Summer is here. A mini-vacation for my family was a fast trip to Sea World San Antonio. My kids and grandkids and myself took in the heat, the shows, and the water. We wore ourselves out having fun.
I also got a few things written for eHow in June:
Events in Iran
As Events Unfold In Iran, Facebook And Google Translate Quickly Add Persian Versions on Tech Crunch points out the impact that the revolutionary events in Iran have on the way we view social media. On CNET, you can read With Iran crisis, Twitter’s youth is Over. Twitter, a tool that allows users only 140 characters to tell their story, is the leading communication medium for a social upheaval that may change the both Iran and the way we regard user generated content.
Nico Pitney has been live blogging events in Iran for the Huffington Post. He’s compiling all sorts of sources into a running mashup of what’s going on. Much of it comes from YouTube, some from Twitter and some from news agencies. There’s an ongoing list of tweets using #iranelection as a hashtag on HuffPo. Links to other bloggers writing about Iran at HuffPo are included, too.
The BBC is covering the story in much the same way in Internet brings events in Iran to life. The story is a collection of video, tweets, Facebook links, images, and blog links.
For those who watch trends in communication, traditional journalism, and citizen journalism, the idea that the Internet is changing the way the world tells its story is not new. But the events in Iran are so significant to everyone on the planet, even people who don’t normally look at trends on the Internet are becoming aware that things have changed significantly. I don’t pretend to understand the implications the unfolding events will have on future communications and future newsgathering, but I can safely say that things will be different from now on.
Addendum: See this excellent post by Ethan Zuckerman: Iran, citizen media and media attention
W3C Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group: The Big Reveal
Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group (OWEA) was announced this week by the W3C.
The mission of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals through such activities as
- fostering open communication channels for knowledge transfer
- curriculum sharing between corporate entities, educational institutions, Web professionals, and students.
W3C Advisory Committee Representatives may join this XG on behalf of their organizations. Participants are automatically subscribed to the Member list when they join the group. Participants should also subscribe to the public list. Non-Participants may also subscribe.
The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues around the topic of Web development education. This Incubator Group will detail the options for establishing a group dedicated to bringing Web standards and best practices to the process of educating future professionals in Web professions, no matter where this training and education might be provided, and will define the goals, activities, and a clear mission for such an organization, and will seek to establish this organization’s viability and role.
This Incubator Group has been initiated by various independent projects and organizations such as the Opera Developer Community, Yahoo! Developer Network/Juku, Web Directions, Web Standards Project (WaSP) InterAct Curriculum, World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), and other groups, as a united forum within which to pursue their shared goals of improved Web development education.
John Allsopp is the initial chair of the group.
W3C initiating members are
Useful Links: center img, Webstock recordings, poll everywhere, spezify
Centering Images with CSS is a quick and easy tutorial.
The Webstock recordings are online. These are the February 2009 event in Wellington, but older Webstock material is still available, too. Excellent speakers and topics.
How to Conduct Live Polls Via Twitter and SMS is a great tip for speakers and teachers. It explains how to use Poll Everywhere.
Spezify is a different kind of search. Try searching on your own name. You get visual results and excerpts of things you’ve published. Interesting the way it displays and organizes the results. Wonder how it decides what is important?
Again with the pr0n
Prude or Professional at Geek Girls Guide is the first of two articles with tons of comments about the pornographic images used in a Flash instructional session at the recent Flash developer conference in Minneapolis. Perhaps you remember a similar incident at a Rails conference that I wrote about in A Tipping Point for Women in Tech: Here’s Hoping. This time the Flash conference organizer took full responsibility in We’re In This Together, by Courtney Remes, Dave Schroeder, Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker.
What the hell is wrong with these men? Are they so inept that they don’t realize they are offending half the population? Or that they look like fools?
BlogHer 09
One of the very best things that happened at BlogHer last year was when a bunch of bloggers stood up and read individual blog posts as a group keynote. The readings ranged from funny to thoughtful to heart rending. It was such a great idea, they will be doing it again. The people sharing this year are announced here. Go see who some great writers in the female blogosphere are.
Another thing last year that was very popular was a day-long unconference and geek lab. It happened the day after the main conference last year, so attendance was small. But it was a huge hit. This year it is ongoing during the conference. A group of geeks will be in the “geek lab” all the time to do 30 minute one-on-one help sessions with bloggers. There will be more organized 30 minute presentations to small groups on geeky topics throughout the day, too.
Useful links: CSS chart, Safari 4, Great Old Broads
Experimental CSS compatibility table from westciv is worthy of a bookmark.
This page currently lists compatibility for more recently added features of CSS in contemporary browsers.
What’s new in Safari 4 on the Apple site describes features of the newest Safari browser. Check out the developer tools, which are automatically included and need only be turned on in the Preferences. It requires OS 10.5.7 to install. I turned down the update to 10.5.7 based on Zeldman’s posts about it, so will have to wait until Apple fixes the issues in 10.5.7 on MacBooks before trying Safari 4 myself.
Great Old Broads for Wilderness. OK. So this has nothing to do with web design or web development and I’m spamming you with an off-topic link. But I love what these women are doing. Plus, they support 350.org, which I’ve talked about here before, so that sort of creates a logical tie-in to justify the link.