Entries For: July 2008
2008-07-29
Social Edge Kicks Ass
Well, what can I say, Social Edge DOES kick ass. How do I know? Because we're featured on AllTop's Social Entrepreneurship page.
What, that's not enough self-aggrandizement for you? Okay, fine. iTunes has reorganized their podcasts section, separating the audio content from the video content and Global X's X-Interviews is now featured at the top level Government & Organizations category, which is a little odd in that most of the podcasts at that level are miltary in nature, along with some U.S. Government produced podcasts. Oh, and Sesame Street. Of course, the Sesame Street podcast is for families of deployed military personnel, so even that has a military bent to it.
Well, enough with the patting oneself on the back. On to more important issues. Jim Fruchterman blogged recently about AxsJAX at Google. It's a good read, with video to boot. I've been very heartened to see the increased focus on accessibility at the tech conferences lately. It seems to me that this kind of technological advancement beats a multi-touch sphere proof of concept hands down. 3-D Pong. Wow. Yeah, I've been waiting for that.
Okay, I've moved from self-aggrandizing to snarky... let's see if I can move the conversation in a more helpful, beneficial way.
How often do you print when you don't really need to? (And how often do you end up with an extra page with nothing but a page number and a carriage return on it? Don't you hate that?) You could use this as your desktop picture, or... give PrimoPDF a try. It's a great way of avoiding the printer until you really have to splash some ink onto paper. If you're a Mac user, PDF printing is built in to the OS, so you can do this directly from most every print dialog box.
What, that's not enough self-aggrandizement for you? Okay, fine. iTunes has reorganized their podcasts section, separating the audio content from the video content and Global X's X-Interviews is now featured at the top level Government & Organizations category, which is a little odd in that most of the podcasts at that level are miltary in nature, along with some U.S. Government produced podcasts. Oh, and Sesame Street. Of course, the Sesame Street podcast is for families of deployed military personnel, so even that has a military bent to it.
Well, enough with the patting oneself on the back. On to more important issues. Jim Fruchterman blogged recently about AxsJAX at Google. It's a good read, with video to boot. I've been very heartened to see the increased focus on accessibility at the tech conferences lately. It seems to me that this kind of technological advancement beats a multi-touch sphere proof of concept hands down. 3-D Pong. Wow. Yeah, I've been waiting for that.
Okay, I've moved from self-aggrandizing to snarky... let's see if I can move the conversation in a more helpful, beneficial way.
How often do you print when you don't really need to? (And how often do you end up with an extra page with nothing but a page number and a carriage return on it? Don't you hate that?) You could use this as your desktop picture, or... give PrimoPDF a try. It's a great way of avoiding the printer until you really have to splash some ink onto paper. If you're a Mac user, PDF printing is built in to the OS, so you can do this directly from most every print dialog box.
2008-07-15
Who knows your passwords?
Do you know what your IT manager's mother's maiden name is? No? Well, you may want to find out.
You have to trust the people you work with, and your IT staff requires even more trust. Like it or not, if you have an email server and a server administrator, your company secrets are in their hands. Unless, of course, you resort to government-esque tactics such as never using email. As long as your business interests are legitimate, you don't need to resort to such paranoia. Hire good people and trust that they're going to be worthy of the faith you put in them. You do want to make sure, however, that another person in the organization has access as well.
As far as contract work goes, you might want to include a password clause in your contracts. Just a simple statement that says at the conclusion of their work for you they will provide you with administrator passwords to all of the systems they install. Nothing terribly oppressive or threatening, just a little, 'when you're done, can you make sure and leave us the keys?' Better to ask up front rather than after the work is complete, you've paid for it and you have no access.
You have to trust the people you work with, and your IT staff requires even more trust. Like it or not, if you have an email server and a server administrator, your company secrets are in their hands. Unless, of course, you resort to government-esque tactics such as never using email. As long as your business interests are legitimate, you don't need to resort to such paranoia. Hire good people and trust that they're going to be worthy of the faith you put in them. You do want to make sure, however, that another person in the organization has access as well.
As far as contract work goes, you might want to include a password clause in your contracts. Just a simple statement that says at the conclusion of their work for you they will provide you with administrator passwords to all of the systems they install. Nothing terribly oppressive or threatening, just a little, 'when you're done, can you make sure and leave us the keys?' Better to ask up front rather than after the work is complete, you've paid for it and you have no access.
2008-07-01
Surfing Blind
Filed Under:
I saw part of the title to an article, "lets blind surf" and I thought of two things that had nothing to do with the internet. The first, being a good California boy, was the Beach Boys:
The second was that in all my time growing up at the beach I had never seen any blind surfers, while I had seen plenty of blind skiers.
As a kid, I had always admired the heck out of people who were willing to fling themselves down a mountain, around trees and other skiers without being able to see any of it, but I could never imagine what it was like until a few years ago when I was skiing above the treeline in whiteout conditions. Not completely blind but still very disconcerting.
This article, however, had nothing to do with sports. It has to do with internet access on the go. The blind can get around the internet via screen readers, but this software has to be installed on the users computer in order to be used. But what about when you sit down to use a computer that's not your own? WebAnywhere is a step in the right direction.
Now we just need to get web developers to do more to make their pages accessible. It's not easy. I was at a screen reading demonstration at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and they had a screen reader read a few popular web sites. It was an eye-opening experience, no pun intended. Of the four or so sites that were read, the audience could only figure out what one of them was, the New York Times. One of the things that became obvious is that the better your site navigation is for screen readers, the better your site navigation is for everyone.
It's hard to adapt, and it's hard to step back sometimes and develop products, on the web or otherwise, while keeping accessibility in mind. It's not any harder than skiing blind though, so it's time to stop making excuses.
The second was that in all my time growing up at the beach I had never seen any blind surfers, while I had seen plenty of blind skiers.
As a kid, I had always admired the heck out of people who were willing to fling themselves down a mountain, around trees and other skiers without being able to see any of it, but I could never imagine what it was like until a few years ago when I was skiing above the treeline in whiteout conditions. Not completely blind but still very disconcerting.
This article, however, had nothing to do with sports. It has to do with internet access on the go. The blind can get around the internet via screen readers, but this software has to be installed on the users computer in order to be used. But what about when you sit down to use a computer that's not your own? WebAnywhere is a step in the right direction.
Now we just need to get web developers to do more to make their pages accessible. It's not easy. I was at a screen reading demonstration at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and they had a screen reader read a few popular web sites. It was an eye-opening experience, no pun intended. Of the four or so sites that were read, the audience could only figure out what one of them was, the New York Times. One of the things that became obvious is that the better your site navigation is for screen readers, the better your site navigation is for everyone.
It's hard to adapt, and it's hard to step back sometimes and develop products, on the web or otherwise, while keeping accessibility in mind. It's not any harder than skiing blind though, so it's time to stop making excuses.
