Holiday Crunch (December 6, 2005)
The typical end-of-year crunch is upon me (it starts right after Halloween) so site updates have been sporadic. In the interim, I added something seasonally festive to the homepage.

On the story front, my new article, "Consumers vs. Compliance: Where the Security Buck Stops" ran today for the IT Compliance Institute. The story rounds up current consumer sentiment about data security breaches. Just this month, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse said over 51 million individual records have been illicitly accessed since February of this year.

What should businesses do to help secure consumers' information? To find out, I spoke with various risk-analysis analysts and practioners, as well as the chief information security officer of MassMutual Financial Group, who detailed his company's approach to safeguarding consumers' information.

Intranet Portals Get Streamlined (October 23, 2005)
"Usability of Intranet Portals (A Report from the Trenches: Experiences From Real-Life Portal Projects)," which I helped revise, is out now from Nielsen Norman Group. This 188-page report on intranet portal usability, with 93 screenshots, uses case studies and lessons learned from portal projects in numerous companies, as well as government agencies, to determine best practices for building and maintaining an intranet portal.

The report is the product of months of work and a lot of help from portal practitioners at such organizations as Boeing, Sprint Nextel, and Wachovia. See today's "Intranet Portals Get Streamlined" Alertbox column from Jakob Nielsen for more information.

Back to Cambridge (September 19, 2005)
The rumors are true: after living in Paris and Toulouse for two years, I've moved to Cambridge, Mass.

It's good to be back, though it is quite strange, especially on the language front. French phrases, responses, a whole arsenal of asides I spent two years learning and honing to get me through everyday situations, are suddenly dormant. The act of buying groceries, ordering in a restaurant, or even apologizing for accidentally jostling someone on the T lacks its Parisian tenor. And don't even get me started on the boxes left to unpack in the back room.

A frequent question I get is, what do you miss most about Paris? Here goes:

• a daily boulangerie fix
• conversations everyday in French
• one of my favorite types of red wine, Cahors from the southwest of France (goes great with cassoulet), difficult to find here
• unpasteurized cheese, plus the availability of 300 different varieties of cheese overall
• long walks around Paris
• outdoor food and vegetable markets

I know, life is rough, and of course the Boston area also has its share of charms, including many more types of food (not to mention that practically nonexistent class of food in France: spicy) than are easily available in Paris; a selection of beer besides just lager or Belgian; lots of residential-area greenery; cafés with outlets for laptops; and glorious autumnal foliage.

Boston also can't be beat for breakfast. In Paris, breakfast food out is all about the croissant, brioche, or pain au chocolate. (Or the occasional Nutella-themed restaurant.) Given the dearth of French diners, I never did discover the French for "eggs over-easy."

The New Fodor's Paris Guide (September 5, 2005)

For the latest incarnation of the popular Fodor's Paris guide, I authored part of the "Exploring" chapter, as well as the "Sports & The Outdoors" chapter.

For the Exploring chapter, I tackle (broadly) the Left Bank, Île St-Louis, and Île de la Cité, detailing such things as the gargoyle-lined ramparts of Notre Dame, a coherent strategy for getting through the Louvre in an afternoon or day, and when to visit the Eiffel Tower (or Tour Eiffel for you French-speaking diehards), plus how to see the Tour de France from there—Lance or no Lance. I also update information on everything from the Musée du Vin, devoted to wine, to the Musée de la Marine, which chronicles France's maritime history.

(Brief aside: Since I just finished, and was then midway through, all 21 of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin novels—the so-called Master & Commander series—the latter museum was a high point for me, since it provided a real-world gloss to Napoleonic French naval history.)

For the Sports chapter, which I also helmed for the Fodor's Paris 2005 guide, I revisit the city's health clubs, spas, prime jogging spaces, and more.

Look to the book especially for its excellent section on Paris hotels by Heather Stimmler-Hall; the other half of the exploring chapter covering the Right Bank, by Lisa Pasold; plus "Where to Eat," the restaurant review section from France-based food expert Rosa Jackson. In fact her restaurant recommendations from the 2005 guide were my 12-month Paris culinary roadmap. I tried all I could afford, and wasn't disappointed.

Buy the guide from Amazon.com.

Breathless in Paris (August 12, 2005)
Want to know what to do with five days in Paris? In the wake of friends' recent visit, here's their fun itinerary:

• Eat a real cantaloupe—not the muskmelon sold in the United States as "cantaloupe"
• Tour the Musée d'Orsay (an art museum in a beautifully renovated train station originally inaugurated for the World's Fair in 1900)
• Walk around the Champs-Elysses saying "New York Herald Tribune" over and over. For fans of Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless).
• Explore an outdoor food market (marché). One good, if very crowded (with tourists and locals) market starts at Bastille and runs Thursday and Sunday mornings, until about 1pm.
• Shop at a French grocery store. Marvel at the inexpensive cheeses; yogurt you've never heard of; and an aisle of mostly under €4 bottles of wine.
• Eat lots of cheese, especially chevre, and fromage au lait crû, the raw-milk cheese the French devour by the ton, but which per U.S. Food & Drug Administration guidelines is illegal for sale in the United States.
• Visit the Centre Pompidou (the modern art museum with its insides turned out).

Just to get you started.

Summer in France (August 1, 2005)
Welcome to August. It's a cold summer in Europe. Here in Paris there's a proponderance of Spanish and English being spoken on the streets. During the congès (vacation), boulangeries are shuttered, grocery stores and cafés have reduced their opening hours, restaurants are closed, and most of the city's residents are already away for their annual three- or four-week August vacations. In other words, it's peaceful in the city.

Tour de France (July 27, 2005)
Sunday was rainy, but that afternoon the weather cleared and the sky turned blue during the final laps, on the final day of racing, for the Tour de France. I was standing in a crowd dense with both Parisians and tourists, just north of the Tuilleries (public gardens) in Paris, watching both the riders as they made eight circuits around the Tuilleries, and the film crews (on motorcycles or otherwise) documenting Lance Armstrong's final Tour.

Carnaval Tropical de Paris (July 15, 2005)
Did you ever walk out the door one Saturday afternoon and see a massive parade with floats full of dancers and live musicians, the sidewalks thronged with spectators, and some kind of judging stand a few blocks down?

That's what happened two weekends ago for La Carnaval tropical de Paris 2005.

Such events are not uncommon, especially because I live between two large squares (place de la Republique, and Voltaire), which provides a straight, large boulevard (perfect for parades or demonstrations) which the police don't seem to mind closing down. Non-stop fun; the only problem is keeping up with all the events.

Breakfast at the temporary Table Nutella (June 7, 2005)
Are you a Nutella fan? I didn't much care for the hazelnut confection, but I changed my mind this morning at la Table Nutella, a temporary restaurant opened in the Marais district of Paris to celebrate Nutella's 40th anniversary. Proceeds go to charity.

In the interests of journalistic inquiry, fellow freelance journalist Heather and I descended upon the restaurant at the unusual (for us) hour of 8AM, since we heard seats could be hard to come by.

Upon entering the restaurant, you step into a dark room filled with Nutella memorabilia. Beyond that, however, is a pristine gallery space with light flooding through turn-of-the-century skylights, onto an open bar and food prep area ringed with stools, and a lofted seating area supported by white-painted girders. Some choice-looking, plump red sofas rounded out the usual seating options. This would be a good day for lounging.

Despite the crowd, we were in luck: seating wasn't dire; the hostess placed us on the edge of a couch area half-occupied by three French women in their early 20s. In fact, the restaurant was almost completely filled with women in their early 20s, reading Elle or Cosmopolitan alone at the bar, or sitting in groups of three or four, with a glazed, too-much-sugar look in their eyes. (The French don't tend to do breakfast—an espresso and cigarette is more like it, or cereal for kids.) Flashes kept popping as everyone documented their Nutella-based breakfasts.

Fixed-price menus are available for three, five, or seven euros. As we sat down, the woman next to us said, with wide eyes, "you must get the brownie." Her recommendation gained moral weight when I gazed at a nearby table and saw a Nutella-smeared toddler blissfully dismantling his.

Heather and I both opted for the five-euro menu (above, right), which included OJ, coffee, a fruit cup, fromage blanc with a Nutella drizzle, a bread basket, all the Nutella you could spread on it, and the aforementioned brownie, a dense confection of striated chocolate and Nutella, of which I only ate a quarter.

What I missed: some interesting-looking chocolate eggs filled with Nutella (above), the weekend brunch menu, which includes eggs, and the exhibit on Nutella history in the foyer.

Guess who's planning a return visit?

(La Table Nutella is open from Monday to Friday, 7AM to 11:30AM, and weekends, 8AM to 3PM. After June 22, it will close.)

Spring Comes to Paris (May 4, 2005)
All the adages about springtime in Paris are true; it's a different world from the dark, closed-in feel of winter. Then again, spring is great anywhere. For me, maybe it's just that spring didn't often hit Boston, my last long-term domicile, at least not before it quickly segued into summer.

On the spring front, at left is a photo from Paris, taken at Sacre Cœur.

In other news, I updated my 2005 archive of stories with the latest work, which hews mostly to information security and compliance features. Speaking of security, I should mention that the stories I write every week for Enterprise Systems are also available as part of a weekly e-mail newsletter called "Enterprise Strategies."

Updates (April 20, 2005)
I'm rather behind on my updates but moving more images to the Web site soon. At the moment, am in New York City for the Nielsen Norman Group's Usability Week conference.

The 10 Best Intranets (February 28, 2005)
The Ten Best Intranets of 2005 report was released today by the Nielsen Norman Group. In the report, which I co-authored with Kara Pernice Coyne and Jakob Nielsen, we profile the design and usability of the world's top ten intranets. In his Alertbox column announcing the release, Nielsen notes, "On average, this year's winning intranets increased site use by 149% with designs that supported bigger screens, multinational users, collaboration, easily updated content, and factory-floor workers."

After about half a year of work, 235 pages, and 116 screen shots, it's great to see the report now in print. The winners—some of the more-recognizble ones from the U.S. include Cisco, Procter & Gamble, and Verizon—were quite strong, and it was a blast profiling them all.

Sledding in Paris (February 23, 2005)
It's snowing in Paris and accumulating; this is unusual. First update in a while—end-of-2004 deadlines crept into the new year.

Recently I've scoured Paris for Fodor's, covering large parts of the Left Bank for the 2006 guide, which should be out this August. It was a great chance to photograph a lot of the city; new online photo galleries to follow soon.

Also my first-ever article appeared in InformIT.com last week. It's a profile of the Madrid-based Institute for Security and Open Methodologies (ISECOM) and its director.