If you're in the audience, what makes for bad manners? Stephen Collins writes about audience etiquette at conferences and presentations. If you're in the audience at a seminar I'm giving or at a conference I'm presenting at, I'd prefer it if you were paying attention. I guess I figure you're wasting someone's money if you're not. That said, these days, many people are getting very good at continuous partial ... Read full entry

Happiness is ... not having the children This according to Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, who was speaking at the Happiness & Its Causes conference in Sydney yesterday. He said people's happiness goes into steep decline after they have children, and never recovers its old level until the children leave home. As a source of pleasure, playing with one's offspring rates just above doing housework ... Read full entry

Is South By South West overrated? Matthew Pennell asks if South By South West has become more blow than go. If you didn't attend, did the fuss and excitement have you turning green with envy - or is SXSW simply a week-long party for A-listers and wannabe blogerati, desperately flickring each other to somehow validate their pitiful obsession with what is essentially simply yet another tech conference?

Pixar does Semi-Permanent This just in from Design is Kinky, re the Sydney Semi-Permanent conference: We are very happy to announce that computer animation powerhouse, Pixar, will be speaking at this years Sydney event. Pixar is the animation studio behind movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and my personal favourite animated movie of recent times, The Incredibles.

Interview with Kelly Goto. Kelly Goto, a speaker at the upcoming Webstock 2008 conference, discusses her work, and future web trends, in another of the Webstock speaker interviews. We're seeing the desktop web migrate to the mobile web, with new devices that are 'sensing' and interacting with eachother. Apple's new MacBook Air is a new take on an old segment UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computing) that hopefully will do ... Read full entry

The 8x5 sessions. The 8x5 sessions return to this year's Webstock Conference. Eight people have five minutes to make their case on a preset topic. 8 speakers, 5 minutes each. Yes, it's the 8 x 5 sessions, one of the hits from the last Webstock. There's a couple of returning 8x5-ers, Mark Zeman and Zef and the Provoke team, and 6 new speakers. While we're talking about Webstock, have you checked ... Read full entry

I'm loving the interim Design is Kinky website/design portal which now includes an RSS news feed, and validating XHTML! The Design is Kinky crew are also organisers of the Semi-Permanent design conferences which are being held in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Auckland this year.

Wire & Twine: "We are a group of designers, coders, screenprinters, photographers, artists, moms, dads, and down-to-earth people - and we like to make things." Things like t-shirts, first aid kits, and baby shower packs! Love the website design also :) Get Out from Behind the Curtain by Sarah B. Nelson at A List Apart examines the designer's age old conundrum of retaining creative control of a ... Read full entry

NorthxEast, co-owned by Collis Ta’eed and Leo Babauta, has just joined the procession of blogs that are being put up for sale. What makes this particular blog interesting is the fact it is updated just once a week! Is this the way to subscribe 2000 RSS readers then?! Spotted at Antbag. 165 How-To / Tips and Tricks Articles: a fairly comprehensive list of all sorts ... Read full entry

I'm about to go and get something to eat so this is the last time you'll be hearing from me today (well maybe, I am a content producer after all), but I've just spotted the newly unveiled Webstock website! Webstock is a biennial web conference held in Wellington, New Zealand, and the next event is set down for 11 to 15 ... Read full entry