links for 2010-07-29

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links for 2010-07-28

  • PandaForm is a new form building service that lets you put together online forms via a simple drag-and-drop interface. Payment processing can be incorporated, and a mail merge facility is included so that pre-filled, personalized forms can be sent out to your users.

    Once you’ve signed up (a very painless process), you can get to work creating forms straight away. The drag-and-drop interface is fairly intuitive. Most users probably won’t need the friendly tutorial video on the form building in order to get going, although certain aspects of PandaForm aren’t quite as straightforward as I would like. In particular, the way that you can apply a “two-column” CSS class to the form that results in changes only to the published form and can’t be seen in the form editor may take a little getting used to.

    (tags: webdesign)
  • Suomi-Neito is a distant, but weirdly parallel echo of ‘Paula’, the personification of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state (discussed in #471). Female like most other anthropomorphic representations of geographic entities (1), this Finnish Maiden shares with Paula the extra distinction of not only symbolising her nation, but also literally coinciding with its geographic shape.

    The Finnish Maiden reminds me of the lament by a Finnish friend, a bachelor recently returned to his home country after years of working abroad: “All the women in Helsinki look identical. It feels like you’re going out with the same woman over and over again.” A luxury problem perhaps, as that same woman probably looks a lot like the Finnish Maiden: a tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman in her mid-twenties (braided hair, bare feet and folkloristic costume in the national blue-white colours are optional).

  • Over the years, I have reviewed the accessibility of a number of sites. This document outlines ten common accessibility issues I have encountered which could result in a site’s failure to fully comply with WCAG 2.0. The document includes links to some of the WCAG 2 advisory Sufficient Techniques provided by the W3C for addressing each issue.

    Please note: This is not intended to be a complete list of all possible accessibility problems and the order of the items is of no significance. For full details about WCAG 2.0 go to the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” W3C Recommendation 11 December 2008.

  • WebWarehouse (WWH) is a web-based solution integrated with the manufacturers’ internal logistics systems to enable proper information flow between them, the warehouses, hauliers and customers. All integration between Communicate and the manufacturers is already done, and because no software installation is necessary at the warehouse, implementation and training only takes about half a day.
  • The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.
  • Tampereen yliopisto on järjestellyt ahkerasti digimedian koulutusta ja tutkimusta viime aikoina. Tuorein liike on Hypermedialaboratorion nimen muuttaminen informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median oppiaineeksi.

    Nimenmuutosta perustellaan mm. hypermedia-termin liialla teknologiapainotteisuudella. Termihän on syntynyt aikanaan 80-luvulla ja sittemmin jäänyt lähinnä tutkijoiden käyttöön.

  • Tampereen busseista vain yksi linja tuottaa enemmän kuin siitä on menoja. Voittoa kertyy 13 senttiä matkalla.

    Loput 32 linjaa tuottavat tappiota muutamasta sentistä useaan euroon matkaa kohden.

    (tags: tampere)
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links for 2010-07-27

  • "Mikä ei ole oikeus ja kohtuus, se ei saata olla lakikaan"

    Tämä Olaus Petrin oivallinen tuomarinohje 1500-luvulta tulisi edelleen olla peruspilarina kaikessa lainsäädännössä.

    Valitettavasti oikeus ja kohtuus ei toteudu laissa. Pyörätien käyttövelvollisuus ei ole oikeus eikä kohtuus, kun pyöräteille ei ole asetettu minkäänlaisia laatuvaatimuksia. Pyörätie poukkoilee korttelin välein ajoradan puolelta toiselle, keskellä pyörätietä on valopylväs, puu tai bussipysäkki, pyörätie päättyy yhtäkkiä, pyörätie on täynnä kuoppia, pyörätie on niin kapea ettei tilaa ole kaksisuuntaiselle liikenteelle, pyörätie tekee 360 asteen mutkia ja niin edelleen ja niin edelleen.

    (tags: helsinki bike)
  • Wille Visualisation System is a framework for building visualisation applications. The latest generation of the system is Wille2.

    This site provides the Wille Developer Toolkit that was mainly developed as part of OPAALS Network of Excellence project during 2006-2010. Last major revision has taken place in May, 2010. The work continues in terms of applied subprojects.

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links for 2010-07-24

  • Suomen valtiolla on enemmän velkaa kuin koskaan ennen, nimellishinnoilla mitattuna. Suomi velkaantuu nopeammin kuin koskaan ennen. Sinäkin olet velkaantuneempi kuin koskaan ennen. Suomen maksama korko nousee ennen pitkää – niin sinunkin lainojesi korko. Yhä suurempi osa veroistasi menee velan korkojen maksuun eikä enää hyvinvoinnin rakentamiseen. Suomen huoltosuhde heikkenee nopeasti, ja maksajia on yhä vähemmän. Kuinka kauan tällainen meno voi jatkua?
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links for 2010-07-19

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links for 2010-07-16

  • FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.

    FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.

    FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.

    FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.

    FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.

  • (tags: gapingvoid)
  • When given an important assignment, there are some unspoken instructions. They are unspoken because of the assumption that they are so obvious, they need not be said. That is often a dangerous assumption. The unspoken instructions are:
  • If you were looking for a message thread on Apple's support forums pointing to Consumer Reports' article 'not recommending' the iPhone 4, it's not there any more. Apple's support forum moderators deleted the thread. Bing cached it.
  • Breaking news: The Guardian once again involved in committing a data awesome! As before, the UK newspaper graced developers with a really cool piece of information published on the web: all the World Cup 2010 statistics as an Excel Sheet.

    Now, the easiest way to play with this data is to use YQL, so I simply took a copy of the information and shared it as a CSV document on Google Docs.

    (tags: yql soccer data)
  • The following demo was made using a variety of CSS techniques. Rounded corners, shadows, gradients, rgba, pseudo-elements, and transforms are just some of them. A lot of these were generated by helpful tools, such as westciv’s tools and Border Radius. By combining these techniques, you can create rich graphics with just a few lines of code. Here are a few examples.
    (tags: css3 html)
  • This is yet, another attempt at killing CAPTCHA, based on HTML, CSS and a little touch of JQuery magic.

    What we're trying to pull here is an alternative to the current CAPTCHA solution, which is inherently inaccesible to people with disabilities, despite the best efforts put forth by initiatives such as the popular reCAPTCHA or the more recent nuCAPTCHA.

    An article by @lukew titled "A Sliding Alternative to CAPTCHA?" published on July 1st, 2010 introduced the idea of the slider approach to replace CAPTCHA, which we thought was brilliant. We decided to push this idea further and try to come up with a solution that would be device-independent, cross-browser and more importantly, totally compatible with assistive technologies. The goal here being to make sure it would be accessible to people with disabilities using assistive software or to people using touch screen devices such as the iPhone or the iPad.

  • Keith Richards at 65, Do you really think he gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says “Keith, you marvelous looking rock star, don’t you ever die?” He might have already died, don’t you think?

    Ringo Starr turns 70 today. Tell me he doesn’t look better now than he did in 1964. It might help that he reads my friend Dak’s hip MagnificentBastard website for looking and staying young.

    In three years, there’s no chance that Ringo will look like my favorite Okie from Muskogee Merle “Yes I Am” Haggard, now 73.

  • ast year, I looked into the way companies are using Enhanced Facebook Pages as a way to beef up the branding and interactivity available with Facebook’s default Page settings. On my company blog, I explored the enhanced Pages of big companies such as Starbucks and The Gap. And I also made a list of ten third-party applications that you could use to enhance Facebook Pages, based on what was available at the time. In that vein, below I’ve identified ten more third-party apps that can be easily plugged into your Facebook Page to offer a little extra functionality and interactivity.
    (tags: facebook pages)
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links for 2010-07-15

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links for 2010-07-13

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links for 2010-07-05

  • Mitä ihmettelemistä siinä on, että Matti Vanhanen siirtyy Perheyritysten liiton toimitusjohtajaksi? Sen jälkeen hän saa virallisestikin palkkaa Kyösti Kakkoselta, Toivo Sukarilta ja muilta Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomen (KMS) rahoittajilta.
    Onhan se hyvä, että salainen ja hämärä puoluerahoitus muuttuu nyt avoimeksi palkkatyöksi. Perheyritysten liiton jäsenlistalta löytyvät KMS:n merkittävimmät rahoittajat:

    - Kakkonen-Yhtiöt Oy
    - Lemminkäinen
    - Maskun Kalustetalo Oy
    - Suomen RH-yhtiöt
    - Suomi-Soffa SSF Oy

    (tags: finnish)
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links for 2010-07-02

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