What a sucker...
I wish people would stop acting as though Vincent Flanders has any qualifications to talk about web usability. This guy has turned one great, irreverent web site title from 1996 into a career and now two books. He's a technocrat who clearly doesn't know much if anything about usability, but continues to act as though he does. He makes egotistical claims like the following, and no one asks him to prove them:

"I'm most proud of the fact that I was the first to say Web design was not about art but about money. I took a lot of flak for that back in 1998, but time proved I was right."
- Vincent Flanders, Sitepoint (April 2002)

"The goal of having a website should not be to brag to your friends that you are on the Web but to provide service to your customers (and thus make money). ... I predict that 1997 will finally be the year when customers (and their money) will talk loudly enough to get rid of superficial coolness and make websites into serious business tools"
- Jakob Nielsen, Trends for the Web in 1997 (January 1997)

Flanders actually states that he thinks SOAP is the next major development in "web design and usability over the coming years". SOAP is just another web technology and has nothing to do with design OR usability, yet he says. "It's the backend that's important." Let me get this straight -- the backend, something the user NEVER sees, is the future of web design and usability???!!! The author and editors at Sitepoint should be ashamed that they gave this drivel an outlet and never bothered to verify facts or statements by Flanders.