vanderwal.net

Make My Link the P-link

Simon hit on plinks as an echo to Tim Bray's comments and variation on Purple Numbers (Purple Numbers as a reference). As I have mentioned before, page numbers fail us and these steps are a good means to move forward.

Simom has also posted in more plinks and in there points to Chris Dent's Big Day for Purple Numbers.

I have been thinking for quite some time about using an id attribute in each paragraph tag that includes the site permalink as well as the paragraph with in that entry. This would look like: <p id="1224p7">. This signifies permanent entry 1224 and paragraph 7 with in that entry. What I had not sorted out was an unobtrusive means of displaying this. I am now thinking about Simon's javascript as a means of doing this. The identifier and plink would be generated by PHP for the paragraph tag, which would be scraped by the javascript to generate the plink.

The downside I see is only making edits at the end of the entry using the "Update" method of providing edits and editorial comments. The other downside is the JavaScript is not usable on all mobile devices, nor was the speed of scrolling down Simon's page that fluid in Safari on my TiBook with 16MB of video RAM.

GEL Conference Overview

Heath Row, of Fast Company, has captured the GEL Conference write-ups on one page. I was traveling this past week and was bummed to have missed this conference. I am already planning to fit in next year's conference as it seems to be a great conference that gathers great ideas that help share how to improve the Web for the user's experience.

Using Section 508 to Improve Access to Information for Everybody

I will be speaking at STC in Baltimore (STC conference listed in Upcoming.org) on the subject of Using Section 508 to Improve Internet Access to Information for Everybody. It has been wild to watch people spend far more time and energy trying to shirk accessibility requirements than do what is needed. Meeting Section 508 (accessibility) requirements is rather easy, well for those that are even partially competent. One great benefit of accessible sites is the breadth of users that benefit from the steps taken to meet accessiblility requirements.

Oddly, there are those that are against meeting accessibility requirement. The only logical explanation is these people are not interested in getting their information into the hands of those that can use the information. Or another possible explaination is the producers of the information love irony.

Ironically, the FCC posts nearly all of its documents in PDF. Most of these documents are not even remotely accessible (accessibility is not fungible for 508 complient, as an item can be defined as accessible but still not meet Section 508 compliance, as accessibility is a very widely defined term). The irony is the organization that is behind pushing for mobile connectivity provides document that 95 percent of mobile users can not use on a mobile device. It seems the FCC just does not care (I would certainly hope they know better).

Composite Capabilities and Preferences Profile

WaSP asks the W3C about Introduction to Composite Capabilities / Preferences Profile, which allows device specific content inclusion, as explained in the article.

Web Content for Mobile Browsers

Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers is a good overview for marking-up for small screens.

Doing this how long

I realized today that I have been marking-up and posting to my own personal Web pages since November 1995. I have been trying to figure out when all this started. The pages started as "The Growing Place", which included the links page along with a handful of other pages on CompuServe's initial hosting of personal pages. I moved from there to Clark Net in late 1996 so I could get CGI access and have my own e-mail (well not really my own). In late 1997 I bought vanderwal.net and finally moved it to a couple hosting homes in 1998 and 1999. Then has been with its current host since 2000, which has provided great service and resources since then (I actually had an other personal site with this host much earlier and ran not so personal site the host for a short while.

Why all of this today? Don't know. It could be that I finally found when Compuserve started hosting member's pages. It does not seem like that long ago until I think that I have been building a presence on the Web for coming on nine years. I have been doing this professionally since 1996. I have been working professionally as a geek since 1988, either as my full-time role or just one of the hats I wore. I have learned a lot about application development and Web development in all these years. It is still about getting the information into the hands of people that are looking for it when they need it.

Keeping the Found Things Found

This weeks New York Times Circuits article: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites, which covers the Keep the Found Things Found research project at University of Washington. The program is summarized:

The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are looking for (books, articles, web pages, CDs, etc.) from a very large set of possibilities. This classic problem has been studied in many variations and has been addressed through a rich diversity of information retrieval tools and techniques.

This topic is at the heart of the Personal Information Cloud. How does a person keep the information they found attracted to themselves once they found that information. Keeping the found information at hand to use when the case to use the information arises is a regular struggle. The Personal Information Cloud is the rough cloud of information that follows the user. Users have spent much time and effort to draw information they desire close to themselves (Model of Attraction). Once they have the information, is the information in a format that is easy for the user or consumer of the information to use or even reuse.

Music for Real People

The Internet, particularly the Web, has become a solid replacement for traditional radio, which most people believe only provides a service for background noise. Traditional radio in the U.S. fails the listener as a medium for finding new music, be they bands, artists, or labels that insight the users to want to own the music. (I am using ownership in a broad sense of the term, which can entail purchasing CDs or downloads as well as downloading free music offerings as defined and offered by the creator of the music.)

The Internet provides a great platform for finding new music. One means of finding new music is from others sharing what they are listening to. The sharing can be done on Macs using iChat and iTunes where iChat shows others what your are currently listening to. Others share music on their personal sites, like Dan Hill does on City of Sound in his year end review or Jeffrey Veen does in his sidebar offering of "heavy iPod rotation". People also share in their finds in their weblogs, which are more difficult to track. Other options are to peruse Amazon wishlists.

Other Internet options are listening to Internet radio broadcasts. There are many options, like Radio Paradise, that offer broadcasts of genre specific music. These stations also usually provide metadata that helps the listener know the creator of the music and the title.

Many people want to consume music, but traditional radio and even record labels have forgotten that people want to consume music, if only they could find music they want to consume. Apple's iTunes has expanded the offerings for purchasing music and also does a decent job (though not great, Amazon does a much better job suggesting related music and provides a means to store music of interest) of suggesting other music that would be of interest.

Ah Treo 600 Arrives

I took the plunge and ordered a Treo 600 with Sprint PCS service. Since adding a solid portable music player to my menagerie of gadgets, I was having to attend to four devices each morning. Yes, four. My normal cell phone with very good connectivity, but horrible customer service (a the customer is always wrong mentality). My HipTop, which got me hooked on mobile e-mail, Web, and IM, but did not have great connectivity and the PIM applications did not synch (only import and overwrite). My Palm which was my true PDA/mobile PIM and all information on it truly synched, but it did not have mobile connectivity. Lastly my iPod, which has been a great addition to the daily workweek commute and will soon be nice on longer drives and with great expanse of mobile memory.

The only things that may bug me are the smaller screen and the lack of bluetooth. The bluetooth may bug me the most as I have also had it with wires running every where. I chose Sprint for two reasons, great rebates when purchasing from Amazon and the faster connectivity.

One device will now replace three (Palm, cellphone, and HipTop) devices. I have already added the AOL IM (using the UK version as it is free, thanks to Real's tip on MobileWhack). I am feeling lighter already. I will be keeping this topic running for a while, I do believe.

The customer service from Sprint has been a little slow, but insanely courteous and helpful when you do get somebody on the phone (even "Kevin" who had a hint of an Indian accent).

AvantGo Synch for Mac OS X

I am now able to synch my Palm with AvantGo from my Mac. AvantGo USB Sync for Mac OS X is the key to getting this working. AvantGo has not supplied a Mac OS X interface. This worked exceptionally well. This was one of my last tethers to my PC. The PC has been very flakey with Palm hot synchs the past month or two, which is bad as one leaves for work with out of date info. Yes, in one day things can be horribly out of date.

Blogs highlighted on Meet the Press

While I am not a huge blog-for-blog-sake person, Meet the Press has a relatively long roundtable discussion on blog and the Democratic presidential campaigns. The talk about how Joe Trippi not only uses the blog to communicate with potential Dean supporters, but how he and others cull ideas from the blogs.

This highlight how new innovative ideas can quickly get posted by individuals, culled, and directly or with modification get implemented to better an endeavor. One clever idea that was culled from a weblog was the ability to have individuals share their unused weekend cell phone minutes and have the campaign use these minutes to call voters in Iowa. A rather clever idea and even smarter use of culling the Internet's vast cacophony of voices to find good helpful ideas to run a business/organization better and smarter.

Lake Effect Snow in Washington DC

Lake effect snow warning or not, for Washington, DC. Yesterday, I had a handful of severe weather warnings popping into my mobile devices and my desktop. I read the alerts, which were for "lake effect snow" and blizzards in the next four to 12 hours. The area impacted were the counties around Washington, DC, including Washington. From there I checked a couple weather forecasts and live weather stats, 39 percent humidity and no clouds on the eastern seaboard.

A couple hours later a retraction was made by NOAA and the National Weather Service. It seems they were testing software alert messages and the tests were dumped in the live system database. Oops. Somebody got the lesson of a lifetime and a lesson on how to verify what system is being tested.

NY Times everlink

For those about to blog the NY Times use NY Times ever link. [hat tip Dori

Testing the Three Click Rule

Josh Porter of UIE test the Myth of the Three Click Rule. Josh finds out that users will continue seeking what the want to find after three clicks as long as they feel they are on the right track and getting closer. Most users will not abandon their quest after three clicks as had been suggested.

Oddly I remember this three click rule from four to five years ago and when we tested it we found the users we tested did not give up. There were other studies at that time that backed up what we were finding. Now in the last couple of years folks that are new to the Web are pontificating the three click rule again.

As always it is always best to test and just follow blindly.

Interdependance of structure, information, and presentation

Peter J. Bogaards explains The Document Triangle: The interdependence of the structure, information and presentation dimensions. This troika is very important clear information consumption, but also information reuse. Structure is extremely important to transmitting information, but also important to information reuse. Information lacking structure nearly as reusable as a newspaper article printed on paper.

One great location to explore the ease of information reuse and the affect the presentation layer has should look no farther than, CSS Zen Garden, where nearly all the content is identical in the various layouts and designs. The structure of the content provides a solid framework to rework the presentation layer. The presentation layer can add to or detract from the clarity of the message as well as the attraction a user may have to the message.