I’d Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson

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Duration: 15 min.

In this podcast, Dr. Robert Glushko, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, explains the concept of Document Engineering — the process of developing document models to make information sharing, reuse, or syndication more efficient.

Glushko gives several examples of document engineering, such as creating a calendar event model that allows an event to by shared across numerous calendars. Or a syllabus document model, which allows students to pull specific data from syllabi across the university in unique ways. Read the rest of this entry »

When you begin modifying your blog’s stylesheet or designing your own blog, you may notice that some elements display differently in Internet Explorer (IE) than they do in Firefox. IE is usually the problematic browser, and it’s hard to say why there are so many CSS display quirks and bugs from Microsoft. But there is a quick, easy fix around the troubling display discrepancies.

In short, you create two stylesheets, one for IE and one for Firefox and other browsers. You then add a piece of code in your header that tells to the IE browser to read the IE style sheet. The other browsers will read the other stylesheet.

To create separate stylesheets for the different browsers:
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White Space is a principle of layout and design well known among graphic artists, but less known and practiced among some technical writers. I have a deep interest in Web design, and white space seems to be one of the first, fundamental principles of design for both on and offline content.

Paradox of White Space

White space also has an interesting paradox surrounding it: The absence of graphics and text plays a significant role in increasing comprehension of the text and of focusing attention on graphics. The absence of content is what draws the eye towards content. The negative, blank space (which possesses nothing) creates a sense of sophistication and elegance. The sense of simplicity and absence of graphics and text is what contributes toward a richer, deeper and more complex artistic expression.

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Lately I’ve had the urge to abandon my main desktop tools and use online tools instead. It’s not just that some online tools are more capable than desktop tools, but it just feels right to be online. When you’re online, you’re connected, integrated, at home. The world is at your fingertips. Because of the limitations of bandwidth, I can’t fully break free from my desktop, but for many applications, the potential is there. Here’s how I can change:
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WordPress is already a micro-CMS, but if you have a site that has a lot of pages, it can get a bit cluttered. By CMS, I mean a site where you have an abundance of static pages that you want to manage, rather than just an endless number of posts. You can use a Subpages plugin in your sidebar to make it easy for your users to find the pages. The context-sensitive Subpages sidebar can give your blog more of a CMS feel.

I just finished redesigning the Suncoast chapter site into a CMS/Blog. You can view it here: http://stc-suncoast.org. When you click a button on the top navigation bar, a list of subpages appear. That’s the CMS part.

The subpages are called automatically using Rob’s List Subpages plugin. Here’s the cool part: this plugin works in your sidebar, not just in a page template.

Using this plugin, you can have about 7-8 top-level pages that each have 10+ subpages, and you won’t overwhelm your users with long page menu showing 80 pages at once. In fact, the user doesn’t even have to scroll. The user only sees pages relevant to his or her selection.

(By the way, the original design was the YGO Lonely theme, but I modified it quite a bit. You can tweak any theme into a CMS.)
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This podcast from Tim and Tom’s Design Critique is a good introduction to Information Architecture. Information architecture involves making content findable, usually in reference to websites. How intuitive is it for users to locate what they’re trying to find or do?

The role of the information architect is to organize information such that the user has no trouble finding exactly what he or she desires, particularly in situations where there are hundreds of pages. The discipline’s roots began with library science and taxonomy, but the term “information architect” is relatively new — the podcast mentions the year 2000 as the time when the term (and professional designation) was introduced.

In the podcast, guest expert Chris Farnum talked about the different roles people play on teams. Some specialize in graphic design, others in usability, others in coding, others in information architecture, others in content, and so forth. Some are able to play several of these roles expertly, and a select few can do them all. Read the rest of this entry »

Destry Wion pointed out this video detailing Google’s Master Plan to me. Really interesting presentation to watch. Google’s simple motto is “Don’t be evil,” but as they achieve total human omniscience, won’t it be tempting to start abusing that power? I hope they use it for good — such as catching criminals and stopping terrorists, rather than empowering marketers.

Google is still viewed as cool; if they abuse their power, they’ll lose that image and turn into Microsoft, which someone once described as the Darth Vader of Tech. It would be an interesting study to contrast the public images of Google vs. Microsoft and how each got that way.

Lip Dub, an amateur lip sync video of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,” is one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen. I want to analyze it a little, so put on your headphones or crank up your speakers and enjoy it first.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo

My 20-Minute Analysis of Lip Dub

Why is this such an appealing, engaging video? And why does it capture the essence of the web?

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If you call 800-466-4411, Google provides you with free business information listings, equivalent to calling information, only free. This Goog-411 service is worthwhile to enter as a contact on your cell phone so you can access it while driving. When I was lost in Seattle I called Google to connect with the place I was headed.

Here’s a sample of me calling for Sam Ash music store:

I’ve been experimenting with a free conference call recording/podcasting service called FreeConferencing from LiveOffice — free if you don’t mind calling long-distance to Minnesota, U.S.A., that is. Most people have free long-distance with their cell phone plans. Or even if you don’t have free long distance, you can use Skype and get long distance for nearly free.

What’s cool about this service is that it allows you to record the conversations. You just click a button that says “Start Recording,” and then an hour after the phone call, you log in to a web interface, download the recorded call in MP3 format, and voila, you’ve got a conference call podcast. This could be very handy for podcasters who want to interview but lack equipment. Or more likely, for those virtual meetings where not everyone is present. Read the rest of this entry »

I just discovered Jott today. Jott transcribes voicemail you leave on its service as text, and then sends that text to you via e-mail. So if you’re driving along and you have a memo to note, instead of writing it down, you just call a special Jott toll-free number, speak your memo, and Jott transcribes it as text and e-mails it to you.

You can also “jot” voicemail transcribed memos to others you’ve added to your Jott contact list. It’s a cool service, but when I cranked up a podcast and tried to record an excerpt of it as a memo, Jott couldn’t understand the speech. Darn. But if you speak into the phone clearly, it transcribes it rather well. For example, here’s a jot I made tonight:

Hi Shannon its Tom, please save me a couple of cookies I will be back in about half an hour and I might get a movie or not, I am sending you this voice mail, which will be converted to text in your inbox, arriving in about five or ten minutes. Bye, love you. [...]. Bye, bye.

If you don’t mind a few comma splices in the transcription, it’s a great resource. Also, Jott is in beta right now, so everything is free.

Internet Explorer comes with a built-in feedreader. Anytime you see the little orange RSS feed button on the toolbar light up, you know the site has a feed. Watch this 30 second video to see how to subscribe to a single feed using Internet Explore 7.0’s built-in feedreader.

You can also import a collection of feeds all at once. A feed collection is stored in an OPML file. Right-click this OPML file and save it to your desktop, and then watch this video for instructions on importing it into IE7’s feedreader.

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Yahoo Pipes is a new online tool that allows you to blend, manipulate, and combine feeds from various data sources to create a streamlined, single feed of information. Essentially Yahoo Pipes allows you to create feed mashups of different data sources without having a knowledge of programming.

 

Yahoo Pipes has received a lot of praise. In its debut, Tim O’Reilly said:

Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output. Yahoo! describes it as “an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator” that allows you to “create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.” While it’s still a bit rough around the edges, it has enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone.

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37 Signals’ to-do lists, which offer printable to-do lists online to help you get organized, or to simply make lists, is one of the most useful tools I’ve used lately. Although I didn’t write favorably about 37 Signal’s Campfire chat product, I really recommend their to-do lists. Mainly, all their products are cool, but the to-do lists have a special place in my heart because they are totally free. Read the rest of this entry »

I just spend the last hour and a half using the virtual chat feature on the Suncoast site talking about competition details and issues for the FTCC. Let me tell you, the chat works awesome. I mean, it actually works. This same functionality from 37 Signals’ Campfire product costs about $49/month (for 60 simultaneous chatters), but with the shoutbox plugin for Wordpress (actually Pierre’s Wordspew, which is a modified version of the Jaleneck AJAX Shoutbox), it’s totally free. Here’s what the message window part looks like:

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If you don’t enjoy listening to voicemail on your cell phone, check out Spinvox. This service converts your voicemail messages to text and then emails you the message. Right now you can sign up for a year’s service for free by e-mailing gamma@spinvox.com with the request.

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Callwave.com is a pretty cool service. When people leave voicemail messages on your cell phone, rather than having to listen to the messages on your phone, Callwave sends the voice message to your email inbox. The following image shows a sample delivery of the message. You click Open and the message plays.

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The Suncoast Member mashup map is finished. Several people commented how cool it is.

You can create a mashup map in 5 minutes from http://www.batchgeocode.com/, and there are Google plugins for WordPress that also facilitate the map. But I used the Google Map API because I wanted a list of scrollable names on the side. The method was much more arduous (right-click the map file to view the source and see the code for the individual markers).

I’m not entirely sure what the map tells us. I introduced the map along with a date for a member chat. I’m hoping the map will give more context to the remotely located chatters. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see where everyone is located.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to make a chapter member map mashup with Google maps. To see what I’m talking about, look at this page: http://stc-suncoast.org/map.html. I’m not finished putting all the members up there — this is obviously just a start.

Google Maps has an API that allows you to blend your own data with their mapping system. It’s really much easier to create a Google map mashup than it may initially appear.

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I have been using SurveyGizmo to issue some short surveys to our chapter and found that the tool is not only the best survey tool I’ve used, but issuing short surveys is also the best thing I have done. The type of feedback that comes back is amazing, particularly when you leave a free answer essay in there. People usually have feedback, and this gives them an opportunity to provide it.

Here are a few tips for surveys.

• Keep them short. Ask no more than 5 questions.
• Provide at least one free answer essay (not just radio buttons).
• If you can lighten the survey up, it may be more appreciated.
• Share your responses with the same people you surveyed 

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