Category Archives: Web

Web 2.0 Expo – Day 1 & 2

Posted on by
Reply
IBM gave out candy if you tweeted (or didn't) #sweettweet. My tweet on top middle.

IBM gave out candy if you tweeted (or didn't) #sweettweet. My tweet on top middle.

Today, I attended day two of Web 2.0 Expo. See day. While I didn’t attend the main conference on day 1, there are a couple comments in here about it.  Many of the presentation files are available.

Day 2 Keynotes

They had a live tweet stream of all items tagged #w2e.  Apparently on Tuesday people posted some less than appropriate things.  Edited to add link. Today the tweet stream was curated (are we in a museum?) and only appropriate ones showed on screen.  Or as the speakers said, the stream was censored.

  1. There’s a #hashtag for that. – I had seen the swine flu part of The Onion speaker’s talk at a previous Ignite event.  It was still funny.  He gave many more examples.  Since this is a twitter topic, I’ll let you check out the speaker’s twitter page for more details.
  2. How we get past “free” and learn to exchange value again – Douglas Rushkoff talked about how money was created as a scarce and controllable resource in the Middle Ages.  It continued through the Industrial Age so the rich could stay rich without “doing anything.”  Corporations support this currency system by extracting value.  He also talked about how if something is free, you must leverage what isn’t.  (Write for free; get paid to talk.)  Looking to the future, Douglas speculated about power being won by companies that index content or control the index and that the next big thing is a non-cash electronic payment system.
  3. Making sense of Google Wave – After plugging her free preview PDF book The Complete Guide To Google Wave, Gina Trapani introduced Wave.  With that: she said, Wave:
    • is a protocol
    • is e-mail if e-mail were invented today (e-mail is a messaging paradigm based on postal mail)
    • does not strive to replace e-mail
    • is a collaboration tool
    • is meant for use in small groups of people you work with (public waves are overwhelming)
    • can have multiple clients like Twitter if someone writes them
    • does not support Internet Explorer – Google calls this “forward thinking” what’s forward about not supporting the most widely used browser?
    • targets power users, not “applications for dummies”
    • takes time to learn – like Photoshop
    • is too unstable to use for writing the PDF book not exactly a ringing endorsement
    • is good for threaded conversations
    • can show realtime movements on a map to others in your Wave
    • can easily start a group conference call when you need to go verbal
    • is currently in the invite only Beta.  Web 2.0 Expo attendees get an invite which comes with 10 invites. First 10 people to ask me for one get them.  I know I look forward to playing with it.
  4. Beyond Facebook and Twitter – Anil Dash described a few lessons learned of Web 2.0 that governments are applying: wisdom of crowds, cloudes, every problem is a scaling problem and there are more experts outside than inside.”
  5. Interview with John Barthwick from Betaworks – The classic O’Reilly style sit on the chairs interview.
  6. Confessions of a public speaker -Scott Berken author of a book by the same name said public speaking is the original social medium.  He pointed to three timeless technologies (at least in techie circles) – talking, writing and beer – all of which provided areas for communication.  Before ending by suggesting an exercise (he suggesting asking “what’s the best story about your product” rather than listening to a marketing pitch”, he made three interesting comments:
    • You can tell a good or bad story with any technology.
    • Failures to communicate cannot be resolved by technology.
    • Technology can only get you so far.  “The world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology; the bottleneck is really in art.” – Penn Jillette

Birds of a Feather

I liked the Wednesday Birds of a Feather much more than the Tuesday ones.  I attended two sessions on both days.  Each day, one had a decent number of people and the other was almost empty.  However, the Wednesday ones had more of what I call “prepared discussion” while the Tuesday ones were more presentation driven.  Since the spirit of Birds of a Feather is supposed to be about discussion, I was surprised by the amount of presentation involved.

Web 2.0 Open

Like Birds of a Feather, Web 2.0 Open also focuses on participation over presentation.  I only attended one of their sessions today, but they did a great job.  There were a lot of people in the room, they were engaged and there were references to discussions earlier in the day.

Other things I learned at assorted talks or things I think were especially clever

  • Open source is people getting together and doing something.  Crowdsourcing is a company trying to get people to do something for it.
  • We all write for a living – e-mails, tweets, etc
  • “Sending cat pictures to friends” is becoming a cliche.  I’ve been hearing about it for over a year now.  In case you haven’t heard about it – I can has cheezburger
  • UX stands for user experience
  • Sony Ericson has a phone/camera with facial recognition.
  • “Social Mining” and “Sentiment Monitoring” are terms.  They are what they sound like.
  • People may say bad things about your product whether you are on social networking sites or not.  The difference is you can respond/react properly
  • Social media isn’t free.  It still takes time to market.
  • Page views are an early matrix.  Financial metrics should be used for ROI which come after that.
  • Facebook is starting to become profitable from ads.  Twitter is still leaking money.
  • IBM talked about the “virtuous cycle or reuse” (aka positive feedback loop) – each mashup you create makes creating the next one faster due to more widgets in your catalog.  This seems like it applies to any type of common component.
  • IBM shows how they use social networking on their own internet with live examples.
  • Wolfram Alpha showed many interesting examples using their knowledge engine.
  • If everyone gets a phone, do you wait for someone to mail you a letter?
  • You can waste time with any technology – such as Minesweeper when PCs first had it.
  • On Twitter, your popularity increases your credibility which increases your status.
  • Four online behaviors are lurking (private), staying in touch (people you know), connecting (people you want to know) and brand building (very public)

Check back tomorrow for comments on the final day of Web 2.0 Expo.

“head first” style aria

Posted on by
3

I attempted to give a Head First style speech at the Toastmasters humorous speech competition. As a moderator at JavaRanch, it seemed fitting to put a transcript of one iteration online. While it changes a bit each time I give it, this is the idea.. Shown here with a bit of organization.

This was given to a largely non-technical audience.   For the more technical readers here, ARIA actually has four levels: off, polite, assertive and rude.  This article on ARIA is an excellent read.  My audience tells me the concepts were memorable and the speech was funny.  So I guess I accomplished my goal.  I did win at my club and get to go on to the next level.  Which gives me the chance to give this speech in front of people I don’t know.

You no longer have to imagine the sock puppets :).  I had two – one for the browser and one (with glasses) for the screenreader.
screenreader puppet

Anyway, here we go:

Introduction
Me: When you think of technology, do you think of humor?  I do.  My goal is to teach you about a technical topic called ARIA – Accessible Rich Internet Applications.  Boring?  Just you wait.  I brought sock puppets.

Welcome the characters
Me: We all know what a browser is.  We use it every day to browse the web.  I’ll let you imagine that this sock puppet is IE 7.  You may not know what a screenreader is.  Imagine you can’t see the screen.  What does our browser friend here look like?  Well, the screenreader reads the words in the browser to you.  The glasses remind us of reading so it will be easy to remember that this guy is the screenreader.  Lets listen in on how things worked up until now.

Scenario 1 – Before ARIA
Browser: I’m IE 7.  Who are you?
Screenreader: I’m a screenreader product called Jaws.
Browser: Ah!  A shark!  And I can’t see my users!  A shark ate my users!
Screenreader: Stop being so dramatic.  Your user is write here – safe and sound.  I help your user.
Browser: My user is just find without your help.
Screenreader: Want to be IE 7?  Watch what happens when a blind or vision impaired users tries to fill out a form without a standard called ARIA.
Browser: I’ll set the scene.  It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader: Get on with it.  I can’t read to the user until you get around to rendering the page.
Browser: Fine.  Here’s your page.
Screenreader: Ok.  User? I’ve got some questions on a form for you.  <hum as they go back and forth>
Browser: Uh oh.  The user entered a bad country.  I know because I checked with the website while the user was filling out the form.  I know!  I’ll put a big red message on the screen.  Surely the user will see that.
Screenreader: <back to humming>.  Submit.  My masterpiece.  All done now – time for a nap.
Browser: Wait a minute!  The country is still invalid.  Jaws – can sharks swim with their eyes close?  You’re falling asleep on the job.  I told you there was a message.
Screenreader: Did not!  You place a secret message and didn’t tell me it was there.  That’s like putting a note in a dictionary in a basement in Europe and claiming I should have seen it.
Browser/ Screenreader: Did not!  Did too!  Did not!  Did too!

Me: All right guys. Break it up.  Luckily this is a thing of the past.  Let’s upgrade to IE 8 and see how it looks now.  Ready IE 8?

Scenario 2 – Urgent Message with ARIA
Browser: Yes!  I’m all bright, shiny, new and upgraded.  My father was IE 7.  Parents are so backwards!  I’ll set the scene.  It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader: Just like you father.  Get on with it.
Browser: Where’s the fire?  Here’s your page.
Screenreader: <hum to user while fill out form>
Browser:  Uh oh.  The website says we can’t ship a book to North Korea.  I know!  I’ll set the rude ARIA property to tell the user.
Screenreader: I see the rube property is set.  The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!  I must tell the king, I mean the user.  User – Abort!  Abort! Urgent message – no books can go to North Korea.
Screenreader: Browser, that was a close one.  But we save the day – and the user – thanks to ARIA.  Remember what that stands for?
Browser: Yeah.  Accessible rich internet applications.  Accessible.  That would be you screenreader – reading to the user.  Internet Application.  That’s a website where we can fill out forms.  And rich.  That must mean the website has a pot o’gold.
Screenreader: Not quite.  Rich means dynamic and interactive.  Like gmail.  You can do things without reloading the whole page.

Interlude
Me: As you can see, IE 8 support is much better than IE 7.  But does this mean we have to interrupt the user for ever little thing.  Seems distracting.  T-O-P- Wait!  I have something unimportant to tell you. !  Let’s watch.  Browser?

Scenario 3 – Informational Message with ARIA
Browser: I’ll set the scene.  It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader:Oh for crying out loud!  Can’t we skip that prt?
Browser: Fine.  Here’s your page already.
Screenreader: <hum while fill out form>
Browser: Hmm.  The website says that city and zip code don’t match.  Probably a typo, but I should tell the user.  I’ll set the polite ARIA property.
Screenreader: Interesting.  I see the polite property has a message.  I’ll wait for a good time to tell the user.  <hum more>.  Perfect.  User, while you are between fields, can you check this?  Oh, it’s wrong?  I see.  Good, we get to fix our mistake.
Browser: That was nice and polite of you.

Conclusion
You came to hear  a funny speech.  You learned what ARIA – accessible rich internet applications are all about.  Without even feeling like you were learning.  My motivation for doing this was the Head First series of books which often teaches through humor, dialog and personification.  Remember ARIA may be rude or polite, but always helpful.  Just like Head First.

[edited to add sock puppet picture]

search – wolfram alpha going live – part 3

Posted on by
Reply

I stopped watching the webcast (see part 2) about two hours in.  While WolframAlpha may go down over the weekend, it is up now for experimenting.  In part 1, I worried about my first impression:

What is interesting to me is that it gives you the answer, but not the source. For calculations, there isn’t really a source anyway. I don’t cite that 2+2=4. However, I do cite the population of Germany. So how are we supposed to know it is right? On the other hand, I think showing similar information you might not have asked for is cool.

Turns out this isn’t a big thing to worry about.  WolframAlpha gives you the source of it’s answer.  For example, I searched for swine flu.  It told me the scientific name along with the number of cases and deaths over the last couple of days.  In addition to a nice pop-up and PDF to export the data, it has a “source information” link at the bottom.  This shows the data set used to derive the answer along with other resources one might be interested in.

As a source for learning, I think this is pretty cool!