This is I think the fourth installment of BlagoNet, a site where I give my personal interests a place on the web.

Who is Blago

My real name is Hanneke Hoogstrate; I'm a Dutch interaction designer. The alter ego "Blago" is from way back when I made deviant posters in art school. It's derived from the Dutch "blaagje", which back in the eighties needed abbreviation to make it sound cool. (Voor de Nederlanders: Blaagje is een variant op "Loesje" van de posters; en Blago is de "afko" daarvan =).

Later I found out the word "blago" was used in "nonsense" Dadaist poems; there's an easel brand called that way (een merk-ezel, hmm), and it means "good" or "treasure" (hee schat!) in Slavic languages. Starting a serious design career, I forgot all about it for years. Then when I got my first email, Blago was back.

Just me having fun

This site's a place for me to play around with code, an excuse to experiment with chocolate, and to post assorted pics and such - it's just me having fun. While this might look like a blog, it isn't very interactive. I found that too much of a burden to keep up, sorry. Still, I love to hear from you - just send me an email!

Really old stuff

For a visual designer, I'm very much into non-visual stuff like content, interaction and scripting. My very first site got noticed back in 1998 to become Yahoo Site of the Week and A Project Cool Sighting - it was about writing, and had this odd scripted interaction, with navigation across frames. Glory Days - when links were supposed to be blue, but where you put your navigation block was still uncharted territory. (So mine's in a rather odd spot.)

My theory then was that the web worked with a variant of the AIDA rule: Interest > Attention > Desire > Action
People will find your site based on a shared interest; you then have to keep their attention, get to the desire part, which is pure ol' advertising, and the action will follow. Last year, I've seen it called "persuasive architecture" - interesting idea :-)

Connecting people and interests

One of the quotes on that old site was: "Transport of the mail, the human voice, the movies - in this century, as in others, our highest technical accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing people together." (Saint-Exupery, 1936)

I feel it's still just that, really. Content is for people to connect to each other. We use bigger words for the process, "richer" technology. We think in online branding, content portals and RIA's, but what connects people is MSN, RSS and plain conversation. Doing the little cool things that make you talk - and then the action will follow... Still working on it, honey!

So, if you happen to share an interest, don't hesitate to mail me!