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Earlier today, there was a thread on Plurk earlier today, discussing web pages that featured lists of Web 2.0 applications. There are a number of them, some on Web 2.0 apps in general, some on specific areas, like Social 2.0. One of the pages that was noted in the thread was Go2Web20.net, self-termed as the complete Web 2.0 sites directory. It has the standard Flash(y) display of acres of scrollable logos that can be clicked for a further description of the Web 2.0 application.

I digress for a moment (read: rant). I looked at the first several entries (in alpha sort order) and found at least one typographical or spelling error in all but one of the entries. If you want your web site to really rock, take a few extra seconds and re-read what you type (or cut/paste) and correct it. We now return to our regularly scheduled entry.

The first thing I noticed about this web site was that there was no other way to review the list of hundreds of web sites that the creators have collected other than through the Flash interface. You could narrow the list by keyword and search it, but you were still left to poking your way with your mouse. What happens if you don't use a mouse and prefer keyboard shortcuts? More importantly, what if you cannot use a mouse or ever see the Flash application? Let me explain...

Editor's note: apologies in advance if I do not use the currently politically correct terminology for the ability differences described from here forward. In our ever-changing use of language, I may have missed a bulletin.

During my career in IT, I had the great fortune of working with a number of programmers and designers who had problems with vision, hearing, and motor functions. I was always amazed at how they adapted to a wide range of barriers that the world has placed into their path. Back in the early days of computing, programming required the three P's: pencil, paper (coding forms), and punchcard. Quite a challenge for a blind or quadriplegic programmer.

When we moved to more modern technology with terminals and, eventually, PC-based workstations, the challenge was still there, but the solutions were at least possible. One of the first was from Maryland Computer Systems (see some old articles via Google) that could read the screen and use a voice synthesizer to communicate to the blind user. The voice had a very monotone male characteristic, too, as if it came from a Class Z robot movie. The user could, however, adjust the rate at which the words were spoken. An adept user could get to a level of listening at several times the normal rate. Remember, in most cases, it was a string of characters, not words. Say the programmer was working in 360 Assembler - the load address instruction with a label, P100X001 LA    R1,=A(JG00012), would come out as P ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO X ZERO ZERO ONE SPACE L A SPACE SPACE SPACE SPACE etc. Additionally, keystrokes were read back, as well as positioning using cursor keys. This hardware attachment (yes, hardware) which cost in the thousands of dollars worked quite well on standard 80 x 24 (characters by lines) screens. Then came Windows...

With Windows, came such devices as the mouse, trackball, and expanded keyboards. The Maryland Talker could not handle much more that text and keyboards. The first product that I came in contact with was from a firm called Henter-Joyce, now Freedom Scientific. One of the founders, Ted Henter, learned to program after he lost his own vision in an auto accident. The company developed a product that eventually became known as Jaws for Windows. Our blind programmers found it to be a wonderful product embodying the company's slogan, empowering independence. It truly brought them to the technology level of their sighted peers. To experience what a screen reader sounds like, try this demonstration at WebAIM. Ironically, it uses Flash.

There are also adaptive technologies for those with limited or no motor function. We have all seen and heard Stephen Hawking. The most common product that we used was Dragon Dictate (now called Dragon Speaking Naturally) which can be used to not only type, but control a mouse using only your voice.

So, now that I have digressed through a bit of my history of assisting my programmers, what does this have to do with Web 2.0? It all has to do with accessibility. Web 2.0, actually most of the glitz in our world today, connected or not, is designed for the fastest, the slickest, the sexiest effect, something that will catch your eye or please your ears or fit in your palm. What if you can't see or hear or hold something?

According to the American Federation for the Blind, there are approximately 10 million in the US who are considered visually impaired (people who cannot see at all as well as those who have difficulty seeing with eyeglasses or contact lenses), 1.3 million who are legally blind. According to Gallaudet University, 9 to 22 persons out of every thousand have a severe hearing impairment or are deaf. Persons with motor impairments can be due to physical injury to or diseases that affect the muscular or nervous systems.

Although I am not different-abled in these areas (I do wear glasses and my hearing stinks), I could be tomorrow or in the future. That is why we have the guidance of laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act for not only things like handicapped parking spaces, but also for web site design. We have aids like the ATRC Web Accessibility Checker to see where our web pages fail and how we can improve them.

Funny, I often wonder why provide a full text RSS feed. Simple, it is pretty much 100% readable by a screen reader. I also think I will be taking some time over the coming weeks adding accessibility features through the web site. Stay tuned for details.

The Olympics will always have a special place in my life with my participation in the 1984 Summer Games in LA. The best of luck in the competitions for Team USA - bring home lots of medals and memories from Beijing. On the other hand, we should all use this opportunity to ask our governments and businesses why we do business with a country that regularly violates the human rights of its citizens and continues to persecute and occupy Tibet.


Feel free to take a copy of this graphics I made - the Free Tibet-related portions courtesy of oddsock and the Team USA logo from their web site.

Being both a geek and an earth scientist, I am now beginning to wonder who in their right mind would choose a Luddite like McCain for president. He watches the Internet with his grandchildren and says that there is a common border between Iraq and Pakistan. Next will he be saying that evolution is a bunch of bunk or that Obama must be a Muslim?

Now I know that those high up in politics have aides and drones to read and respond in their name to email messages and to glean information from Internet sources, but come on. It is the 21st Century and at least a tiny bit of familiarization about technology by a candidate expected to lead what is purportedly the richest, smartest, most advanced country on Earth would be appropriate. No, he does not have to blog or tweet or plurk or text, but a basic understanding of all of the above would be nice.

And geography... don't get me started, but here we are not talking rocket science. We're talking elementary school! He can't blame lack of access to Google Earth either. He could use a paper map, atlas, or a globe. Granted, he was making a speech to a group of people who probably can't find their way to the next county, let alone state, but what if he was standing next to the leader of a country and makes a gaff like that? So many are saying he is just Bush continued and this is just another example of that. Oh, he was just confused say the conservative pundits. Well, geez, what if he is confused while deciding whether to say bomb Kazakhstan or not. He might think... hmmm, sounds like Kansas and say well... bomb Kansas! Dorothy and Toto would not like that, Mr. McCain. I know that is an outlandish example, but if he cannot do basic geography or understand new technology, who's to say?

All of this lack of knowledge by the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party or of any party for that matter should be of concern to all Americans. Does this mean if he does not understand something that he will just let his advisors take charge? If he gets confused, we should just ignore it? Does this mean that if he makes a mistake that we'll all just say oops, nevermind? I feel that being the chief executive of my country requires at least a general knowledge of the world and what makes it work. McCain flunks miserably. Being a POW does not make you a commander in chief. Being a senator does not make you a leader.

Now that you are done reading, take a moment, print a blank outline map of the world (PDF file), and see how many countries of the world you can name correctly. Here you will find larger blank maps of the world's regions to make those tiny countries easier to see. Also, look at these blank US and Canada maps and see if you can label the states and provinces. Share this with friends and family... amazing how much fun it will be when you here mention of Bahrain or Moldova or Nunavut on the news and actually can place where it it. The whole collection of blank (and labelled - no cheating!) maps can be found at Houghton-Mifflin's Education Place.

I was looking at Sears for an intercom (you know, Sears has everything!) and came across this splash ad for furnishing dorm rooms (month and a half 'til Fall Semester). They have several different layout options to fit your kid's particular style. So I browsed through them to see what ideas I could get for doing stuff around the house as we clean and paint and fix-up.

But take a close look at the picture (click it to see it full size). Do you see something missing from this picture? Something like... books... notebooks... educational materials.... Yes, the room has an el grande TV, game station, gaming chair, but it seems to lack anything vaguely related to school. With all the toys, who has time to go to class, study, socialize (not connected to the 'net).

Back in the day, there used to be one TV in a lounge in the dorm (dark ages, I know), but that way you got to mix and mingle (and yes, fight over what to watch). Go to the library (OMG!) and actually read a paper book. I know, reality bites. But, hell, the bite might just be worth it!

Stepping off my high horse...

I really should add my blogroll back to the sidebar (some day), but until I do, I will share some of the items that I read somewhere on the sidebar some time soon. For now, here is the snippet of my most recent reads, courtesy of Google Reader.



I was also playing with reBlog from Eyebeam. While the UI is nice, the problem is that all the publishing code is in PHP (not my forte) and the plugin to integrate the output into MT was for 3.x (meaning I would need to hack it to 4.1). It does not appear to be in active development either - probably no reason to since it seems to work quite well as is. I had previously used Bloglines, but I never cared for it. Since I spend what seems like half my life in Google-land, I figured giving the Reader a good move. We'll see.

One blog I have started following in my quest for wrangling social networking is Social Web Tools. She covers a wide range of tools and, in particular, Twitter and its analogs. Even with this post, I suggest it as a good read.

A recent article, Promote Your Site The Smart Way With BookmarkingDemon, just plain rubbed me the wrong way. In a nutshell, the tool she is describing provides a means to send out links to your entries, web pages, whatever, automatically to a variety of social bookmarking web sites. Automatically. Daily. While it is termed as an SEO tool, it sounds in the same category as the blog / web site / comment / search engine spamming engines we all dread. I get 5000+ worthless spam pings a day. While they never see the light of day, it still degrades my web site response and chews up traffic.

Rather than rant on again, let me just clip the comment I left on the post, just in case it gets lost in moderation:

"It can be such a tedious pain though, to manually submit your URLs to all those social bookmarking sites on a daily basis." "...many features such as ... automated account creation."

Last time I looked, the definition of "social" has an intimate connection to the word "human" as in a person. Call me old fashioned, but I thought social networking was to be... um... socialable. I really enjoy reading your blog, but this post resembles promotion of a spam tool (I know... it is an "SEO tool"). You may not be promoting Viagra or whatever, but it is no different.

As far as automated postings, pings, and such, it is much easier (and free) to use one of any number of plug-ins that already do the same thing when you actually do make an update.

Just my $0.02, guess I am old-fashioned and already swamped going through all the repetitious links and spam out there.

To promote yourself, do it yourself. I have no problem with update pings when you make a change, either automated or manual. Using a tool that not only pings, but also creates additional accounts in social engines, is spamming. Sure, we all can have multiple personas on the Internet, but mechanical ones seems to defeat the purpose of social networking.

When I expressed my leeriness about using foreign-based social networking sites and applications, you may wonder why. Most, if not all of these web sites have privacy statements, some with great detail, some just "we protect your privacy" at the bottom of a page. Being in the US, my expectations are that my private data will be protected and that if for some reason it is lost, stolen, or misused, that I may have legal recourse. Okay, I know, fat chance, but at least there is a chance. Patriot Act and FISA courts not withstanding, for the most part, we do have protection.

The clause in most privacy statements that cause me the most heartburn is this one, taken from a unnamed social web site:

Disclosures Required by Law: We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information when we believe in good faith that an applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of another user.

Sounds fair, right? You would want to be protected from whatever. The phrase that concerns me is the applicable law, regulation, or legal process one. In the US, it would be state and/or federal law and the privacy statement would say what state has jurisdiction in its matters. And that is why I always check where the web site is hosted and the company is located.

The problem with this particular privacy statement is that the web site and its company are located in Mainland China. Yes, those friendly folks who brought you the Tiananmen Square massacre, harsh treatment of practitioners of feng shui, and persecution of the Tibetan followers of the Dalai Lama. So, you think that since they are hosting the Olympics that all is changed? No censorship? No theft of your personal data? In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry. Since we don't live in one, we even have to worry in the US.

That is the only word I can use to describe the accident that I spent four hours at last night. Senseless loss of life. I dread it when the tones come across my pager for an accident. It is a part of what we do, our service to the community in times of need, but we would so much rather just be there in case of need than to have to respond to it. Late night on a road nearby that is known for its sharp declining curves, when you hear a call for an accident on it, you know that it will not be good, as if any accident ever serves a useful purpose.

When the response comes for our rescue truck for entrapment and for the fire police to close down a road, along with extra ambulances and medics, you only hope that we are not necessary, that everything is okay. But when you hear a medical helicopter placed on alert and then hear that their services as well as the EMT's are canceled, but rescue is told to continue in, your heart sinks. Last night was one of those nights.

For whatever the cause of the accident, two young men, high school students, lost their lives. Over the past two years, it is the third fatal accident in that stretch of road. Their families and friends gathered at either end of the scene. Our job was to light the scene for the investigators as well as provide a perimeter to keep onlookers well back from the area. The clusters of people, obviously their classmates, clinging to each other, crying, consoling, asking why, why this had happened. Our job is to assist the police in their reconstruction, but also to provide for the safety of all who were at the scene, both working and grieving.

Seeing the kids, wrought with the pain of losing someone close to them, and the adults, either relieved it was not their son or daughter, came together to try and make sense of and begin the recovery from such a senseless accident. Senseless, that two young men will never get to see adulthood and live full lives. Senseless, that their parents and siblings have lose a part of their family. Senseless, that their friends and classmates have to grow up very quickly to see someone's life snuffed out in a moment.

I am not one to make a judgment on the cause of the accident. Those details will come out in the days and weeks ahead. It is, though, a reminder to all of us, to slow down a bit, pay attention more when we are behind the wheel. When I walked down to the scene, it was not until I was only a few feet away that I could even begin to tell what make of vehicle it was, and then only by the manufacturer's emblem. So many times, we feel that when we are surrounded by steel and airbags, that we are invincible. We aren't. We are frail in comparison to the forces of an accident, even a minor one. No matter what auto maker says about this safety feature or that improvement, the overriding laws of physics still remain.

My thoughts are with those who lost someone in that accident last night.

Finally, I can see the last 200 gallons or so of brackish (mild statement) water at the bottom of our pool. The biggest problem is getting those last gallons out of the pool. I have been using a heavy-duty submersible sump pump (clearly marked as not for use in swimming pools) with great success. Now, at the deep end of the pool with so little water in it, the challenge is getting the pump to sit upright so that the water level switch is upright enough to turn (and keep) the pump running. So far, so good.

My little amphibian friends who had taken up residence in the pool are almost gone. I have three stragglers that I need to coerce a bit while the rest of the water drains since the next step in hyperchlorination - shocking what little water is left while I refill with clean water. That process will kill of the algae and any other growing matter to be swept away through the filtration system. The frogs will not want to be in there when that happens so I need to get them migrated to a nearby stream with their compadres.

Back to work!

And the someone knows who she is. Even though it didn't arrive until today, it made this past Sunday even more special and made me feel like I can have that particular day again.