Brad Lauster .com

Selena pointed me to a review of Ozumo from onemedia.com. The table, pictured, is where we sat.

YAY – I’m officially unemployed!

I had a great last day at Intel. I turned in my laptops, chatted with friends and even got an SRA (an Intel recognition award) for some work I did on the Intel® E-Mail Effectiveness Coach! Then I had my exit interview and some of my co-workers took me out for margaritas. Yum!

…did I mention they paid me to quit? Sweet!

I couldn’t stay long though, because Selena had planned a surprise party for me back in San Francisco, at a new Japanese restaurant, Ozumo. I wish I had a picture of the interior of that place. It was BEAUTIFUL! And the staff was sooo nice…especially considering half of us were wearing T-shirts to the most expensive Japanese restaurant in town! Heh heh. I had a great time and some really wonderful cuts of fish.

Some of my friends (and some who don’t have web pages) even got me gifts…lots of fun books and this ultra-cool Japanese bag full of goodies. Thanks you guys – you’re the best!

So, I’m sure you’re wondering, “What’s next for Brad?” Well, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a job with the Product Design & Delivery group at Stanford University. It’s going to be SO much fun! I start on July 9th…I can’t wait!

Robert Reimann defines what it is to be an Interaction Designer in his article, “So You Want To Be An Interaction Designer,” part of this month’s Cooper Interaction Design newsletter. For those of you who don’t really know what I do, you might want to check it out.

Help prevent the Micro$oft machine from directing people to their own content and sites by turning off Smart Tags on your web site.

You’ve probably been wondering, “What’s the deal with bradlauster.com lately? One post a week, at most, and nothing really interesting…at least nothing as interesting as what Chad’s got going on over at Brightly Colored Food.”

…if that’s what you’ve been thinking, then you’re right! The fact is, I’ve been busy preparing for my last day at Intel (which is this Friday, by the way). Ye-ah!

Once I’ve left Intel, I can announce my plans for the future. Don’t fret, you’ll be a part of that future. Please stay tuned for more juicy updates…coming soon!

What a great resource! I can’t believe I didn’t know about The O’Reilly Network Weblogs before.

Visiting, John Rhodes’ webword.com today, I followed a link to computergripes.com, a great site for the usability cynic in all of us.

(Note from Dec. 2001: The link in this post was no longer valid, so I removed it and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

While working on a little project for a job interview, I came across the Leland web site “updates” page. Read the description on the page, then read the updates…too funny!

The CHI community is such an incestuous little group…
Last Friday, I started a post on CHI-web entitled, “PDF web (WAS: designers?).” On Saturday, Jakob Nielsen published his latest Alertbox column, “Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading.” Coincidence? I think not!

Well, it’s official…my last day at Intel will be June 29th – my birthday, by the way. This is so exciting! It’ll be sort of sad when I leave, but I’m just not getting to do as much user-centered design and user research as I want to do in my current position.