Category Archives: Design

Email Befuddling

Posted on by
Reply

So, the common concern is:

If I put my email address "out there" on the web that spammers will get it and start sending me spam messages.

Well, that is a valid concern. There are scripts and crawlers which go around and look for email addresses. (And lets suppose that they also do not check for a robots.txt file.) These generally work by focusing on the syntax of the email addresses using Regular Expressions or finding the mailto: term in the HTML code. There are some things which can be done to prevent this from happening.

  • The best way is to use contact forms.
  • The second best way is to use JavaScript hiding. (Go here to read how to do this if you are running your own HTML pages, or here if you want a site which will create a JavaScript for you.)
  • The third best way is to use HTML characters for your email addresses.
  • One way that I severely dislike is to spell out the email address or phone number like (you see a lot of this on sites like craigslist and after a few spam text messages one understands why it is done): seven-one-seven or hugh dot paterson at.

Continue reading →

New Feature for Craigslist

Posted on by
1

Ever look for something on Craigslist and get hundreds of results – look at a few and decide that you don’t want a few and then type in something else and get the same search results?

Obviously you were looking for something else… what is needed is a check box to say that you are disinterested in a particular listing. (Or that a listing was no-longer for sale, but the owner “forgot” to remove the listing.)

Craigslist as it currently is.

Craigslist as it currently is. (Incase you forgot.)

Needed Check Box.

Needed Check Box for better results.

The Look of Language Archive Websites

Posted on by
4

This the start of a cross-language archive look at the current state of UX design presenting Content generated in Language Documentation.

http://www.rnld.org/archives
http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/language_archives

http://paradisec.org.au/
http://repository.digiarch.sinica.edu.tw/index.jsp?lang=en

http://alma.matrix.msu.edu/

http://www.thlib.org/

http://www.thlib.org/

http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/welcome.html

Useful or Not?

Posted on by
Reply

This post is a open draft! It might be updated at any time... But was last updated on at .

The online version of the SIL Bibliography contains a subset of over 29,000 citations from the more than 40,000 publications representing 75 years of SIL International's language research in over 2,700 languages. [1] SIL Bibliography Online. April 2012 version. SIL International on Ethnologe.com. http://www.ethnologue.com/bibliography.asp [Accessed: 21 August 2012] [Link]

Finding Resources through SIL.org's (as of 2 August 2012) Bibliography can be a challenge at times - Maybe even a time-wasting endeavor. Time wasting because it might not be very useful to consult the online Bibliography.

The challenging aspect which affects usefulness is primarily three fold:

  1. Items known by SIL to have been created by SIL staff may or may not be listed. (The on-line Bibliography is a sub-set.)
  2. Items listed in the Bibilography may or may not have digitally accessible resources.
  3. Items created by SIL staff may or may not be in the bibliography because they have not been submitted to the Language and Culture Archive (managing division of the SIL Bibliography).

Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 SIL Bibliography Online. April 2012 version. SIL International on Ethnologe.com. http://www.ethnologue.com/bibliography.asp [Accessed: 21 August 2012] [Link]

In Browser “Spyware”

Posted on by
Reply

I found for some of my blog posts I need a screens shot plug-ins for my browser. So I first downloaded and installed, Awesome Screenshot Capture. However, after a recent update my browser was running slowly. So I investigated and found each page load was being referenced to superfish.com. I knew that I had not installed a plug-in which should be contacting superfish.com. So I had to look around I did some Googleing and discovered that superfish.com has a package which can be used by plug-in developers to monetize their Open Source software. Basically the developer gives away their product for free, while superfish.com gets their user browsing data and pays the developer some sort of fee for helping them collect the data. (The best review I can find explaining how this works.)

While I have nothing against the business model and the plug-in works well, I feel a bit undercut. See, when I installed the plug-in it did not contain the superfish.com addition. My update program told me I needed to update so I did. I trust Firefox, and I trusted the developer. So, I feel that this was a bit of a switch-and bait tactic used by the developer, or certainly a “change in business direction”. While the plug-in is technically Open Source, unless one is code savvy, the code is not going to change. While one could say that I should have read the reviews, the reviews were not necessarily there when I installed the plug-in.

In my case superfish.com was still being contacted when the plug-in was was told not to activate that part of the plug-in. So I went and found another plug-in in the FireFox extensions repository.

superfish.com and screen shot FF extension.

superfish.com and screen shot FF extension.

This is the lesson:

Not all Open Source software is good for you, and sleazy things can happen with updates. So read the update notes and the reviews when updating.

The importance of writing for the web

Posted on by
Reply

Lets say it this way, If you want reader to comprehend the things you are trying to communicate to them, and then to act on something then when you write for the web:

  1. Make it short: People scan the web. This is part of making things readable.
  2. Make it readable: that is use pictures to explain concepts.
  3. Make it interactive: [Press the like button…]
You’ll notice that on my personal blog:

  • I do not write short blog posts.
  • I am trying to use more images and photographs to explain concepts.
  • And there should be a like button or a comments section.

Digital Literacy vs. Literacy in a Digital Medium

Posted on by
4

Introduction

Several months ago, I posted a question to Facebook about digital literacy.

What is the role or place of Digital Literacy in a company that values literacy as being vital to reaching its goals?

I have had several months to contemplate the question and I realize that I was a bit ambiguous in my question, or rather my question could not have been understood concisely. Digital Literacy can and is used to mean Continue reading →

iPhone geo-data

Posted on by
Reply

I have been playing around with data available from the iPhone (and also separately visualizing Map data).

I came across a project, iPhoneTracker which was done to show iPhone users the kind of data that the iPhone collects about a users travel and whereabouts. I downloaded the app and ran it. Looks like about a complete history since I activated the phone… The interesting thing for me was that this app did not collect the data from my phone directly but rather from my computer.

iPhone location history from my iPhone