post-next -Ted Drake's sketchbook » Web Design

Preparing for the FCC

Ted Drake — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:09:01 +0000

I’m heading to the FCC next week for a developer event.

On Monday, November 8, 2010, the Federal Communications Commission will sponsor an Open Developer Day event at FCC Headquarters in Washington, DC, to promote collaboration between Web developers in the public and private sectors, in furtherance of FCC goals to further innovation in accessible technologies and foster citizen participation in open government.

This will be a public, single-day event that prioritizes accessibility goals, though other Web solutions are also of interest. The event will feature guest engineers from the Yahoo! Developer Network and Yahoo!’s Accessibility team, and will have a component addressing the requirements and opportunities in the new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

FCC Hosts Open Developer Day: Accessibility Innovation – Yahoo! Accessibility Lab

I’ve been playing with government data to make it ready for quick mashups. I threw a challenge to some other developers for creating a quick map mashup with a series of map points generated by a spreadsheet on Data.Gov. This is what Anthony Ettinger put together with Yahoo! Pipes:

It’s great to see how you can grab a spreadsheet from the government’s repository, convert it to CSV format, upload it to your server, and quickly parse that data for mashups. It would be easier if data.gov had the file in csv format instead of xls or zip. I could have saved the first few steps.

FCC Hosts Open Developer Day: Accessibility Innovation (developer.yahoo.com)
Baker Awarded FCC National Broadband Map Data Assessment Contract (eon.businesswire.com)
FCC Fines Verizon a Record-Breaking $25 Million for Screwing Customers [Fcc] (gizmodo.com)
The man behind the National Broadband Plan (Q&A) (news.cnet.com)
Calling all developers! FCC releases APIs for key databases (arstechnica.com)

A little Insider knowledge is a scary thing

Ted Drake — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:45:18 +0000

Especially when it means putting me on a video. I just ordered insiderarts.com, so take that you domain squatters! Now I just need to build it :)

Check out my site when you need some new food ideas: InsiderFood.com

Au Revoir Paris – Hello India

Ted Drake — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:46:51 +0000

I’m in the airport, waiting for the flight to Bangalore. Luckily, I get to use the new terminal at Charles De Gaulle. It’s bright, airy, and has a great wi-fi.

Yesterday, I woke up and could see the sun shining. I walked out to get a croissant and it was downright pleasant. Well, I didn’t need anything more to choose shorts and sandals for the day’s outfit. Needless to say, the bizarre mixture of weather made this an unfortunate decision. The temperature fluctuated by about 20 degrees from warm to chilly. It rained, it hailed, it left me looking like a circus clown in my sunny California attire. But what the heck, not everyone can be glamorous.

I’ve walked so many miles in the past few days that I’m afraid the ASPCA is going to arrest me for abusing my size 14 dogs. They’re barking up a storm and could use a day of rest. I’ve also been swallowing horse pills to avoid malaria and Ghandi’s revenge in India. Ah, the life of a jet setter.

Garcon! Garcon! bring me another cafe! Pronto!

I’ll be in Bangalore for a few days to discuss Yahoo! technology and web site accessibility to engineers. I’m looking forward to hearing some of the other talks, meeting various people, and seeing the city and country. I’ve got a shopping list started: elephant for Jim, outfit for Hannah…

Yahoo! Accessibility

Ted Drake — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:33:47 +0000

Next week is going to be a big week for me and accessibility on Yahoo! There’s a lot going on, I don’t know how it will all go down.

1. I am going to Bangalore, India to discuss accessibility at the annual Front End Engineers conference. I’ve wanted to visit India for a long time and I’m looking forward to the chance. I’m also going to Paris and Munich for other Yahoo! business.

2. The Yahoo! Accessibility Stakeholders Group, of which I am a member, is hosting a global campaign to fix alt attributes across the network. Alt attributes are the snippets of text that appear when an image is not displayed. They are critical for those using a screen reader. Using alt attributes correctly seems to be the most basic element of making a site accessible, unfortunately they are also easily forgotten.

3. Yahoo! Avatars has added the Accessibility Stakeholders Group icon to the clothing options for your avatar (http://avatars.yahoo.com) This nifty logo replaces the normal Y in the logo with a braille version.

I’ll post more as the trip and campaign progress.

Micropatronage for accessibility

Ted Drake — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:08:03 +0000

Joe Clark has an ambitious project on the docket. The Open & Closed Project hopes to create a new standard for video captioning. It also includes plans to develop better training and certification for those creating captioning. Joe even has plans for developing and implementing new fonts that would make it easier to view the online and over-the-air captions.

However, Joe needs some help.

This project won’t run itself and needs funding. He’s asking us to help him raise the funding. Joe needs $7,777 to support 4 months of intensive fund-raising and project co-ordination. Can you help him raise this sum? If you have a friend, family member, or acquaintance that is deaf, this project will significantly help their lives.

If you go to the gym and watch the telly while sweating on a treadmill, desperately trying to figure out what the talking head is saying…. this project may or may not significantly help your life. Sometimes, you just don’t want to know what the idiot on Fox News is saying when some jerk on another treadmill is controlling the remote control… but I digress.

Visit Joe’s site and donate a few bucks. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to be a superstar to make captioning real.

I’m an antidote to bad gay sites

Ted Drake — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:09:19 +0000

I can’t wait to call my mom and let her know. She’ll be soooo proud of her little baby.

Seriously, Joe Clark referred to Yahoo! Tech as an antidote to some of the horrible re-designs of gay-game sites. It’s a bit disjointed but appreciated.

We tried to make Yahoo! Tech as accessible as possible. User-testing with Victor Tsaran, Yahoo’s accessibility guru led us to make many small and large changes to the code. I’ve written one article about how we made our home page flash movie accessible and have two more on the way about our comparison tables and how we are displaying our ratings and reviews.

Visit www.last-child.com for my notes and articles about web design. It’s got the geeky side of me and stay on this site for the well… less geeky side. Thanks Joe for the nod and the push. Now I’ll need to get busy on publishing those other articles.

Off to Europe

Ted Drake — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:49:41 +0000

I’m hitching a ride with the big birdie to San Diego tomorrow and grabbing Jim for the big hop, skip, and a jump to Europe on friday. It’s going to be a fun time for all. I’ll be attending the @media conference in London and spending many days eating cheese and chocolate in Paris.
I’ve finished printing a small portfolio of my photographs from the cemetery in Paris’s Montmartre district. Hopefully, I can find a place or two in Paris that would be interested in exhibiting a series.

Yahoo! Tech

Ted Drake — Mon, 01 May 2006 04:24:18 +0000

Tech for Red State Moms. I’m going to get killed at work for actually saying that. It’s been a mantra around the office for too long, but it’s true. We’ve launched Yahoo! Tech and I couldn’t be more proud.

When I was interviewed for a job at Yahoo! six months ago, I was asked about my preference of projects. Would I like to work in Santa Monica for News or for this new project about making tech easy for the average person. “Yes!” Pahleeease… like I would have said no to either of them?

However, I wanted to work on whichever would be the most challenging. Tech certainly filled that requirement.

I pictured Tech as a mix between Cnet and Netflix. A place where you could get the information you needed, but also feel like it was personlized just for you. I think we’ve done just that.

Yahoo! Tech is full of great information, specifications, price comparisons, and everything else you’d ask for in a tech site. But it’s also got personality, something you don’t always hear in conjunction with Yahoo! sites. We get a kick out of reading user’s questions, especially when they get a bit risque. The ability to save products, share them, and compare them with a few clicks makes shopping so much easier. One of the last features we added was content from Dummies and McGraw-Hill. It’s great to be on a page looking at digital cameras and see an article about removing red-eye.

So take some time and enjoy Yahoo! Tech. I know I will. It’s been a long 6 months with many, many 70-80 hour work weeks. Now I’ve got a computer filled with recordings of Top Chef, Flavor of Love, and other horrible television shows to catch up on.

Keep an eye on www.last-child.com, my CSS/Web design site for some articles about what’s behind the code in Tech.

The coverage is starting to appear. Here’s what Forbes has to say about Yahoo! Tech.

The countdown begins

Ted Drake — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 04:09:44 +0000

6 days… 6 more days before I can take a rest. In less than a week we’ll be unveiling the largest project that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. My neck is numb from the headphone strap, my shoulder, forearm, and hand are sore, my eyes are tired, but my spirits are up. I’ve worked an average of 10hrs/day for the past 8 weeks and only taken 4 days off in that time period.

Tired? yes. Worn out? almost. Unbelievably anxious? most definately. Proud? You bet. I’m going to be one big ass grin 7 days from now.

Me, me, me, me… I, I, I, I… no, I’m not forgetting everyone else, just taking a little self-absorbed moment, thank you. It’s too early for the tearful acceptance speech. Just peel your eyes away from the CSS Reboot list on monday and come back here for the big announcement.

Museum Inside Information

Ted Drake — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 03:09:10 +0000

The golden boys and girls of the Museum web site community have put together a new blog to share inside information on what it takes to present a collection online. MuseMatic is a co-ordinated effort between the Museum Computer Network and the American Association of Museum’s Media and Technology Committee. While the design of the blog won’t impress the standardista community, the informaton within should.

Museums and other non-profits have an amazing collection of misfits, psychopaths, and egotistical maniacs. But once you get beyond the marketing departments, you’ll find people who love what they do and have an earnest desire to share their collections, art, history, and culture with anyone and everyone. Museums have been leading the drive towards accessibility, online interactions, user generated content, and doing so with the tiniest of budgets.

So step behind the scenes. Go past the paintings, the skeletons, and the gift shops. Share the lessons learned by some of the largest (Getty) and smallest museums around the world.