Benaiah Morgan's Graduate School Blog

Week 12 - Frustrating Forms

2010-11-17T17:44:00.000-08:00

If you've been browsing the Web for more than a day, you've used a form. Whether it's registering for an account, completing a purchase, or leaving a comment it seems like most sites have at least one form. The first thing I remember doing on the Internet was doing a search for Cartoon Network: entering a search term into a text box and clicking the submit button.

But if you've been browsing the Web for a while you've probably run into a form that made things difficult. The following things really grind my gears when I'm trying to fill out a form:

"What do you want?"
The label for this form input doesn't make sense. It's either too brief to be clear or the wording is just confusing.

Make form labels as clear as possible by:

Avoid using jargon (unless it's jargon your target audience is familiar with)
Use verbs or sentence completion
Use complete questions or phrases
Clearly differentiate form fields asking for the same information but for a different reason
For example: shipping information vs billing information

"What do you mean it's wrong? What's wrong with it?"
The form won't let me submit but doesn't tell me why. Yes, the phone number field turned red but since I put in a full phone number I don't know why it isn't accepting it.

Help users enter information correctly by:

Placing any formatting requirements next to the input
Example: xxx-xxx-xxxx or "no dashes, dots, or spaces - numbers only"
Place an example in an input field that would otherwise be empty
Consider adding code that formats the user's input for them

Related item: Tell the user their input is wrong after it loses focus. It can be irritating to reach the end of the form and find out half of it is wrong.

This is probably just me but...
Quick! Where's the search on this site? (Click for large image)

If you picked the larger text input to the right of the Sony ad then, congratulations! You have the same dis-function that prevents me from realizing that the text "Got a tip for us?" does NOT mean "Hey, this is a site search!" But maybe it makes sense to make that form more prominent. The regulars on the site are probably used to it.

The search form is actually the small on at the very top of the page to the right of the word 'login'. Wait, what? Is it me or does the login link end up looking like it's the label for that text box?

Placing form elements (or entire forms) in unexpected places or placing them too close to unrelated content can confuse people like me.

Avoid this problem by:

Clearly separating forms from regular page content
Clearly separate forms from each other if there's more than one on a page
Follow conventions: if most sites place an element in a certain location then do the same thing

To be fair, Gizmodo did follow convention by placing the site search in the upper-right hand corner. (I wasn't being sarcastic when I said this is probably just me.)

It broke, now what?
The form tries to submit but it fails. It either hangs there trying to reach the next page or it goes to an indecipherable error page. It may even crash the browser entirely. In any case the user has no idea whether the information they entered got to where it was supposed to go.

I'm not going to put a list of how to prevent this; it isn't something that's necessarily in your control as a web developer and that isn't the point anyway.

What I'd like to see is an error message that makes sense for the user and instructions for what to do now. "An error occurred while processing your transaction. Please contact [DEPARTMENT] at xxx-xxx-xxxx or help@company.com" If it's known that a certain kind of error only prevented the next page from coming up but the order when through put that on the error page. If it definitely means the order failed say that. (Is it even possible to know? If so, that'd be awesome.) Put instructions on what to do if the submission hangs in your Help section.

A "Whoops, we don't know what happened" is better than nothing.

Week 11: Responsive Web Design

2010-11-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

Something awesome happened at work last week.

During our team meeting our manager said that we would move forward with using some of the new features in HTML5 and CSS3 even though not everything is supported in every browser. We're not just letting go of pixel-perfect similarity between browsers, we're not worried about having the exact same visual effects and features. Instead of designing everything for the least capable browser the templates will be designed based on what's possible in modern browsers. Furthermore, the sites will be designed for multiple devices.

It's the most exciting thing since we dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 and I'm not even a designer.

So it seemed like rather good timing that J. Cornelius (VP of Operations at Coffee Cup and President of the Atlanta Web Design Group) came to speak to our class that same week and touched on the same thing.

Why is this good?

Less time spent tweaking
Deliver the best possible design regardless of browser
Deliver design meant for mobile
Things that are used are kept and improved
More pressure on browsers to adopt standards

I won't dwell on the first item since I've already ranted about it in a previous post. But the point made by John Allsopp earlier and reiterated by Cornelius last week applies to the second item as well: most people only use one browser. The person using IE7 doesn't care that the person using Opera or Firefox gets rounded corners and a different font. However, the people using Opera and Firefox will like how nice sites look that make full use of the standards those browsers support. There's really no reason those users should get less than what's possible.

But let's say for a second that a lot of people do use multiple browsers. If they have a browser the site looks better in wouldn't they just use that one rather than complain that the other browser doesn't show all the same stuff?

A lot of people already design for mobile but sometimes what happens is that a separate version of the site is built for mobile devices. Using CSS to make the existing site adjust for different devices will make maintenance much easier.

Another point is that it is important to use the new standards in order to keep them around. The W3C abandons things that aren't implemented by the browsers and the browser companies won't implement things unless there is pressure to do so. We can't wait for every browser in existence to support something to use it because that will never happen. While we're waiting for more support, W3C and the browser companies see little to no interest and the existing support gets dropped.

The major browser companies are using the W3C standards and the modern versions of their browsers have some level of support for HTML5 and CSS3. Since the browser wars are no longer about whose interpretation of the standards is correct the browsers have to compete based on who delivers the best experience. If a lot of sites start using something that's only supported by Mozilla that pressures the other browser companies to implement it as well.

Example Sites

Amped - Amped is the hack day that wrapped up Web Week in Atlanta. Currently, if you look at it in Firefox (3.6.4) you get the gradient background with the circular stripes. You don't see the stripes in Opera (10.63) but you do still see the effects with the font and text. In IE9 (9.0 beta) you lose the background stripes and font/text effects (but still looks cooler than how it does in IE6).

Robot or Not - This is the site our manager showed us right after coming back from An Event Apart (the conference put on by A List Apart). Designed by Ethan Marcotte, it is an excellent example of a site that adjusts to different browser window sizes.

More Information

A List Apart: Responsive Web Design

The Big Web Show: Episode #9

Responsive Web Design presentation on SlideShare

Week 10: My Thoughts on a SpoolCast episode

2010-11-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

SpoolCast talked to Luke Wroblewski back in October in an episode titled "Luke Wroblewski and Innovations in Web Input" (transcript available).

As the title suggests, they discussed some of the newer ways forms are handling user input and the newer ways users are able to input data. The main topics in the interview (in order):

Google Instant Search
Yahoo's experience with a similar product "Live Search"
Other sites using different versions of this search
Input from anywhere
Ping for iTunes

It's a good interview where many good points are made but there were three that stood out for me.

A feature added to your site should solve your specific problem

Google's Instant Search may be cool and useful but that does not mean that every web site should change their search to do the exact same thing in the exact same way. An instantaneous* response can backfire. The example given in the interview was a form immediately throwing an error when the first character for a user name was entered because 'L is not a user name'.

As a counter-example some registration forms, like the one for Twitter, put indicators next to the password field indicating their strength. As you type in the password and add in characters that meet the requirements (numbers, symbols, mixed case) the indicator goes from red and 'weak' to green and 'strong'. You know that your password is good enough as you're typing it: not after you've attempted to submit but you're not being interrupted by an error message either.

New features should help the user do what they need to easier and faster without frustrating them. This means doing some research and user-testing even when it's not something you're building from scratch.

Keep It Simple, Silly

Not a new lesson but sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are helping other sites let their users skip the registration process entirely. Services like Facebook Connect lets you log into an entirely different site using your existing account. The third party site avoids losing the user in the registration process, Facebook increases the value of their service to the user, and the user doesn't have to do anything other than log in to use the third party site.

Manage and Meet User Expectations

If Luke Wroblewski's opinion of Ping is typical of the people who used it then it seems that most of the problem was that people got something other than what they expected. Wroblewski was expecting his Ping account to pull information from his iTunes account but it didn't. He was also expecting it to work the way most other social sites do where there is very little limitations on what name or photo you use and no limit to what you can say that you like.

Part of this could have been avoided if people had known that their Ping accounts wouldn't be pre-populated with any data. User expectations can be managed by explaining what a new service will have, do, and be used for when it's announced. Demos are a good idea: they can make it clear what a service can't or won't do. I don't know what Apple did or didn't do with Ping before it was launched so this isn't to say that they didn't do any of this.

But another thing to do is to meet user expectations. I've honestly never heard of a social site or service that required you to not just use your real name but use it exactly how it appears on your credit card. I've also never heard of one that requires you to submit your user image for approval first. That's just odd. If they really didn't want to bother with having moderators check for anything inappropriate they could have just done what AdultSwim did and have a set of images for users to choose from.

This is all just my opinion and certainly not a substitute for listening or reading the interview so check it out if you haven't yet.

*I know people use the term "real time" but it sounds odd to me for anything that doesn't use some kind of alternative timing. We're not talking about an awards show on a 30 second delay or a video game where 3 minutes in real life is an hour in the game. We're talking about web sites. It'd be like getting on a slow elevator and saying, "I wish this elevator could get me to my floor in real time!".

See how that doesn't make sense? Clearly it wouldn't even be an elevator at that point but a teleporter.

Week 6 - Getting Access

2010-10-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

All people, regardless of any condition they may have that affects how they use a computer, should be able to use web sites. Poor development and design decisions can prevent that. We should all want to build accessible web sites because it's the right thing to do but that is not enough motivation for everybody. Some people think that making web sites accessible is too much work and not worth the effort. So here are 3 selfish reasons for making sites accessible.

It's good business
19.3% of the United States population in the year 2000 had some kind of disability. 17% of adult Americans report having some hearing loss. While not everyone who falls in the first 19.3% necessarily has a condition that affects how they use the Internet that is still a large number of people to ignore as potential customers. Would you have your sales people refuse to describe a shirt to a blind customer in your store? Then why do that with your web site?

"The ADA prevents that anyway" you say. I say that's a next segue for my next point: not making your site accessible could get you sued. Target ended up settling a lawsuit brought forth by the National Federation of the Blind for 6 million dollars because they were unable to use their site. Target's settlement with the NFB also required that they make the site accessible.

If you don't care about increasing your customer base you should at least care about covering your butt.
One day it could be you
Think about the amount of time you spend online and all the sites you like to visit. Now think about how you'd feel if you suddenly couldn't use most of those web sites anymore or if the number of sites you could use got smaller over time.

Not everyone who has a disability was born with it. Some people developed impairments with age. Some were caused by injury or illness. You might not care about sites being accessible now but you will when your short term memory won't hold onto which page you just visited, that artsy site becomes harder to read, that episode of your favorite show becomes harder to hear, and moving the mouse gets that much more painful.

Unless you're planning on becoming completely disinterested in the Internet at some point.

It's worth noting that while I keep using the word 'disability' there are things that affect your vision, hearing, cognitive abilities, and/or mobility that aren't considered disabilities, at least not by the general population.

It's also worth noting that you're probably taking advantage of things that done for accessibility already and not just on the web. (Sliding doors anyone?)
Professionalism
Just like coding to standards, making your sites accessible is just the right way to do it. If you want to be perceived as a professional in the industry then your sites will work for 100% (or as near to that as possible) of the population, not just 80%.

Some of this should happen anyway without the client asking for it, like alternate text. A lot of it will require input and/or permission from the client like the color scheme.

These aren't the only reasons but they're the best ones I could think of for anyone for whom appealing to their better nature doesn't work.

Useful Links

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - "[Develops] strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities."

United States Section 508 Guidelines - Web sites for federal agencies must follow these guidelines as well as state and local agencies that receive federal money.

WebAIM - Web Accessibility in Mind has a lot of information on the subject like this article on cognitive disabilities and the web but they've also created a tool to help you check that your sites are accessible called WAVE and it's free.

Think Vitamin's Videos on Accessibility - Think Vitamin recently made all of their videos on accessibility free forever.

Vischeck - This site has two useful tools. The first, Vischeck, is a color-blindness simulator that allows you to see what an image or web page looks like for someone with one of three different types of color blindness. The second, Daltonize, alters the colors of an image so that someone with colorblindness can still see the same contrast as in the original image.

Color Scheme Designer - 4th link in the utility navigation at the upper right is Vision Simulation and it has 8 different conditions that affect how someone views color. It's a good way to make sure that your palette has sufficient contrast for those that don't have normal vision (which according to this site is over 10% of the population).

Week 4: Personas

2010-09-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

I happened upon this randomly. The Consumerist linked to a comic about e-mail marketing and I found this while browsing the archives. It's a comic created by Brad Colbow for Think Vitamin:

How to Understand Your Users with Personas

Week 3: Web Standards

2010-09-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

It is very important to have standards. We have standards of weights and measures. There's agreement on how long a foot is and how much a pound weights. There are industry standards. You don't have to worry about electronic devices only working with one kind of wall outlet (at least not until you go overseas). There's even standards for the weight of yarn.

So why not use standards for the web?

There are already plenty of articles explaining why web standards are good and necessary. The main reasons are:

Maintenance and Production: It is easier and faster, and therefore cheaper, to create a web site that uses standards than to create a site specifically for one browser using proprietary code (or worse, a different site for each browser).

Accessibility: You can make your site more accessible by coding to standards. This is usually stated in reference to disabled users but will also help those hampered by older technology or slow/limited Internet access.

Search Engine Optimization: Other things being equal, a site with valid code is ranked higher by Google than a site with invalid code.

Professionalism and Quality: If you're a web developer writing standard code shows that you know what you're doing. You want to be seen as someone who is current on industry standards, technologies, and best practices. If you own the site then you don't want your site to flat out break in other modern browsers even if it isn't the one most of your target audience.

There are more of course: page weight, re-usability of the code, etc. but these are the reasons I see given the most often. They're also the reasons that both the developer and site owner will care about.

So are there any arguments against using web standards? I didn't really find any articles railing against standards but here are two reasons I've heard not to bother with them.

Tables are easier than using CSS
If browsers would support the multi-column layout module I would just say that this statement is false and move on. But since this is not the case then it may be true in production depending on your comfort level with CSS. But once the site is in maintenance you're in trouble and here's why: the client can't see the table, they only see space.

I can GUARANTEE that eventually the client is going to ask for content to be added someplace that is going to break the template because there is space there. They can't see that putting a wider banner in that cell is going to throw off the spacing for the entire table. They can't see that the change they're requesting is going to require adjusting all of the colspans and rowspans in the table. They only know that they are being quoted/charged an awful lot of money for what looks like a very simple change.

The site has to look exactly the same in every browser so it's OK to make the developer write hacky code.
No.

No, no, no, no, no.

No.

And also no.

I'm going to quote/paraphrase John Allsopp here and say that a site does not have to look exactly the same in multiple browsers because most people don't use different browsers on a regular basis. At worst, for the average non-web designing user, they might be using IE6 at work because they have to and a different browser when they use a mobile device. But no one expects sites to look exactly the same on a mobile device as they do on a computer and since IE6 is not a modern browser there can't be a reasonable expectation for things to even work in it, much less look the same as they would in IE8 or FF 3.x.

Yes, I did say earlier that you don't want your site completely broken browsers other than the one used by the majority of your users but there's a difference between the template being broken and something being 5 pixels farther to the left in IE than it is in FF.

Side Note:
OK, how ridiculous is this? Apple has an HTML5 showcase but blocks you if you try to view the demos in anything other than Safari. *facepalm*
Found via an article in InfoQ.

Communication - Harder Than It Looks

2010-08-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Our professor showed this two minute clip on YouTube of a guy attempting to explain what an Information Architect is and does. It's a funny video. The woman keeps thinking that any other job he mentions in his explanation is what he does until he gives up and says, "Sure, why not?" to her last guess.

But let's be honest here there were problems on both sides of that conversation.

It starts out OK. She asks what he does and he says he's an Information Architect. Most people are after your job title when asking that question so no problem here. But once she asked if he was "like an architect, but" it was clear she had no clue what an IA does. At that point he should have given the simplest and most complete answer possible. Again, I like the one given by the The Information Architecture Institute since it doesn't use any jargon.

Instead, he only gives bits of information that don't really answer the question. She then starts guessing at what he does. When he does explain what an IA does he uses a bunch of terms she doesn't understand. So she guesses again and he gives up.

For her part, it makes absolutely no sense to guess that he does any other job he happens to mention. The "do you work in fashion" part came across like she was purposefully being difficult. However, I'm sure she felt the same about him when he said he isn't a designer and then described his job in terms of designing something.

I bring this up because one of the things that has been brought up multiple times in our classes is that IT communicates poorly with the rest of the business. I think that this works as an example even if he isn't actually in IT.

Week 2: Information Architecture

2010-08-30T19:11:00.001-07:00

So, What is It?

The Information Architecture Institute has three definitions for information architecture. For this post this one is the most useful: The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites, intranets and all other organizational information repositories to help people find and manage information.

It's the job of an Information Architect to make sure that the information is arranged and labeled in a web site in a way that makes sense. This refers not just to information on individual pages but to where those pages are located in relation to each other. For example, a bank web site might put checking and savings information on separate pages but could have those pages grouped together under the heading of Deposit Information.

This job is important because if done poorly (or not at all) then visitors to the site won't be able to find what they're looking for. If you have a favorite website that you've never had to use the search engine on then thank the person who took on the role of Information Architect.

Persuasive Information Architecture

So I was looking for a site with some tips for IA. I expected to be writing about findability and/or usability but then I found this: Persuasion and Information Architecture: 5 tips

Even though IA is about organization, usability, and helping the user do what they want it can also help the business get the user to think and do what they want. What's key is that many of the rules for helping the user and helping the business overlap. While there are times where they will conflict, user and business goals are often the same. I want to buy a book from Amazon and Amazon wants me to buy a book.

Amazon prefers that I buy the Kindle and buy Kindle books instead of paperbacks which means that it shows up first in the left hand menu but the site doesn't prevent me from finding other kinds of books. The conflict does not have to be a deal breaker.

If the business doesn't see the value in Information Architecture then describing the benefits in terms of persuasion would be more helpful than talking about usability. When discussing usability you have to explain why it helps the user and why helping the user helps the business. Putting it in terms of persuasion goes straight to business goals. Some businesses may not appreciate how much their needs and customer needs align and this skips having to convince them otherwise.

Design with Intent

This isn't strictly about IA but the article above linked to it and I found it interesting. It's a set of cards with patterns for influencing behavior through design. It says that the Architectural Lens section "can also be applied in interaction and product design, even in software or services". I think I can find an example for each.

Angles
The example given is the sloping top on cigarette bins which prevent people from leaving trash on the lid. This might be stretching it but my example is timeouts for login forms. You don't want users to accidentally leave their login information in a form if they leave without actually submitting it.

Converging & Diverging
This is done on websites all the time with different logins for different types of users: Students vs Teachers, Business vs Consumer banking, and so forth. Business web sites also make sure that you'll end up on the page to purchase their product/service whether you decided to view the demo, view a feature list, or read reviews. All those paths lead to a "Buy Now" page.

Conveyor belts
The web site equivalent would be Quick Links.

Feature deletion
This one is self-explanatory.

Hiding things
Many web sites will put some settings in an Advanced Features section to prevent users from accidentally breaking things.

Mazes
While you shouldn't make your site a maze (unless that's the point) you probably won't get to the free version of a service or product without first seeing the benefits of the paid version.

Pave the cowpaths
Finding the paths users usually follow and making those paths easier is in the definition of Information Architecture.

Positioning
Same as above.

Roadblock
Many of our clients are required by their auditors to warn their users about any link that takes them away from their web site. We sometimes call them speed bumps. For example, take a look at First American Bank and Trust and see what happens if you click on any of the logos at the bottom of the page.

Segmentation & spacing
Monthly upload limits on free accounts, like the free accounts on Flickr.

Simplicity
IA is all about making the most important tasks simple. 1-click ordering on Amazon would be an example of this.

Fall 2010 - Week 1: Interact with Web Standards Chapter Summary

2010-08-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5 – Writing for the Web

The chapter begins with how people read websites and how that differs from how people read printed media. We're told what bad and good web writing does with a brief description of SEO. The chapter then gives us a list of tools to organize and style content. A list of web writing tips and tips for keeping the content updated finish the chapter.

The Writer

Writing for the web is trickier than you might think. It requires having multiple skills: the ability to write creatively and on technical subjects, organize content into categories from multiple sources, balance user needs and business goals, and so on. A successful web writer must understand what the user wants and how they will use the web site.

The User

People do not use web sites the same way that they read books. Users go to a site to do specific tasks. They scan pages for relevant information and will leave if they can't find it quickly. Visually impaired users do the same with the aid of special tools. The user will also interact with a site via tools like forms or chat if available.

The Content

The content should be "useful, usable, engaging, and findable". The text should be descriptive but not wordy; personable, but not sloppy. The style should be consistent. It should aid findability for both users and search engines without sacrificing readability. Whatever is most important to the user should be easiest to find on the page.

The Tools

There are several things a web writer should use:

Copy deck – All of the text for the web site

Content audit/inventory – A list of all the web pages in a site, their URLs, and any notes about its current state
Style guide – Describes how the text should look, its tone, voice, etc.
Wireframes – A layout of the web page
Sitemap – The hierarchy of all of the web pages in the site

The Tips

Erin Anderson lists ten tips for writing for the web. Start with the conclusion. Begin sentences with verbs. Be brief but be specific. Keep the sentence structure simple. Make the text easy to scan by breaking up text into short paragraphs and lists. Use short, concise headings. Headings and links should be accurate. Have the content reviewed by someone knowledgeable. Get writing hints from other good web sites.

Keep the content updated by scheduling regular audits and updates. Put people in charge of the content for specific pages or sections.

Spring 2010 - Week 16: Getting IT Done - ITIL

2010-04-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

ITIL - Internet Technology Infrastructure Library

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of recommendations for managing IT. While it's focus is on IT services it also covers IT development and operations.

The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, a part of the UK Government, created ITIL back in the 1980s. (As such, ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are trademarks of the UK's Office of Coporate Governance, formerly the CCTA.) Originally a set of 40 manuals the ITIL has been updated twice: once into a set of 8 manuals for version 2.0 and again in 2007 with a set of five core manuals for version 3.0.

Each manual focuses on a particular aspect of IT which is then broken down into multiple sections. For example:

The Service Desk

With the prevalence of technology at home and in the work place many people have had to ask for help from a help desk or service desk before. ITIL recommends that the service desk handle requests using only one point of contact (at my place of employment we call it "one neck to choke"), one point of entry, and one point of exit.

It's easy to see how doing so accomplishes the next ITIL of making things easier for the customer: They only need to contact one person or department to get help. Instead of being told to contact a different department or to send the request in a different manner the person in contact with the customer is the one who routes it to the correct department. ITIL also recommends keeping the customer updated on progress instead of simply waiting until there is a resolution to communicate again with the customer.

There are also recommendations for data integrity and streamlining communications. Data integrity is necessary for databases. It's easier to maintain information if it is always referenced in the same way. At best time is simply wasted in multiple searches to get all of the relevant data but at worst the database end up completely unusable. Streamlining communications is important internally, to get requests moved and managed as easily as possible, and externally, in further aid of making things easier for the consumer.

As ITIL has become more and more popular as a standard for managing IT, more people have gone into the business of ITIL itself.

Consulting Firms

There are multiple consulting companies offering their expertise on the ITIL. One of these companies is The Drapeau Group, LLC.

The tagline on TDG’s site is, “Achieve ITIL Maturity, Avoid Broken Promises”. They claim that they stand apart from other firms by having consultants who are both IT process experts and technically adept, using a different charging model where they do not bill 8 hours a day, and only selling advice not hardware or software. They also focus on what they consider to be the most important parts of the Service Support and Service Delivery parts of the ITIL rather than trying to apply all of it as is.

TDG offers the following services:

ITIL Maturity Assesment
Service Support Implementation
Service Delivery Implementation
ITIL Training
ITIL workshops
ITSM for SME Business
ITIL Tools Review
Metrics Assessment

There are client testimonials on the site as well, the most well known likely being CheckFree(now Fiserv). If you’ve ever received or paid a bill online through your bank chances are good you were using their services. (You can run a search on just the state at the site in the link to see all the financial institutions that use Fiserv.) TDG worked with CheckFree to investigate ITIL and non-ITIL processes and, when CheckFree decided to use ITIL Service Management processes, helped them through the multi-phased deployment.

Software

ITIL Foundations maintains lists of programs related to ITIL in four different categories. In "Help Desk and Support Desk Software Tools" they recommend ServiceDesk Plus. ServiceDesk Plus is used to manage IT service requests from start to finish:

An end user who has an IT problem creates a 'ticket' requesting help
The ticket can be created multiple ways: e-mail, phone, API, web, even a Network Failure can create a ticket
SDP then applies business rules to the ticket
Rules can be added to have certain events or alerts occur based on the type of incident, SLA, etc.
The SLA is verified
The Service Level Agreement in this case refers to the amount of time for the incident to be resolved.
The due date is set
The ticket is then sent to the appropriate group
A technician within that group works on the problem specified in the ticket
The end user is notified of the solution of the problem
SDP can be set up to give the end user notifications in the mean time.

Spring 2010 - Week 4: Micrsoft Oslo

2010-02-07T15:34:00.002-08:00

Before we get into this week's topic I am going to offer a few links for anyone who doesn't know what BPMN is. Last semester I decided to write this blog so that anyone who might stumble across it could read it and have some idea of what I was talking about. Since I'm going to make a comparison I need to explain what it is first.

BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling Notation and is used to describe business processes via a graphical flowchart. It was created so that people at every level of an organization could read and understand what a process is supposed to do and accomplish before it is implemented. (That flowchart at the end of week one's post is an example.)

BPMN is the standard for describing business processes.

Wikipedia page for BPMN
FAQ page by the Business Processes Managment Initiative

Which brings us to this week's topic, Microsoft Oslo.

Turns out that "Oslo" is a codename for what Microsoft is currently calling SQL Server Modeling CTP (Community Technology Preview) and is part of a larger project called Dynamic IT. SQL Server Modeling will be included in the next edition of SQL Server. (ZDNet article about the Oslo announcement in November 2009 for the name change and it's inclusion in SQL Server)

Olso started as a larger project but is now comprised of a visual tool, code named Quadrant, for specifying views of the data, a language, code named M, for modeling data, and SQL Server Modeling Services, a database for shared, common domain models.

So while both BPMN and Olso are about modeling and have the same goal of speeding up development, Olso is about the data not the process. I'm not clear on whether they want all levels of an organization to be able to use the M language or not.

Here's three videos of SQL Server Modeling being used by Rockford Lhotka. In the first video he creates the object 'Customer' and uses the file describing that object to generate a form. The titles of the other two are good descriptions of what they're about but anyone who just wants to know what SQL Server Modeling should watch the first one.

This is kind of an aside but I question the neutrality of the Wikipedia article on Olso. It shouldn't say, "set of tools that make it easier", it should say, "set of tools intended to make it easier". Even if you put aside the need for neutrality they don't have any numbers to back that statement up with because it isn't available to the general public yet.

Spring 2010 - Week 1: Google Adwords

2010-01-18T14:29:00.001-08:00

Last semester I blogged a bit about Google: Google Docs and Automatic Captions.

This week's post is about Google Adwords and I'll be laying out the steps for how to create an Adwords account and begin a campaign.

Google Adwords is the service that allows people to have their ads appear in Google search, partner networks, etc. when certain keywords are used. Unless you block ads on every site you go to you've probably seen them before.

Someone who wants to use this service would go to the Google Adwords home page and click Start.

They will then be asked to create a user name. At this point the user may use an existing Google Account or create a new one. Then they will choose a currency. If the user selected an existing Google Account to use with Adwords they will be able to log into their Adwords account immediately after creation. If the user created a new Google Account then Google will send the user an e-mail and the user will have to follow the directions in it to verify the account.

Now the user can create an ad campaign.

First the following settings for the campaign must be set: the language, the geographical location(s) the ad should appear in, the networks it should appear in (i.e. Google Search, Google's search partners, and/or Google's content partners), the devices it should appear on, the amount the user wants to spend per day on the ad, and the maximum amount the user wants to pay per click on the ad (abbreviated by Google as CPC, cost per click).

Then the user will enter the content for the ad itself. A Google Adwords Ad consists of a headline, two lines of descriptive text, the URL to be show in the ad, and the URL the ad will actually go to when clicked. The ad must comply with the Advertising Policies** set by Google.

**I highly recommend that anyone who wants to use Google Adwords read this since there are a few rules you might not expect.

The user can now choose which keywords to associate with the ad campaign. They can also choose negative keywords: keywords that will prevent their ad from being displayed if they are used.

But before the campaign can begin billing information must be entered.

The user will enter the following information in Billing preferences: Country/territory and time zone, payment method, and billing information. (Yes, that's how Google described it: enter your billing information in Billing preferences. I'm guessing that they mean a billing address but what they need may differ depending on the payment method.)

The user will then be prompted to accept the Terms and Conditions. They will then be able to save and activate the campaign. The amount of time it takes Google to activate a campaign depends on the payment option selected. (The option to prepay via bank transfer was the only method that specifically states that there will be a delay on the page about payment options.)

Now the user has a Google Adwords campaign. There are tools to help you choose which keywords to buy and how much to bid. How often the ad appears depends on your CPC bid for the keywords, the daily budget for the campaign, and the quality of the ad as determined by Google.

There is a flowchart of the process below. It's rather wide so you'll have to click on the image to see the whole thing.

Spring 2010 - A Brief Introduction

2010-01-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

We are a full week into the second semester of the Master of Internet Technology program.

A new semester means new classes: MIST 7530 Object Oriented Systems Analysis (with some Project Management thrown in) and MIST 7570 Internet Programming. I'll be blogging for 7530 though it's possible I'll discuss something relevant to the other class as well.

I hope the new semester finds everyone well after the Winter break. As for myself I did a lot more traveling and a lot less knitting than expected.

ETA: Oh, I finally switched this thing back to a template though I need to adjust the spacing in this thing. It's all scrunched; the posts are too close together.

Week 14: Writing on the Web

2009-11-25T15:47:00.001-08:00

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).

Week 13: Accessibility News

2009-11-19T08:03:00.001-08:00

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

Week 12: Energetic Thinking

2009-11-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

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.

Week 11: How Hard Was It To Find This Post*

2009-11-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Week 11: Semantics Matter

2009-11-02T17:35:00.001-08:00

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.

Week 11: Dime Sized Design

2009-11-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

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

Week 10: Insert Joke About Tubes Here

2009-10-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Week 9: Video - Now featuring audio*

2009-10-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

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:

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

You'll also want to credit your sources.

*That's not mine, I'm quoting the home page of Adult Swim

Weeks 7 & 8: Midterm Assignment

2009-10-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Midterm Paper for MIST: 7500 - Web Analytics and Design for Personal Blogs

6th Week of Class: Paper will become obsolete...any minute now

2009-09-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

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.

6th Week of Class: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2009-09-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

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.

6th Week of Class: It's 10PM. Do you know where your data is?

2009-09-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

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.

5th Week of Class: Tricking out Twitter

2009-09-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

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.

5th Week of Class: Step 1: Tweet, Step 2: ..., Step 3: Profit!

2009-09-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

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.

5th Week of Class: Twittering About

2009-09-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

4th Week of Class: Storage Options

2009-09-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

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.

4th Week of Class: A Libretto and a Musical Score

2009-09-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

4th Week of Class: Editing Wikipedia

2009-09-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

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.

3rd Week of Class: Underutilized Code

2009-09-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2nd Week of Class (8/27/2009): Who's In Charge Here

2009-09-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

*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?

First Day of Class (8/20/2009)

2009-08-25T15:53:00.001-07:00

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:

Whether the content can be obtained for free
How difficult producing the content is perceived to be
How popular the content is

No one wants to pay for something they can get for free. Similarly, no one wants to pay a lot for something they think took little effort to produce. It doesn't matter if it actually takes a lot of work if people have the impression that anybody could do it with little effort. Finally, no one wants to pay for something if they aren't sure it's going to be good.

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.

An Introduction

2009-08-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

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.