What’s on your packing list?

packing the computer

I discovered something fascinating about people. They love to tell you what tech gadgets they consider essential to haul along when traveling. Especially when going to a convention.

I got interested in this because I recently decided to quit taking my computer to every panel and session I attend at a convention and make it work with just the iPhone (for Twitter) and a small notebook and pen. I also like to carry a good camera. But I think I’ll leave the laptop waiting in the room for when I have time in the evenings to develop something longer than a tweet.

This also means packing some cables, batteries, and chargers.

What’s your number one must have item? What else do you have on your packing list when you go to a conference or just leave your house for a few days with the intention of staying connected while you’re gone?

Your Twitter Profile

I’m not huge on Twitter. I don’t want to be huge on Twitter. (I like to actually read what the people I follow are saying. Huge is prohibitive to reading.) As of today, I am following 355 people. There are 447 people following me. I’ve posted 1853 tweets. So we agree, I’m not huge.

That does not stop me from having opinions. Especially opinions about those 92 people who are following me that I chose not to following back.

When I get one of those lovely emails saying that someone new is following me, here’s what I do. I look at your profile for these things:

  1. Do you give a real name?
  2. Do you give a real location?
  3. Do you give a link in plain text (not a shortened URL) that I can scan before clicking?
  4. What are your recent tweets about? Is there anything of substance or interest to me? (My interests are mainly web topics, technology, education, writing, news, green living and people I know in real life.)
  5. Do your recent tweets show a willingness to share good links? Do they show a sense of either intelligence or humor or both?
  6. Are the number of people you follow and the number of your followers somewhat proportionate? If you are following 12,538 people and 41 people are following you, something is amiss and you are not using Twitter for a purpose that interests me.

In the Twitterverse, even one out of six is enough for me to follow if that particular 1/6 is really interesting. But more is better. More looks transparent, professional, and honest.

My personal likes and dislikes are not really that important. However, I’m not the only person who looks at a Twitter profile with these questions in mind.  Turn my questions into advice on how to make a Twitter profile that will attract followers. Make a better profile and you’ll have more success with Twitter.

Useful Links: more about .gov, Twitter, education

Hear me stumble around White House Recovery and Data GOV web sites from As Your World Changes picks up the accessibility banner regarding the .gov web sites. Slger recorded  himself on audio while trying to navigate these sites.

How Twitter will Change the Way we Live at Time Magazine may be of interest to you.

Web Design Education Sucks at Boagworld starts a discussion about what’s wrong with the current state of web design education and offers some suggestions for change. Go participate in the discussion.

Useful links: students and teachers networking, .gov sites, Dreamweaver tip

when teachers and students connect outside school at apophenia asks What do you think is the best advice for other teachers when it comes to interacting with students on social network sites? She said,

Digital technologies collapse social contexts all the time. The key to figuring out boundaries in a digital era is not to try to revert to space. The key is to focus on people, roles, relationships, and expectations. A teacher’s role in relation to a student should not end at the classroom door. When a teacher runs into a student at a local cafe, they are still that student’s teacher. When a teacher runs into a student online, they are still that student’s teacher. Because of the meaning of a teacher-student relationship, that should never be relaxed; the role of teacher should always be salient (except when the teacher also happens to be the parent which is when things get very murky very fast).

Leave your comments at apophenia.

Jim Thatcher continues his series examining the accessibility of Obama administration web sites with a look at Accessibiliity of MakingHomeAffordable.gov and Accessibility of Data.gov.

A Forgotten Productivity Tip: Dreamweaver CS4 from Greg Rewls is a good tip.

Google Web Elements

The big hoopla this week in the world of technology came from Google’s I/O conference. Among the announcements was one about Google Web Elements. What are they and what can you do with them?

Google Web Elements are widgitized versions of Google products such as calendars, chat, maps, custom search, YouTube news, and docs. You can add these widgets to your site or blog. Most of the widgets were already available. Now they’ve been aggregated in one spot. YouTube News is a newly added item.

It’s very easy to use one of these widgets. Making a map widget took about three seconds. I entered the address of the New Mexico State Capitol, commonly called The Roundhouse. I selected a satellite map display. Google handed me a bit of code, which I copied to get this map. If you close in on the map, you’ll understand the nickname.


Denise Wakeman at Biz Tips Blog described making a map widget in Google Launches Web Elements for Your Blog.

Have an event you’re promoting and want to include a map on the registration page or in a blog post? Choose the size map you want, type in the address, a title for the location and you immediately get the HTML to paste in your blog. Nothing could be easier. (click on the image to get the full size graphic)

Since Google Docs can be widgitized, you can embed a spreadsheet or a presentation in a web page.

The custom search widget lets you choose an option that will add AdSense for the search. I didn’t choose that option for this example, but you might want it for your own blog. You’re going to get Google ads no matter what. You don’t have to tell Google anything, even the URL of your site, to get search code. Try the search right now. When you’re finished use the small x beside the Search button to close the search. You don’t have to tell Google anything, even the URL of your site, to get search code.

Loading

Widgets are nothing new. You may already have ways to do what Google wants you to do using their products. The Conversation Element, which allows chats on your site, is similar to a FriendFeed widget. A Google Docs Presentation widget is similar to SlideShare services.

Barb Dybwad at Obsessable, commented in Google launches Web Elements suite, embeddable widgets for integrating Google products to your site. She included some tweets on the topic and explained the Conversation Element.

A “Conversation” widget allows readers to post comments and videos that can become shared global threads via Google Friend Connect.

Kate Green, reported on Google’s announcement for Techology Review in Google Launches Web Elements.

In the spirit of simplifying software, Google announced a new way to easily integrate its products, like News and Maps, into a personal website. The offering is called Web Elements and was demonstrated today at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.

At the event, DeWitt Clinton, the technical leader on Google’s developer team, illustrated how to use Web Elements within a blog. He embedded a Google News feed, a map, and a live conversation widget in about the same amount of time it takes to embed a YouTube video. While similar tools have been available for some time, it’s interesting to see Google’s take on letting users easily add some of its popular products to their sites. Currently there are eight products available, with the possibility of more to come.

Do Google Web Elements have any advantages over all the other widgets available already? If you are a Google Docs user, they might make things easier to share, especially presentations. They should work on most blogs and web sites. I’m not ready to say that they are superior to any other widget choices, but they are sure easy to use.

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Three examples of fieldsets styled with CSS

These rules applied to all the examples:

label {
display: block;
width: 10em;
float: left;
}
fieldset {
width: 25em;
}

Example One

This example uses a background color. The CSS for this fieldset is:

fieldset {
font: 1em Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
text-transform: none;
color: #00F;
background: #CCF;
border: thin solid #333;
}
#legend {
font-size: 1.4em;
text-transform: uppercase;
color: #000;
}

example one

Example Two

This example uses a background image. The CSS for example two is:

fieldset {
font: 1em Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
background: url(img/wave-in-blue.jpg) no-repeat center top;
border: medium dotted #3B6281;
color: #C30;
}
legend {
font-size: 1.3em;
border: medium dotted #60A4C1;
}
label {
font-weight: bold;
}


Example Three

Example three uses heavy black and white contrast. The CSS is:

fieldset {
border: thick solid #000;
}
legend {
color: #FFF;
background: #000;
font-size: 1.5em;
padding: 5px;

}

example three

See Also: Styling a fieldset with CSS.

Useful Links: Accessible forms, CSS Quick-Question

Accessible forms using WCAG2.0 from Web Usability. Code examples, screen grabs, video and  transcripts of screen reader interpretations of forms. Very valuable. For educators: this is a  great resource for an assignment. If I gave stars to my useful links, this one would get 5 stars.

Smashing Magazine is doing something interesting using Twitter. Their first post based on questions from forums/Twitter is Ask SM: CSS Quick-Question Edition. Questions posted to the SM forums or to @smashingmag or @chriscoyier are given complete answers in a column of the magazine. Common CSS problems are tackled in this post. I find this idea an example of “getting it.” A design magazine takes questions from readers/followers and answers them in SM’s well-illustrated fashion for all to see. This is a super example of a two-way street working well, of a magazine that gets what social media is all about. Looking for an example of a business that communicates in an effective way with its audience? This is one.

Compare what Smashing Magazine is doing with what Dell just did with it’s Della site. (SEE Big Aaargh! for Dell’s Della.) That’s an example of doing it wrong.