It’s been a few days now since the release by Chris Wilson on the official Internet Explorer Blog and the subsequent follow up by Eric Meyer and Aaron Gustafson (as requested) showing support for and explaining in detail the introduction of the X-UA-Compatible Meta switch. Now the post to read here is the Microsoft one. That is primary to the whole deal, it explains somewhat why this was done.

What’s it all about.

Basically from Internet Explorer 8 there will be the provision of a meta tag. If you want to use the features of the rendering engine for IE 8 you have to insert this meta tag. If you don’t well your page will render as if it’s been developed for IE 7 (that’s the fall back).

Hence we are ending up with version control flagging for each web page. So you have to opt in to get the features like better standards support and the like from IE 8 and beyond by resetting this meta tag each time the browser changes.

So in web speak..
If DOC TYPE and X-UA-Compatible Meta Tag
Render as indicated by meta tag
elseif DOC TYPE
Render as IE 7 (Standards Mode)
else
Render in Quriks Mode
endif

The Emotional Roller Coaster

I haven’t commented on this, besides on twitter and a few blogs around tracks. I have been basically letting my opinions settle.

• When I first read about this I was outraged. “What are we going back to the dark days of the web”.
• Then I was considering the footprint size of the resultant application, mainly due to different rendering engines, the patching problems and hack attack holes.
• Like John Resig I was also considering the impact on JavaScript having to determine the rendering engine for the page.
• Then there was the possible future death of web standards, the removal of the future proofing concept. That had very concerned.
• Finally I ask who is going to control the registry of User Agent Acronyms that will be used? Will that be a free for all?

It was getting a little strange, a good number of the web community was lining up on opposite sides like Jeffery Zeldman and then Jeremy Keith, If Andy Clark had an operational blog I’m sure we would have been his 2 cents pence worth. Did they know something they are not telling use. Anger was subsiding to confusion. What was really happening?

Browser Wars – Not.

Well we know that the WaSP-Microsoft Task Force have been working on this for a while. The question does come up if this has so many problems, what where the alternatives, like. Is it possible that they where so bad, or that Microsoft just put a gun to the task force’s head and said “We are doing it with you or without you.” – I really hope this was not the case. I guess we will never know with a cloak of NDA around it all.

With the roll out of IE7, we in the web industry think it was a blessing (better than IE6 anyway). Not so in the Microsoft camp.

They are in the real world you see. They have clients with developers that don’t care about standards, about correct CSS, about cross browser compatibility. Yes they do exist. They are a majority, we are the minority. Yes we are very vocal, but we are small.

But IE 7 broke the corporate applications; it broke the implementations of ActiveX and Jscript The bringing of ActiveX and JScripting into line with standards compliance maybe a little harder than Microsoft wants to admit. It cost time and money to fix.

So if you major corporate customers complain about your implementation methods and demanding that the default playing field remains static. What are you going to do. Well if you want to stay in business, you are going to listen to these paying customers.

Then we have the web industry, do they in general pay for Microsoft products (beyond the operating systems) in general no.

So we have annoyed paying customers and on the other hand a minority of free loading noisy upstarts. This is business, money talks in this case. Web Standards lose to business reality. The opt-in stands so the corporate sector can opt-out by default.

As Lachlan Hardy says:

Microsoft doesn’t tell you it’s going to do something of this scale unless it means it.

What people are going to do

I’m consider it’s going to get to the point where you are sick of putting the meta tag in, so you just sniff the browser header, and insert the correct meta tag as the page renders via a backend script.

You have other problems as well like when you go to render generated content as expected in the current version of CSS, but you have to check first that page is going to be rendering as say IE8 otherwise its going to only render as IE7. So then IE8 is really IE7..okay? That is going to get very confusing. Maybe its a move to force people to stagnate.

Is it Good?

Is it going to be helpful? Well, yes, may make life for debugging a little easier and testing as well, as you can stimulate multiple browsers with one version of Internet Explorer. However this doesn’t take into account (at this stage) sub-versions of the render engine. .

Ian Hixie is recommending we all opt-out or put “IE7″ in the meta tag, forcing the rendering engine to IE7. Nice, so the web stagnates. This is just what we don’t need at the moment.

We need to keep Microsoft at the table and educate like crazy these corporate sector developer cowboys. We need to get out there and get mentoring. We need to turn the corporate sector around.

It’s just one line of code but I can still see blood on the browsers over this one. Microsoft has been force to cave to the demands of their own monster.

This week on twitter Molly Holzschlag live tweeted the conversation with Bill Gates at Mix n’ Mash not that the twitter feed really had any important information in it. Anyway Molly did put the seemingly sanitised highlights of the conversation on her blog, thanks for pushing the points Molly.

The topic centred around Web Standards (recommendations for the purists) and IE8 development and the resultant loss of transparency that the development team used to have. Bet you have noticed that too, been very quite on the IE8 development news front hasn’t it (update:  yes silence does usually mean we commonly think inaction even if MS says it isn’t sitting on its hands). So like us all Molly and others are smelling the old Microsoft rat.

Some interesting points from all this; did we get a promise for IE8 in 2008, or not. It would be good to at least see the early beta in 2008, the idea would be the full release. I’m not holding my breath on this one.

As expected Bill Gates is no longer really in control of the day to day events, and isn’t really even across the product lines. Or maybe he is just dodging the question by dumping the answer back to someone else. Is Bill Gates becoming just a Microsoft figurehead.

Maybe Microsoft are going back to there old ways, waiting for a glossy event, MIX08, before rolling out teasers on IE8. This is typical of the thinking of someone locked in the old school marketing concepts.

The problem becomes that the Microsoft team may get it. But we have seen that before, remember MS Outlook 2007 and it’s email HTML standards support. When one section overrides another at Microsoft. Is there a danger that with IE8 having a new engine that they will use the MS-Word engine and slide back into the dark ages with IE8.

All that really is required is for IE8 to finally catch up with the rest of the browser community (FireFox, Opera, Safari) and support CSS to its full standard recommendation. Sure have you can have Microsoft “exclusive” rules and tags; But first off support the base line of CSS like everyone else.

You know this conversation in a way remind me of the thinly disguised apology from Chris Wilson at Web Directions South 2007. Yes we all know Microsoft has screwed up in the past. But if others can implement the standards why can’t Microsoft. Or are they just playing lip service to it all, and IE7 was just a blip on the radar.

What do you think? Will IE8 happen in 2008 or not?

Technorati Tags: ie8, microsoft, billgates, web+standards, wds07, internet+explorer, browsers, ie

Adobe have been waving this about for a while. The proposal to take Photoshop and convert it into an online application like Google Docs (Writely anyone). When I first heard of this I thought there is no way Adobe are going to be able to take the complete breadth and power of the full version of Photoshop and put that into a javascript or flex modular application with server side extensions. I rolled my eyes and muttered “we shall see”.

Well it’s all over the media, for example on Techcrunch. From these preview pictures, we can see it appears that this will indeed be a cut down version of Photoshop and not the desktop resource hog that we are all used to. So we have a very focused online photograph editing application, aimed at the non professional. Really this is nothing new. Previously we have had a few online applications like:

• Fauxto

  They offer basic photo editing and graphic element generation. It’s a simple online Flex application, lacking a few features, like a zoom.

• Picnik

  This is a very easy to use online application. Interface wise, it’s not too bad. It’s aimed like most of these applications at the non-professional. And that said it’s approach on certain functions maybe annoying to a photoshop bigot (like me). In general a good example of a Flex application.

• Picture2Life

  Some applications just don’t work on a interface basis. This is one such application. The interface still needs a little work. On the up side it’s very feature packed, with options for animations and the like.

• Preloadr

  If don’t have a Flickr account, don’t bother, simple. Some of the functionality could be streamlined. It’s functions are simple and frankly a little lacking.

• PXN8

  Some nice features, the cropping is not to my personal taste, but the zoom function was well presented. Over all functional, but not pretty.

• Snipshot

  This application has a pretty interface. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good application does it. Seems again to be another application that is lacking a few features, but it has potential.

• FotoFlexer

  A straight forward photo editing tool, usual photo manipulation functions. What sets this Flex application apart is the fact that it uses layers, and seems to have some type of artificial intelligence component built into the editing features.

But after all the hard R&D work in the wild that has been done by all these online photo-editing startup within the Flex platform space, along comes Adobe to reap rewards of all this work, and “flex” its marketing muscle. However it’s not going to be the small guys that Adobe is looking at. It will be Google, having Google considering seriously moving into this online application space, could see Adobe left only on the desktop and out of the online world. This is a mistake all too many companies have made in the past (eh Microsoft, Corel, Lotus/IBM, Novell).

So Adobe is putting out an online Flex version of Photoshop, making it free, but advert sponsored. Offer an upgrade path for the corporate sector too I bet. They’ll get lots of exposure with a free product. Get the Photoshop brand out of the design studios and into the general corporate offices, the home offices and schools for very little cost. Perfect marketing, get the world using your online application, on your servers, under your terms. I can imagine Adobe wants the Photoshop brand = photo editing, like MS-Word = word processing.

Still I can see that the smaller startups will not be happy at all, especially now it seems to be more than hype. What do you think? Are these online applications a real workable alternative or just a cut down toy?

Technorati Tags: FotoFlexer, Snipshot, PXN8, Preloadr, Picture2Life, Picnik, Fauxto, Photoshop, Adobe, Photo-editing, Tools, online, Flex

The curse of any blog is the endless stream of comment spam. In some cases this has lead a number of predominant popular bloggers to turn comments off all together. Which in away defeats the purpose of a blog altogether doesn’t it. Well this blog used to get its fair share of spam. Okay we aren’t up there in the two to three thousand pieces of comment spam a day. But for this small blog it was in the range of two to three hundred comments a day. Then in all changed. Now it’s 1 to 2 pieces of spam a day. So what did I do to reduce to the level of spam.

• Use a spam filter, filter the comments as spam before they are lodged.
• Moderate all instances of a comment with a URL in. Spammers can be cleve, as you know, they love even giving you somewhat interesting comments and then a nice link to some strange dark hole on the web.
• Moderate any comment that is under defined number of words. This one has been a pain of late, spam that is only two or three words in length.
• Limit the time frame that comments can be made. For example after six months close of the comments on your older articles. Its well know that spammers in general will target the older articles on your blog. Frankly these posts make good reference reading, but the social interaction that they once had is by now well and truely spent.

There are a number of plugin that can assist with reducing the amount of comment spam you will get. It’s not going to eliminate it but it will help:

• Akismet

  This has to be the best first level of anti comment spam defence. Even if you have a commercial site the cost of this service is well worth it. It will, I have found, in most cased capture 99% of your spam. Okay it has every now and again trapped a few false positives, but in general it is all good.

• Moderate Brief Comments

  This is an interesting plugin by Kaf Oseo, it allows you to send any comments that are under a nominated number of words for moderation. This is really handy if you are getting a lot of single word comment spam.

• Comment Timeout

  This is the plugin by James McKay that I would rank just behind Akismet in comment spam blocking functionality. This plugin allows you to automate the closing of various aging articles to comments determined via a number of criteria.

• reCAPTCHA

  I’m not a big fan of CAPTCHA’s mainly due to the large inaccessibility component and that they do stop the flow of commenting on a blog. However they can be very effective at stopping comment spam. This particular plugin is a little better as at least it offers an audio component.

• Mod_Rewrite Trackback Spam Blocker

  Nice effective trackback spam comment blocker. Only really works with spam bots by modify the WordPress permalink generator. Its not much good with manual human spammers. But every little bit helps. Then again you can always turn trackbacks off.

So there you have it. These all seem to work well together as a combined procedure to reduce comment spam. At present it seems to be working well, may work for you, it may not. It’s not a full list but it is a practical list. For a complete list see the Wordpress Anti-Spam Tools list. Do you have anymore to add to the list that you have tried and really work?

Technorati Tags: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, CAPTCHA, spam, anti-spam, wordpress, blogging, spam+tools, comments, plugin

Seems lately that we are now starting to get a good spread of CSS and JavaScript (DOM Scripting) debugging tools available. About time too, for too long we web designers have spent endless hours debugging inconsistent implementations of CSS over the various browsers. Time for us to take some of that ‘lost’ time back. Now we all know about Joe Hewitt’s famous FireBug extension. If you don’t then go get it, install it, and it will change the way you design. That wonderful extension aside, what else is out there in the market place:

• XRay

  Just the other day John Allsopp joined the crowd with his XRay bookmarklet. Now this is just a CSS only tool that allows you to XRay (hence the name) into a page and see the CSS that relates to an element. Much like you can do in FireBug in FireFox, an extension I’m sure you all . What sets the Xray bookmarklet asie is that it works with Safari 2 and 3 (for OSX), and the Mozilla based browsers (OSX and Windows). The good thing about this tool is that it doesn’t take up as much screen real estate as FireBug does. But it doesn’t stop there, oh no. John is planning versions for Opera, and Internet Explorer. If this happens, this tool could be come an essential component of any web designers toolkit. Still go check it out. Also remember it’s still in beta.

  Update: There is now a version for Internet Explorer, this has now become a primary debugging tool for IE.

• YSlow

  Then we have YSlow released by the team at Yahoo, yes this is a FireFox Extension. Okay it’s not all strictly CSS, but it is a handy enhancement on Firebug and provides a quick analysis of your web page’s performance and reports on possible speed bumps (or weak points) for the nominated page. Now a word of warning using this. Don’t leave it turned on all the time, only enable it for testing and then disable it’s reporting after you have finished using it. It can be resource intensive depending on the web page.

• Dust-Me Selectors

  The people at SitePoint have produced a nice extension Dust-Me Selectors that reports on the unused CSS selectors within the current page. Now this is not ideal, as you may only use a selector on one page, and this maybe not the one being reported on. But it is good for general design selectors. Especially if you build your pages with a base design featuring all the major content elements for debugging of the design, and ensuring it all works and looks as you have envisioned. This even works with IE conditional statements. There is a school of design that dictates that you isolate your base design CSS selectors from your specifics via separate CSS files, Dust-Me Selectors is ideal for that situation.

• FireFox Web Developer

  The Web Developer FireFox extension developed by Chris Pederick is still a handy addition to any web designers toolkit. Although it has been surpassed in many areas by FireBug it is still useful for disabling elements of the display. I would recommend you at least have it installed as it can ofter as alternative view point to FireBug.

• DOM Inspector

  Scott MacGregor’s DOM Inspector extension for FireFox was very popular before the introduction of FireBug. It is still in production, however I feel the usefulness within the web designers tool kit has wained. This extension allows you to examine the DOM of a page, and travel up and down the DOM structure.

• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

  The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar from Microsoft is really the only alternative, outside of the commercial products (see below), for CSS debugging in IE. It’s not a even a shade on FireBug, and while a stable and useful product, it is about time Microsoft developed a better tool than this, as it is a bit dated. Come on Microsoft time to revise and take a leaf out of the FireBug camp.

• Opera Web Developer

  There is a Web Developer Toolbar and Menu for Opera as well. This offers very much a functionality similar to the FireFox Web Developer toolbar.

• FireBug Lite

  Not the most ideal solution but FireBug Lite does offer Firebug like functionality to IE, Safari and Opera. It requires the use of a code insertion into the page to be debugged and the calling of the FireBug interface modules from a JavaScript library on the server. Not so much as on the fly like FireFox FireBug functionality, but it is an alternative.

• DeBugBar

  This is the solution to the poor support provided from the IE Developer ToolBar. The commercial product DeBugBar. This is an Internet Explorer plug-in that gives you FireBug like control of the page. Navigation up and down the DOM, and changing of CSS selector attributes on the fly. A JavaScript console and inspector. If you have problems debugging CSS in IE, and I know we all do! Then take a look at this commercial plug-in, prices start from 59 €.

That’s a bit of a wrap up. What other CSS debugging tools do you use, besides blood sweat and tears (mainly over IE 6)?

Technorati Tags: XRay+Bookmarklet, YSlow, FireBug, FireFox, CSS, Web+Design, Dust-Me+Selectors, Web+Developer+ToolBar, Opera, Debugging, DOM+Inspector, Internet+Explorer+Developer+Toolbar, IE, FireBug+Lite, DeBugBar

You know the story. Your client or boss wants to put a report online, it’s just a few pages long, but they want exact print output control of the document or they just want to ensure that the cost is kept to a minimum. So you end up putting the document online as a PDF. Now I ask you is it really readable by everyone. That is normal viewers, assistative technology viewers, search engine bots and viewers in remote areas on slow connections. I can bet that in most cases one of these groups is missing out

So you ignore the problems and just get the job done and get the PDF online. If you have been in the industry for a while you would have done this. Yes even I a have done this, shame on me. Come on, I bet you have too. Well I’m going to discuss how to get over some of the problems you will have created with PDF distribution of information on the Web.

Suitability of PDFs – when to use them

I’m a business realist; I know there are times that you have to use a PDF. But let’s have a close look at the times you should use a PDF the and times you shouldn’t.

When to use

• Large reports, papers, documents
• Books or book chapters
• Legal or procedural forms intended to be printed.

When not to use

• Short brochures and specification sheets (include a HTML version of the information)
• Product catalogue pictures and brochures (or consider an online catalogue)
• Short one of two page documents. These should be in HTML.

The Acrobat distribution problem

There is generally not a major problem with version control of the PDF reader. In that previous versions of the reader can read the base features of the new versions (as long as the security features aren’t activated. However there is one version where all bets are off, as there is a distinct problem.

If you have been working with PDF a while you would have come across this error:

Error: Database: corrupt database

First off you think, hang on – where are the database within a PDF. But there are several data tables of information within a PDF if you think about it. I have found from experience that this only tends to occur if the document is being read by Acrobat reader below version 5.02.

Problem is there are a lot of computers in the corporate world; especially government, that still have Acrobat Readers that are version 5.0. It seems there was massive push with distribution of version 5.0 This was for Adobe a double edged sword. As this leaves them with a large number of corrupt readers that would nor read version 7+ files. The release of the voluntary patch to 5.01 and 5.02 was frankly a waste of time as it’s well know that IT sections don’t apply non operating systems patches. Hence till the OS is updated the problem remains for most corporate users.

Or does it? Try removing some of the accessibility settings when you make the PDF. The main one in case is the “Enable accessibility and reflow with Tagged PDF”. You will find this under Settings, in the Application Settings section. Ensure it is NOT checked. That’s right I know it’s insane but uncheck it.

Of course the other alternative is to get the user to upgrade to version 7 or above. Good luck with that. So here is a classic case of good distribution can come back to bite you. But what do you do with Quark or InDesign created documents. Well I don’t have a solution for that case, yet.

Optimisation

You have a PDF it’s well over 5 Meg in size and you really want it to be about 1 Meg or less. So how do you get it smaller? You have tried the optimise settings in Acrobat, but still it’s just way too big. First things first, you may have to have the PDF rebuild. There are a lot of things that we as designers do, in our rush to get the job done, that make the resultant PDF, as a vector based document, bloat to an unworkable size. Here is a short list of things you can do to make the document smaller file size wise.

Using InDesign

• Check the InDesign files for hidden images or vector shapes. You are looking for things that are hidden under other layered images or objects. Look for items off to the side of the Layout, this is still placed in the PDF, if its not required remove it.
• If you have an image that has a mask over it within InDesign, there can be wasted pixels there. You need to redo the image so that it is clipped or cropped as close as you can get it to the mask edge. As the complete image is rendered underneath the mask layer in the PDF even if you only see 10% of it.
• Ensure all gradients are vector generated and not bitmap images (Tiff, Jpeg etc). This is especially true of that groovy Illustrator gradient you are just been working on; in this case render them as a true vector EPS file and place this into InDesign.
• Use Jpegs that are optimised instead of Tiffs. Jpegs have a smaller initial footprint.
• Use pictures that have large blocks of the same colour in them and not great amounts of detail or different colours. Bright and colourful is often better.
• Use black and white or duo tone images.
• Use Adobe smart object when you can for cross platform object they seem to help a little, especially in CS2. The compression on Smart Object is very good for some reason (I have no idea why).
• Then export file as PDF, assuming you have all the accessibility tags in place too.

Using MS-Word

• Optiumise all images as if you are doing it for the web before you insert them into the word document

Using Acrobat

Now start work in Acrobat, use the PDF Optimiser tool under Advanced > PDF Optimizer. Remember to save versions of your file as you optimise. Things to consider while optimising:

• Select Flatten transparency
• Clip complex regions
• Don’t disable embedded fonts unless you really have to. You still want you typography to remain as you designed it.
• Down sample the images step by step, soon as you notice a difference at a glance take the previous version, you have optimised too much
• Remember to clean up any referenced structure elements like bookmarks that are not referencing the pages in the document. This is important if you are chopping a document into different chapters.
• Don’t ever try and combine two documents together or build a document from separate InDesign page exports it will always be a lot larger than the single run InDesign export.

Searchable PDFs

Yes Google and most search engines will index your PDFs. But please ensure you do a few things to help them along. It does help if you complete the Metadata section of the Description tab in the PDF (Ctrl-D) :

• Complete the Title field, this becomes the link text
• The Subject field, this maybe become the description depends on the search engine and the version of PDF.
• The keyword (delimited with semi colons)

You should if you have the time consider completing the Additional Metadata section of this dialog. You can import and export these via an xml file. This will give you a better metadata footprint, and is very handy if you are doing a lot of documents with a standard baseline of metadata.

Now the really interesting bit, did you know up to till version 7 Adobe has produced a different method of presenting the metadata within the file format for nearly every version of Acrobat. In version 6 it is presented in version 5 format and version 6 formats, just to make life interesting. In Version 7+ we have an enhanced version 6 format. Luckily a well written search bot can tell what version the PDF document is written in. Version 8 follows the version 7 format for the most part.

Accessible PDFs

I’m not going to go into a great detail on this, but the bottom line is all the accessibility must occur in almost all cases before you create the PDF. You can do it afterwards, but it does tend to more time consuming the later in the process you add in the accessibility.

Pre Production – MS Word

• Ensure that the document structure is written in using the Heading styles
• That a table of contents is defined,
• That all images and diagrams have an alternative text defined.
• That all links have an screen tip text defined
• With tables that all header rows are check under Table Properties as “Repeat as Header Row at top of each page”
• Ensure the colour contrast is readable for extremes in contrast and colour blindness. Light grey on white is not a contrasting colour scheme.

Pre Production – InDesign

• You have to tag the document either via File Export or by turning on tagging by default for all exported files are tagged. You do this via File > Adobe PDF Presets > Define and click on the presets you want to be tagged and check Create Tagged PDF . If you are doing a high quality print this is the default anyway, but it’s a good idea to check.
• When building the document you need to define headers (semantic structures) that use styles that have the right names, that is h1 to h6. Nothing else, use exactly h1 to h6.
• Check the Structure Panel to ensure you are progressing well with the semantic structure.
• Add alterative text to images, right click the image tag in the Structure Panel and selecting New Attribute. Add “Alt” in the name field (note capital A) and the alternative text in the value field.
• Links and lists will have to be edited post production. Although this may have changed with InDesign CS3.

Post Production – Acrobat

• Ensure the fonts have not been rasterised (scanned), check, you must be able to copy the text at least.
• Use Acrobat 7 or above for the base line, JAWS and other assistative technology may have issues with anything below version 7.
• You can add tags to the document via the Acrobat, but it is not an easy issue, it will take time to complete. View the tags by selecting View > Navigation Tags > Tags.
• If there are no tags, select Advanced > Accessibility > Add tags to Document, to add them
• Select the Content Tab and use the right click on the structure elements to edit the accessibility elements.
• Within the Touchup Properties dialogue remember to use the Tag tab and fill in the elements required there.
• Build the bookmarks structure in the Bookmarks tab for the document via Acrobat. This just takes time.
• Build the thumbnails in the Pages tab. Don’t forget, to set the Page Properties (right mouse click) to Use Document Structure.

Summary

PDFs are not just simple build, link and upload document format. If you must use them, use with caution and optimise and make them accessible at all times. Suddenly you will find that quick fix by using a PDF, isn’t really that much of a quick fix after all.

These are the notes from the mini talk “PDF is not your Friend” I gave at the Perth July 2007 Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) Meeting. There is a podcast and the slides are available as a PDF document (852 k), on slideshare or below.

Technorati Tags: acrobat, pdf, indesign, accessibility, optimisation, searchability, seo, AWIA, port80, mini+talk, metadata

It was a little amazing last night (WST-AU) Twitter had been a little flaky, but at least it was operational. Then “it” started, someone was talking about alternatives to Twitter. Slowly but surely people went and checked out Jaiku, signed up, collected their friends, of course this meant more of their friends signed up as well. The wave of Jaiku signup spam started to lap my email inbox. Within 12 hours my lonely old Jaiku account had gone from 5 odd contacts on Jaiku to a modest 40 odd. It was just amazing to see the power of the peer group. People not wanting to be left out, not wanting to be out of the loop, just in case people did migrate to Jaiku. Often the Jaiku sign up was followed by the statement:

Just looking at Jaiku, I still like Twitter, just having a look.

It was a bit like lemmings going over a cliff. People were signing up at a rapid rate. The funnier thing was that the trend jumped timezones, the “just checking out Jaiku” continued from the OzPack into the the BritPack, and then onto the US. I suppose we geeks like to have a backup system.

Well Twitter has been stable for most of today. Adapt there has been a distinct reduction in usage. But what went wrong, well the people at twitter tell us it was just a series of bad software deployments. Makes me think maybe the cats are running the application deployment at Twitter.

During this time the cry went up for Jaiku base desktop tools. They were reviewed and some taken up, some not. So now people have a Jaiku and Twitter account, so if you want to be distracted by both of them, can you have it all in on application or page.

Well help is at hand, Rodney Olsen suggested people go have a look at TwitKu. Despite the plain interface and the Marquee Tag (urrgh) it does the job at hand, allowing dual posting (why if you have a public twitter feed). Most importantly you can see both streams at once.

Did Twitter Jump the Shark? Or were the cats having a very bad series of days.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Jaiku, TwitKu, Downtime, Socialnetworking, Migration

The other day managed to get hold of an invite to the IPTV service Joost, that is currently in Beta (and we all know what that means). First off, I have no invites, so don’t ask; okay. Update – I do have a few invites (900+) in reality I think Joost maybe open to the public soon anyway, however you can still email me for an invite (if you want the invite you find my contact).

You connect up to Joost via a downloaded purpose build desktop application. It launches you into the Channel Selector and straight into the programs that are available. The interface is very simple are easy to use with either a mouse or keyboard.

Besides the various channels and ways of customising the programming for your own use, there are also widgets that you can active as an overlay on top of the program being viewed. The widgets include items such as a clock, an Internet Messenger (using jabber or gmail), local chat room, rating scorer, news board and tickler and a few more. These may seem a little boring at first, but consider you can now twitter from within Joost. I’m sure there will be more widgets to come in the future, as this aspect brings an element of social networking, apt a minor one in the on-demand TV world.

The visual quality of the content is not high definition, but it up scales well and present very nicely when displayed on a high definition plasma or large LCD screen.

The content of programming it not all to my taste, but still I found at least 40 hours of viewing on the various stations that I’m going to have a look at. I can see a great potential for this type of TV delivery if the content is improved. My one complaint is the licensing has meant that Joost programming is segmented into three regions: US, EU and the rest of the world. Well I’m in the latter, which is a shame as there are whole channels that I can see and be teased with but can’t access.

Yes there are adverts. Some are short; others are of a standard length. You are not, at present, subjected the endless adverts as you would expect. You are lucky if you have one advert in the middle of a program; and for a free service I can deal with that.

The Local TV Scene

I’ll explain my TV viewing habits so you have an idea where I’m coming from.

Now I don’t normally have access to Foxtel (local pay-TV), the programming just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s all mostly repeats, and frankly the cost is too high for the quality that you get. I watch a little Free to ai, mayeb 5 hours a week and rest is with DVDs.

Free to air TV in Australia is a little better than your average (compared to US free to air), being selective of the best (and sometimes worst) from the US, UK and European programming.

However these programs are usually a good 6 to 24 months behind their initial screening. This has started to change over the last few years as the free to air TV networks seem to realise that a percentage of people are viewing programs via torrent feed or on copies sourced from friends and associates. This is good, as there is no reason why we have to wait a year or so for a TV series to be aired in Australia.

I have also noticed there has been less creative editing of late. You know what I mean, when up to ten minutes of a program is sliced for advert, usuallyon scene changes or off the sides of the advert spaces.

Is this again a policy decision by the program managers that has been influenced by the fact that people can now source their favourite TV programs elsewhere.

On-Demand IPTV Now!

Looking at Joost, there is one thing I really like about the concept; it’s IPTV on-demand. When I want it. No more working out what to watch when, no more programming a PVR, or training it to select the program types and themes I like.

The concept is not new; you can rent a movie online and (with the associated DRM) download or watch a streaming version. The usual on-demand viewing is like your own DVD library; you watch it when you want to. You control your lifestyle not the TV programmers. I can imagine that this type of service has the traditional TV executives either burying their heads in the sand or quivering in their soft leather shoes.

Are these new trends in people’s viewing habits and new services like Joost going to change the age of television? Is TV as we know it about to start to morph into something else; a more interactive on-demand service? Should TV executives be scared? I hope so.

Technorati Tags: IPTV, Joost, Televsion, TVProgramming, , JoostTV

Well Twitter is well over a year old now and pushing the edges of the G2G universe (thank you Bronwen of Perth Norg ). As expected people have found a use for this technology, from social chat, help desk functions, news broadcast, micro blogging, and storytelling. It almost seems now when you get geeks together; twitter will be topic of conversion, out come the mobile phones and the twittering begins. Point in case the Perth Webloggers Meetup this month (April 2007).

What’s avialable for twitter on mobile phones, besides the standard twitter SMS . It does bring up the question – why bother with a mobile phone application for twitter. Well some phone networks charge higher rates for incoming or outgoing overseas SMS. Yes in some places people have to pay for SMS. In some of these cases it’s cheaper to use a data network connection. You could also use free wifi when you can find it.

So lets look at some of the mobile phone apps available for twitter:

Twitteresce

This is an application from Madpilot Productions, it’s a Java (J2ME) based application, using a GPRS/3G network. This is from the same people that brought you 88miles. Twitteresce is simple and effective, the interface is raw, but it is version 0.3 (at time of publication) and it is very much in beta. It does suffer on the Nokia phones from a text contrast problem with the text input screens depending on your theme, (dark blue text on a blue background).

In general it is good if not raw in its interfac; applying all the most recent features on twitter except the direct tweets. Twitteresce allows access to both the friends and public twitter streams.

Point your mobile phone to: madpilot.com.au/twitteresce

Twitlet

Another Java (J2ME) based application, running on a GPRS/3G network, this time from Paxmodept. It certainly is an outstandingly well-presented application (being version 1.0). With a full customised interface using the twitter blue colours in all areas but the text input fields, which is a shame as it does spoil the overall effect.

There are a few problems with screen flow and text contrast like Twitteresce is suffers from. The tweets are displayed with the time stamp, useful in a way, but not that much as it’s not recalculating to the local time zone. There was one screen flow that really had me stumped for a minute or so, how to get off the tweets screen.

You can send your tweets as expected, but there is no shortcut for direct or in reply to tweets. There is also no provision to view the public twitter stream or have an auto update of the tweets like with Twitteresce.

Point your mobile phone to: mobile.paxmodept.com

Tiny Twitter

An application from Kevin Cawley from Boulder, Colorado, it’s a Java (J2ME) based application, running on a GPRS/3G network. It’s version 0.83. Site has a few mobile web usability issues, not that they are show stoppers.

The interface is good, the contrast bug is all gone on some fields, by using a lighter overlay fill in the fields. It has a good series of error messages. It doesn’t use a custom interface like Twitlet, but uses the plain text screens like Twitteresce.

However the tweet input, defaults to the standard freeform sms text page, and the contrast problem returns.

Point your mobile phone to: tinytwitter.com

FlashLite Twitter

For the phones that can use FlashLite 2, there is a Twitter app too. Abdul Qabiz has throw together a application for basically posting only to twitter, mainly to avoid overseas SMS costs. Again this is a GPRS/3G network application, it’s not bad, there are lots of bugs and interface issues, but Adbul is really frank about this. These could do with cleaning up. Currently it’s really the only free FlashLite Twitter application available.

Download the app here: FlashLite Twitter

Other Applications

There are a series of Twitter applications for various PDA phones. I’ve not tested these, but I’ll list them for completeness:

• TreoTwit – for Palm OS Treo or Palm OS PDA
• Cellity Tweeter – Another thin Java app, not tested due to terms and conditions. Yes I do read them.
• TwitterBerry – twitter for Blackberrys.

There has been some discussion since Adobe announced their new Creative Suite 3 products on the differences in pricing for non-US countries. Adobe tells us that the pricing models for countries outside of the US are controlled by the local Adobe office to a degree.

Now I have nothing against the new Creative Suite itself. From what I have seen in the previews and demonstrations, it seems to be worth the United States upgrade price. But how does this compare to previous upgrades? How do the prices in Australia compare to the prices in the US. Are Australian’s being ripped off by Adobe Australia? This is what I’m going to be examining here in detail.

A quick comparison of the recommend retail pricing in Australia versus the US is given below.

Yes I’m focusing on the web premium package, mainly because this is the package that I’m interested in.

Looking at the figures above, Australian’s are paying a 25-30% price increase for the same software sold in the US. Now I know the product has to be shipped, but I can bet that it’s not really coming from the US, but a pressing plant in China or the equivalent. So why are us mugs in Australia having to pay the price increase for the same software. And don’t tell me it’s for local customisation. Should we have to pay for this price difference?

We need to send a message to Adobe Australia to stop being greedy with the local designers and developers. Wake up Adobe Australia, you are in control of the pricing, at least give the local industry and break and do a loyalty early upgrade discount marketing campaign.

If you could purchase and download the software from the Adobe Store (not that I have tried this one), then certainly that would be the way to go. Mind you, to do so you would have to register the account in the online store as being in the US, and I you will be breaching the licensing agreement. And if you can’t download it and have to ship the disks, you will be slugged for GST and import fees. Still all things considered this pricing is just not on. Has anyone considered the Australia-US free trade agreement.

Price the products too high and the Web Industry will find alternatives. Look at the Microsoft alternatives MS-Expression, okay the product is a little immature, but it’s shaping up as an alterative development suite, which is good as it gives us back a competitive market.

Also the debate has moved into the upgrade prices and their value for money. Clearly from the table below it is value for money if you consider it versus the purchasing of separate items, but it’s always been this way, hasn’t it. That’s why these software suites always sell well.

But how do the upgrade prices compare to previous versions.

Is the current (CS3) upgrade prices good value for money?

Well if you consider the matrix above the pricing points are very similar. The exceptions being for Photoshop and Illustrator, but if you consider the level of feature improvement and changes from the previous versions these prices aren’t too bad.

Now I do agree it would be nice if Adobe had allowed an upgrade path for Photoshop, Illustrator AND Studio as an item. But sadly there is only three pricing points; separate products, Studio or Creative Suite. This could have been handled a little better with maybe another pricing tier being present. I have attempted via several communication mediums to contact Adobe to get an answer on this, but as expected they are silent.

What do you think; should here be a third middle tier on the pricing? Is the software priced too high in comparison to the US price?

Technorati Tags: adobe, cs3, pricing, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash-Professional, Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator