I wrote about The Future of Folksonomies before so of course I was interested when I read an article on Using tags to improve the Flickr experience. The article discusses a talk given by Kakul Srivastava, Flickr’s service director of product management, about the next generation of tagging and how tags can provide a better user experience when searching and discovering.

I think the article just reaffirms my point that information architects are and should be looking for new, creative, and intuitive ways to use tagging not only on sites like Flickr, but on all kinds of sites. I’m interested in seeing the various uses of tagging in the next few years.

Org Chart 2.0: Built for User Experience Systems describes new business organizational structures where the user experience is thought about throughout the groups instead of the many time-honored and well-established organization charts we see today. I think large, established companies would find it hard to adjust and change their structure but I could definitely see smaller companies or startups adopting a user experience driven organization.

Information Architecture One Sheeters provides simple one sheet documents of commonly produced artifacts by IA’s to help promote the practice in your company.

The glo Pillow, an alternative to the traditional alarm clock, uses an LED fabric substrate below the surface to wake the user using light. 40 minutes before the pre-set alarm time the pillow begins to glow and gently brings the user out of sleep. This natural waking process helps to set the circadian rhythm or “body clock” and results in more healthy sleep/wake patterns.