People love collections for some reason.

As a web developer, you’re constantly approached with pulling off zany schemes. In the words of Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Replace “scientists” with “designers” and you see the dilemma. They know you can pull off some funky effects in flash, so they opt to flash. However, flash is still not quite as easilly accessible and searchable that we all would like - and please, you can try to argue this point, but the majority of flash efforts I’ve seen tend to bypass the accessibility and searchability because it’s just easier to do the cool animations/sounds/effects/transparencies in flash (or flex) than it is to do in javascript. Internet Explorer be damned! The unholy bastion of a front-end developers existence tends to fall on IE6 - which is at 24% and dropping in its market share. This is always the what I end up falling on when talking to a fellow developer, and it usually goes like this: Me: We could totally pull off that flash effect! We can do multiple animations using mootools, and it’d be indexable and still be applicable without javascript if we code it right! Him: You mean those large transparent PNG images that would be sliding into place? Me: Right! We could..totally… pull it off… in everything except IE6…. Him: … Me: …shit. I mean, this isn’t too far from the truth, but the point is - accounting for IE6 is a bitch. I recently had to redo someone else’s code that used a PNG script I had rewrote because the alphapng filter was hitting multiple images on the page (dozens of images had a filter alpha opacity of 1). A quick audit of the code and reorganizing the javascript (ahhh… another blog post for the future, me thinks?) and suddenly IE6 was back in action, faster than ever!….not really, but it was at least usable. So you see a lot of our ideas rely on javascript being utilized - or flash, which still will rely on javascript to be embedded - again, because of IE and other cross-browser issues - so we need to keep in mind that hankering feeling… What if they don’t have javascript? No doubt, some people with disabilities may still be able to use a site that utilizes javascript. It’s possible that they may have some ability to use a browser, but if they don’t turn off javascript, it may make it a more difficult browsing experience. Don’t forget, there are a plethora of mobile browsers that may/may not do javascript well, if at all. This falls into a certain realm of uncertainty - and as I ran through a gamut of big e-tailers sites (American Eagle, Anthropologie, L.L. Bean, amongst others) L.L. Bean was the only one that I could purchase from (well, reach a point where they ask for payment). The inherent problem of this, they rely on AJAX calls to do their server side form validation - so it’s possible that if you don’t have javascript, you could still enter bad data and find out your Christmas order is incorrect, maybe too late when they call to tell you why your credit card was declined, or that it was sent to a non-existant address. Understandably - from a SEO perspective, they only need to index up to the product pages. If they’re smart, they don’t have any “highly relevant, high-traffic” content in their shopping cart pages or payment pages (it seems that those are generic, so it should be moot). The dilemma occurs in how they handle that percentage that is browsing without javascript. Maybe it’s a small percentage. Maybe it’s corporate users, or users from the large assortment of mobile devices. The point is - why should you neglect a sale just because they’re on webTV? Enter the Dragon <noscript> PPK on quirksmode wrote about the use of <noscript> and it’s use in helping point out (to the majority of browsers) that we can throw a little message stating that “hey - you need javascript.” I’ve looked at L.L. Bean’s source code, and they’re littered with <noscript>. But really, this shouldn’t be a concern as… You shouldn’t be catering to a rich experience. Really. You should be presenting a website that works - period. I should be able to hit it in lynx. In Safari. My iPhone. His blackberry. IE6. IE5. We shouldn’t be relying on javascript to pull off effects and basic, fundamental functionality. Javascript is an enhancement, not a requirement. If it’s required, you’ve failed. I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers - but I do know that if we want to code in a way that no matter what crap happens in the near future, we need to focus on the basics and get them executed as cleanly, and simply as possible. There may be a point that we finally say - okay, you’ll need javascript to get these cool “up to the minute” updates, live editing, in place context editing, etc. But that’s really at a point when you have to decide - who is this website for? Who am I catering to? Why do I care if the degraded expeience means things pop instead of fade in? More than likely, this same day will be when you say… Shit, a fraction of a percent of people visit my site on IE6. I might want to tell them to upgrade. Copyright © 2008 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

You know - I’m so vain. It’s like looking into a mirror online, and sucking in all the beauty that is the information super highway - to you young’ns that’s what we called the Intertubes back in the day - through a wonderful tool called Google Alerts. I’ve got an addiction, and it feels so good. It starts out with subjects - I follow ATG, Arts Technology Group, Mootools and jQuery. I get flooded with the latest news and blog postings around those topics because they interest me, and, I suppose, naturally, after hearing a lot of people talk of googling themselves, I set up a google alert on my name: Keith Baker to see what’ll come up. In the ideals of personal branding I tend to most of my online diction and commenting under keif because there are quite a few Keith Baker’s that me beat in terms of popularity (like the Yale Physics Professor working with CERN, a Dungeons and Dragons Author, a drummer (who also a a Japanese fan site?), a photographer, a children’s book illustrator) - so I set up an alert on that, as well - this way I know most often if my real name creeps up in an alert it deserves a lot more attention. So what’s the point? A quick shill for Google Alerts? No, I bring this up, because an interesting alert fell into my inbox today - Silliman’s blog post about Issue 1, a 3,785 page e-book of poetry. Wow. With 3,164 authors, you’re sure to find something you like, right? Well, as it turns out, a lot of people published in this book are finding out they’re in this book for the first time (plagiarism!) - except, perhaps captured most eloquently by Silliman: Ed Baker put it so elegantly in the comments stream to For Godot, I DIDN’T FUCKING WRITE THIS GARBAGE! As I certainly did not write the text associated with my name on page 1849. And I doubt seriously that my nephew Dan wrote the one-line poem associated with his name in here either

Now, as is pointed out in the comments, it’s possible that the “author” of said shit poem may merely be - by chance - someone who happens to also write poetry and has your name. Someone later points out the possibility of an automated script being the source - the author may be crediting the original authors as more of a “tribute” or perhaps suffers from a misplaced decimal in the code (hey, it happens - ‘feet instead of meters’). So what can you do to control this? Cease and desist? Threaten litigation that your shiny reputation as a poet could be tarnished being associated with some crap tagged with your name? I know I’m not a poet, but I figure on ecould make a few assumptions… If no one asks - does it matter? People in this world exist with the same name. Someone else can write poetry with your name and get it published - you may think they suck, but they’re published and you’re not (or may not be). If you have one iota of fame, I have a feeling that you have an established style or diction - people who are your fans will no doubt read something attributed to you incorrectly and either think you’ve quit smoking pot and switched to heroin, or that this isn’t you. The point is - let it go! Life’s too short to be worked up over an automated program/persons/whatever incorrectly attributing crap poetry to ‘your name’ and NOT YOU DIRECTLY. If you advertise when you publish (”I’m in this journal/blog/magazine”), I doubt someone will find a random person’s work (not you, with your name) and assume you just don’t want people to know you wrote it. Would you be upset if someone, with your name, with your “passion,” started getting attention in your field?You know - I’m so vain. It’s like looking into a mirror online, and sucking in all the beauty that is the information super highway - to you young’ns that’s what we called the Intertubes back in the day - through a wonderful tool called Google Alerts. Copyright © 2008 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

I get it. You joined Twitter because it’s the new thing. But do you really need to add 1000+ people when your first tweet is “trying out twitter?” Twitter: The Basics If you’re trying it out, start out small. Add the people you know. That was like ten or so people for me. Then, add the blogs you love (notice the LOVE - not just casually read or have in your favorite RSS reader). They may not follow you back, but people will get that, at least, when you have 30 people you’re following and only 10 follow back.e Now, test out twitter. Tweet a bit. It doesn’t have to be relevant or interesting. Have you read my tweets? I bitch, I whine, I moan, I question, I ask, I inform. I’m all over the map. It’s a total mind dump. Why people follow me at all is a mystery - at least to me. Twitter: Slightly more advanced. So you’ve tweeted for a little while. You’ve picked out your favorite clients - maybe TweetDeck or its groups, or maybe Twhirl for its integration with friendfeed. That’s why I tend to use the two. My cell phone doesn’t support twitter, so I don’t bother with mobile clients (for now). So - you’re following people. Maybe a few people (that aren’t spammers) are following you. What now? Research, baby! I suggest using Twellow aka TwellowPages to find tweeters that are interested in similar topics as yourself. Maybe using Twitter’s Search (integrated from Summize) to find key words you like. I’ve done searches on mootools, analytics, metrics, social media, and a few others as they are all topics that interest me. I haven’t ruled out others, and I usually re-run the query. Keep an eye on your ratio of followers to following. This makes you look like a spammer if you’re following, say, a 1,000 plus people and only a hand-full are following you back (spammers get lucky if the users are utilizing TweetLater.com - a tweet scheduler/auto follower. I use it to automatically thank followers. It’s one step less I need to do to thank people for being interested enough to follow my dumbass. It gets interesting when other peple use it so it becomes a two-step loop of “thanks for following!” “thanks for following!” It’s possible that you really dig a thousand people on twitter - you really want to read those tweets! But it just makes you look bad. Please refrain. Slowly add a few dozen daily so people aren’t freaked out by your spam-like addiction (seriously, I’m almost to 2,500 tweets in a short time - imagine me times one thousand). Think before you act. Contribute. Response. Ask. Blog. I know, this Twitter stuff is pretty basic. But that’s kind of the point - twitter is pretty basic. Don’t make it harder or more complex than it needs to be! Copyright © 2008 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

So Mark @ Mashable wrote about YouTube updating their community guidelines against Hate speech. He points out the obvious - people on the internet are retarded and this change means they are censoring us all, and we are fucked because all censorship is evil, and they have won because they can’t say their evil words online. Freedom of speech is absolute. If we can’t beat them without silencing their message, we obviously aren’t being convincing enough to those they are converting. Fight them with our own free speech and expression.

Overall - it’s a good read. YouTube doing a political nod (gee, just like Google did for China, and then did with Law Enforcement Agencies). My only real issue with the article is the wrap-up: We Need to be Smart About This As Uncle Ben used to say, with great power comes great responsibility… If we want to keep it safe from the grubby paws of governmental intervention, companies like Google must implement and enforce standards of policing the community.  Otherwise, the government will do that for us, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we do not want that.

Google isn’t the little shop down the street. They’re a huge-ass corporation. If MSN was doing this people would be calling for Bill Gates head. If Steve Jobs did it, people would make shiny new logos promoting how innovative and forward thinking he’s being. Instead, YouTube (which was purchased by Google) is taking it into their own hands. This shows the error of their “Do No Evil” slogan - nothing is really black and white. They can do something that a lot of people can consider evil - collecting user data, censoring hate speech, censoring anti-hate speech. I do not welcome our new Internet Overlords. Benjamin Franklin once said, They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

We continue to do so, and turn a blind eye to it. We say it’s for the best. It’s better this way. Think of the children. To me, this just shows how freaking worthless our rights are becoming. Services talk about how they’re for everything, but what’s going to happen in the future? For a citizen to express their discontentment, they’ll have to make a video, encrypt it, send it to a friend over seas to upload it to a “video sharing site” hosted on a derilect oil tanker in international waters that’s under siege by the U.S. Government for posting a video of someone saying “The Bill of Rights is an illusion.” So what - how did I get all of this off a little YouTube censorship? Because Google was supposed to be that Little Big company. They’re supposed to be those guys that got big being good, making Microsoft look foolish for ever putting DRM on your computer. Instead they’re slowly transforming into “will this be good for the company?” type double-speak they can throw around in marketing and PR to make themselves look good. How long until Google starts telling you what to write on your blog? “You said not nice things about Google, so we’re giving you a PR of 1, unless you delete those articles. By the way, we bought the rights to your domain, so when it expires, it’s ours unless you comply.” Those who have the power, make the rules. Those that get the information can make their power. I know, I know, a bit paranoidal-freakish, but hey, political season stupidity always riles me up. Copyright © 2008 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana