Well, that was short and sweet. I’ve already exited FeedBurner’s service.

Feedburner has no “exit strategy” and once you get people signing up to your blog’s feeds via a Feedburner link, you’re pretty much stuck with Feedburner forever (unless you’re paying for a premium service that will forward feeds forever for you).

Now I’m waiting for Measure Map (as mentioned by Jeffrey Veen at WE05) to become available so I can check that out properly.

Again, if you have any problems, let me know. It’s possible, if you subscribed to the actual Feedburner feed on the single day or so when that was all that was available, that you may need to re-subscribe. My apologies. 😐

Technorati Tags: webessentials05, feedburner, jeffreyveen, measuremap, we05, webessentials

I’ve been back for a week now and couldn’t let the occasion go by without remarking on it (along with zillions of others). Because WE05 in Sydney was, truly, a remarkable conference.

Firstly the line-up of international speakers was impressive. From Molly Holzschlag (I want to be like Molly when I grow up!) to Derek Featherstone (whose web accessibility smarts are second to none, and who is such good fun too) to Tantek Çelik (who had a heap of informative things to say about web standards and Web 2.0 and who, after all, gave me a Technorati t-shirt!) amongst others, it was an awesome opportunity to learn and be challenged.

The Australian contingent gave the international speakers a run for their money (so to speak). Lisa Herrod gave a wonderful presentation on usability testing, specifically eye-tracking. I really appreciate that kind of thing because for many of us, we just don’t have the facilities to do our own in-house testing so it’s really interesting to get a feel for how it’s done when it’s done properly. Russ Weakley also gave an excellent — and amusing — presentation on liquid CSS layouts.

The whole crowd was just fantastic. It was a fun event, and informative, but more than that, it was exciting and motivating.

Technorati Tags: derekfeatherstone, lisaherrod, mollyholzschlag, russweakley, sydney, tantekcelik, technorati, we05, webessentials, webessentials05

Hearing Loss News and Reviews has published an article about a proposed city for deaf people in South Dakota to be named Laurent, after Laurent Clerc, a pioneer of American Sign Language (ASL).

I know the Deaf culture exists and understand many of the reasons for it. However, my first reaction was there are many cultural groups in our society and if all of them wanted their own towns then we’d be in a bit if strife, wouldn’t we?

But it’s not that simple.

Deaf people communicate with an entirely different language to most of the rest of us. (Contrary to what many assume, sign languages are complete languages and have their own syntax, and are not just signed versions of English, or whatever language is spoken by others in a given country.) But unlike immigrants who can learn the language of their new country if they don’t already know it, many Deaf people have limited ability to do this. The reasons for this are varied and in many cases may have less to do with physical ability than with the politics determining the type of education offered to Deaf students.

I personally understand how difficult it is to live in a world in which communication is difficult. Several times, I’ve thought about learning Auslan (the Australian sign language) but I don’t know anyone else who knows it, so there has never been any point. So I can definitely understand that it might seem comfortable and a relief to the Deaf to know that everyone they come across will speak their language.

It seems that society has let down Deaf people in a big way. Shame on us for isolating a group of people with a disability (apologies to Deaf people who don’t consider they have a disability) to the point where they feel driven to all but segregate themselves.

On a more practical note, I certainly can’t see such a town ever being built in Australia — anti-discrimination laws would prevent it, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I also don’t see how it can be doing kids, in particular, any favours to isolate them from mainstream society. Parents are making the decision for their kids that the kids will never learn to integrate into hearing society. Is this the parents’ right? Should they not be giving their kids all opportunities so the kids can make their own decisions later in life? I know the article doesn’t suggest that residents will never visit places outside of Laurent — but won’t it be increasingly difficult for them to do so when they develop a comfort zone? And if they don’t visit other places and spend time with people living in the wider society, surely they will be less well-equipped to cope when it comes to following a higher education and a career, just to name a couple of instances that are likely to see kids leave the town eventually.

Yes, we all want to surround ourselves with people who share and understand our own circumstances. We all gravitate towards those with whom we have something in common. But, like it or not, our society is bigger than that, and ultimately Deaf people live in the wider world and parents who try to remove their kids from it… well, what are they achieving except teaching them that discrimination (this time against people who don’t speak their language) is ok? I can’t help feeling that integration should still be the goal — not segregation. Though I do admit that I am not Deaf and can’t speak for those in the Deaf culture.

But the bottom line is that our society as a whole has badly failed Deaf people by causing them to feel (not just feel — be) excluded to the point where they want their own town.

I’ve just moved the Unheard Word blog feeds to FeedBurner. Everything should redirect so there should be no need to re-subscribe, but if you have any issues please let me know and I’ll look into it.

I remember seeing results of studies that show that one of the top hates of many Internet users is not being able to find details of the physical address of a business on the business web site. Post office boxes just don’t cut it.

I agree: lack of such detail detracts from the credibility of the business concerned. But I don’t have these details on my business web site either.

I was reading a prediction in the Business Review Weekly magazine that, with the trend for companies to outsource rather than employ, by the year 2020 a whopping 50% of the Australian workforce will be self-employed. Many in our line of business — and, given the current trend, increasingly other businesses as well — operate from home. Sole proprietors are frequently women. Obviously such people don’t want their home address splashed across the Internet.

I’m interested to hear how others deal with this issue. For businesses that want to grow, and deal with medium to large companies, yet want to appear totally professional and not be subject to prejudice often seen by such companies towards sole traders — what’s the answer? What do you all do on your business web sites?

I’ve been very busy in the last week or two and have had several items of interest open in my news reader (NetNewsWire) to remind me to blog about them. By now they’re old news but this is one I think is worth noting, for those who haven’t yet seen it.

In short, the device that is used to read email is likely to influence the kind of response received. When a user reads email via a handheld device, there’s a good chance they’re on the road and/or in a hurry and are likely to skim. This isn’t helped by the lack of screen real estate and the comparative difficulty of typing a response (which encourages brevity, and can in itself lead to lack of clarity). As a result, email replies sent from such devices often show a lack of comprehension of the meaning of the original email.

Could be handy to keep in mind.

An emerging discussion on the Web Standards Group (WSG) email list has brought up some interesting points on the quality of web design and development instruction in tertiary institutions.

I don’t have any statistics to back this up (and would be surprised if any formal study has been conducted) but there is strong anecdotal evidence that the majority of institutes of higher learning don’t teach web standards — and when they do, it’s with a wishy-washy attitude.

There are exceptions of course, and apparently Sydney TAFE has some excellent, standards-conscious teachers. I am sure there are others but they must be few and far between if members of the world’s leading web standards discussion group don’t know about them. (I’m assuming that if students were taught about web standards, their teachers would know about, and let the students know about, this group.)

A former colleague recently made a lovely site for her upcoming wedding, having attended a short “Dreamweaver course” at TAFE. It looks great, but it’s got tables for layout and many validation errors (mainly syntax-related). I know she took the course to learn how to use a tool and not how to become a professional web designer, and she may not even care if it’s not done right as long as it looks right — but it is just as easy to teach good coding practices as it is to teach bad ones, so why not teach it correctly from the start?

There seem to be myths abounding, such as — for example — tables for layout are easier than using appropriate mark-up and CSS — but actually those who never learned any other way, and those of us who have become used to the simplicity and flexibility of XHTML/CSS, find tables very difficult to use for layout. It’s really what you’re used to — so let’s teach correct methods from the start. One day these web design hobbyists may become professionals (soooooo many of us started out as hobbyists!) and teachers have a responsibility to put them on the right track.

One of the issues we face is that a need to teach web standards may be recognised (I know it’s true at least at my former place of study, and I am sure that is not the only such institution) but the teachers may not know much about it themselves. Many have a lot of catching up to do, partly because, in an academic environment, they don’t always continue to actually work in the field. They have little or no opportunity to put these things into practice in order to learn them thoroughly enough to teach them. It might also be the case that teachers have specialised elsewhere, and web design is merely a sideline that they’re told they have to teach, like it or not.

Another issue arises when the need is not recognised at all. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s left to the students who know more than their teachers to start making waves. As a friend of mine discovered, this is detrimental to academic health: he lodged a formal complaint against a teacher and now cannot take half of his classes and may not be able to receive his TAFE Diploma. I wonder how comforting it is to him to know that he’s paving the way for future generations of web designers!

Also to be considered is the length of time it takes to recognise a need for a curriculum change and then to actually introduce the changes. This can take years at some institutions. But I’d also suggest that it doesn’t really require a curriculum change at all. Good coding and adherence to web standards are part of web design, not any kind “optional extra” or even new technology to be included. Our current web standards have been around since at least 1999, but standards in general go back well before then and, as I said above, it’s just as easy to teach good coding practices as bad coding practices.

But first, the educators must be educated, and not just with skills and techniques. Before it even gets to that point, they need to be armed with the knowledge that there is a big benefit in teaching web standards in the first place. Until we succeed in getting this message to tertiary institutions, change cannot take place. Then, of course, the teachers do need to get up to scratch with skills, but this is an ongoing process and not something that would happen instantly.

I would venture to suggest (at the risk of appearing egotistical) that I know more about CSS and web standards and certainly web accessibility than many, if not most, tertiary staff that teach web design classes. However, I would not even be considered for a teaching position (as far as I know and I could be wrong) because I don’t have a tertiary qualification myself. It’s a bit sad, really. People like myself, who care about web standards and actually know quite a lot, could play a valuable role in educating teaching staff as well as students — and provide an alternative to those teachers who are only doing it because they’re told to, regardless of their own skill level or even whether or not they like web design.

This is getting really long so I’ll stop here, but feel free to leave your own thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Further to my post on why Business Blogging is a Good Thing, I’d like to first define “success” in this context.

Of course, there is no single correct answer and it depends on the goals of the individual blog.

For a blog that’s intended to be an online diary and mainly personal, success can be measured by the very fact that it has been “published” — and if one, or two, or more people comment on a post, then you’ve really “arrived”!

A blog that exists to draw attention to a “cause”, be it social, business, or philosophical, may never be able to quantitatively measure success. However, the type and number of responses by those commenting (along with analysis of web site statistics) may give a good idea of the extent of the reach, and the passion unleashed, by the blog’s posts.

For business purposes, there is no hard and fast “goal” either. Someone blogging solely to make money from the blog via advertising will measure success in different terms to the corporate blogger whose main purpose is to market an organisation’s services, products or brand, by drawing in the customer (and potential customer) with up-to-the-minute yet personalised information in the relevant field. For the home business operator, the goals may be similar — yet the methods are likely to be far less sterile (and far more opinionated, contentious and therefore more open to potential litigation).

So, success means different things to different bloggers and it all depends on what you want to achieve with your blog. Therefore, the first important thing is to define a goal (or goals). When setting goals, also define carefully-thought-out milestones along the way with a realistic timeline, so that some kind of measurement of outcomes is possible. You’ll need to note details of your current situation for the purpose of comparison.

Unless, of course, it’s purely a social kind of journal and measurable results of any kind are neither here nor there. But for bloggers who intend to make some kind of impact in their field, setting a realistic goal with realistic milestones is a good first step.

Just remember: the goals and milestones are guides, and subject to change and reassessment along the blogging journey. There is no reason to believe a blog has failed if results are not at first as hoped. It’s quite ok. Mistakes, external factors beyond our control, unexpected deviations from the anticipated path, and coming to terms with unrealistic expectations are all what I call “Learning Experiences”. They are simply stepping stones to the ultimate goal.

As with any aspect of business, circumstances, expectations and goals are subject to external factors and therefore subject to change. So assess, reassess and hang in there, and there will be results.

I Love IM is web-based instant messaging that apparently works behind firewalls and proxy servers.

I just got a very gleeful email from my friend Brian (g’day Brian!) telling me that after a long, dry spell behind a proxy server that blocked IM ports, he can finally, via I Love IM, access MSN instant messaging from his workplace again.

For those of us who are business people who want to provide customer service via IM but are not happy to open up the relevant ports for security reasons, this could be a Good Thing.

I’m not enough of a tech-head to tell you how it works and what security issues there may or may not be for network admins, and am interested to hear from those who actually do have a clue. If you check it out I’d love to hear what you think of it.

The browser Opera is 10 years old and the developers say, “We’re giving away registration codes for as long as the party lasts!” This is the real deal: I grabbed one.

http://my.opera.com/community/party/

Good marketing, IMO! (And Opera 8 is a very interesting browser — I’ve had it on my machine since it first came out for Mac.)