ivantohelpyou

I was skimming a recent issue of Fast Company during the flight to Los Angeles, which included an article about how the Chinese market has influenced automotive design.

We get to PSP, pick up our car, and look at that, I get to drive a big white hearse.

In China, white is the color of death and mourning.

In Palm Springs, it's just common sense.

Labels: travel

We're heading to Palm Springs this afternoon, and going to Coachella on Friday to see Björk and Sonic Youth.

Björk was on Saturday Night Live last weekend, but Scooter made me turn it off because she didn't want to spoil the live show experience. She doesn't like watching movie trailers either. Me, I'm all for the big build-up. Plus, you can't spoil a concert by hearing a couple songs in advance. When you know a couple of the new songs already, it just makes the live show better.

On June 12, Sonic Youth will be releasing Daydream Nation as a two-disk set (also available in special edition on vinyl), which will include the remastered original album plus live versions from the tour in support of the 1988 album. Many of their live shows following the release are billed as "SONIC YOUTH PERFORMING DAYDREAM NATION." Perhaps in another couple of decades or so we can look forward to the release of a recording of the 2007 live version of the 1988 masterpiece, paired with a tribute album by the incredible Chinese bands that will soon arise inspired by SY's performances earlier this week in Beijing and Shanghai.

Labels: music, travel

So, for the past few weeks I've tried to theme my blog posts around a certain subject, like Accounting, Web 2.0 and Small Business. That's a good idea in theory, but in practice it has been constricting. For this blog, I'd rather just let it flow and then sort it out later.

Plus, I already have a blog for small business.

Get ready for a wild ride. As if accounting isn't wild enough.

Labels: blogging, small biz

The U.S. Small Business Administration, with a presidential proclamation, has designated this to be National Small Business Week.

According to the events schedule (PDF), Senator John Kerry will speak tomorrow at the State Small Business Awards Luncheon, where the award for National Small Business Person of the Year will be given to a person "selected from the 53 State Small Business Persons for the Year."

For the purposes of the SBA, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico have been granted statehood.

Congratulatons to all of the nominees.

Labels: small biz

Here are more takeaways from the Web 2.0 Expo, thinking about how the web's going to be different from a user's perspective.

Mobility Applications

The phone is the new browser.

Google SMS – Text your query to GOOGL, and receive a flurry of texted responses back with the results. Make sure your plan can handle the deluge. You won't get millions of results, but for a request for a movie time, I got back six texts.

TellMe – Has an SMS component like Google SMS, but also has a voice-recognition component. Dial 1-800-555-TELL for a demo.

Mozes - From the FAQ: "All you need is a keyword and Mozes let’s (sic) you send and receive all kinds of mobile messages to and from friends, favorite bands and social groups using your mobile phone and/or your personalized Mozes page on Mozes.com." The organizers of Ignite Expo (see related post) used the service's API to enable the on-screen mobile-phone voting. Although I still think that voters should be encouraged to make their own choices without being influenced by the leader board, it's still an interesting application of the service.

Social Networks

Yes, it's official. There's a social network for everything. (Well, almost everything. I'm still waiting for a social network for antisocial personalities. Oh wait, that's the Internet.)

Confabb - A social network for people who attend conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo.

Instructables - Build stuff and share with others how you did it.

See below. Many of the media sites have an social networking component.

Entertainment and Media

The rapid buildup of our digital infrastructure and online social networks will be a wonderful way to distract us from the crumble and collapse of our physical infrastructure and deteriorating personal connections. That is, unless sites like Vancity's ChangeEverything can attract more eyeballs than sites like YouTube and CollegeHumor.

Media sites to watch (in no particular order, and all taken from a presentation by David Berkowitz):

YouTube – Wasting your life one clip at a time.

MTV – Still relevant after all these years. Who'd have thunk it.

magnify – Build your own video channel.

Sling – A lawsuit waiting to happen.

BrilliantButCancelled – Interesting use of the term "brilliant." Like the DVD extras without the movie.

Innertube – Brought to you by CBS. Still irrelevant after all these years. Who'd have thunk it.

Joost – Aggregator of quality content such as Fight Network, Braindead, The Soccer Channel and Bridezillas.

Meevee – Free, personalized TV guide that also includes Internet-only programming.

Jumptv – It's like getting one of those satellite TV packages for foreign-language content, but without the satellite.

Brightcove – Now partnering with media companies like Hearst, WaPo, Time, Rodale to create video channels. In the meantime, watch Jessica Simpson, Batty Britney and National Lampoon videos.

Mobitv – Get live TV on your mobile device or laptop.

Stumbleupon – Add a toolbar that watches you surf and makes recommendations for other pages you should explore based on patterns and trends among the other users. (c.f. Google Web History, via Battelle; Netcraft)

Veoh – Yet another online video platform, but with investors like Michael Eisner and Time Warner behind it, maybe it'll do something interesting. Like put the complete Sopranos online.

Revver – Like YouTube, but there's a way to get paid if people watch your videos. Don't quit your day job.

Collegehumor –Parent company Connected Ventures is now 51 percent owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, adding it to a well-considered portfolio including Ask.com, Citysearch, Domania, Evite, LendingTree, Match, Ticketmaster and more. Sure, Google wants to organize the world's information, but IAC just wants to own a focused category-killer for every event and milestone in your life. Impressive.

Search

Speaking of IAC and Ask.com, I liked the local search features of AskCity. You get to draw a red line around the areas you'd like to search, create an itinerary for the evening, and share it with friends. I'm going to be writing a blog post about local search for SmallBizResource in the near future.

Labels: media, mobile, search, social networks, Web 2.0

What's Web 2.0? Simply stated, it's the combination of community, mashups and rich-media interfaces that characterizes the latest wave of web sites. Applications that once only operated on standalone PCs are now ripe for adoption to the Internet, thanks to faster connections and better browsers.

The Web 2.0 Expo conference track had impressive depth, with an unmistakable O'Reilly influence. On the show floor, the involvement of CMP, with its enterprise/channel expertise, really paid off in terms of getting major business-technology companies involved in what otherwise could have been an echo chamber of futurists talking to futurists.

Speaking of the future direction of the Web, it'll come not from the predictions of pundits, the bluster of bloggers, or the mechanizations of marketers, but rather the aggregate choices of millions of developers. The battle for Web 2.0 will be fought in the IDE. Where should an independent developer invest his or her energies? Which platforms will support the most successful applications, and the most profitable businesses?

The Sexy Stuff: Presentation Layers

Adobe Apollo - Adobe hopes to build a development platform bridging online and desktop applications, and they're off to a good start. Their presentation during the Web 2.0 Expo keynote highlighted several examples of Apollo in action: Buzzword, an Apollo-based word processor to be released this summer; an eBay application; Finetune, a music player; a time-tracking and calendaring application code-named gTimer; and Adobe Media Player. I have also been impressed by the Adobe presence at the majority of the events I've attended this year (see my events page).

Microsoft Silverlight – Last week, Microsoft anointed its own rich-media application development platform, previously named WPF/E. I predict that Adobe will have the cooler applications out of the gate, but Microsoft will ink enough deals with someone you do business with (e.g. your bank), or somehow tie it into the Vista experience. There'll be a compelling reason for you to download the Silverlight plug-in at some point, and the historical record backs me up. Thus, most of us will probably end up with both the Apollo and Silverlight plug-ins running side-by-side, with developers having to choose where to invest their time and energy.

It Ain't Over Yet: Operating Systems

Linux is the wild-card in the Apollo v. Silverlight showdown. Adobe plans to launch an Apollo version eventually, and I wouldn't expect Microsoft to follow down that path. While Linux comprises only a sliver of the PC market now, if and when the big vendors such as Dell and HP start to ship Linux boxes, that will certainly change. The Mac is now a PC; Linux is the new Mac.

From Enterprise to SMB: Partner Ecosystems

By partnering with a technology company that's already gained traction in enterprise and small-business settings, you can use a known name and partner network to get customers. For example, if you have an idea for sales-centered companies, you can build applications on top of Salesforce.com by learning the Apex platform and programming language. Or, if you envision applications built around web conferencing and online meetings, join the WebEx Connect developer program. Or, you can follow SAP's lead into the small market by learning their Business One platform. Are you more aligned with the online auction market? Join the eBay Developers Program. Or, use Amazon Web Services to create a business or service from customizable components. Even the venerable AOL has reinvented itself as a development platform with dev.aol.com, offering APIs for authentication, photos, videos, maps and more. It all depends on what you want to build, I suppose, and for whom.

Stop Programming: Zero-Code Development

Intalio has an intriguing open-source business-process management system (BPMS) that promises "zero code" development. Similarly, Coghead has easily-customizable templates for project management, HR and inventory applications, and the flexibility to develop whatever else makes sense for your application.

Or, if you want to build a simple database, Dabble DB lets you build databases on the Web, with relational capabilities accessed through a simple yet powerful interface. Swivel wants to be (and apologies for the formulaic construction, but it works in this case) the "YouTube for data sets", and makes customizable graphs available for inclusion in blogs, collaborative commenting and more.

Design and Development Resources

RobotReplay - Add a script to your web pages to record every mouse motion and click that users take on your website. It's like what Steve Krug says, to design a better experience, just watch your users in action. All RobotReplay needs is a way to surreptitiously turn on the user's webcam and microphone for the complete picture.

LuckyOliver - Inexpensive stock photos.

oDesk - Inexpensive development resources. And just to make sure that you're getting your money's worth, they'll take a screenshot of your contractor's screen at random intervals.

Labels: Adobe, Microsoft, Web 2.0, web design, web2expo

I'm putting the finishing touches on an article for SmallBizResource about QuickBooks Online Edition, and Scooter says to me, "Wasn't last week Accounting Week?"

"Actually, QuickBooks Online Edition brings the community aspects, the rich-media interface and mashup capabilities characteristic of Web 2.0 to the world of accounting software," I replied. "And so it's entirely appropriate for me to close out Web 2.0 Expo Week by writing this article."

"You're an idiot."

That's how we communicate. True story.

Labels: accounting, small biz, Web 2.0

Here's my article in SmallBizResource ("The Price of Kidneys in Australia") about an artist in Australia looking for a website for less than the price of a kidney.

Article summary:

• If you're a Web designer, here's your chance to send her your pitch.
• If you've ever hired a web designer for your small business, e-mail me with your advice for how to pick a web designer.
  
• Hey, what about me? If you need a basic, entry-level web site, check out my new services page.

Labels: small biz, web design

I've launched a new website and business at ivantohelpyou.com!

My business: Helping small businesses to get online quickly with simple, no-frills websites.

I saw plenty of startups at the Web 2.0 Expo, many of them ostensibly geared towards the small business. Very nice, and some great ideas. But if you're running a small business, the first task is to put up a basic, functional website without the "under construction" logo. That requires setup of a dot-com address, a standards-friendly web site, and from the very beginning, professional writing.

Check out ivantohelpyou.com to learn more.

Labels: web design, web2expo

Speakers:

1. Jeremy Keith, Adactio
2. Kelly Goto, gotomedia
3. Chris Messina, Citizen Agency
4. Richard McManus, Read/WriteWeb (moderator)

The speakers explored the paradox of having to become a "hybrid designer," someone blurring the lines between designer and developer.

Some paraphrased notes and actual quotes:

(1) Many web designers come from the print world, where they have almost complete control over the layout and presentation of their work. It's not like that on the Web. Get used to it.

(2) "What do these new [hybrid] designers look like and how do we hire that person?"

(3) "You don't actually know where your content is going to show up." Could be on your website, in some feedreader, cell phone, bloglines or another website. So, make sure your mark (e.g. ivantohelpyou) is on your work (ivantohelpyou) outside of your blog (ivantohelpyou) template.

What's the key skill for the hybrid designer?

(1) "Communications."

(2) "It's curiosity."

(3) "Willingness to ask questions."


It's hard to get started as a hybrid designer, isn't it.

(1) Big companies like to pigeonhole you as a developer or UI designer, and aren't prepared for the hybrid. The more modern companies expect you to do absolutely everything. "It's tricky to find that '1.5' area" where you can start breaking out of your pigeonhole."

(3) "Find, if you can, one other kindred spirit." Pair up with a designer if you're a developer, or vice versa. Start designing interfaces on the screen to show developers what you're thinking, which is better than trying to explain what you want.


What about platforms?

(2) Go ahead, pick a platform/environment/toolset/"playground" such as Ruby on Rails, Drupal, among others.

(1) Toolsets lower barrier to entry. But it takes time to learn these tools. Learn from "view source" mentality. Closed systems don't allow this, and so they'll never have the same impact as open systems.

(3) Get fluency in the idea of mashups. Either DIY, or wait for someone to DIFY (Do It For You). An example of a mashup, particularly for web2expo attendees: conferenceer.com.

My thoughts:

The technology was the bottleneck. Now, frameworks allow rapid reproduction of massive sites that would have taken months to build by hand or rebuild using new designs. This means the new bottleneck (and therefore profit opportunity) is the design phase, matching the output of these automated tools to the needs, preferences and aesthetics of the end users. Developers, in order to make a difference, will have to dig deeper and deeper into the weeds. Designers can stay close to the customer where they belong.

See you on day two.

Labels: Web 2.0, web design, web2expo

It's Web 2.0 Expo Week at ivantohelpyou.

I'll be in San Francisco through Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Expo, attending the keynotes and every other session, plus wandering around the show floor, seeking order in the chaos.

Impressions to follow.

Labels: Web 2.0, web2expo

I asked Scooter if she wanted to join me at the open-to-the-public Ignite Expo at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. She listened to my description of the event, which consisted of 16 presentations in two hours, each presentation made up of 20 slides moved forward automatically every 15 seconds.

"It sounds like a poetry slam for geeks," she replied. "Count me out."

Good description, actually.

Yet there were some differences between Ignite Expo and a poetry slam. For instance, instead of three minutes, as is the poetry slam standard (see the PoetrySlam.com FAQ for more information), Ignite participants received five full minutes. And instead of the poetry slam custom of selecting five audience members to act as judges, Ignite asked the entire audience to vote via text message on which presenter of each round of eight would be asked to give the afternoon keynote in front of 3,000 people.

The audience also used anonymous text messaging to heckle, with the messages displayed as the participants spoke. This took an ugly turn during one presentation about diversity and inclusion programs. One text message made fun of the speaker's weight and another about his clothes, thus proving the speaker's point about the need for greater diversity and inclusion in the technology world. Nobody voted for him.

The organizers made the curious decision to display the running percentages of the votes given to each contestant during each round of voting. There's a reason that the television networks are asked to refrain from showing predictions before the close of the polls. Early voters have undue influence on later voters, which can knock out an otherwise viable candidate from consideration. Perhaps they were following the "hive mind" concept of Jordan Schwartz from Microsoft, in which one bee doing the "waggle dance" influences others to check out a potential spot for a hive. Subsequently, other bees can then waggle if they like what they see. So, instead of each bee making an independent decision, the decisions are made sequentially with full knowledge of the choices that have been made before.

You can read about the presenters listed on the web2expo blog.

And here's a link to the PoetrySlam.com poet gallery, complete with MP3.

There's a hybrid opportunity to bring together two diverse audiences under one roof with one set of rules. I'd go again if I could see an eager, fast-talking entrepreneur paired with a passionate counterculture performer. Bring it on!

Labels: poetry, Web 2.0, web2expo

Some notes on Shooter:

• The protagonist Bob Lee Swagger lives in the mountains with his dog before the military interrupts his idyllic existence with a personal request to do a job. This is reminiscent of Commando, in which Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger) lives in the mountains with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano) before being similarly called back into service. The two films have a comparable body count, although it's not quite a fair comparison because Matrix was able to kill scores of enemy soldiers without the benefit of a spotter.
  
• Remix of Lethal Weapon, with Danny Glover channeling the power-abusing South African bad guy from Lethal Weapon II and Mark Wahlberg playing the Mel Gibson righteous anger role.
  
• The part of Philadelphia was played by New Westminster, at least during one of the car chase scenes by the riverfront.
• Scooter says Mark Wahlberg is the new Bruce Willis. But the old Bruce Willis hasn't gone anywhere, considering that there were two previews for upcoming Bruce Willis movies. We can expect a Willis-Wahlberg buddy movie one of these days.
  
• Post-Entourage, it's hard to watch Mark Wahlberg without thinking, "Did Ari push him to do this movie, or did Eric actually like the script?" "What's Turtle's angle?" "Where's Drama?"
  
• More speeches than a Rocky movie.
• Second Amendment lovefest with revolutionary fervor and vigilante justice, Charles Bronson-style.
  
• Missed opportunity to bring back the 80s action-movie tradition of the kill-shot one-liner. If you've just wasted the bad guy after two-and-a-half freakin' hours, say something memorable and quotable.
• Speaking of one-liners, I still can't watch Ned Beatty without thinking of Deliverance.
  

Bottom line: They don't make 'em like they used to.

Labels: movies

After filing my taxes online, I noticed a link to the TurboTax "Tax Rap" contest website.

Intuit has a $25,000 contest inviting users to perform YouTube rap songs about TurboTax software. The host of the contest is Vanilla Ice, who set a definite example for many of the contest participants.

Although I sampled many of the latest entries, I was incapable of watching any of them to completion. Here are some of the images I'm trying to forget:

• Formerfatboy: "I make 30 grand a year, so much for my degree / and I write about games so I can write 'em off, sweet!"
• Gmiller10304: SNL "Chronic of Narnia" redux.
• Rhettandlinl: Geeky duo in early Will Smith style. The non-rapping, singing climax was painful.
• Goremy: All about the Uncle Sam costume.
• Lucidsurreal: Animated entry, with the best sound editing, overdubs and syncopated rhymes.
• Djfwally: More Zappa than Rappa.
• Evcakes: Guys wearing suits riding tricycles boasting about their financial planning skills. "You'll be workin' in the factory while I'll be sippin daquiries/Playin' shuffleboard with senior ladies comin' after me."
• Funkyfreshco: Guy wearing an oversized dog mask going old school. Plus a guy with a robot mask does the robot.

My vote goes to Evcakes. They were the ones who went farthest beyond "it's funny to rap about taxes" to perform "a funny rap about taxes."

Labels: accounting, music, tax

Yesterday I looked at the statistics of this blog. One curious stat: there was an almost one-to-one correspondence between the number of items I read in Google Reader and the words I wrote in this blog over a 30-day period. This is probably a coincidence. The two numbers are probably unrelated for the most part, although I would expect that the more you read, the better your blog would capture the zeitgeist. But the more you read, the harder it is to shake off the conversation of the moment to write something truly original.

In terms of blog accounting, bloggers mostly assess themselves by counting visitors and commentors.

I haven't enabled comments on my blog yet, so I'm not really taking full advantage of the medium. This is by choice. I don't regularly comment on other peoples' blogs, and so I'd feel like a hypocrite asking people to comment on my blog.

The other problem is that I'd have to decide how I want to handle comments, a popular topic in the blogopshere these days. Gawker has an interesting approach: If you submit just one interesting comment (per suggestions from Lifehackers guide to weblog comments), they publish it on the blog, and also grant you the right to continue posting comments without prior editing. Then, they thin the herd by "executing" lame commenters (e.g., This week in commenter executions). Posting is a privilege, not a right.

The final problem: What if I enabled comments and nobody said anything? I'd have to spend all day faking it. What a chore.

Labels: blogging

In the spirit of Accounting Week, here's an attempt to quantify what goes into this blog:

Google Reader subscriptions: 438
Google Reader items read (or scanned) over the past 30 days: 13,442
Google Reader items starred: 97
Google Reader items shared: 32
Google Searches in March: 380

Conferences attended since February: 5
Conferences blogged about here: 2

Movies seen in the theater since February: 5
Movies blogged about here: 4

Unique visitors in March 2007: 1,185
Blog posts in March 2007: 48
Number of written words in this blog in March 2007: 13,000+
Number of spoken words in the script of Commando: 3,369

Labels: blogging

As part of getting things done, I have recently started to "theme" my weekly activities, so that I know exactly what I should be doing when I wake up in the morning (well, it's always morning somewhere).

This week is Accounting Week.

Apropos of the upcoming April 15th festivities (celebrated this year on the following Monday, April 16th), I will be doing the following accounting-related activities:

• For SmallBizResource, testing QuickBooks Online in comparison to the offline versions of the software as a followup to past QuickBooks-related coverage (reviews of the Pro/Premier and Simple Start versions compared to their MS counterparts).
  
• Using Intuit software to pay my taxes for the first time as a small-business owner.
• Beta-testing online accounting software from Less Accounting.
  
• Blogging about all of the above.
  
• Paying bills.
• Figuring out how to increase revenues throughout the rest of 2007.

But first, did you hear about the constipated accountant?

He worked it out with a pencil.

Labels: accounting, small biz

Your Blog Should Be Purple

You're an expressive, offbeat blogger who tends to write about anything and everything. You tend to set blogging trends, and you're the most likely to write your own meme or survey. You are a bit distant though. Your blog is all about you - not what anyone else has to say.

Labels: blogging

Everyone's got problems. In The Lookout, former high-school hockey star Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) has cognitive disabilities stemming from a youthful indiscretion involving a fast car, fireflies and farm equipment. His roommate Lewis (Jeff Bridges) was blinded while cooking up a batch of crystal meth. Bad guy Gary Spago (Matthew Goode) frequently uses an inhaler, and "Bone," the No. 1 Henchman, wears sunglasses throughout the film, indicating extreme sensitivity to bright light. And as for the love interest and pole-dancer Luvlee (Isla Fisher), she's disablingly hot.

This portrayal of disabled people as both protagonists and antagonists seems to depart from the James Bond formula in which physical disability represents moral impairment. Almost all of the Bond villains have something wrong with them, including Casino Royale's "Bloody-Eye" Le Chiffre, sporting a platinum inhaler for dramatic effect.

When the good guys and the bad guys all have disabilities, how can the audience tell them apart? In "The Lookout," that's simple. The bad guys with disabilities are the ones planning to do something wrong in the future (i.e. rob a bank), while the good guys with disabilities have already done something wrong (i.e. reckless driving, making drugs) and they now suffer their disabilities as a punishment for past sins.

It would be refreshing to see disabled people portrayed as heroes without a moralistic reason for why they're disabled, but "The Lookout" isn't that film. Because of Hollywood's pernicious influence, whenever I see someone using an inhaler, such as at a housewarming party last night with Scooter's friends from work, I nudge Scooter to indicate, "Hey, look, there's someone using an inhaler who's probably up to no good."

Labels: movies

Attention all musicians!

Every time I work on a website using Dreamweaver (the web design software), I hear in my head the 1975 keyboard-synthensizer trip Dream Weaver by Gary Wright, as featured on the Wayne's World soundtrack. And I'm not alone.

Gary Wright and his lyrics may be responsible for the escapist nature of the Internet, where people are led to believe that what they do online has only fleeting consequences in the real world. The lyrics of "Dream Weaver" contain an appeal to the driver of the "Dream Weaver train" to "take away my worries of today/and leave tomorrow behind." Suggested destinations include the astral plane and the bright side of the moon. This leads to a disconnect. The designer wants to go to the bright side of the moon, but the user just wants to solve a mundane, earthly need.

Because designers have built the web according to the subconscious influence of the Dream Weaver, many sites have been thematically constructed as a temporary fix to "help me to forget today's pain." Instead, web design should be an eyes-open experience that solves problems rather than buries them in the subconscious collective mind. Sites should concentrate on the realistic presentation of information rather than spacey effects.

And so, musicians of the world, here's your chance to write a catchy new tune called "Dreamweaver" to correct this deficiency.

Write a song prominently featuring "Dreamweaver" in the lyrics. If it becomes a viral word-of-mouth sensation, or more likely, if you have a promotion deal with a major label, your song will become a critical part of the soundtrack for the younger generation of web designers, and therefore set the tone for the future development of the Internet.

For maximum effect, make sure to include in your lyrics the phrases "social media," "Web 2.0 paradigm shift," "graceful degradation" and "separation of content and presentation."

Labels: Web 2.0, web design

The feedback to my SmallBizResource post "How To Revive An Old PC With Linux" has been phenomenal. Read some of the responses in "Readers Respond to Linux."

From the exchanges, I have come up with a few ideas on how to keep large numbers of decommissioned computers from getting dumped into landfills, and it could even turn into an interesting business. Stay tuned...

Labels: linux, small biz

When I was at CMP, I participated in the launch of a daily Internet video program called The News Show (June 2005 - August 2006). About a dozen correspondents were given cheap webcams, video editing software and instructions to produce at least one clip per week. As you might imagine, the quality varied widely from day to day, and from correspondent to correspondent. Furthermore, the publications began to get a little tetchy about loaning out their reporters to a corporate startup initiative. (Unfortunately, the News Show site still exists but the clips seem to be gone, so you can't examine the remains yourself.)

Now, they've come up with its successor, a weekly program called The Friday ITch. The roving correspondents are gone, and they've replaced former News Show anchor John Soat with the saucy Sian Welby from the Rocketboom school. I'm impressed that actually went out and hired professional talent, rather than counting on amateurs like myself to entertain the troops.

They've given it a decidedly adult flavor this time around. I remember one of my favorite segments getting spiked for a risque comment about Lindsay Lohan. And now they make jokes about your pets watching you... well, I'm still running a family blog here, so I'll leave it up to you if you want to follow the link.

I'm looking into getting a digital camera by the time the Web 2.0 Expo rolls around, so that I can shoot some video for this here blog. If they're any good, maybe I can convince someone at YouTube to publish my clips. That would show everyone that I'm really hip.

Labels: blogging, vlogging, Web 2.0

An Event Apart
Boston, Mass.
March 27, 2007

Below, I have some notes from the second day of An Event Apart Boston 2007. But first, here are a few reflections about the event itself.

Reflections

As the tagline indicates, it's a great event "for people who make websites." More specifically, it's the perfect opportunity to listen to people who write books about making websites. People genuinely enjoy hearing their favorite authors speak, and I overheard several occasions where an attendee would approach one of the rock stars to say "I love your work" or "thank you."

However, the crowd of 500 people tended to produce a passive learning experience. It's intimidating to ask questions in front of a crowd, and for those who did, there was no microphone stand nor a roving assistant with a wireless microphone. In addition, even though most of the presentations were very polished, with telling anecdotes, well-crafted laugh lines and fun visuals, they weren't particularly inviting for questions. That's the trade-off from the one-track model. You get everyone sharing the same experience, but at the expense of interactivity and participation.

Also what it wasn't: a networking show, job fair, or opportunity for vendor selection. The typography of the conference badge says it best: a big font for the first name, a small font for the last name, and nothing at all for company name or city. I'm told that this is by design, intended to foster a collegial atmosphere. Personally, I would have liked to get a sense of the types of businesses interested in Web standards by noting which organizations have the foresight to ante up the conference fee, but that's either proprietary or irrelevant, I suppose.

So, what I got out of the conference was a better idea of how to evangelize web standards within an organization, and a two-day run-through of the skills required to build standards-compliant sites. I learned that as long as I can fake my way through the following topics when speaking to a potential client, I'll do just fine.

1. Understanding the client
   
2. Copywriting
   
3. Graphic design
4. User interface design
   
5. Typography and iconography
6. Technical details of using stylesheets
7. Enabling accessibility
8. Preparing for browser differences
9. User testing

AEA Second Day Notes

On the second day of the conference, to the extent my battery capacity allowed, I used my laptop to take notes. During those presentations, I was able to visit the Web sites being discussed by the speaker without having to squint at the screen from the very back of the room. I'm old enough to consider it somewhat rude to be using a laptop during a presentation, but if you're following along the presentation it's probably an acceptable use from an etiquette standpoint. You know full well that the people sitting behind you are looking over your shoulder at your screen. If you're reading your e-mail or surfing unrelated sites, it can be a distraction. But if you're on the same site as the presenter, even if you're clicking different buttons, your browsing can serve as an adjunct to the presentation rather than a distraction. I wonder what Miss Manners would say.

Since the speakers' presentations are not available to the public online, I will instead focus on some of the Web sites they mentioned in their presentations, with my own comments.

A few sites mentioned in Cameron Moll's presentation

• Perceptive Pixel. This is the "Minority Report" vision of computer interfaces. But what problem would this technology solve? Offhand, I can think of two. First, why have a character in a movie hunched over a computer screen when you can get Tom Cruise to wave his hands in the air in front of a translucent screen? Second, if you're in front of an audience giving a presentation, working directly on the screen trumps having to use a separate control device. Other than that, forget about it. I can just imagine the cubicle politics that would erupt were this technology to be adopted in an office. Picture a sweaty accountant radiating body odor every time he clicks a button on the top of the screen. Or an overenthusiastic cut-and-paster who's not wearing a sports bra. Count me out.
• National Gazette. A newspaper for "millennials" (Americans born in the 80s-90s), designed by A-Lister Jason Santa Maria. Very clean design, textbook markup and adherence to Web standards. But where's the RSS/Atom link, so that I can subscribe via my favorite feed reader?!? You'd think that a publication for millennials would get that right. And what's with the term "millennials" anyway? Personally, I'm relieved that the millennium is seven years gone, so that I don't have to listen to the spellchecker bark at me for missing that second "n." And the term doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Since we're talking about the young adults born in the Clintonian reverie between the Bush presidencies, I propose that we name the generation after Millie, Barbara's dog. "The Millies" – apt successors to the Baby Boomers. [UPDATE: the term "Millies" is already in wide currency. However, as for linking the term to the Bush family dog, I haven't seen that elsewhere yet.]
  
• First Principles of User Interface. Good summary of how user interface should work. I wonder how Fitts' Law ("The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.") applies with the Perceptive Pixel approach when the distance is measured in feet rather than pixels.

A few sites mentioned in Ethan Marcotte's presentation

• CSS Zen Garden. The site that started the CSS craze, and a great place to see for yourself what CSS means to web design.
• An interview about the ESPN.com redesign. Useful case study for the application of Web standards.
• New York Magazine. One of Ethan's clients. I was a regular reader back in the day.
• The Today Show. Another one of Ethan's clients. I know what it is, but I've never really watched it before. But judging from these viewer-submitted dog photos, I am totally missing out!!
• Position is Everything. Compendium of browser bugs.
• Where Our Standards Went Wrong. Ethan's article on how to sell the Web standards concept.

The rest of the afternoon

Eric Meyer gave a very nuts-and-bolts presentation. No links, but some good recommendations for how to deal with the fact that each browser implements Web standards slightly differently.

Molly Holzschlag provided a cogent explanation of the six reasons each browser implements Web standards slightly differently.

I can boil it down to three reasons:

1. Browser-makers use their preferred development tools and methodologies, and then add features that aren't in the specification to gain competitive differentiation.
2. Standards-makers come up with incomplete specifications with margin for variable interpretations, partly because it's complicated and partly because the browser-makers help to set the standards.
   
3. Users don't really care about web standards. They just want their sites to work.

Jeffrey Zeldman gave a primer on how to pick clients, when to run like hell, and how to build trust in a business relationship. He then gave some great ad-agency-style examples of how to pitch a client. For example, don't walk into a meeting with one design when you can put together two or three separate themes, each keyed to a perceived problem that the customer is trying to solve.

By the way, I spoke to Jeffrey, who had read my blog post about the first day of the event. He gave me some encouraging feedback, and I intend to submit an article for publication in A List Apart. Maybe something about Adobe Flex, just to go punk-rock among the guitar virtuosos. We'll see.

Labels: ALA, web design, Web Standards

A big rocket-mouse hello to Jenny the Juggler (see the video + blooper reel). Available in the Boston area for kids' birthday parties, family functions, corporate events, or anywhere else that calls for a live performer for face-painting, singing, balloon animals and yes, juggling!

Labels: travel

At the movies, preceding the feature presentation there's typically a brief segment admonishing people to be less annoying during the average two-hour film. Why isn't there a similar public service announcement before a six-and-a-half hour flight?

The airline could put together a montage of comedians doing their obligatory routines about flying ("Don't you hate it when..."), which are always funny – just like blog posts about flying, which never fail to make interesting reading.

And now a word about media consumption on JetBlue. Instead of showing a limited selection of commercial-free movies (edited for language and sexual situations) as do other airlines, JetBlue has back-of-seat live satellite television. So, instead of sitting back and passively soaking in a new movie that's not out on DVD yet, I had to become an active channel-surfer in an attempt to stay entertained. Maybe that would be acceptable if I were flying during television's sweeps week, but it's not the best tradeoff on a Saturday night featuring nothing much other than a SNL rerun that was barely tolerable the first time around; a commercial-laden, expletive-deleted airing of "Friday" on Comedy Central; or an "I Love New York" marathon on VH1 (which I couldn't even watch, since I'm saving it for DVD).

Even a bad film can knock a two-hour chunk out of a cross-country trip. By contrast, live television segments the journey into hundreds of tiny moments, "Isn't there anything else on?" *click* "Another commercial for the electric knife" *click* "Oh look at that, Anna Nicole...still dead" *click*

I couldn't even stare at the map for hours at a time, since the flight tracker was punctuated with commercial messages from JetBlue. How many times do I have to see the drinks menu? Why, when I'm trying to remember how to pronounce Couer d'Alene, should I be barraged for the 100th time with the unappetizing suggestion of a pairing between the house merlot and a bag of Doritos?

In-flight entertainment should make the flight seem shorter, not interminable.

Labels: movies, television, travel