Our class is now using Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and Javascript by Jonathan Stark from O'Reilly Books. The book has not been printed yet. It's online on what's called The Open Feedback Publishing System. O'Reilly Books is experimenting with allowing people to comment on several titles before they're printed.
I hadn't heard of this before finding that iPhone title but several companies and sites are doing this (a few are listed at the second link). I find it amazing that at a time when companies are aggressively trying to stop pirating some are actually putting work out there were people can get to it without paying or even having to login. The other surprising part is that companies and authors are usually telling people that they can't take their ideas for legal reasons. I'd guess that they just make people agree that they can use their ideas when they login (you have to login to leave comments).
But perhaps none of this should be surprising. Perhaps it is simply the natural result of companies using social media.
What's not surprising are the number of sites for individual writers. National Novel Writing Month is a well known example. Each November writers from all over the world attempt to write a novel, at least 50,000 words, before the end of the month. NaNoWriMo participants can offer each other support, advice, and the site helps them connect to other participants who may be in their area or writing in similar genres. Critique Circle is a site where authors can put up parts of their stories to be reviewed by other authors. You get points by reviewing the work of others and get reviews by using those points.
Advances in technology have made on demand printing/publishing possible. Sites like Cafe Press allow people to have their books printed as they are ordered. Authors who self publish no longer have to pay a printer for many books they may not be able to sell. Any place with Espresso Book machine can print a book in minutes. Bookstores can use it to print out-of-print books.
Some people will find all of that a moot point with the advent of electronic books. I personally think that as long as people enjoy reading from physical material then there will be print media. I also wouldn't want to use an electronic book format for manuals like cooking or automotive books. Can you imagine taking a Kindle or Sony Reader with you underneath your car?
So there are several options for electronic books. In addition to the dedicated devices above anything that supports a program that can read pdfs can be a book reader (if the file is in that format). Sites like Lulu offer support for publishing a publication as an electronic book while sites like Scribd allow you to post material to the site itself (I only found out recently you can put a price on what's posted there).
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Week 13: Accessibility News
Google has added Automatic Captions, Automatic Timing to YouTube
This is too cool and I want to make a video just to try it out.
The automatic speech recognition technology being used in Google Voice was combined with the existing captioning technology used by YouTube to create automatic captioning. The captions are created without any extra input or effort on the part of the person who created the video. It does it for you. It's not perfect so they're not making it available to everyone yet but there's a list of channels at the end of the article above that have it available.
The automatic timing is also cool and it is available to all YouTube users. It makes it easier to add captions to videos by figuring out when the words are said for you. All you have to do is upload a text file containing all the words in the video. If it's a video that you wrote a script to create you have that anyway.
My only question at this point is how do you add non-verbal captioning with these tools. Sometimes captions will explain off screen sounds and describe the music being played. Perhaps that's to be left to the annotation tool.
Cushing Academy's Library Goes Digital
I first heard about this story on NPR. Cushing Academy not only added a huge database of books to their library but they removed most of the physical books. The latter had some people upset: The president of the American Library Association said that it will hurt the students who don't take to the technology; they'll learn better if they can handle the material. The Dean says that students weren't using paper sources for research anymore.
It's an interesting argument from the president of the ALA. Some people are visual learners. Are some people tactile learners? Or perhaps she simply meant that frustrations with an electronic device would be a barrier to learning.
Electronic sources have the potential of making the material more accessible to the disabled but the text-to-speech capability only works in the Kindle if the author and/or publisher allows it.
More on Accessibilty: Introduction to Web Accessibility from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative
This is too cool and I want to make a video just to try it out.
The automatic speech recognition technology being used in Google Voice was combined with the existing captioning technology used by YouTube to create automatic captioning. The captions are created without any extra input or effort on the part of the person who created the video. It does it for you. It's not perfect so they're not making it available to everyone yet but there's a list of channels at the end of the article above that have it available.
The automatic timing is also cool and it is available to all YouTube users. It makes it easier to add captions to videos by figuring out when the words are said for you. All you have to do is upload a text file containing all the words in the video. If it's a video that you wrote a script to create you have that anyway.
My only question at this point is how do you add non-verbal captioning with these tools. Sometimes captions will explain off screen sounds and describe the music being played. Perhaps that's to be left to the annotation tool.
Cushing Academy's Library Goes Digital
I first heard about this story on NPR. Cushing Academy not only added a huge database of books to their library but they removed most of the physical books. The latter had some people upset: The president of the American Library Association said that it will hurt the students who don't take to the technology; they'll learn better if they can handle the material. The Dean says that students weren't using paper sources for research anymore.
It's an interesting argument from the president of the ALA. Some people are visual learners. Are some people tactile learners? Or perhaps she simply meant that frustrations with an electronic device would be a barrier to learning.
Electronic sources have the potential of making the material more accessible to the disabled but the text-to-speech capability only works in the Kindle if the author and/or publisher allows it.
More on Accessibilty: Introduction to Web Accessibility from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Week 12: Energetic Thinking
Part of this week's lecture in MIST 7510 was a presentation on Energy Informatics.
I found this very interesting and exciting because we're often told to use less energy, but less than what? Our only measure of our impact is the monthly energy bill and if you are on an energy plan in an apartment building you won't even get that. It doesn't tell you what time of day you're using the most energy, whether your energy use is normal or not for your area and household size, and it certainly doesn't tell you which devices are draining the most energy. It’s hard to know if you’re doing enough when you don’t have any numbers to go by.
The presentation showed some examples of technology being used and in the works to collect and present that type of information so that people can use it, although in some cases it was simply a matter of getting the existing information to the right people. One thing I hadn’t heard of before was a refrigerator that operates based on the type of energy coming into the home. If the energy is coming from wind sources it runs but if it’s coming from coal it stops (it has more insulation to make up for running less often). Another thing I didn’t know about was all the technology that went into the I-35 Saint Anthony Bridge (photos) which replaced the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge after its collapse. It has 320 sensors monitoring traffic and environmental conditions and can even de-ice itself. No more sending out trucks to remove ice from the bridge.
Towards the end of the presentation a study was quoted that found that the best motivator for getting people to go green was peer pressure. Trying to get people to do it for their own good or for the good of the planet didn't work as well as pointing out that everyone else was doing it. It's the opposite of what they tell you to do in school but it makes sense: if you knew you were using twice as much energy as everyone else, wouldn't you do something about it?
But I think it also needs to be easy which is what all this new technology does as well. The technology is either allowing the devices to use less energy or giving people enough information to make better decisions about their energy use.
I found this very interesting and exciting because we're often told to use less energy, but less than what? Our only measure of our impact is the monthly energy bill and if you are on an energy plan in an apartment building you won't even get that. It doesn't tell you what time of day you're using the most energy, whether your energy use is normal or not for your area and household size, and it certainly doesn't tell you which devices are draining the most energy. It’s hard to know if you’re doing enough when you don’t have any numbers to go by.
The presentation showed some examples of technology being used and in the works to collect and present that type of information so that people can use it, although in some cases it was simply a matter of getting the existing information to the right people. One thing I hadn’t heard of before was a refrigerator that operates based on the type of energy coming into the home. If the energy is coming from wind sources it runs but if it’s coming from coal it stops (it has more insulation to make up for running less often). Another thing I didn’t know about was all the technology that went into the I-35 Saint Anthony Bridge (photos) which replaced the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge after its collapse. It has 320 sensors monitoring traffic and environmental conditions and can even de-ice itself. No more sending out trucks to remove ice from the bridge.
Towards the end of the presentation a study was quoted that found that the best motivator for getting people to go green was peer pressure. Trying to get people to do it for their own good or for the good of the planet didn't work as well as pointing out that everyone else was doing it. It's the opposite of what they tell you to do in school but it makes sense: if you knew you were using twice as much energy as everyone else, wouldn't you do something about it?
But I think it also needs to be easy which is what all this new technology does as well. The technology is either allowing the devices to use less energy or giving people enough information to make better decisions about their energy use.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Week 11: How Hard Was It To Find This Post*
Findability
It is defined by Peter Morville in Ambient Findability (on page four) as "a) the quality of being locatable or navigable. b) The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate. c) The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval. "
So the findability of any object in my purse hovers around zero percent.
Findability could be confused with search engine optimization. While search engine optimization can help people find a site via Google or Bing, that's not all there is to findability. The contents within a site should be findable too. The first step to make that happen is to make the site usable. If the architecture of the site is confusing, e.g. unclear navigation, then the usability of the site suffers. You can not expect people to find anything if they can't figure out how to use the site.
The more people who can find the site and it's content the better. It doesn't do much good if a web site is highly findable for only 5 people. Not only can you build a site so that it is accessible for people with disabilities but also accessible for machines.
More on Findability
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry -an article by Aarron Walter who has taught at both Templar University and the University of Georgia
The 10 Worst Findability Crimes Committed by Web Designers and Developers - I'm not sure what the beef is with Verdana but I agree with the pagination thing. (It is MADDENING.)
*Well, Week 11 posts were late so it probably was hard to find this.
It is defined by Peter Morville in Ambient Findability (on page four) as "a) the quality of being locatable or navigable. b) The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate. c) The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval. "
So the findability of any object in my purse hovers around zero percent.
Findability could be confused with search engine optimization. While search engine optimization can help people find a site via Google or Bing, that's not all there is to findability. The contents within a site should be findable too. The first step to make that happen is to make the site usable. If the architecture of the site is confusing, e.g. unclear navigation, then the usability of the site suffers. You can not expect people to find anything if they can't figure out how to use the site.
The more people who can find the site and it's content the better. It doesn't do much good if a web site is highly findable for only 5 people. Not only can you build a site so that it is accessible for people with disabilities but also accessible for machines.
More on Findability
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry -an article by Aarron Walter who has taught at both Templar University and the University of Georgia
The 10 Worst Findability Crimes Committed by Web Designers and Developers - I'm not sure what the beef is with Verdana but I agree with the pagination thing. (It is MADDENING.)
*Well, Week 11 posts were late so it probably was hard to find this.
Week 11: Semantics Matter
Guest speaker Robin Fay gave a lecture on the Semantic Web in Week 10. Semantics is the study of meaning, usually the meaning of language. The idea behind the Semantic Web is to have machines understand what we mean. For example, doing an image search for socks. What you want is to only see images that have socks in them but what you might get are images from any page with the word socks in it. If we can add code describing our images to search engines then we could get only images with socks and even specify socks for feet (as opposed to wind socks).
We didn't have time to get too deep into it (Robin said it gets technical and a quick search proves her right) so here are three sites that have more information.
Semantic Overflow: This site's sole purpose is to answer questions about the Semantic Web. Some are technical questions like "Is it possible to list the named graphs using a SPARQL query?" and some are non-technical like "Isn’t the “Semantic Web” overrated?" Unfortunately 'technical' and 'non-technical' aren't tags that anyone is using to describe their questions (or something similar) so you can't just browse questions just about programming or questions just about the Semantic Web itself. (It may or may not be irony but it does highlight one of the criticisms of the Semantic Web: it requires people to tag or mark up the data in a useful way.)
It's only a few days old so there aren't a lot of questions yet.
Semantic Web: A wiki for Semantic Web topics. The Getting Started page has links for books, tutorials, and videos. If you drill down to specific languages and tools you can get to the official site for the individual or organization that created it.
Semantic Web - The Voice of Semantic Web Business: This site has articles about businesses and web sites using technologies for the Semantic Web. I think this is a good resource for someone who's just curious about this topic because sites don't necessarily say on their site, "Hey, this is a semantic-powered site!". There's also articles about business trends and news related to the Semantic Web.
For example, there's an article about hiring trends for semantic-related jobs and an article about a site called Book of Odds.
The Semantic Web Gang - Prefer to get your news in an audible format? The Semantic Web Gang produce podcasts of their monthly round-table discussions. The site has links to all the resources they refer to in each podcast.
We didn't have time to get too deep into it (Robin said it gets technical and a quick search proves her right) so here are three sites that have more information.
Semantic Overflow: This site's sole purpose is to answer questions about the Semantic Web. Some are technical questions like "Is it possible to list the named graphs using a SPARQL query?" and some are non-technical like "Isn’t the “Semantic Web” overrated?" Unfortunately 'technical' and 'non-technical' aren't tags that anyone is using to describe their questions (or something similar) so you can't just browse questions just about programming or questions just about the Semantic Web itself. (It may or may not be irony but it does highlight one of the criticisms of the Semantic Web: it requires people to tag or mark up the data in a useful way.)
It's only a few days old so there aren't a lot of questions yet.
Semantic Web: A wiki for Semantic Web topics. The Getting Started page has links for books, tutorials, and videos. If you drill down to specific languages and tools you can get to the official site for the individual or organization that created it.
Semantic Web - The Voice of Semantic Web Business: This site has articles about businesses and web sites using technologies for the Semantic Web. I think this is a good resource for someone who's just curious about this topic because sites don't necessarily say on their site, "Hey, this is a semantic-powered site!". There's also articles about business trends and news related to the Semantic Web.
For example, there's an article about hiring trends for semantic-related jobs and an article about a site called Book of Odds.
The Semantic Web Gang - Prefer to get your news in an audible format? The Semantic Web Gang produce podcasts of their monthly round-table discussions. The site has links to all the resources they refer to in each podcast.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Week 11: Dime Sized Design
A list of resources for designing sites for the iPhone/iPod Touch
General iPhone Web page best practices
Building web sites for the iPhone with Freeway - Although the paper is geared toward explaining how to use a specific product to create web sites for the iPhone the list of recommendations for optimizing the site come from Apple. The information is useful even if you don't intend to use Freeway.
iPhone Microsites: Tutorials
Working with the viewport
Configuring the Viewport - This page is from Apple's Safari Dev Center. I honestly couldn't find another site that had a comparable amount of information.
CSS for good iPhone Web pages
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Here's something really interesting: this is an O'Reilly book that's under construction. They're posting it online as they write it so they can get feedback. The link goes straight to Chapter 2
Basics & Tips on Designing for the iPhone - A 30 minute video from css-tricks.com
The WebKit and using it's features for iPhone Web apps
Make the most of the iPhone SDK
To WebKit or not to WebKit within your iPhone app? - not a 'how to' but I thought the pro/con info was interesting
the iUI
Writing an iPhone page in minutes using IUI
iUI 0.13 - An Overview
iUI Introduction Wiki Page - I like how the home page says to go to the Introduction and the first thing in the introduction says is "See the home page". There are links for more info here.
Layouts
Liquid Multi-column CSS layouts - Several layouts with 2, 3, or more columns that are compatible with the iPhone.
For inspiration
20+ Websites Optimized For The iPhone
Web Design Inspiration for the iPhone
General iPhone Web page best practices
Building web sites for the iPhone with Freeway - Although the paper is geared toward explaining how to use a specific product to create web sites for the iPhone the list of recommendations for optimizing the site come from Apple. The information is useful even if you don't intend to use Freeway.
iPhone Microsites: Tutorials
Working with the viewport
Configuring the Viewport - This page is from Apple's Safari Dev Center. I honestly couldn't find another site that had a comparable amount of information.
CSS for good iPhone Web pages
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Here's something really interesting: this is an O'Reilly book that's under construction. They're posting it online as they write it so they can get feedback. The link goes straight to Chapter 2
Basics & Tips on Designing for the iPhone - A 30 minute video from css-tricks.com
The WebKit and using it's features for iPhone Web apps
Make the most of the iPhone SDK
To WebKit or not to WebKit within your iPhone app? - not a 'how to' but I thought the pro/con info was interesting
the iUI
Writing an iPhone page in minutes using IUI
iUI 0.13 - An Overview
iUI Introduction Wiki Page - I like how the home page says to go to the Introduction and the first thing in the introduction says is "See the home page". There are links for more info here.
Layouts
Liquid Multi-column CSS layouts - Several layouts with 2, 3, or more columns that are compatible with the iPhone.
For inspiration
20+ Websites Optimized For The iPhone
Web Design Inspiration for the iPhone
Monday, October 26, 2009
Week 10: Insert Joke About Tubes Here
I was looking at my subscriptions in Google Reader and spotted this from Line25: 40 Amazing Female Role Models for Web Designers. I thought it was pretty cool so I'm sharing. Line25 also posts, among other things, 'Sites of the Week' if you just want to look at pretty designs.
Network Neutrality
I'm sure by now most people have heard that the FCC is drafting rules on network neutrality. (What's up with all the links to Word docs? Not everyone owns a copy of Microsoft Word. PDFs people! Adobe Acrobat Reader is free!)
The list of what the current proposal would require of Internet Service Providers seems reasonable, to me anyway. As long as everything is legal an ISP can't prevent anyone from sending or receiving data, using services or applications, or connecting to other networks. Nor treat it said items in a discriminatory manner. They can't block anyone from the competition and they'd have to make some of the information regarding their network management public.
I know companies like to keep how they do things secret but that's what they get for having invisible bandwidth caps.
The current Wikipedia article on network neutrality is written as a debate instead of an encyclopedic article. Bad for Wikipedia and not exactly neutral either but still interesting reading. I looked at a couple of the web sites cited by the article and was struck by this:
That scenario [a bifurcated world in which the wealthy enjoy first-class Internet access, while everyone else is left with slow connections and degraded content], however, is a false paradigm. Such an all-or-nothing world doesn't exist today, nor will it exist in the future. Without additional regulation, service providers are likely to continue doing what they are doing. They will continue to offer a variety of broadband service plans at a variety of price points to suit every type of consumer.
This is laughable at best and at worst an incredible insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it. I'm supposed to believe that an ISP would never charge users more for accessing sites like Google and Hulu or degrade services like Skype that compete directly with their own offerings just because it hasn't happened yet? ISPs already want companies like Google to pay them to keep access to their site fast. Why should I believe that they won't also charge customers more for other people's content or that only the sites that can pay the most will be easy for me to get to?
I think the problem is that all the major ISPs are either cable or satellite providers or telecommunications companies. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc. are all used to getting paid at both ends. Both parties have to pay for phone service to make or receive calls. The customer pays for cable or satellite TV and the networks pay money to have their channels carried by the providers.
OK, I've strayed away from 'something I've learned' to 'here's some opinions I already had'. But I did find out from the Wikipedia article that it isn't just ISPs who are against the legislation. While Tim Berners Lee supports network neutrality Robert Kahn does not. That surprised me. People like Bob Kahn believe that they should be able to develop and use technology that does treat different types of data differently and that it will be necessary to improving the Internet. There's a link to an article and a link to a video as sources for that. The article from the Register, unfortunately, doesn't say much about why network neutrality is bad just that it is.
Saying this will prove my professor right in having us do these blog posts, but why doesn't Robert Kahn have a blog?
If anyone knows of any sites with detailed arguments from Robert Kahn or any engineer about why net neutrality is bad feel free to put them in the comments.
Network Neutrality
I'm sure by now most people have heard that the FCC is drafting rules on network neutrality. (What's up with all the links to Word docs? Not everyone owns a copy of Microsoft Word. PDFs people! Adobe Acrobat Reader is free!)
The list of what the current proposal would require of Internet Service Providers seems reasonable, to me anyway. As long as everything is legal an ISP can't prevent anyone from sending or receiving data, using services or applications, or connecting to other networks. Nor treat it said items in a discriminatory manner. They can't block anyone from the competition and they'd have to make some of the information regarding their network management public.
I know companies like to keep how they do things secret but that's what they get for having invisible bandwidth caps.
The current Wikipedia article on network neutrality is written as a debate instead of an encyclopedic article. Bad for Wikipedia and not exactly neutral either but still interesting reading. I looked at a couple of the web sites cited by the article and was struck by this:
That scenario [a bifurcated world in which the wealthy enjoy first-class Internet access, while everyone else is left with slow connections and degraded content], however, is a false paradigm. Such an all-or-nothing world doesn't exist today, nor will it exist in the future. Without additional regulation, service providers are likely to continue doing what they are doing. They will continue to offer a variety of broadband service plans at a variety of price points to suit every type of consumer.
This is laughable at best and at worst an incredible insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it. I'm supposed to believe that an ISP would never charge users more for accessing sites like Google and Hulu or degrade services like Skype that compete directly with their own offerings just because it hasn't happened yet? ISPs already want companies like Google to pay them to keep access to their site fast. Why should I believe that they won't also charge customers more for other people's content or that only the sites that can pay the most will be easy for me to get to?
I think the problem is that all the major ISPs are either cable or satellite providers or telecommunications companies. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc. are all used to getting paid at both ends. Both parties have to pay for phone service to make or receive calls. The customer pays for cable or satellite TV and the networks pay money to have their channels carried by the providers.
OK, I've strayed away from 'something I've learned' to 'here's some opinions I already had'. But I did find out from the Wikipedia article that it isn't just ISPs who are against the legislation. While Tim Berners Lee supports network neutrality Robert Kahn does not. That surprised me. People like Bob Kahn believe that they should be able to develop and use technology that does treat different types of data differently and that it will be necessary to improving the Internet. There's a link to an article and a link to a video as sources for that. The article from the Register, unfortunately, doesn't say much about why network neutrality is bad just that it is.
Saying this will prove my professor right in having us do these blog posts, but why doesn't Robert Kahn have a blog?
If anyone knows of any sites with detailed arguments from Robert Kahn or any engineer about why net neutrality is bad feel free to put them in the comments.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Week 9: Video - Now featuring audio*
So you want to make a video that's going to be viewed on or downloaded from a web site. What's the best way to go about that? Before you blurt out, "YouTube", here are some things to consider first.
Streaming vs Downloading
This will depend on how you want users to view your video and your budget.
The easiest, cheapest thing to do is to have visitors download the file from your web site. It works but it requires your visitors to get the entire file onto their computer before they can watch it.
Streaming video is the more expensive option. A streaming video allows the user to view the video as it's being delivered to them instead of waiting for the entire file first. It costs more because it requires the server to be running an application specifically for streaming video. However, in addition to users being able to view the video faster, a streaming video can detect a user's connection speed, broadcast live events, and handle larger traffic loads.
There is an option in between the two called progressive downloading. It mimics streaming in that it allows users to start viewing the video as soon as the beginning of the file has been downloaded but it lacks the additional benefits of streaming video. It's cheaper than streaming since it doesn't require the additional software on the server.
Which to pick? If you want visitors to be able to keep the file you can allow them to download it. If you want users to start viewing the video as soon as possible but don't have a big budget or do anything else special with it use progressive streaming. Sites with large amounts of traffic and want to do live events, like Hulu, need to use streaming.
Format
There are a few formats available: Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG-4, Flash, and, more recently, Silverlight.
If you are a business, use Flash or Silverlight. You want as many people as possible to be able to view your video so you should use a format that works across multiple platforms and browsers. Flash edges out Silverlight in that regard since Silverlight does not work in Opera on Macs yet and Microsoft does not plan to update IE6 so that Silverlight will work in that browser.
This article comparing different aspects of Flash and Silverlight is useful for considerations beyond compatibility such as the ease of creating animation, sound quality, and accessibility.
You'd want this on your personal web site as well but since Flash video is expensive. In this case a MPEG-4 format that works in multiple players may be the way to go. However, if you do plan to have your videos on a site like YouTube or Vimeo they will convert your file to flash for you.
The Video Itself
This is information I learned years ago in a New Media class so it is not universally applicable. If you want people who are on slower connections to be able to see your video clearly you should consider this during video production if you intend to stream your video.
No rapid movements: Avoid having a lot of unneccessary movement in the video and nothing fast. The video will become pixelated and blurry on a slower connection.
Close up shots: Do not use wide shots for videos intended to be viewed on slower connections. The less color information the better. Like fast motion, a wide shot will be blurry when streaming on a slow connection.
The Pew Research Center has a survey of dial-up vs broadband use but note that they do not ask about how fast anyone's broadband was and the survey is only relevant to the United States.
Copyright Law: Using Other People's Stuff
The Center for Social Media has a video and article for their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Generally, if your video has copyrighted material in it then it should fall under at least one of the scenarios that constitutes fair use:
*That's not mine, I'm quoting the home page of Adult Swim
Streaming vs Downloading
This will depend on how you want users to view your video and your budget.
The easiest, cheapest thing to do is to have visitors download the file from your web site. It works but it requires your visitors to get the entire file onto their computer before they can watch it.
Streaming video is the more expensive option. A streaming video allows the user to view the video as it's being delivered to them instead of waiting for the entire file first. It costs more because it requires the server to be running an application specifically for streaming video. However, in addition to users being able to view the video faster, a streaming video can detect a user's connection speed, broadcast live events, and handle larger traffic loads.
There is an option in between the two called progressive downloading. It mimics streaming in that it allows users to start viewing the video as soon as the beginning of the file has been downloaded but it lacks the additional benefits of streaming video. It's cheaper than streaming since it doesn't require the additional software on the server.
Which to pick? If you want visitors to be able to keep the file you can allow them to download it. If you want users to start viewing the video as soon as possible but don't have a big budget or do anything else special with it use progressive streaming. Sites with large amounts of traffic and want to do live events, like Hulu, need to use streaming.
Format
There are a few formats available: Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG-4, Flash, and, more recently, Silverlight.
If you are a business, use Flash or Silverlight. You want as many people as possible to be able to view your video so you should use a format that works across multiple platforms and browsers. Flash edges out Silverlight in that regard since Silverlight does not work in Opera on Macs yet and Microsoft does not plan to update IE6 so that Silverlight will work in that browser.
This article comparing different aspects of Flash and Silverlight is useful for considerations beyond compatibility such as the ease of creating animation, sound quality, and accessibility.
You'd want this on your personal web site as well but since Flash video is expensive. In this case a MPEG-4 format that works in multiple players may be the way to go. However, if you do plan to have your videos on a site like YouTube or Vimeo they will convert your file to flash for you.
The Video Itself
This is information I learned years ago in a New Media class so it is not universally applicable. If you want people who are on slower connections to be able to see your video clearly you should consider this during video production if you intend to stream your video.
No rapid movements: Avoid having a lot of unneccessary movement in the video and nothing fast. The video will become pixelated and blurry on a slower connection.
Close up shots: Do not use wide shots for videos intended to be viewed on slower connections. The less color information the better. Like fast motion, a wide shot will be blurry when streaming on a slow connection.
The Pew Research Center has a survey of dial-up vs broadband use but note that they do not ask about how fast anyone's broadband was and the survey is only relevant to the United States.
Copyright Law: Using Other People's Stuff
The Center for Social Media has a video and article for their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Generally, if your video has copyrighted material in it then it should fall under at least one of the scenarios that constitutes fair use:
- Commenting ON OR CRITIQUING OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
- USING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FOR ILLUSTRATION OR EXAMPLE
- CAPTURING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL INCIDENTALLY OR ACCIDENTALLY
- REPRODUCING, REPOSTING, OR QUOTING IN ORDER TO MEMORIALIZE, PRESERVE, OR RESCUE AN EXPERIENCE, AN EVENT, OR A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
- COPYING, REPOSTING, AND RECIRCULATING A WORK OR PART OF A WORK FOR PURPOSES OF LAUNCHING A DISCUSSION
- QUOTING IN ORDER TO RECOMBINE ELEMENTS TO MAKE A NEW WORK THAT DEPENDS FOR ITS MEANING ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE ELEMENTS
*That's not mine, I'm quoting the home page of Adult Swim
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
6th Week of Class: Paper will become obsolete...any minute now
I've blogged about a few social and/or entertaining things the Internet has to offer: Twitter, Hulu, & Wikipedia. But what about work? Not business but the regular 9 to 5 stuff.
Companies have begun offering online versions of desktop software, also known as Software as a Service. Google and Zoho currently have several things available while Microsoft will have a product online next year.
Google
My group decided to use Google Docs to edit the PowerPoint for our presentation. Google doesn't call it PowerPoint but it did start off as a PowerPoint file. That users will be able to import and export these files in MS Office formats will hurt Microsoft's chances at dominating the market when it launches the online version of Office.
You can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms with the free version. While you can't do as much as you could in the desktop version of Office (no WordArt for the PowerPoint for example) I was surprised to see how much you could do.
Google does have a business, standard, and academic versions that you can pay for but they practically hid this. There's no option to 'upgrade' while you're logged into your Google account. When you're not logged in you have to click on 'New Features' before you see a link for 'For Work or School'. They explain the business benefits of Google Docs but don't do a free vs paid comparison. Frankly, I find this baffling.
Zoho
I hadn't heard of Zoho before but I was impressed by how much they make available. Right on their home page you can see a list of Productivity/Collaboration Apps and Business Apps. In addition to the types of applications you can get with Google Docs for free you can get CRM and create database apps. (Some of the things Zoho has Google also offers, just not as part of Google Docs.) There's also a marketplace where you can buy apps or post what kind of app you need created.
Zoho doesn't hide that there is a version that you pay for (most of the business apps list the limit on the number of free users it can have) but they do hide the demo. I didn't see it mentioned until I was reading the Privacy Policy and there's no link to it there.
Microsoft
I didn't find anything about Microsoft Office 2010 being online directly from Microsoft but there are articles and opinions on it. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote will the programs that will be available online.
Companies have begun offering online versions of desktop software, also known as Software as a Service. Google and Zoho currently have several things available while Microsoft will have a product online next year.
My group decided to use Google Docs to edit the PowerPoint for our presentation. Google doesn't call it PowerPoint but it did start off as a PowerPoint file. That users will be able to import and export these files in MS Office formats will hurt Microsoft's chances at dominating the market when it launches the online version of Office.
You can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms with the free version. While you can't do as much as you could in the desktop version of Office (no WordArt for the PowerPoint for example) I was surprised to see how much you could do.
Google does have a business, standard, and academic versions that you can pay for but they practically hid this. There's no option to 'upgrade' while you're logged into your Google account. When you're not logged in you have to click on 'New Features' before you see a link for 'For Work or School'. They explain the business benefits of Google Docs but don't do a free vs paid comparison. Frankly, I find this baffling.
Zoho
I hadn't heard of Zoho before but I was impressed by how much they make available. Right on their home page you can see a list of Productivity/Collaboration Apps and Business Apps. In addition to the types of applications you can get with Google Docs for free you can get CRM and create database apps. (Some of the things Zoho has Google also offers, just not as part of Google Docs.) There's also a marketplace where you can buy apps or post what kind of app you need created.
Zoho doesn't hide that there is a version that you pay for (most of the business apps list the limit on the number of free users it can have) but they do hide the demo. I didn't see it mentioned until I was reading the Privacy Policy and there's no link to it there.
Microsoft
I didn't find anything about Microsoft Office 2010 being online directly from Microsoft but there are articles and opinions on it. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote will the programs that will be available online.
6th Week of Class: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I'm watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog and the first notable thing occurs before the show even starts. I'm given a choice of which show to see an advertisement for: Ugly Betty, Castle, and Life on Mars. I like Castle so I clicked on that.
While I've only gotten a choice of what kind of ad to view on Hulu (sometimes you can get the rest of the show ad free if you watch a long ad at the beginning, sometimes you can choose between two different ads for the same product) ABC's player does sometimes have interactive ads at their commercial breaks. I've seen a car ad that is completely silent and lets the user click around to see the vehicles features. I've seen another ad that actually contains a game.
One of the trends with video on the Internet is that advertisers are going to take advantage of the medium and allow users to interact with the ads. It's one I personally hope continues, if only so I can 'dislike' all the ads I hate and never see them again. So far I've only seen the option to dislike or like an ad on Hulu.
But one of the things all the video sites for major networks have done is to make the content free for the end user. They're all ad supported and while they do tend to include the same number of commercial breaks that you'd get on television they all only show one ad per break on the Internet. The other trend I haven't found an exception for (at least for sites owned by networks) is the choice of Flash video. Although some sites players that require you to install an additional plugin to use their player the video itself is still Flash.
Everything else seems to vary: the quality of the video, whether the video will have the option of HD, whether the player works in multiple browsers, DRM (I assume that's what the plugin is really for but it was really explicit when trying to view videos on TNT's site, at least at first), even whether the video can fill the screen. (Lifetime's videos for Project Runway do not fill the entire screen even on the full screen setting. It's not letterboxed either; there's black around the whole picture.)
There's a lot that must go into this: loads of storage for the video for one thing. Then there's the database for the shows, their episodes, reviews, discussions, user accounts, etc. They must have a way of automating the commercial breaks: there's too much content to have someone going into the Flash and hard coding it for each video. Not to mention the fact that the videos will have a different number of commercial breaks and at different points in the video, even for videos of the same length.
While I've only gotten a choice of what kind of ad to view on Hulu (sometimes you can get the rest of the show ad free if you watch a long ad at the beginning, sometimes you can choose between two different ads for the same product) ABC's player does sometimes have interactive ads at their commercial breaks. I've seen a car ad that is completely silent and lets the user click around to see the vehicles features. I've seen another ad that actually contains a game.
One of the trends with video on the Internet is that advertisers are going to take advantage of the medium and allow users to interact with the ads. It's one I personally hope continues, if only so I can 'dislike' all the ads I hate and never see them again. So far I've only seen the option to dislike or like an ad on Hulu.
But one of the things all the video sites for major networks have done is to make the content free for the end user. They're all ad supported and while they do tend to include the same number of commercial breaks that you'd get on television they all only show one ad per break on the Internet. The other trend I haven't found an exception for (at least for sites owned by networks) is the choice of Flash video. Although some sites players that require you to install an additional plugin to use their player the video itself is still Flash.
Everything else seems to vary: the quality of the video, whether the video will have the option of HD, whether the player works in multiple browsers, DRM (I assume that's what the plugin is really for but it was really explicit when trying to view videos on TNT's site, at least at first), even whether the video can fill the screen. (Lifetime's videos for Project Runway do not fill the entire screen even on the full screen setting. It's not letterboxed either; there's black around the whole picture.)
There's a lot that must go into this: loads of storage for the video for one thing. Then there's the database for the shows, their episodes, reviews, discussions, user accounts, etc. They must have a way of automating the commercial breaks: there's too much content to have someone going into the Flash and hard coding it for each video. Not to mention the fact that the videos will have a different number of commercial breaks and at different points in the video, even for videos of the same length.
6th Week of Class: It's 10PM. Do you know where your data is?
We're all doing group presentations in Database Management. The group I was in did a presentation on Multi-factor Authentication.
Since we had to touch on various technologies that can be used to implement this I had to leave a couple of things out of the presentation to stay within the time limit.
A couple recently sued their bank for not having Multi-factor Authentication. They even cited the FFIEC in the lawsuit. We mentioned in our presentation that money was a barrier for some companies when it comes for MFA because the technologies to implement it can be expensive. However, if there are more lawsuits like this, it might become too expensive not to have it.
I mentioned skimmers but didn't have time to do much more than mention a couple of sites where you could learn more. Here's a video from a British show, The Real Hustle, showing how the crooks use skimmers:
Commonwealth Bank has a pdf showing how to spot a skimmer and the Consumerist has several articles about skimmers.
What will be interesting to see is what kind of backlash there will be if and when businesses start to require their end users to use a 'something you have' factor for authentication. If/when a company many people use like Bank of America requires this people will freak. They will not care if it's free and they will not care if it keeps their information insecure. To them it will an inconvenience. I could tell you stories, but they're work related. Instead, I'll use Internet Explorer as an example. IE6 is less secure than IE7 and 8, Internet Explorer is free to upgrade, but many people in the US still use IE6.
Some people will be happy to see it happen. Anyone who's had their account compromised for instance. Maybe I'll be wrong and most people will just be upset it wasn't done sooner.
Since we had to touch on various technologies that can be used to implement this I had to leave a couple of things out of the presentation to stay within the time limit.
A couple recently sued their bank for not having Multi-factor Authentication. They even cited the FFIEC in the lawsuit. We mentioned in our presentation that money was a barrier for some companies when it comes for MFA because the technologies to implement it can be expensive. However, if there are more lawsuits like this, it might become too expensive not to have it.
I mentioned skimmers but didn't have time to do much more than mention a couple of sites where you could learn more. Here's a video from a British show, The Real Hustle, showing how the crooks use skimmers:
Commonwealth Bank has a pdf showing how to spot a skimmer and the Consumerist has several articles about skimmers.
What will be interesting to see is what kind of backlash there will be if and when businesses start to require their end users to use a 'something you have' factor for authentication. If/when a company many people use like Bank of America requires this people will freak. They will not care if it's free and they will not care if it keeps their information insecure. To them it will an inconvenience. I could tell you stories, but they're work related. Instead, I'll use Internet Explorer as an example. IE6 is less secure than IE7 and 8, Internet Explorer is free to upgrade, but many people in the US still use IE6.
Some people will be happy to see it happen. Anyone who's had their account compromised for instance. Maybe I'll be wrong and most people will just be upset it wasn't done sooner.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
5th Week of Class: Tricking out Twitter
So there are a lot of Twitter Apps out there. Some are meant to let you use Twitter along with something else and other are meant to enhance Twitter itself. Ones that caught my eye:
TwitterAnalyzer: the description for the app says that it is sometimes called "Google Analytics for Twitter users". With over 50+ statistics measures I can see many organizations wanting to use this. In addition to some demographic info they're always looking for they can also see how often they're mentioned on Twitter and who's talking about them. A business like Pizza Hut could direct message someone a coupon because they've tweeted about having pizza delivered for the 50th time.
FitClick Diet Tweets: You send it a tweet of the food you ate and it will track the food and the calories in it. It can also track protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc. but it looks like only the calorie counter and food diary are free. It seems like an easier way of tracking that than carrying around a journal or waiting until you get home to enter it into a Word or Excel file. Frankly, I'm curious about how much food they can actually do calorie counts for. It takes 5 minutes though, so you can get instant gratification for curiousity's sake.
JustBought.it: Share photos and tweets about your purchases. While I'm not dying to go out and announce where I live and shop with everyone on the planet I can see this being used to help people find out which bookstore still has a certain textbook or other hard to find items. I can also see people on Ravlery using this to talk about yarn purchases. Many of us already photograph all the yarn we buy anyway.
Tweet what you Spend: Like FitClick the appeal is the ability to track the details of a certain event away from home without using pen and paper. In this case the event is spending cash. There is also an app to help you sort and categorize your cash spending. If I were to use this (see above description on why I might not be keen on that) I'd use it to make a separate tool I use to track spending more accurate.
Weatherizer: Changes the background of your Twitter home page based on your local weather. While it doesn't have many different possibilities for what it could be used for I think this is nifty. Windows ME had desktops that were essentially HTML pages. The default had a background that changed depending on the time of day you turned your computer on. If they expanded the app to change based on different events that would be really cool. Maybe even change based on events in Twitter. You could have your background change when you got your 100th follower or something.
TwitterAnalyzer: the description for the app says that it is sometimes called "Google Analytics for Twitter users". With over 50+ statistics measures I can see many organizations wanting to use this. In addition to some demographic info they're always looking for they can also see how often they're mentioned on Twitter and who's talking about them. A business like Pizza Hut could direct message someone a coupon because they've tweeted about having pizza delivered for the 50th time.
FitClick Diet Tweets: You send it a tweet of the food you ate and it will track the food and the calories in it. It can also track protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc. but it looks like only the calorie counter and food diary are free. It seems like an easier way of tracking that than carrying around a journal or waiting until you get home to enter it into a Word or Excel file. Frankly, I'm curious about how much food they can actually do calorie counts for. It takes 5 minutes though, so you can get instant gratification for curiousity's sake.
JustBought.it: Share photos and tweets about your purchases. While I'm not dying to go out and announce where I live and shop with everyone on the planet I can see this being used to help people find out which bookstore still has a certain textbook or other hard to find items. I can also see people on Ravlery using this to talk about yarn purchases. Many of us already photograph all the yarn we buy anyway.
Tweet what you Spend: Like FitClick the appeal is the ability to track the details of a certain event away from home without using pen and paper. In this case the event is spending cash. There is also an app to help you sort and categorize your cash spending. If I were to use this (see above description on why I might not be keen on that) I'd use it to make a separate tool I use to track spending more accurate.
Weatherizer: Changes the background of your Twitter home page based on your local weather. While it doesn't have many different possibilities for what it could be used for I think this is nifty. Windows ME had desktops that were essentially HTML pages. The default had a background that changed depending on the time of day you turned your computer on. If they expanded the app to change based on different events that would be really cool. Maybe even change based on events in Twitter. You could have your background change when you got your 100th follower or something.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
5th Week of Class: Step 1: Tweet, Step 2: ..., Step 3: Profit!
I was skeptical of Twitter when I first heard about it. 140 characters is too short to be useful, right?
But then I stared reading stories about different entities using Twitter on Consumerist (over time, not specifically for this assignment). It sounded silly at first, but some of them had good ideas about how to use Twitter. Now I don't even blink when I hear that another group or business is using Twitter. In fact, even a few of my employer's clients use Twitter. Los Angeles Federal Credit Union has a Twitter feed (and a Facebook page and a YouTube account). So does Mobiloil Federal Credit Union.
Stories that changed my mind about Twitter
Boston Police Department: We Will Let You Know When The Zombies Come
OK, the headline is funny but the BPD Twitter feed has information that's not just useful, but the kind of information you'd actually want sent to your phone. Police departments using Twitter means that they can do what I've been saying the Amber Alerts should be doing which is to send people text messages when a child goes missing.
TweetCongress Lets You Succinctly Shout At Your Congresspeople Online
This is actually a collection of Twitter feeds by people in Congress. I imagine it's mostly interns updating it but it's still a way to know what they're doing. (I'd love to know how this turns out. Better have a moderator.)
Comcast's Twitter Reps Save The Day...
OK, so it would be better if their normal customer service representatives had been able to handle it but in general having an alternate way of contacting customer service is a good thing. If you don't want to wait on hold to report that your Internet connection is kaput you can send a tweet instead.
As the above examples show, organizations can use Twitter to alert their followers to recent news and changes as well as resolve issues. It's also a good promotional tool: Many congresspeople send tweets about when and where they'll be speaking to their constituency next. Businesses can tweet coupon codes, contests, and sales information. Non-profits can tweet their progress in fund-raising goals.
But then I stared reading stories about different entities using Twitter on Consumerist (over time, not specifically for this assignment). It sounded silly at first, but some of them had good ideas about how to use Twitter. Now I don't even blink when I hear that another group or business is using Twitter. In fact, even a few of my employer's clients use Twitter. Los Angeles Federal Credit Union has a Twitter feed (and a Facebook page and a YouTube account). So does Mobiloil Federal Credit Union.
Stories that changed my mind about Twitter
Boston Police Department: We Will Let You Know When The Zombies Come
OK, the headline is funny but the BPD Twitter feed has information that's not just useful, but the kind of information you'd actually want sent to your phone. Police departments using Twitter means that they can do what I've been saying the Amber Alerts should be doing which is to send people text messages when a child goes missing.
TweetCongress Lets You Succinctly Shout At Your Congresspeople Online
This is actually a collection of Twitter feeds by people in Congress. I imagine it's mostly interns updating it but it's still a way to know what they're doing. (I'd love to know how this turns out. Better have a moderator.)
Comcast's Twitter Reps Save The Day...
OK, so it would be better if their normal customer service representatives had been able to handle it but in general having an alternate way of contacting customer service is a good thing. If you don't want to wait on hold to report that your Internet connection is kaput you can send a tweet instead.
As the above examples show, organizations can use Twitter to alert their followers to recent news and changes as well as resolve issues. It's also a good promotional tool: Many congresspeople send tweets about when and where they'll be speaking to their constituency next. Businesses can tweet coupon codes, contests, and sales information. Non-profits can tweet their progress in fund-raising goals.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
5th Week of Class: Twittering About
I did not have a Twitter account before this assignment. (No podcasts, no RSS feeds...you might be wondering if I even spend any time on the Internet!) I'd heard of the character limit and some people and groups using it but I didn't know any of the details about using it.
Signing up was easy. They even check your username for availability when you stop typing in the text field for it.
What to Tweet
The video on the first Help page tells you, "In general...tweets answer the question 'What are you doing right now?'". The character limit is to keep messages brief. They also suggest tweeting links, questions, and reactions.
Types of Tweets
A normal tweet is public to everyone. You can change your privacy settings so that only people following you can view your tweets. A direct message will send a private message to one person.
You can write a reply to what someone has said by beginning your tweet with '@[username]' (ex. '@bob'). This is called an '@reply'. If you put the '@[username]' anywhere else in the tweet it is considered a 'mention'. An @reply, unlike a direct message, is public to everyone.
It is a convention on Twitter to place the letters 'RT', short for retweet, somewhere in a tweet that quotes an existing tweet. This is not an official function of Twitter or even a rule but probably a good idea so that people don't think that others are trying to take credit for something they said.
Limits on Tweeting
While you can delete a tweet you can not edit them. If there's something you want to change you'll have to remove the whole thing and retype it. HTML is not allowed for security reasons but they'll change an URL to a link for you.
What not to Tweet
There's the obvious things that are banned everywhere: Spam, phishing, malware, illegal activities and the promotion of illegal activities, violent threates, private/confidential information, impersonation, copyright violations, and trademark infringement.
You may not use the 'Verified Accounts' badge without Twitter's approval.
The only potential surprise in what you may not do is that Twitter's definition of 'private and confidential' is a bit broader than other companies' definition. A street address falls under the category of private/confidential on Twitter whereas on other sites they might just say, "Hey, it's in the public domain".
This is clearly to prevent harassment. They do not want people blasting someone's contact information along with the message "Get 'em!" Unfortunately, they do not state how this is enforced. They may not mind people tweeting an address for anything other than a private residence but they might not want street addresses on Twitter at all.
NEWS: Twitter eliminates certain kinds of users with a Terms of Service update
Signing up was easy. They even check your username for availability when you stop typing in the text field for it.
What to Tweet
The video on the first Help page tells you, "In general...tweets answer the question 'What are you doing right now?'". The character limit is to keep messages brief. They also suggest tweeting links, questions, and reactions.
Types of Tweets
A normal tweet is public to everyone. You can change your privacy settings so that only people following you can view your tweets. A direct message will send a private message to one person.
You can write a reply to what someone has said by beginning your tweet with '@[username]' (ex. '@bob'). This is called an '@reply'. If you put the '@[username]' anywhere else in the tweet it is considered a 'mention'. An @reply, unlike a direct message, is public to everyone.
It is a convention on Twitter to place the letters 'RT', short for retweet, somewhere in a tweet that quotes an existing tweet. This is not an official function of Twitter or even a rule but probably a good idea so that people don't think that others are trying to take credit for something they said.
Limits on Tweeting
While you can delete a tweet you can not edit them. If there's something you want to change you'll have to remove the whole thing and retype it. HTML is not allowed for security reasons but they'll change an URL to a link for you.
What not to Tweet
There's the obvious things that are banned everywhere: Spam, phishing, malware, illegal activities and the promotion of illegal activities, violent threates, private/confidential information, impersonation, copyright violations, and trademark infringement.
You may not use the 'Verified Accounts' badge without Twitter's approval.
The only potential surprise in what you may not do is that Twitter's definition of 'private and confidential' is a bit broader than other companies' definition. A street address falls under the category of private/confidential on Twitter whereas on other sites they might just say, "Hey, it's in the public domain".
This is clearly to prevent harassment. They do not want people blasting someone's contact information along with the message "Get 'em!" Unfortunately, they do not state how this is enforced. They may not mind people tweeting an address for anything other than a private residence but they might not want street addresses on Twitter at all.
NEWS: Twitter eliminates certain kinds of users with a Terms of Service update
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
4th Week of Class: Storage Options
I need to correct something I said about the assigned weekly in my first post. I said that the required weekly post would be about "topics discussed in class or reading material". In fact, the requirement for the weekly post is that it be about something we learned that's related to our Internet Technology classes.
This news came the RSS feed for the W3C, one of 25 I subscribed to through Google Reader as part of last weeks assignment.
The Rich Web Client Group recently released Working Drafts: one for Web Storage and one for Web Database. (Learn about W3C Activities) Each is related to storing information on the Internet.
The Web Storage Draft defines an API that will hold information similarly to how a cookie does, in key-value pairs, but seeks to overcome some of the problems and limitations that cookies have. The draft gives a couple of examples of the problems that can happen with using cookies and I have had the issue they point out in the airline ticket example happen to me before.
The Web Database Draft defines an API for adding and accessing information in databases. This draft shows some example code at the beginning. It never names a language so maybe they intend for it to be language independent.
Each will be dependent on HTML5* and WebIDL, neither of which are finished yet. I guess I shouldn't expect to see either finished anytime soon.
*The review comment form on this page is nifty.
This news came the RSS feed for the W3C, one of 25 I subscribed to through Google Reader as part of last weeks assignment.
The Rich Web Client Group recently released Working Drafts: one for Web Storage and one for Web Database. (Learn about W3C Activities) Each is related to storing information on the Internet.
The Web Storage Draft defines an API that will hold information similarly to how a cookie does, in key-value pairs, but seeks to overcome some of the problems and limitations that cookies have. The draft gives a couple of examples of the problems that can happen with using cookies and I have had the issue they point out in the airline ticket example happen to me before.
The Web Database Draft defines an API for adding and accessing information in databases. This draft shows some example code at the beginning. It never names a language so maybe they intend for it to be language independent.
Each will be dependent on HTML5* and WebIDL, neither of which are finished yet. I guess I shouldn't expect to see either finished anytime soon.
*The review comment form on this page is nifty.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
4th Week of Class: A Libretto and a Musical Score
We're going to have an Opera Evangelist as a guest speaker in our class this week. As such, we're all doing some research into the Opera Software Company.
Opera Software ASA is a public company that was founded in 1995. It is headquartered in Oslo, Norway but has offices in other countries including the USA.
Products
Their first product was their web browser, Opera, currently in version 10. Users had to pay for the early versions of Opera after 30 days. This was changed to an ad supported model in version 5. In 2005 ads were dropped completely in version 8.5. Google currently pays Opera to be the browser's default search engine.
Opera Mini: A web browser designed for cell phones, this product is currently in version 4.2. The company is working on getting video to work on more phones but the feature is available on some Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones.
Opera Mobile: A web browser designed for smartphones and PDAs. Version 9.7 is in beta. To quote the product page this was "the first mobile browser to bring the full Web to the small mobile screen". The browser makes it possible to view full web sites on mobile devices.
In addition to this Opera offers browsers for all kinds of other devices from the Nintendo Wii to refrigerators.
Opera Dragonfly is listed on the company web site as a separate product but it's included in recent versions of the browser. It's an open source debugging tool. It works even in smaller devices and you can set breakpoints in your code.
Opera Unite: this turns the Opera web browser. I really hope the guest speaker talks about this because it sounds very interesting.
Ideas
The Opera Software company doesn't just create products and call it a day. They do a lot of work in promoting web standards. In fact their CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, is the person who came up with the idea for Cascading Style Sheets. The company regularly has tours and seminars on web standards and even has a Web Standards Curriculum. The curriculum is not yet finished; there are 10 articles on JavaScript that have not been published yet.
The Vision page on the company site states their beliefs about what the Web ought to be and how a company should be run but the one that stood out to me was their statement on accessibility. What makes it stand out? That it's even there. Most web sites don't say anything about accessibility much less explain how they intend to make it work. If they do anything they usually just have a text only version of the site. (J.K Rowling's site is the only exception I can think of but I don't know how accessible Flash can be.) Opera intends to make their existing site accessible and even stated what their goal is as far as how accessible the site should be.
I admit, I thought the statement was going to be about encouraging other web developers to do the same thing but that might be part of their standards curriculum.
News
CNet has a review of Opera Mini 5 beta
The NY Times recommends Opera mainly because of it's Turbo technology
Opera Software ASA is a public company that was founded in 1995. It is headquartered in Oslo, Norway but has offices in other countries including the USA.
Products
Their first product was their web browser, Opera, currently in version 10. Users had to pay for the early versions of Opera after 30 days. This was changed to an ad supported model in version 5. In 2005 ads were dropped completely in version 8.5. Google currently pays Opera to be the browser's default search engine.
Opera Mini: A web browser designed for cell phones, this product is currently in version 4.2. The company is working on getting video to work on more phones but the feature is available on some Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones.
Opera Mobile: A web browser designed for smartphones and PDAs. Version 9.7 is in beta. To quote the product page this was "the first mobile browser to bring the full Web to the small mobile screen". The browser makes it possible to view full web sites on mobile devices.
In addition to this Opera offers browsers for all kinds of other devices from the Nintendo Wii to refrigerators.
Opera Dragonfly is listed on the company web site as a separate product but it's included in recent versions of the browser. It's an open source debugging tool. It works even in smaller devices and you can set breakpoints in your code.
Opera Unite: this turns the Opera web browser. I really hope the guest speaker talks about this because it sounds very interesting.
Ideas
The Opera Software company doesn't just create products and call it a day. They do a lot of work in promoting web standards. In fact their CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, is the person who came up with the idea for Cascading Style Sheets. The company regularly has tours and seminars on web standards and even has a Web Standards Curriculum. The curriculum is not yet finished; there are 10 articles on JavaScript that have not been published yet.
The Vision page on the company site states their beliefs about what the Web ought to be and how a company should be run but the one that stood out to me was their statement on accessibility. What makes it stand out? That it's even there. Most web sites don't say anything about accessibility much less explain how they intend to make it work. If they do anything they usually just have a text only version of the site. (J.K Rowling's site is the only exception I can think of but I don't know how accessible Flash can be.) Opera intends to make their existing site accessible and even stated what their goal is as far as how accessible the site should be.
I admit, I thought the statement was going to be about encouraging other web developers to do the same thing but that might be part of their standards curriculum.
News
CNet has a review of Opera Mini 5 beta
The NY Times recommends Opera mainly because of it's Turbo technology
Sunday, September 13, 2009
4th Week of Class: Editing Wikipedia
The first part of our homework for this week is to become an editor for Wikipedia and make a change to an existing article. (BTW, Wikipedia made a major change in how certain articles will be edited.)
I decided to check the Wikipedia article on knitting and did find something missing that I could add. Only one word but I was surprised it was missing. The sentence in question also had a grammatical error. I would say exactly what I changed but Wikipedia recommends against using your real name there. Saying what I changed in a blog that does use my real name would defeat the purpose of using a pseudonym.
I clicked on the edit link for that paragraph expecting to be taken to a login page but it turns out that you can edit Wikipedia without creating an account. They will however publicly log your IP address. Creating an account prevents this.
I follow a link on the Edit page to the Create an Account page. This quickly became the page I wished I could edit. First, although the page puts the things you must do to create a user name a password before the form fields, it puts the things you should consider regarding your privacy after the form. You know that some people filled that form out without scrolling to the bottom of the page first. In my opinion, the submit button for a form should come after everything the end user should read before they actually hit the button.
The second problem I ran into is that you can not check to see whether a user name is available before submitting the form. Having to retype passwords and CAPTHA text just to find out the user name you picked is already taken is annoying. If you sign up for a Windows Live account it lets you check for availability of a user name without submitting the main form. I tried one of the CAPTHA phrases but it was also taken.
My third attempt is successful. I get the Login successful page and wish I could bookmark it since it contains a list of the first few things I should learn about Wikipedia. I bookmark the individual links for the policies I should learn first.
Doing the actual edit and preview was simple enough. I checked the links at the bottom of the page before saving my changes and it was a good thing I did. They always want an edit summary and what's pre-populated in that field is not sufficient. Their definition of a minor edit is also more narrow that what I would have assumed. Adding even one word can be a major edit if you are adding content and not just making a grammatical change. However, not all changes have to be cited only ones that may be challenged and quotations. I doubt my change will be challenged but I decided to watch the page just in case.
Doing a small change was not too difficult or time consuming but I would definitely read the guidelines and policies before making a change larger than this one.
I decided to check the Wikipedia article on knitting and did find something missing that I could add. Only one word but I was surprised it was missing. The sentence in question also had a grammatical error. I would say exactly what I changed but Wikipedia recommends against using your real name there. Saying what I changed in a blog that does use my real name would defeat the purpose of using a pseudonym.
I clicked on the edit link for that paragraph expecting to be taken to a login page but it turns out that you can edit Wikipedia without creating an account. They will however publicly log your IP address. Creating an account prevents this.
I follow a link on the Edit page to the Create an Account page. This quickly became the page I wished I could edit. First, although the page puts the things you must do to create a user name a password before the form fields, it puts the things you should consider regarding your privacy after the form. You know that some people filled that form out without scrolling to the bottom of the page first. In my opinion, the submit button for a form should come after everything the end user should read before they actually hit the button.
The second problem I ran into is that you can not check to see whether a user name is available before submitting the form. Having to retype passwords and CAPTHA text just to find out the user name you picked is already taken is annoying. If you sign up for a Windows Live account it lets you check for availability of a user name without submitting the main form. I tried one of the CAPTHA phrases but it was also taken.
My third attempt is successful. I get the Login successful page and wish I could bookmark it since it contains a list of the first few things I should learn about Wikipedia. I bookmark the individual links for the policies I should learn first.
Doing the actual edit and preview was simple enough. I checked the links at the bottom of the page before saving my changes and it was a good thing I did. They always want an edit summary and what's pre-populated in that field is not sufficient. Their definition of a minor edit is also more narrow that what I would have assumed. Adding even one word can be a major edit if you are adding content and not just making a grammatical change. However, not all changes have to be cited only ones that may be challenged and quotations. I doubt my change will be challenged but I decided to watch the page just in case.
Doing a small change was not too difficult or time consuming but I would definitely read the guidelines and policies before making a change larger than this one.
Monday, September 7, 2009
3rd Week of Class: Underutilized Code
Part of our homework for MIST 7500 has been HTML tutorials. At one point in the tutorial for this week the voice over says that the code for tables they're about to show is underutilized. With the exception of regular frames, I think the same could be said about all of the code in this tutorial when it comes to my own web development experience.
I had completely forgotten about cols and colgroups. It's been a while since I've had to build a table from scratch but I still can't recall why I stopped using colgroups. Is it a deprecated tag? No, it isn't deprecated. I couldn't think of why I'd stopped using it.
Then I checked the lab assignment in Firefox.
Firefox recognizes the width attribute in a col tag but not align. Align is deprecated so I try an inline style and it still doesn't work. I'm not sure if that's why I stopped using them but I'd love to know why Firefox doesn't support this.
I thought for a second that Firefox didn't support accesskey either but I figured out that if you use ALT + SHIFT and the letter it works. I haven't noticed many sites using accesskeys.
Although I've seen and used variables in mailto links it seems like most people don't want anything pre-filled, at least not in a normal link.
I had completely forgotten about cols and colgroups. It's been a while since I've had to build a table from scratch but I still can't recall why I stopped using colgroups. Is it a deprecated tag? No, it isn't deprecated. I couldn't think of why I'd stopped using it.
Then I checked the lab assignment in Firefox.
Firefox recognizes the width attribute in a col tag but not align. Align is deprecated so I try an inline style and it still doesn't work. I'm not sure if that's why I stopped using them but I'd love to know why Firefox doesn't support this.
I thought for a second that Firefox didn't support accesskey either but I figured out that if you use ALT + SHIFT and the letter it works. I haven't noticed many sites using accesskeys.
Although I've seen and used variables in mailto links it seems like most people don't want anything pre-filled, at least not in a normal link.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
2nd Week of Class (8/27/2009): Who's In Charge Here
*A note on writing style: It will probably only be my classmates reading this but since this blog is open to the Internet at large I'm going to be writing as if the person reading it is not in the class.
*A second note: I can't seem to comment on my on posts. Anyone else having this problem?
In our first class we talked about computer network protocols. We broke into groups to look up and then discuss different parts of the OSI Model, the TCP/IP Model, and how they differ. Our next class began with a scavenger hunt.
It was much less exhausting than the last scavenger hunt I was in (running around downtown during the summer) because it was online. We all looked up information to answer questions about how the Internet works and who makes it work.
I found this question to be the most difficult:
Aside from the W3C and WaSP, list two entities that help govern the web.
Because really, how do you look that up if you don't already know the names of the groups? It seems kind of like using a dictionary to find out how to spell a word. You have to be pretty close to the answer for that to work. If you don't know that pterodactyl begins with a 'p' you're out of luck.
I mean it's not like you can just ask 'Who is in charge of the Internet'...oh, apparently you can.
Still, it was the only question without an obvious search query and I'm curious as to how people who didn't have an organization or two in mind for the question went about searching for the answer.
We also watched a video called (warning: page plays sound) Warriors of the Net. It explains how information is transmitted over the Internet by showing the journey of one packet of data from one computer to another. The video really does an excellent job too. It doesn't have any techno babble; any technical term it uses it explains and it doesn't use any more technical terms than strictly necessary. It doesn't get bogged down in details or go off on tangents. Most importantly, in my opinion, it doesn't assume that the audience knows anything about this beforehand.
This may sound obvious and unremarkable. You might be thinking, "Shouldn't it do all that if they're explaining something? What's the big deal?" However, it has been my experience that it doesn't always happen that way, especially when it comes to things related to computers or the Internet. If you think I'm exaggerating go to the bookstore and look at all the titles in the computer section that are manuals for specific programs. The Missing Manual series even refers to itself as "The book that should have been in the box". Well, why wasn't in the box?
*A second note: I can't seem to comment on my on posts. Anyone else having this problem?
In our first class we talked about computer network protocols. We broke into groups to look up and then discuss different parts of the OSI Model, the TCP/IP Model, and how they differ. Our next class began with a scavenger hunt.
It was much less exhausting than the last scavenger hunt I was in (running around downtown during the summer) because it was online. We all looked up information to answer questions about how the Internet works and who makes it work.
I found this question to be the most difficult:
Aside from the W3C and WaSP, list two entities that help govern the web.
Because really, how do you look that up if you don't already know the names of the groups? It seems kind of like using a dictionary to find out how to spell a word. You have to be pretty close to the answer for that to work. If you don't know that pterodactyl begins with a 'p' you're out of luck.
I mean it's not like you can just ask 'Who is in charge of the Internet'...oh, apparently you can.
Still, it was the only question without an obvious search query and I'm curious as to how people who didn't have an organization or two in mind for the question went about searching for the answer.
We also watched a video called (warning: page plays sound) Warriors of the Net. It explains how information is transmitted over the Internet by showing the journey of one packet of data from one computer to another. The video really does an excellent job too. It doesn't have any techno babble; any technical term it uses it explains and it doesn't use any more technical terms than strictly necessary. It doesn't get bogged down in details or go off on tangents. Most importantly, in my opinion, it doesn't assume that the audience knows anything about this beforehand.
This may sound obvious and unremarkable. You might be thinking, "Shouldn't it do all that if they're explaining something? What's the big deal?" However, it has been my experience that it doesn't always happen that way, especially when it comes to things related to computers or the Internet. If you think I'm exaggerating go to the bookstore and look at all the titles in the computer section that are manuals for specific programs. The Missing Manual series even refers to itself as "The book that should have been in the box". Well, why wasn't in the box?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
First Day of Class (8/20/2009)
In most classes the first day routine goes as follows: teacher introduces themself, the students all introduce themselves, and then the teacher goes over the syllabus and what topics the class will cover.
In the first day for MIST 7500 we came up with topics we could discuss in class before we hit the syllabus. One of the ones that was mentioned was paying for content on the Internet. This is an issue that even the most casual Internet surfer is aware of: should the visitors to a web site pay to access the content, should it be supported by ads, or both? The short answer is, in my opinion, "It depends".
There's been plenty of news about companies wanting users to pay. The Boston Globe announced it would start charging readers earlier this month. Back in June a board member of Hulu stated that hulu.com might move to or add a subscription model. My first reaction to both is that neither will work. Readers of The Boston Globe will go to other news sites and they'll just flat out mess up monetizing Hulu by introducing bundles or tiers. On the other hand, people do pay for The New York Times online. **Correction: General access for The New York Times is free, it just requires registration. Only certain sections of the site require you to pay first.
But can any site exist soley on ad revenue? YouTube, which is free to users and has ads, is losing money. Most free sites I can think of are only free up to a point. If you want the really good stuff (or at least unlimited use) you have to pay: Flickr and Popcap are good examples. Even non-commercial web sites that don't require payment for any of their content ask for donations. I'm sure there are businesses baffled that people will donate money to a free web site but won't pay for content on a commercial site.
So what works best? I said that it depends and here's what I think it depends on:
The first and third items create a Catch-22. People don't want to have to pay for something that was once free but they won't pay for a completely unknown product or service. Businesses are stuck having to give something away for free to make what they're selling popular but then can't get anyone to pay later because the potential customers are used to getting it for free. This is what happened to newspapers. They put all of their content online for free and then no one had a reason to pay for the paper anymore. I remember the term "cannibalizing" being used by someone at work for this: one product or service taking away all of the customers and revenue from another product or service.
In the first day for MIST 7500 we came up with topics we could discuss in class before we hit the syllabus. One of the ones that was mentioned was paying for content on the Internet. This is an issue that even the most casual Internet surfer is aware of: should the visitors to a web site pay to access the content, should it be supported by ads, or both? The short answer is, in my opinion, "It depends".
There's been plenty of news about companies wanting users to pay. The Boston Globe announced it would start charging readers earlier this month. Back in June a board member of Hulu stated that hulu.com might move to or add a subscription model. My first reaction to both is that neither will work. Readers of The Boston Globe will go to other news sites and they'll just flat out mess up monetizing Hulu by introducing bundles or tiers. On the other hand, people do pay for The New York Times online. **Correction: General access for The New York Times is free, it just requires registration. Only certain sections of the site require you to pay first.
But can any site exist soley on ad revenue? YouTube, which is free to users and has ads, is losing money. Most free sites I can think of are only free up to a point. If you want the really good stuff (or at least unlimited use) you have to pay: Flickr and Popcap are good examples. Even non-commercial web sites that don't require payment for any of their content ask for donations. I'm sure there are businesses baffled that people will donate money to a free web site but won't pay for content on a commercial site.
So what works best? I said that it depends and here's what I think it depends on:
- Whether the content can be obtained for free
- How difficult producing the content is perceived to be
- How popular the content is
The first and third items create a Catch-22. People don't want to have to pay for something that was once free but they won't pay for a completely unknown product or service. Businesses are stuck having to give something away for free to make what they're selling popular but then can't get anyone to pay later because the potential customers are used to getting it for free. This is what happened to newspapers. They put all of their content online for free and then no one had a reason to pay for the paper anymore. I remember the term "cannibalizing" being used by someone at work for this: one product or service taking away all of the customers and revenue from another product or service.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
An Introduction
My name is Benaiah Morgan and this blog is for a class I am taking in graduate school, Internet Technology (MIST 7500). I made the title of the blog generic in case I use it for other classes. The blog will be updated weekly with at least one post per class and at least 200 words per post.
In this blog I will be writing about the topics discussed in class and/or reading material. The class is going to be a survey of the Internet: its uses, technologies, tools, and business and social issues. We are also going to be doing some programming for mobile devices, which is new to the degree program.
So the blog is going to be similar to those journals you might have had to write for English class where you wrote about each chapter of the book(s) you were reading except this is public and my classmates can leave comments about what I’ve written.
We’ve been encouraged to include images and links related to what we’re discussing in our posts so here’s a disclaimer:
From time to time the blog may link to third party sites. These links have been included because they may be of some use to you. Although the author will take care to only link to sites that are relevant, appropriate, and safe the author is not liable for the content of third party web sites. By clicking on a third party link you agree that you do so at your own risk. You are encouraged to read any Privacy Policies or Terms of Use agreements third parties may provide.
In this blog I will be writing about the topics discussed in class and/or reading material. The class is going to be a survey of the Internet: its uses, technologies, tools, and business and social issues. We are also going to be doing some programming for mobile devices, which is new to the degree program.
So the blog is going to be similar to those journals you might have had to write for English class where you wrote about each chapter of the book(s) you were reading except this is public and my classmates can leave comments about what I’ve written.
We’ve been encouraged to include images and links related to what we’re discussing in our posts so here’s a disclaimer:
From time to time the blog may link to third party sites. These links have been included because they may be of some use to you. Although the author will take care to only link to sites that are relevant, appropriate, and safe the author is not liable for the content of third party web sites. By clicking on a third party link you agree that you do so at your own risk. You are encouraged to read any Privacy Policies or Terms of Use agreements third parties may provide.
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