News-Politics Archives - Page 17 of 39

Is this support call hilarious? What do you think?

A call for help with a technical problem to a line called Builder Support is making the rounds of the Internet. During the anniversary of Pac-Man last week, there was a small Pac-Man game on the Google search page. The call is about that noisy Pac-Man game. Most people think it’s worth linking to and tweeting about because it’s hilarious. Here’s the call.

Did you think it was hilarious? Or even a bit funny? Responses from Twitter all retweet the idea that the call is hysterically funny. This person also called it a Google fail.

Check this video out — Old Lady’s Google Pac-Man Problem: Hilarious Tech Support Call http://youtu.be/xYWuW7_WfJU GOOGLE FAIL!!Thu Jun 10 20:12:23 via webCrystal Jones
CrystalSaysSo

Everyone also assumes it is an old lady calling, a senior citizen. Who else could be so ignorant, right?

Old Lady Calls Tech Support To Remove Google Pac-Man–Hilarity Ensues http://huff.to/9UuJb5 #LOL /via @low78Thu Jun 10 20:10:03 via Twittelator Andrea
KshrGirl

The headlines on Alltop and Techland both refer to the caller as either an old lady or a little old lady. The people at College Humor were particularly unsympathetic. I guess college kids never feel stymied by new information.

These are my feelings about the call.

The support dude, Brian, was rude initially and actually laughed at the woman’s question. Why isn’t anyone talking about that?
The caller, on the other hand, was very polite. She even asked if he had time to stay on the line while she tried his suggestion.
After about three minutes of useless conversation, Brian finally figures out that he really does need to do something useful to help the woman with her problem. He doesn’t explain it very well, but he finally manages to get her to shut down the browser tab for Google. He doesn’t mention the volume control icon next to the game display.
Who says she’s old? She’s a woman. She doesn’t know much about using a browser. Does that make her old? Is her polite behavior a symptom of age? You could argue that her voice “sounds old.” On the other hand, I am old, but people constantly tell me my voice sounds “young.” (Like this interviewer did.) Am I young or am I old on the phone? Why does it matter?
Why is it funny? Was everyone who laughed born knowing how to close a browser tab? I don’t think so. They had to learn the first time just like the caller did. Is the experience of learning to close a browser tab different at age 6 than at age 96?

I’m pretty tech savvy. The other day my granddaughter brought me her netbook to show me something. I couldn’t figure out how to scroll down the page. Turns out there was a lovely little device next to the track pad meant just for scrolling. But I didn’t know that. I couldn’t read the page. Even the most accomplished user has an occasional moment of beginner’s mind. This story rubs me wrong because of the assumption that anyone so afflicted with a case of beginner’s mind regarding a browser problem must be old.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you think the call was the funniest thing you’ve heard in years. Or maybe you’d like me to shut up because my complaints about ageism are bugging you. Don’t worry, they’ll be gone tomorrow. (Maybe.)

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

Useful links: Documentation, help files, child bloggers

Talk documentation to me lists some common sense steps for documenting a process. One of my pet peeves around the explosion of web apps, iPhone apps, and explosive new tools like Twitter is that the documentation and help information is inadequate. Putting someone in charge of documentation is always a good idea.

The Twitter Help Center is a good example. There was always something in the Twitter help files, but it was not very helpful for a long time. Now there are video tutorials on everything from how to retweet to how to find people. Twitter even has a YouTube channel for their videos.

How Young is Too Young? at Techipedia takes a look at successful child bloggers, some as young as 10. The kids respond to some questions about young bloggers and offer advice for young bloggers.

Embedding fonts the Google Way

For a while I toyed with the idea of using embedded fonts to liven up my web pages. I would read articles on how to do it and get discouraged. Some browsers needed one kind of font, some another—it was too much bother.

Then Google came out with a font embedding system that is dead easy. You can get started with them at the Google Font API page.

For completeness, I must add other sources for embeddable fonts. One is Font Squirrel. It uses a different technique involving the CSS @font-face declaration. With Font Squirrel, you download the font and put it on your server. TypeKit sells access to embeddable fonts, which are on their server network. TypeKit has many more fonts than the free sources do. The price structure on TypeKit is very reasonable.

The How To

Google’s tools are the easiest to use. Here’s how you would use Google fonts.

Pick a font you like from the Webfonts page.
Click a font you like. You see it in various sizes. Click the Tab that says “Get the Code”
There are two code snippets. The first you paste into the head of your HTML document. Make it the first thing in the head. (I’ll get to why in a minute.) I wanted to try the Cantarell, so I pasted this code into my web page.
The second code snippet goes into your CSS file. I changed it up a bit to include three sizes of headings and default to sans-serif rather than the serif in their example code. Here’s how my CSS looked.
Upload the HTML and the CSS to your server and take a look at your page. (You may need to refresh the page.) Here’s how Cantarell looks on my web site.

The Caveats

The Google fonts work with most browsers, but with limits. One limit is that you need a pretty up to the minute version of any browser to see the magic. That means don’t remove that old font rule in your stylesheet, just put the new one calling a font from Google after your original rule. If the browser doesn’t know the embedded font magic, it will still show your original font.

The other limit is download time. If you have a lot of users with dial up, mobile users or users with slow connections of some other kind, you may want to stay away from the idea for a while longer. It’s whiz-bang fast with cable or DSL, but that may not be who your web page targets.

It works in Google Chrome versions 4.249.4+. Chrome renders the rest of the page, but until the web font has loaded, it displays a blank space in place of the text that uses the font. This may cause a problem with slow connections. Apple Safari versions 3.1+ work. Like Chrome, Safari renders the rest of the page, but until the web font has loaded, it displays a blank space in place of the text that uses the font. The same thing applies in Internet Explorer versions 6+. The reason the LINK element you paste into the document head must go first is because of Internet Explorer. If it isn’t the first thing there, the whole page may not render.

The fonts work in Mozilla Firefox version: 3.5+. In Firefox, the first display is the text in the default font. Firefox then re-renders text in the web font once it has loaded. So, the user sees something, but it may change appearance unexpectedly when the connection speed is slow.

For Opera versions 10.5+, Google mentions no problems. Imagine that.

In one of those interesting coincidences, A List Apart published Web Fonts at the Crossing today, which gives the insatiably curious the whole story on web fonts.

Facebook’s New Privacy Settings: This is simple?

Last week Facebook responded to the screams of anger over their privacy policies. On the Facebook blog, Mark Zuckerberg explained Facebook’s new rules. Supposedly, the steps Facebook is taking will make monitoring your privacy settings simpler.

Today we’re starting to roll out some changes that will make all of these controls a lot simpler. We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.

Whether Facebook succeeded in making things simpler is open for debate. The problem with Facebook privacy settings is that so many applications, features, functions, partnerships, advertisers, and connections run into and out of Facebook. So many settings are needed to control all these data streams, that it’s hard for me to regard the process as simple.

Trying to tame Facebook’s privacy settings is like trying to get a kid into a onesie while she is kicking and rolling and practicing her semaphore technique. It’s like the kid has forty arms and legs to trap instead of just four, and you can never quite get everything snapped up before she slips an appendage out again.

The headline at Search Engine Land says it all for me: Drill (Down), Baby, Drill: Facebook’s New “Simple” Privacy Settings Still Pretty Complex.

The new settings are rolling out slowly. If you look at your Privacy settings in Facebook and the heading is “Privacy Settings,” you still have the old system in place. When the new one reaches you, the page heading will say “Choose Your Privacy Settings.” You can see a screen shot of the new privacy page in Live Blog: Facebook Unveils New Privacy Controls.

A video tutorial by the EFF shows step by step directions for every menu and submenu involved in deciding on your privacy settings. The EFF page gives a text version of the video, which is helpful. If you can grasp all the steps from just the video and don’t need the written version, here’s the video from YouTube.

Wired Pen, in Facebook Principles Deciphered takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the new principles Zuckerberg announced and explains what they mean. For example, here’s one principle and its deciphered meaning:

We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want. (That is, unless a friend of yours has done so but we warn you about this in our privacy settings so that means we aren’t sharing your information, your friends are.)

On a more serious note, Wired Pen wrote today about the privacy controversy being deliberate on Facebook’s part.

Some people delivered kudos for the new settings. You’re in Control with New Facebook Privacy Settings is a good example of showing some approval to Facebook for respecting the demands of its users.

I agree that Facebook gets points for responding to the complaints. However, from my viewpoint, putting “you” in control of your Facebook privacy settings is part of the problem. Instead of opting in, you are forced to opt out. Instead of relying on your personal privacy and safety being respected, you are forced to police your settings with a microscope. If you are distracted or confused or not alert and things go awry—too bad, because you were in control.

Movements to get Facebook users to quit Facebook have fallen flat. Most people have concluded that Facebook is too big to quit. The only option left is to be in control of your privacy settings—and it’s not that simple.

Useful Links: WestCiv Tools, GHC 2010, Facebook

The Stylemaster folks at WestCiv have some online CSS tools that are useful. Make gradients, transforms, shadows and stroke text with these tools. Small icons on each tool show you which browsers currently support these CSS3 techniques.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for 2010 is themed “Collaborating Across Boundaries.” It’s set in Atlanta, Georgia, September 28 – October 2, 2010.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has put together a tutorial explaining step by step how to get the most privacy out of Facebook’s latest attempt to fix its privacy nightmare. You might get a laugh out of Wired Pen’s explanation of Facebook’s Principles.

Useful Links: DW CS5 HTML5 Pack, Togetherville, synthetic cells, something’s happening here

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is a free extension. Sorry, it only runs on CS5—can’t retrofit older versions of Dreamweaver.

Togetherville: Walled Garden Social Networking for the Younger Set. There have been social networks for young children before, but this one is making news right now. I’m wondering what educators will do with this new site.

Scientists Create First ‘Synthetic Cells’ is a bit off-the-web-design-topic, but it’s fascinating news from the scientific world that may have far reaching implications.

Something’s happening here. People used to be either a Windows person or a Mac person. Now Android is outselling iPhone, Google has a new store in direct competition with iTunes, the number of Android apps is growing fast. When we weren’t looking the world changed to a place in which you are either a Google person or a Mac person.

Useful links: Facebook, iPad accessibility,

Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options. Seriously, Facebook, show some respect for your users and get your shit together. Or, as I said it on Twitter . . .

I apologize to Microsoft for ever complaining about the menu maze in Word. Facebook tops them: http://nyti.ms/cChrNXThu May 13 15:13:20 via SeesmicVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

To add fuel to the current inferno of bad vibes facing Facebook, here’s Why Facebook Can’t Be Trusted.

Not everything is about Facebook, however. Random Highlights from Chicago Trip and Beyond at Do It Myself Blog gives some real user reports about how an iPad facilitated a better experience at SOBCon for several attendees.