Useful Links: Usability, Text resize, Twitter IPO, Siri

The ABC’s of Usability, Part 9 is at Usabilla. They are defining terms in a move to teach you the basics.

Support a user’s ability to resize text. This is from Simply Accessible. One thing it talks about is the uselessness of text resize widgets.

Twitter loses money, as many have reported. Yet it’s going to try to raise a billion dollars in an IPO. In a lot of ways that doesn’t make sense, but I recall Amazon losing money for many years before it started turning a profit.

The voice talent behind Siri has spoken out. Her name is Susan Bennett. She’s going public now in an effort to make sure the right person is recognized for the famous voice.

Useful links: dialog element, going green, surveillance

A Preview of the New Dialog Element comes from Treehouse. A new HTML element – that’s exciting news to me!

Did you try out the Ecograder tool that James Christie told us about yesterday? Web Teacher came out pretty high on the green scale, but there are a high number of http requests. One of the things I’m going to do to cut back on them is stop linking to photos on Fllickr as decorations in the useful links posts. Just words, folks. Hope you can live with it. After a discussion with Denise in Fads and Fashions, I had resolved to use more images, but have reconsidered that plan. The other fast way I see to reduce http requests is to get rid of the Flickr widget in the footer. I’ve had a Flickr widget on this blog for years because I personally enjoy it. I am 100% sure none of you readers care about it at all.

eyes on the street or creepy surveillance? danah boyd brings up serious questions that responsible adults need to be thinking about.

Useful links: Bing search, Creative JS, iPad Classroom

bing cherry

Bing is touting some new search results tech that happens on it’s page zero search. Search Engline Land explains all about it.

Here’s a blog with JavaScripts, tutorials and articles that might help you. Creative JS.

The iPad Classroom is a Paper.li daily that might give you some good teaching ideas. Any Paper.li daily can be subscribed to, including the one I curate, Women in Web Education.

Useful Links: 6 easy steps, 6 print faqs, WordCamp, teaching web design

The 6 Simplest Web Accessibility Tests Anyone Can Do is from Karl Groves.

6 Things I Learned about Print Stylesheets from HTML5 Boilerplate. This is by Joshua Johnson from Design Shack and explains how to use a media query to include a print stylesheet with your CSS.

I’m participating in WordCamp Albuquerque this weekend. If you are a WordPress user anywhere in the nearby area, I hope you are signed up for this great event. You’ll learn a lot!

Teaching Web Design to New Students in Higher Education is at Smashing Magazine by Jen Kramer. Must reading for web educators.

Useful links: 3D printing, Open Edu, Prosthetics

How 3D Printing will Impact the Web is speculation, but it’s fun to think about.

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom On New Online Education Initiatives: “If This Doesn’t Wake Them Up, I Don’t Know What Will” Must reading for educators. Here’s one quote:

The Open Education Alliance can potentially be an extremely disruptive model because it addresses what Thrun and Newsom acknowledged repeatedly as one of the biggest problems that the higher education system faces: The skills gap. Today, education is geared towards assessment — towards preparing students for some illusory, state-driven, assessment-driven goals, which may have no relevance in the end to giving them the skills and preparation they need to thrive outside of higher education.

And while we’re on the topic of interesting and challenging new tech ideas to think about in a disruptive future, consider The Six Million Dollar Question: How Will The Future of Prosthetics Affect Human Performance and Self Esteem?

Useful Links: Girls in IT, wearable tech, early edu

Why schoolgirls are not interested in studying IT is an essay by a 13 year old English schoolgirl.

This bracelet could replace your passwords, your car keys, and even your fingerprints. This is the ultimate in cool and something a forgetful password keeper like myself thinks is a great idea. It’s also the ultimate privacy invasion. Since it can be anything, how long until its baked into something like Google Glass or whatever comes after Google Glass?

3 Tech Skills Every Kid Should Learn at School (but doesn’t) is right on the mark.