Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Lea Verou has released her syntax highlighters prism.js and prism.css as a free download.
A side note about Lea, she has just joined the W3C as a member of the the W3C developer relations and web education teams. If you are working in web education, perhaps you should find out a little about her if you don’t already know who she is.
HTML5 Doctor has an article to help you with Multimedia Troubleshooting.
An expose from .eduGuru about potential problems in the EDU world: Are You Being Used?
Okay, dear reader, this is my last example to get you started on stories and examples of places where women in tech are treated as equals. Further Good Guys in Tech posts must come from you.
The Open Help conference boasts a female speaker and female led sessions.
I must mention Environments for Humans as one of the good guys. E4H sponsors many conferences – all done online. For example, if you look quickly through the speaker’s faces for the current CSS Summit, you’ll see that women are welcomed and given equal status there.
I’m attempting to prime the pump with a few Good Guys in Tech posts of my own. I hope this encourages you to let me know about examples of men in tech who treat women as equals that you find.
One way men in tech can support women in tech is to treat what they do with the respect and support that comes from a promotional tweet. Here are a few examples, starting with good guy Jeffrey Zeldman.
More great advice on public speaking. This time from Lea Verou. lea.verou.me/2012/06/so-you…
— Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) July 27, 2012
Mike Lane lets us know how the W3C is doing on equality for women in this tweet. Perhaps he wasn’t interested in the 2:2 gender ratio of the new editors, but I am.
W3C names four editors to work on HTML specification mln.im/QlPL1d
— Mike Lane (@mlane) July 27, 2012
Pratik Patel – love his enthusiasm for the ladies’ work on a panel.
Had an excellent panel on accessible books at #RWA12 with @SassyOutwater, @Smartbitches, and@LaurelMS. Awesome job everyone
— Pratik Patel (@ppatel) July 27, 2012
Here’s one from Howard Rheingold celebrating a woman’s work.
Beautiful crap detection case history by @AlisonSeaman storify.com/AlisonSeaman/c…
— Howard Rheingold (@hrheingold) July 29, 2012
Finally, advice for a woman from Dave McClure about how Yahoo! can Pass Go, collect the big money, and hold up half the sky.
Dear @MarissaMayer: Think Different. 500hats.com/pink-is-the-ne… cc @Yahoo @Women2 @500startups
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) July 29, 2012
The people who work with and for Pete Seewald at Location3 Media are so enthusiastic about what a great job he does treating women as equals in the workplace, I heard from even more of them after the mention he got yesterday.
The first comes from JV, who said,
Pete Seewald and I worked together for about a year and a half on a large software project. The team was comprised primarily of men. I was in a product owner role and Pete was a developer. Pete was willing to talk to me about technical issues and not deliver it in a way that was condescending. He actually listened to my opinion and point of view which was evident in his final work product. Pete made me feel that my perspective was just as important as the other members of the team. The idea of gender and treatment of individuals based on their gender does not seem to enter into Pete’s mind. It is a refreshing approach.
Next I heard from BB, who said,
As a woman in the IT field, a lot of the times people treat you like you are not as good as men unless you prove to them it is not the case. I have been in the situation where a new manager came on board (a guy) and I am the only woman in the team so I was assigned to do all the administrative tasks such as booking meeting rooms, arrange lunches, photocopying and etc, I was eventually pulled away from those duties after the boss realized I am actually one of the strongest programmers in the team. There is also the opposite situation that I have heard: the team hired a woman programmer but she couldn’t really deliver anything, but because she is a woman so the team was very lenient with her incompetency and it turned out the value of her being in the team was to help out some administrative tasks. I’d like to be in a team where people just treat me as a professional, and that is how I felt working with Peter Seewald. I felt that I was given the same opportunity and respect while working with Pete, he is very direct and candid, and also very attentive to my professional opinions.
And finally, from his boss, Brandi.
Pete works with me in an environment where he tries to find solutions to problems and facilitate opportunities for everyone in the business including me, as his female boss. He constantly looks to give me information, or ensure that I’m filled in when I may be seen outside of the “good ol’ boys club”. Pete has always promoted my work and realizes that in some cases as a woman, I may need to manage businesses differently and accepts and embraces those challenges. He has always respected me and my decisions, and reflected on me in a positive and friendly manner as we have worked together in a wide range of types of businesses.
Thanks to Philip Reed for getting all this organized among the folks at Location3 Media.
As for myself, I want to see Pete speaking at tech conferences and telling all the brogrammers who attend how to act around women in the workplace. He has some advice to give, methinks.
If you can share a story about a conference where you see women treated as equals – delivering keynotes, leading panels, giving talks – please contact me and I’ll share the good words in a Good Guys post. See Women in Tech: Can You Help Find a Few Good Men? for more details.
I received this as a comment from Jackie Brockhill in the post Women in Tech: Can You Help Find a Few Good Men, Part II.
I wanted to promote Jackie’s comment into a post, because it is the inaugural post in the new category on this blog: GoodGuysInTech.
As an Agile project manager, the majority of the developers that I work with are male. All with varying levels & flavours of their experience with Agile as it relates to a company or project. The team I was managing for this particular company were considered to be some of the most senior developers responsible for the foundation of the platform. Each with their own beliefs, attitudes and goals . My challenge was about demonstrating how Agile could benefit a skeptical group of developers. To do that I needed support. Luckily, Peter Seewald was able to help translate between myself & the developers. He helped explain to the group the reason behind using points to track work, the need to enter time spent on a particular task & he also showed enthusiasm for our daily scrums. I believe that the support of a male developer made my job & in the end the whole team a success.
Naomi Kobuko was an experienced business woman. She and her husband were running a game development company called LavaMind. He did the games, she took care of the business side. That is, until she decided she wanted to make a game, too. She knew nothing about how to do it. This is the story of how she learned.
Image courtesy Naomi Kobuko
Naomi explains how she got started learning what she needed to know:
“I didn’t even know how APIs really worked,” said Naomi. “I used to blank out when anyone talked tech to me. I’d worked in the game business, but I was never one to code.”
“The thing that helped me the most was the community. I stumbled upon the computer language Lua and joined the Corona Labs community. As soon as I plugged into the forums, I felt connected, and I began to suck up knowledge. Whenever I got stuck, someone always posted something that helped me get over the hurdles.”
About a year later, Naomi completed her first game and is now the one helping newbie coders. Her game is called Beetle Bounce.
Image courtesy of LavaMind.
More than just a finished game that works on iOS and Android, it was a Top Game Pick on Nook and she was getting offers of marketing money backing.
I was fascinated by Naomi’s story of how she learned with the help of a supportive community and wanted to know more about her background. She answered a few questions for me.
Q: Can you explain your background?
A: I’ve actually had a varied career. I grew up in a small farming village in Japan. My father was a Christian pastor, which is quite unusual in Northern Japan.
I went to college in Tokyo at ICU (International Christian University). When I graduated, I worked as a financial analyst for
Morgan Stanley. Then I moved to the United States to be with my husband, and I worked in real estate.
Real estate wasn’t my thing, so I began translating for TV and film productions, and I wound up coordinating international film productions. That was a blast. I also worked translating manga (Japanese comic books) into English. I’ve translated some volumes from popular series, including “Naruto” and the “The Ring”.
Around the same time, I partnered with my husband to form LavaMind. My husband did all the coding on our first games, while I did the graphics, sound and helped manage the business. Our first game was Gazillionaire, and it was successful. So we did two more business simulation games: one called Zapitalism, and another called Profitania. These are very popular for teaching kids and adults entrepreneurship and money management. After this I worked for several startups doing business and finance.
After this, I wanted to work from home again, but I couldn’t justify hiring an engineer. It’s so expensive in San Francisco and games are risky business, so I began to teach myself to code. After a year of hard work, I’d completed Beetle Bounce.
Q: What age group is Beetle Bounce for and what’s it about?
A: I designed a game that I wanted to play myself, so I’d say it’s primarily for women (and men) who like casual games, like Peggle, Zuma, and Tetris. That said, it seems to appeal to everyone. It’s easy to play and action-packed, so even kids get into it. Girls love it!
Q: It sounds like you did this single-handedly with just help from the online forums at Corona Labs. That’s amazing to me. Are you planning to do your second game the same way?
A: Yes, I did it all myself. I like the freedom of working for myself and not being reliant on anyone else. It’s completely liberating. I had so many jobs where I had to be in an office and rush around to meetings, which is difficult when you have two boys. I really enjoy working for myself at my own pace. I also love the freedom to create whatever I feel like making. I plan to continue creating new, original games as long as my brain is still sharp!
Q: Do you blog somewhere?
A: Yes, I actually run a blog called Founders Space. It’s quite popular with startups and small businesses. That’s my main blog. LavaMind is on Twitter, too, @lavamind.
Other moms who have a great idea for a game but need help with learning how to make it a reality may want to check out the community forums at Corona Labs that helped Naomi so much.
The community at Moms with Apps is also very helpful. Recently Moms with Apps published Resources for Beginning Programmers. They asked,
If you want to build an app from the ground up, and you aren’t a computer programmer, where do you start?
The resources suggested by that community are listed in the article, with Corona among other helpful sites named by mom app developers.
For someone with an idea and an interest, making a popular game that can be sold in the mobile marketplace is definitely possible. Naomi Kobuko did it, and you can, too.
[Note: Cross-posted at BlogHer.]
When you go out of town you might think you have to give up your blog and website reading until you get back. With the entertaining, helpful or interesting content out there these days, you might not be so eager to do that. I know that I personally like having something to read while I travel, and while I usually stick with books it might be nice to have a few blogs to go through. Just for those shorter trips or waits that wouldn’t give me enough time to really get invested in my book.
Not only is this a pleasant thought for traveling, but just for those waits that are part of daily life. Waiting for a prescription to be filled, or to be called in for a meeting. Even just sitting outside enjoying the sun while your kids play at the playground.
This is a reality these days, thanks to mobile technology like tablets and smartphones. You can take advantage of this by turning website pages into PDF files for reading on the go. This is a great way to increase your blog reading productivity and keep you up-to-date with Internet marketing news.
Here are eight ways to do that.
I have never tried this myself, as I don’t use Google Chrome. But Digital Inspiration created a quick tutorial that shows you how to do it. The gist is that you go to the page of your choice, click CTRL+P, and it will open the printing dialog box. From there you will be able to hit “Save as PDF” and it will create the file on your computer. It will also allow you to select the pages to do this with, which is convenient.
This is a simple to use tool that lets you put in a URL for what you want to have included in the PDF. From there you can delete portions, change the text size, remove or include images and even email the result to yourself or anyone else.
This app works by making a clean version that is easy to read of any web page for your mobile device. You can remove clutter and set it up so that it is easier on the eyes, all set to your specifications. Plus, you can save it for reading later.
Here you are able to cut out large chunks of content so you can put just what you want into a readable file. It is mostly for people to print, but you can save it into a PDF as well. It is great if you want a collection of prints that would otherwise be unrelated to a single web page.
A super simple program, this is similar to a lot of others. You put in the URL, it creates an editable file which can be saved as PDF. You can then save it to your desktop and email it to yourself. It is a bit more bare bones than the others.
One of my favorites, this is an opensource project from FiveFilters. It easily creates large PDF files by cleaning it up for you and making it into something easy to read. It has both a bookmarklet and a WP plugin for efficient use.
A quick to use cleanup plugin that works more quickly than perhaps any other similar tool I have found. It works with Firefox and I have never found anything that is higher rated for that purpose.
I use this one all the time. It is a standard conversion tool that allows ypou to put in the URL to make a PDF. However, you can select each post you want included, so you can more quickly edit content for the perfect reading experience. You can also add in other blogs to select more posts. It is one of the most popular tools on the web.
When on the go, it is nice to be able to read what you like. If you want something quick and interesting, try turning your blog or web favorites into an easily created ebook. These tools will make PDF files that are perfect for reading out of your home.
Guest Author Jessy is the travel blogger for Luxury-Hotels.com, the ultimate travel tool for picking luxury hotels on your next business trip.