If Kate Spade designed Web sites, this is what her portfolio would look like.
NYPL’s potential budget cut looks like it might pass $18M. We may be facing a loss of $25M to next year’s budget. If you use the NYPL, please write a letter of support.
Another mirror project submission.
When I was a little girl I had a bunny named Bun. Bun was my security blanket; he went with me everywhere. One Easter I lost him in the madness and confusion of an Easter egg hunt. Easter is a day to receive bunnies, not lose them.
I think that this experience has had a twisted and lasting effect on me. I find “bunny” such a funny word. Say it once, especially out of context, and Iíll chuckle. If my sister says it with that special sibling-language intonation, Iíll pee my pants.
Bunny.
If I were to write a screenplay the title would be The Bunny and The Bunny. It would be about two bunnies.
If you missed it the first time, and you like bunnies too, read Bunny Blood Lust.
My dad printed out my entire weblog so that my 84 year-old Grandmother can read it. She is as sharp as a tack and a major fox.
There is hardly a car on the street. Rubble trucks are driving up 3rd Ave. hauling away debris from downtown.
Busses are running; I took the M3 to work. Passengers normally rush for the good seats, but today they filed into the bus quietly, efficiently and politely.
People seem to carry this attitude into almost every task. “After you,” they say to one another in line for coffee.
Some restaurants and delis are open, but with limited supplies. Duncan Doughnuts has no doughnuts, just coffee.
My colleague created this up-to-date list of emergency contact information for airlines, blood drives, schools, transportation, shelters, hospitals and volunteer organizations. Most of the info is local, but there are some national numbers as well. He is updating it about every 30 minutes today.
After a long beauty sleep, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is back in business, with a larger membership, a new look and a refocused mission. The WaSP is still fighting for standards for creating and interpreting web-based content, but they are increasing their focus from browsers and authoring tools, to include the last problem: developers.
With the advent of 5.0 browsers, support for web standards in receiving devices began to take hold, thus making The WaSP’s earlier efforts a reality. The release of Dreamweaver MX demonstrated that The WaSP’s Dreamweaver task force had taken root, and that a generation of standards-compliant authoring tools was emerging.
With browsers and authoring tools more or less in the bag, The WaSP decided that the next target should be web developers. Many web developers are still creating sites built with table hacks, font tags, and other expensive and outmoded techniques. These practices were developed to cope with the proprietary rendering engines of 4.0 and earlier browsers. While the browser manufacturers have cleaned their side of the street, developers have been slow to clean theirs.
A new swarm headed by Molly E. Holzschlag and Shirley Kaiser (Learn Group co-leaders) has created an educational section on the new site that will help developers retire bad habits, and begin to author more accessible, less expensive, standards-compliant sites.
The WaSP has changed not only in its look and its focus, but in its voice. In its first iteration, WaSP had been written almost entirely by Jeffrey Zeldman, but now its regularly updated content is authored by a chorus of some of the best brains in the business.
My Interland troubles put me in good company. Thanks David.
But as one problem abates, another intensifies, and this time the villain is netsol. I received a "Domain Name Expiration Notice" from netsol for a domain that I registered with easyDNS just a few months ago. The document is designed to look like I reserved the domain with netsol, and the expiration date is June 20th. But if you look closely, you see that the expiration date is just a "reply by" date, and that the accompanying form is a transfer authorization. The thing looks like an expiration notice, but it is a transfer request!
And there’s more. I am trying to renew a client’s domain with netsol, and when I try to do it online, the netsol site tells me that I am not authorized to renew it because I registered the domain through another company. It will not tell me which company. Given the domain theft that is so prevalent lately, I wonder if someone is trying to hold this domain hostage until it expires, and then to take it from me. It could also just be bad record keeping on netsol’s part. That is bad enough.
Prescription for restoration of hope for the web: visit Look
At Me, a collection of found photographs. Link via portage.
The good news first: a three-judge panel sitting in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania concluded unanimously that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is unconstitutional. This decision is in response to the civil action brought by the American Library Association and the Multnomah County Public Library. That action was based on the claim that CIPA would force libraries to violate the First Amendment rights of their patrons. If CIPA had not been stopped, libraries receiving certain kinds of federal funding would have been forced to filter Internet access. Some libraries may still decide to filter as they wish. See the court’s opinion and the American Library Association’s response.
Now the bad news. The Justice Department has eased restrictions on domestic spying, giving the FBI greater authority to monitor libraries and other organizations. An especially cheery item to note is that "the new guidelines give FBI agents more freedom to investigate terrorism even when they are not pursuing a particular case." Tip for library users: if you need a book about bomb making, terrorism or anarchy, steal, do not borrow; you don’t want to that kind of stuff on your “library record.” A good discussion about this development is under way at Web4Lib. If you are not a subscriber, you can read the archive. Look for the "FBI to monitor libraries" thread.
Happy birthday to Mr. Zeldman.
At pixelview, the head lemur interviews Matt Haughey, the creator of Metafilter.
Portrait of an urban library: Washington D.C.’s public library system is the product of decades of neglect. Thanks, David.
Yesterday I wrote about the deceptive letter that I got from netsol/VeriSign. Today I learned that a U.S. court had ordered this sinister company to stop this very campaign. The fury that netsol has generated is enough to fuel a whole community; Network Solutions Horror Stories has a rather salty discussion forum, and a standing VeriSign scam update. Thanks, Michael.
Peter Merholz has a thing or two to say about decentralized organizations unifying their online presence. Makes me tired to even think about it.
Accessibility Tip:
I’ve been doing Section 508 research,
and testing each new lesson on the NYPL site. The flavor of this month has to
do with links and screen readers. Some screen readers have an option to read only
the links on a given page. It is important to select meaningful words to use as
the link. Here is an unkind way to set it up for screen readers:
A screen reader set to read links only will read, "visit this site, visit this page, read about."
Here is the kind way to provide the screen reader with meaningful links.
There are two things that women discover about themselves in their thirties; one is their anger. At age 32, mine flows steadily like steam from a subway vent, but I have not tapped it entirely yet.
Years ago I gave Interland my credit card number so they could host an ill-conceived web site. Last month they charged that card $1,141.20, assuming that I wanted to continue the long-dead site on their new, exorbitantly priced hosting plan. Securing the refund was a two-day affair that climaxed when my account rep informed me that I had not "canceled the account soon enough to warrant a full refund."
I do not yell much. I am afraid to, really. When I have yelled, I have always withheld some part of it, sort of like the way I dance, arms a bit stiff, reluctant to submit to the experience.
But this time, I yelled at my rep with all my entire being, "You did not have my authorization to take my money, and I will not get off the phone until I have a full refund!"
And he gave it to me.