycling/program – more useful information through this link