Ben Coffey and his eBook “Useful URLs”
In the hustle and bustle of these holidays, I didn’t manage to churn out all of my planned posts for our introduction series. So with nothing else to publish today it seems only fitting I introduce you to the works of someone I met recently. His name is Ben Coffey and he’s an absolutely brillant kid[1] from the U.K. who shares my passion for User-Centric User Design.
His work that I spoke of is his ebook entitled “Useful URLs” It is available for download at his website inelegant.org in both HTML and PDF formats. Further kudos to Ben for he licensed Useful URLs using a Creative Commons “by-nc-sa“ license meaning you’re free to copy and distribute it as long as you attribute him as author, you don’t use for commercial purposes, and you share any of your own modifications or additions with the same license. Ben says that Useful URLs is a work-in-progress so he plans on updating it continuously. I’ll be sure to make mention here when he updates it, especially if he adds new chapters.
That said, Useful URLs is both a quick read and also:
Highly Recommended!
- Sorry for calling Ben a kid, but at 23 he’s barely more than half my age, and I still feel relatively young! But the more I talk to him, the more I think I barely know half what he does, at least with respect to programming and the Internet! I’m actually afraid to talk to him about anything else for fear I’ll learn that I barely know half as much on those topics as well!
January 26th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Thank you for pointing out Ben’s excellent eBook - just what I was looking for!
BTW, are you a human, an automaton, or a collective … it is hard to tell from your site :) Whoever you are, I like what I see… so thank you!
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
Arun,
An “Automaton?” What would make you think that? Man, I’m hurt! :-(
But seriously, thanks for commenting. As for who’s writing, it’s just little ole me with a plan to add other bloggers over time. See my list of blogs at www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ BTW, what made you think I might be an automaton?
As for The Well Designed URLs Initiative blog I’ve got literally hundreds of posts planned by title already, with many already partially written! What’s more, I’ve got several URL-related projects I plan to launch with partners, and each one of them will be great for the web. Please subscribe to the feed so you’ll be aware of them when we announce, and if possible please help support them too by spreading the word!
As for Ben, yeah that kids amazing. I can’t praise him enough.