Interact With Web Standards Curriculum Now at Home at the W3C

The Interact with Web Standards online curriculum developed by a group of volunteers at the Web Standards Project has moved from the WaSP site and now lives at the W3C. The material at the WaSP site is still there, but updating is now handled at the W3C.

The W3C took over the curriculum some time ago. It is on the Web Education Community Group Wiki. All the courses that were on the other site (for example Web Design 1, my course) are still there. Some of the courses have been updated since moving to the W3C, mine among them. Plus there are lots of new web education materials on the W3C site that have been developed and published online since the move.

Everything is still free and web-standards based. The courses are modularized for classroom use with full sets of learning objectives, learning activities, projects. Tests and project grading matrices are provided.

The site for the textbook, InterACT with Web Standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design, remains where it has been. The book is a perfect classroom tool to use with the projects and assignments in the online curriculum.

Have you Googled a person by name lately?

Google search results have changed if you search for a person by name. Here’s an example, using Elisa Camahort Page as the guinea pig. (I thought about using myself, but Google recognizes me and urges me to complete my profile. Someone else is a better example.)

You have two views, with personal results showing, and with personal results hidden. If the person has a profile on Google+, the personal results are from their Google profile. Here are views of Elisa Camahort Page with and without personal results.

with personal information

You can see that the personal results are something like a social media result rather than a search result. The top search result is BlogHer either way, but the next results are different with and without personal results.

How about a celebrity? I searched on actor and artist Laurel Holloman, who does not have a Google+ profile or her own web site. Her personal results came from Wikipedia, followed by IMDB. There were lots of images and mention of her movies and TV shows.

Google wasn’t just linking to every web page that mentioned either Elisa or Laurel. It was providing results that were rather intelligent in that they related specifically to the person. Out of all the web pages, in all the world, where the two of them might be mentioned and indexed, it picked really relevant results and images.

I know you’ve Googled your own name in the past; do it again now and take a look at the difference in what you see. It isn’t just a million links in willy-nilly order. It’s an intelligent collection of links that tell a lot about you in the first page of results. Big Brother is watching.

 

Feedburner API will be history soon. Are you ready?

If you’ve been using Feedburner to track stats, subscribers and send email to your blog’s readers, it’s time to look for an alternative. On October 20, Feedburner will end its run. Or, to put it in Google terms, Feedburner’s API will be deprecated. That API is what allows you to interact with Feedburner stats and other info. Here’s a rundown of your alternatives.

feedburner
Screen capture from Feedburner

Google owns Feedburner. What Google wants you to do is move your feeds into the Google world using their migration tool, which you see in the image above. Since this change was announced months ago, many people have already chosen to do that. If, like me, you’ve dilly dallied about this, now is the time to pay attention.

There are other choices. On Beth’s Blog in Is it Time to Let Feedburner Burn? you can learn how to switch to a service called FeedBlitz. Beth’s Blog walks you through the steps and FeedBlitz provides a detailed Migration Guide.

FeedBlitz will give you the RSS services and the email services you had with Feedburner. One issue, however, is that readers must have an account with FeedBlitz to get your blog post by email. Depending on your demographic, this could be a barrier.

At MomCrunch, Cecily Kellog mentions some of the alternatives in Feedburner Feeds Vanish. (She urges you to download an Excel document of all your subscribers from Feedburner to have on hand. Probably a good idea, just in case you have migration issues.) Cecily mentions these other options,

But if you don’t want to pay for it, there are alternatives. Jetpack (a WordPress Plugin) offers a free email subscription service. You can also use companies like AWeber, MailChimp, and more. Google for other free options (I think they are sticking with the search business, at least).

If you’re using WordPress, you probably have Jetpack installed already. WordPress recommends it. The directions for using Jetpack for Email subscriptions are simple. Basically all you have to do is pull the Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack) widget into your sidebar.

I’ve seen several bloggers mention MailChimp as their choice for the email subscribers because of the MailChimp RSS to Email service. In fact, it was Brenda’s comment on this blog that alerted me to the RSS to email service by MailChimp. Depending on your volume, MailChimp can be free.

FeedBlitz, MailChimp, and AWeber have integrated Twitter and Facebook services for your blog posts in addition to the RSS and email subscription services.

Notify your readers about what you’re doing. Here’s how Schmutzie did it.. I did a similar thing here in What feed are you using to read Web Teacher? That post contains several comments you may find helpful in looking for an alternative.

Bottom line, if you’re still depending on Feedburner, now is the time to decide on what will work for you and make the switch.

Editor’s Note: Cross-posted on blogher.com in a slightly different form.

Dreamweaver CS6 Fluid Grid layouts

Even though I don’t own Dreamweaver CS 6 yet, I’ve been studying up on how it uses fluid grids for page layout. (The dilemma of a teacher: we are often called upon to teach software we can’t afford to buy.) I found an excellent tutorial explaining it and wanted to share it here. This is an Adobe/Lynda.com video. Watch all the way to the end, there are some interesting points there.

Useful links: Pixie Dust, profitable, MOOCs

Pixie Dust and the Mountain of Mediocrity is a guest post by Kathy Sierra at Gaping Void. Thanks to Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void for snagging Kathy Sierra to write this post. Her voice is missed and needed. Here’s the opening paragraph:

We’re always searching for that sec­ret for­mula, that magic pixie dust to sprin­kle over our pro­ducts, ser­vi­ces, books, cau­ses, brands, blogs to bring them to life and make them Super Suc­cess­ful. Most marketing-related buzz­words gain trac­tion by pro­mi­sing pixie dust results if applied to wha­te­ver it is we make, do, sell. “Add more Social!”. “Just need a Viral Video!” “It’s about the Story­te­lling!”. “Be Authentic!”

 

Find out if your favorite web service is profitable with “How Do they Make Money?” You know you’re curious.

Why MOOCs should be in your marketing plan talks about the effect of Massive Open Online Courses on higher ed.