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We are therefore happy to introduce a new service to the Maps API family that enables applications to determine elevation profiles. Using either the new ElevationService Maps API v3 class or the Elevation Web Service you can request the elevation in meters for one or more sets of coordinates, or you can request a specific number of elevation samples equally spaced along a path. If any sampling points are over bodies of water, the service will return the depth relative to sea level as a negative number.
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A WCAG1 compliant site is accessible to people with disabilities
WCAG2 has only recently been released and there has not been much testing to ensure that it fully addresses issues of people with disabilities (such as people with cognitive disabilities). WCAG1 is 11 years old, and although it has its problems, it is a proven method to ensuring the accessibility of a web site.
In conclusion…This is my current advice to my clients, who have their own specific set of circumstances. I will, in the near future, start recommending the use of WCAG2. However at this stage I do not believe there is enough information available to support developers in complying with WCAG2.
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Nearly a year on since Cambridge University researchers discovered that Facebook, along with other major social networks, doesn’t erase server-side copies of your uploaded data, the world’s biggest social network is still guilty of such a sin.
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If there was any other tool as widely misused in your organization, you'd ban it. The cost is enormous in lost opportunity and lost time. Guns don't kill people, bullets do.
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Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
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Sumo Paint in short is a photo editing/painting application that works from your web browser. The application is Flash based and thus works on most of the different operating systems.
Archive for the 'news' Category
Last February I wrote about Nokia’s site chosen as “Best Web Page in Finland“.
I was skeptical then and I’m skeptical now as the same media, Digitoday, publishes almost the same piece of news. Except that the company who did the research is different.
(Article from other source in English)
At march it was Webmark who did the research, now it’s Blue White Partners.
Anyhoo.
Article (in Finnish) claims that “Blue White Partners went through over thousand Finnish corporate web sites evaluating their marketing efficiency“. Jolly good.
Marketing efficiency?
Over thousand corporate web sites?
Hmm.
Well, as I last time learned, our journalists can be quite busy sometimes. So off to BW Partners we go to find the press release!
And yes, there it is ( press release as .pdf)
Whee, this is nice.
According to press release, methodology of the said research is based on “an average efficiency to attract visitors and turn them into customers, based on hundreds of thousands web sites evaluated“.
Errm, what?
And how the hell does one measure that?
And hundreds of thousands web sites evaluated?
Hmm.
Hey, there’s even more!
Again the Press Release states that “the average Blue White Score for Finnish Companies” (sic!) ” is 42, still below the international average of 50″. Now, Nokia, the front-seat student of all Finnish web sites, scores 99,8 and release states “which means that only 0,2 % of companies worldwide have as good or better web site as Nokia“.
Phee.
It seems that the rating goes from 0 to 100, 0 being the lowest score and 100 the highest. 100 obviously means “The Best”, there is no better and 0 that there is no worse site. (Please do correct me about the rating if I’m wrong)
The top-100 list for Finnish companies can be viewed at BW Partners Web site. All sites, listed in order of ranking, followed by score and change since the last evaluation.
(Small side note: depending on source about 8 % of (Finnish) men are red-green colour blind. If someone wants to indicate something, let’s take change, with colours, do use some other colours than red and green. Or better, don’t use colours alone, use something else. Like a minus-sign in front of negative changes?)
Anyhow, forward.
What’s nice is that I can purchase the evaluation report for only 295 eur!
Pretty cheap, isn’t it?
Conclusion and remarks
As such the evaluation portrayed here is worthless (at least to me). I don’t know the methodology, I don’t know the sample and so on.
Perhaps they’ll tell in the 295eur-report the following facts left missing in the press release and articles:
- Exact size of the sample (“over thousand” is not that exact, you know. 1001 is over thousand, isn’t it?)
- Methods of evaluation (“average efficiency to attract visitors ” and so forth is not that convincing)
- Sites Sampled (“over thousand Finnish corporate web sites” doesn’t tell that much.)
- Pages Sampled from every site or the algorithm for selecting the sample (did they evaluate only the front page or what? Did they start from the root and continue to leafs?)
Most likely the evaluation will be covered heavily by Finnish media, which is somehow sad.
Still waiting for the first proper “Best Web Site in Finland” evaluation.
I’m not holding my breath, though.
(Usual disclaimers apply; I do realize that evaluation methodology can be a trade secret, as well as other data. I also realize that business is business and everyone must make a living. )
[Edit 15.45, Arctic Startup has written about the first evaluation done by BW Partners. According to linked article the evaluation score is "is made by investigating content semantics, language, search engine rank and index, and presence in social media."]
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"When you’re burned out, you know it. You can feel it and taste it, but in order to get past, it you have to acknowledge it and fight to restore your internal equilibrium. Stop, decompress, communicate, and focus. That process often begins with a look inward to learn what gives your life balance, such as family, friends, personal interests, and hobbies—the things that counterbalance your life on the web.
Your life should be just that—a life; if your waking hours are entirely consumed by work, or if you’re unfocused and inattentive to your own needs, burnout will be waiting at every turn. "
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"Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities."
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"The RozTracker is an interactive map that you can use to track Roz's progress across the Pacific, and see exactly where she was when she posted updates to Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and iTunes. It takes data from Roz's Solara Field Tracker GPS system and links it to her postings to show the trail of rich social media content she leaves as she rows across the ocean. "
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"Nyt saa tuulettaa! Kaikki perusoikeusargumentit on hylätty ilman perusteluja! Juuri näitä kaivataan lisää, kun kysymys on ilmiselvästä perusoikeuksien polkemisesta."
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"Even though applying for a freelance job online is fast, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. You need to consider several issues before rushing your application for a prospective project"
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"Many people have not had the opportunity to see someone use a refreshable Braille device to access the web. I recently videoed Bruce Maguire describing how he uses the internet with a refreshable Braille display. He also demonstrates finding a book on the Amazon site. Transcript of the video is at the end of this document."
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"API-karttasivuille on ollut jo suunnilleen vuoden ajan tarjolla GAdsManager-objekti, jonka on luvattu tuovan mainosnuppineuloja ja niiden kautta klikkituloja. Jostain syystä kyseisiä mainosnuppineuloja ei juuri kukaan ole nähnyt ja vielä harvempi saanut klikkituloja.
Nyt Google tavallaan pakitti tekniikassa ja otti käyttöön brutaalin mainosikkunan kartan päälle. Heti tuli kehuja kentältä. Nyt näkyy klikkituloja."
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"I wasn't affected by last weeks areps.at Facebook phishing scam, but it seems like another one is underway right now. I've been getting some messages on my Facebook account with the subject "Look at this" and "wwww whiteflash be" as the message body. The site whiteflash.be looks like a Facebook log-in page, and is designed to steal your credentials and use them to send similar messages to all your friends."
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"Facebook has increased the size limit on photo albums from 60 to 200, thanks to a new storage system dubbed Haystack. The jump in storage capacity was a necessity for many users, as Facebook is the largest photo-sharing site on the Web."
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"Kukaan ei ole kiinnostunut firmasi brändielementeistä. Viestisi menee paremmin perille ilman niitä."
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"On a day like today, you might feel exhilarated — like you've just been shot out of a cannon at the circus — and even invincible. Don't ever forget that incredible feeling. But also: always remember that the moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to do things that might make a big difference in the world, or even to make a small difference to someone you love — all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think."
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Winnie and Swineflu.
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"Summary: Automated web accessibility evaluation tools are hard to trust, understand and only provides feedback on a small amount of factors that influence accessibility. Also, a unified web evaluation methodology should be adopted to provide consistent results across tools."
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"When it comes to market support, I've often looked at it as one big pie. You may say that Opera is too small to really care about. It's only 2%. You don't care about Firefox 2 users. It's only 2%. You may not care about accessibility issues. It's only 2%. Soon enough, you've whittled down your potential market to 90% of what it could have been."
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"No matter where you store your data, it is always good practice to maintain backups. After all, it is your data and you need to be responsible for it, although we trust 3rd parties to keep it safe and backed up for us too."
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"So that’s Coffee Theory in a nutshell. It’s about bridging the gaps left in corporate communications, so you can get people together and get things done. It’s about embracing the human side of work life; and accepting that informal work time can be the most productive time of the day."
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"The following tables contain a history of Opera versions, release dates, release types, rendering engines, JavaScript engines, user agent/id strings, and features in final releases. Final releases are highlighted in light yellow, with bold text. Each version is hyperlinked to its respective Windows changelog where possible. Please see the Opera Changelogs page for FreeBSD, Linux, Mac, and Solaris platform details."
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"Depeche Mode – "Wrong" The first single from the album "Sounds Of The Universe", released April 20th, 2009. http://www.depechemode.com / Check out the web site for all the album details, as well as details on the Tour Of The Universe."
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"In order for the mobile phone to reach its full potential we’re going to need to understand what people in developing countries need from their mobile devices, and how they can be applied in a way which positively impacts on their lives. Sounds like the perfect job for an anthropologist to me."
I like running, a lot, actually.
I live in Finland.
My first name is Ilkka.
Am I male or female?
(And why the hell am I thinking about this?)
Long story short; some years ago I bought iPod Nano with Nike+ -running sensor. Sensor worked fine during running but doesn’t work when I inline skate (well, obviously as it is based on step counter/acceleration, read more at Wikipedia). Therefore my usage was cut short and nowadays I’m perfectly happy with my Nokia Sports Tracker and N82 -combination, thank you.
Well now, as the Sports Tracker from Nokia comes with a web site (reviewed earlier), so did the Nike+iPod, too (www.nikeplus.com). Nikeplus boasts all the same features as Nokia Sports Tracker’s site and few more (like being able to buy sneakers and music to iPod) but is basically the same site with different skin (this is my opinion, of course. All Nokia/Apple/Nike fanboys can disagree as much as they want).
At NikePlus one creates an user profile, fills in all the important stuff and so on. One of the things one has to tick in the registration form is gender. I’m a male, therefore I ticked “Gender – male” (screen capture below).
If I understand the form correctly, I have ticked “male“.
Now, why the weird title and all this before making any point?
NikePlus has these wondeful promotional, playful competitions challenges (like who runs the most distance at two weeks, which one of your running mates runs longest/fastest etc). There’s atm a race between men and women going on, goal to run more km than the other group (Titled simply “Men vs Women – make every run count”. See the ad below). And as some of you may know, I’m all in for a bit of competition!
And then we come to my first name. As it ends with A, some European (and US citizens) tend to think it’s a female name. Well, it isn’t. In Finland there’s no such rule that male names end with certain letters and/or female with certain (ok, bit harshly said, but anyway).
Anyhoo.
NikePlus sends me occasional e-mails. Haven’t unsubscribed as I quite like them (and Gmail swallows almost anything I can stuff there). Last week I received an e-mail about the challenge between men and women (I’ll just paste selected parts below, italics by yours truly):
We’re ahead on KMs, let’s keep it that way
Men may be ahead on total KMs – but this is no time to get complacent – there’s more than one way the girls could win this race.
…
Show your female friends the score with the live-updating Men Vs. Women Challenge widget.
…
Why are we the superior sex? Let’s be kind and leave it at two reasons: strength and competitiveness. So give in to your animal instinct and power your way ahead. She won’t see what beat her (she’ll be running too slow).
Ahem.
Well, yeah, we are the superior sex, aren’t we? “Girls could win this race“?
As I read the e-mail for the first time at my mobile, I thought they have gotten the gender wrong. Which e-mail letter would state men the superior sex? What letter would talk to men about girls - and about showing my female friends the challenge?
Apparently this one.
Well, ahem.
I misread the letter at the first time, have to give you that. And as quite many foreigners mix my gender based on my name I thought that was the case here, too.
Now I’m just wondering which one is more stupid, me misreading the letter or the marketer writing it? (Well, I’m blogging about the letter, giving it free publicity and everything, so that leaves only me.)
Any publicity is good publicity?
Conclusion
- People can be touchy when it comes to gender based marketing. It might work better than anyone has ever expected – or then backfire and do a lot of damage.
- Challenges work (and as NikePlus -typed site is filled with runners it works perhaps really well)
- Don’t assume anything about gender based on person’s name.
[Update: I was contacted by Webmark about the survey. Read Updates at end of post.]
According to various (finnish) sources (Tietoviikko, Digitoday, Tietokone etc), Nokia.fi was chosen as “best web site in Finland, 2008“.
I don’t even want to begin to conversate about Nokia.fi’s pros or cons – I’ll just focus on how this achievement was published in the news.
Well yeah.
I spotted the news at Digitoday. It states that Webmark, “a company that measures quality of web sites”, found Nokia’s website the best in Finland (according to their evaluation/survey).
Then Digitoday, as well as all other publishers, continues jabbering about survey/evaluation done, which sites made it to Top-10 and so on.
Nice.
Except that:
- I didn’t find a single link to survey/evaluation made
- I didn’t find a single line mentioning tools used in the evaluation
- I didn’t find a single line mentioning source for this bit of news
(Where did it come from (Heaven?)? Was there a press conference (where? when? who was invited?)? Did the company post a press release?)
Jolly good.
Now, as I’m by nature mean, nasty and curious, I googled Webmark first. Found eventually their finnish site. And yes! There it was, the press release about “Best Site in Finland, 2007″.
Wait, what?
2007? It should be 2008 now, shouldn’t it?
No press release about year 2008, just 2007.
Nice.
Well, back to Google.
Tried “webmark suomen paras verkkosivu“. No source, no press releases from original source, just different posts with (virtually) same content. (Other queries returned same results, too.)
Back to original post at Digitoday. CEO’s of Webmark and Accenture are mentioned, as well as that “at the same time published research done by Accenture” – hey, I’ll just see Accenture.fi for origins!
Nothing at all about these things at “press” -part of their pages.
Makes one wonder.
Hey guys at Webmark, Accenture, Digitoday and so on, if you read this, please post (all or at least one of the following):
- original press release
- origin of this news (if it was published at conference or something, where and when?)
- actual evaluation data
- methods used at evaluation
.. and then I’m willing to believe Nokia.fi is “the best web site in Finland, 2008″.
Update 25.3.2009
I was contacted by Webmark about this post and spent interesting times discussing the survey and methods. I also received some additional material, which made some points mentioned above quite clear.
- Original press release was published at the given date at Webmark’s site, only in the afternoon (read it here, pdf)
- Announcement was made at “Vuoden verkkosivut 2008″ -conference, 19.3.2009. (See the program here.)
Why didn’t I find the link nor the page? Only mention at Webmark’s front page about the announcement and conference (symposium?) was a flash -based banner, which got caught in my Adblock (it’s not a good idea to name banners “banner”, you know.). And when it comes to no origin at news about survey, thank our beloved and overworked reporters! - Evaluation data is not available, but is based on methodology by Mr. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen from University of Oulu.
- See point 3 and press release.
(Bit more later…)
[Editor's note: Do read the comments of this posting about Jokakoti.fi.]
Always the big question; how much should we test it? When is it ready?
When should we launch the product? Should we launch alpha or beta (private or public)? Is it ok to launch so called perpetual beta (take Gmail for example)?
Pretty good questions.
Lately I’ve read that one should always launch early (see Startups in 13 Sentences for one example).
Well, today I received an e-mail from Mtv3 inviting me to beta-test their new real estate service (jokakoti.fi). I can’t actually remember if I signed for invite – might have done that.
Anyway, used the link provided in the e-mail. Whee, HTTP-basic authentication set to protect the pages! Professional? Not so, IMHO. Typed in the general user name and password combo (was there an ad agency who came up with these?) – what follows?
Screen capture below:
MTV3's new real estate service, Jokakoti.fi as seen with FF 3.0.6, newest Flash installed (and working), running on WinXP
Pretty nice, isn’t it?
Plain blue, small tick mark from Adblock showing that there’s some Flash present.
A quick peek at code; almost valid HTML, awful conditional comments used for IE and yeah, that’s about it. Flash and Ajax, which don’t seem to work with my sturdy old computer.
Nice.
Accessibility? Can’t even evaluate it as I don’t see the content. Oh wait, I can, can I?
Yes I can: accessibility is not that good.
Lessons learned so far:
- In order to use the site I have to have Flash 10 (latest version) installed.
- Beta testing is a fine way to catch some bugs – as we see here;)
Small test with IE7 – no surprise – it works. (Screen grab below)
Pretty nice, though the slides are sluggish and so on.
jokakoti viewed with IE7
Lessons learned so far?
- not all users have the latest plugins installed
- not all users have up-to-date computers (I’d reckon this works like a charm with my laptop)
Last but not the least, a small test with my favourite mobile browser, Opera Mini, using their wonderful Simulator/Demo. (Screen grab below, screen states that one has to have Flash and JS support).
jokakoti viewed Operamini simulator
Conclusions?
- Developing cross-browser, accessible websites is not easy
- One can’t rely on users having newest versions nor fast computers
- Beta testing is worth one’s while.