Challenging the status quo is, undoubtedly, part of the service provided by graphic design. But here, we need to distinguish between creativity and originality. It is possible for originality to be no more than the rearrangement or a recombination of existing elements into a different pattern. Originality alone is vacuous, since a "solution" need only be unconventional or different to be original. A creative solution will have varying degrees of originality, but it will always have purpose and be useful. With creativity, I see no reason to differentiate between fine art and applied art. In fine art, just as in typography, surely, originality alone is banal, no more than novelty. To be creative, originality must serve an intellectual and/or practical purpose

I read it twice more, then sat and thought about it. That last sentence pretty much sums up my attitude toward design.

To be creative, originality must serve an intellectual and/or practical purpose.

Most designers who work today strive to make "pretty" websites, thinking they are creating the high design that clients hired them for. I hate to say this but I'm going to anyways. Most of these "pretty" sites are Flash-oriented ones. There. I said it. Flash is an amazing technology that, when used properly, is groundbreaking. But more and more I'm seeing sites that just don't understand how their visitors will interact them. I've found myself on these sites having no idea where to click, what is supposed to happen, sometimes not even knowing what I'm looking at!

Roger Johansson posted a rant the other day on his site along similar lines.

This excuse is normally used by visually oriented Flash designers or ad agency art directors that create design profiles which simply do not work on the Web. Instead of adjusting their design when they are made aware of the problems, they stubbornly push ahead and make users think and work harder than they should have to in order to use the site. If your design - or you as a designer - cannot handle the fact that the Web is the Web, please do everybody a favour and stick to the safety of your printed brochures.

At this stage of the internet, user patterns have been well-defined. Being creative within those patterns is what makes good design great. There is a certain amount of "creative throttling" that we, as designers, need to understand and use.

1. It will be a good way to start shaping my own path in the web community.
2. It will be a good way to keep on top of the industry. Not only will I know what is happening with HTML 5, I will actually know the language and it's proper usage.
3. Lastly, and most importantly, it will give me a voice within our community. If I'm not a part of where the we are going, I can't complain about the state of the community when we get there.

I encourage everyone that cares about where the internet is headed to join. It's quite simple and Ian Hickson has posted instructions on how to become an "invited expert." Also, while you at, I would suggest joining the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group mailing list. The WHATWG has been championing HTML for the past couple years so some great ideas are coming out of there as well.

A couple warnings here before you join. Be prepared to be inundated by email. I've received over 150 messages in the past couple days alone. The group is very active - that's the good thing - but it will fill up your inbox - that's the bad thing - and take your time reading the ideas being purposed. Also be aware that Chris Wilson was formally announced as the working group's chairperson today. Up until now, from what I hear, there's just been arguing about smaller issues and various elements or tasks. I think Chris' oversight will bring significant change in the way we communicate in the future.

But, for now, I'll sit back, get the lay of the land and then take a more active role when things start to sort themselves out and progress is starting to be made.

I was home from DC at the time, over at my friend's house for a Christmas get together... which basically consists of drinking beer and raging bonfires. My friend AJ was there. In high school he was one of my best friends. We had lost touch since graduation so it was an unexpected surprise that he was at the party. We sat for a bit and caught up and that's when he told me about it.

"So what are you doing these days?" I asked him, in the casual tone that friends do.

"Right now, I'm in broadcasting school. Looking to get into the radio and, hopefully, get my own show" he answered. Then he hit me with it. "Have you ever heard of This American Life? It's out of Chicago and I'm looking to do something like that."

"This American Life, eh?" I say. "Nope, never have."

That started it. I looked into the show and started listening to the back episodes on their website, getting into the radio show a little more each and every week. It was good, the stories were always entertaining and managed to keep my attention - which is a rare thing with radio shows - and... well, there was just that special bit of "magic" that came along with Ira's voice every week. I was immediately hooked.

The reason I bring this up is, on Saturday night, I bought tickets for Alexis to see Ira Glass give a little talk at Eastern's Pease Auditorium. I had no idea what to expect, with the exception of Ira being on stage.

We arrived a bit later than planned (dinner ran late) and could tell the place was packed already. After taking our seats in back of the balcony we heard the spiel about all the great things Ira's done. Then the lights dropped and a shadowy figure could be seen walking in the back and taking his place at the desk sitting in the middle of the stage. The crowd erupted. After we calmed down, a snippet about gang members is played for about 2-3 minutes while we sat in darkness. We hear Ira jump in at the end of the quote and say "OK, let's bring the lights up." Again, the crowd goes crazy as if applauding the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.

He leads with his past mistakes, playing snippets of his early days with NPR. Laughing along with us at the report he filed on the corn tortilla shortage in Mexico after being in the business 8 years. He's very self-aware, poised and, surprisingly, hilarious. His timing is impeccable and he knows hows to deliver a punchline. He entertains with his storytelling.

For two hours he held a captive audience of 1,500 people with just his voice. He taught, he laughed, we clapped. Was the talk worth it? Let's put it this way, I would go anywhere possible to see him again.

I don't know how to put into words the respect and admiration I have for Ira Glass. Maybe that's the highest compliment I can pay him.

Personally, these type of movies have always either kept my attention or frustrated me to no end. One of my favorites, Mullholland Drive, has a long opening dream sequence that contains clues as to what is going to happen. What we believe is happening, and are seeing onscreen, isn't. David Lynch paces the moviestraightforwardly , or so we are lead to believe. Maybe that's why this movie resonates so well with me. The time traveling that takes place fools the viewer in an already intriguing plot.

All these movies draw on a sophistication about cinema that is now almost universal. We know that a film is not a piece of life; we know that it is something made. And we’re used to being shoved around in time—we may even be doing some of the shoving ourselves. Twenty-five years ago, the videotape transfer of a film sustained the notion of a movie as a continuous track: you could run it forward or backward, but the film was “printed” on magnetic tape, and you remained on the track. Digital information, on the other hand, can be infinitely manipulated; you can jump from one place to another or cut the movie into pieces. At home, kids create “mashups”—chopping sections out of a feature film, mixing the excerpts with their own material, and posting the result on the Web as a madcap original creation. The danger of instant editing, of course, is not just disordered time sequences but glibness. Some of the big Hollywood action films move so quickly that they eliminate the most rudimentary emotional attachment to the material. It would be terrible if computer editing wiped out the proper emotional resistance to making a cut—the lingering grave affection for a face, a landscape, an interior, even the resonance of an empty space.

Denby warns that pace is what is needed in movies like this. Pacing and proper editing have great rewards but also a treacherous downfall. His example, the Academy Award nominee Babel, fails at this. It undermines the story in the way that the filmmakers, GuillermoArriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu, used the narrative to tell it.

...part of the disconnection that the movie presents as a universal fact of our world is produced by the odd way it is put together. And, once one notices the inorganic structuring of the material, and the hostile tease of the editing, one begins to wonder if the conjunction of so many mishapsisn’t a kind of abuse of the freedom that’s normally granted to fiction.

So on that note, let's go to the usual bulleted list of things that I've done:

1. The wedding. It's over! Not like I had much to do with it being here, but I don't have to hear about it anymore when chatting with my mom. Arynn gave a great speech (ha), Alexis looked stunning (per usual) and the happy honeymooners missed their flight in the morning to... well... their honeymoon. Check out the pics here and here.
2. Michigan-Ohio State. I was in Indianapolis this past weekend for the Michigan-Indiana game. It was freezing but worth it. With about a minute and half left, the "Beat the Buckeyes!" chant started. Oh wow. I had chills. As if the game isn't big enough...Scotty, Dave, Vinny and Gerbs are all coming to Chicago to watch it with me. Duffy's opens at 7am. We'll be there are 6 (I hope).
3. The Tigers. Well, it ended. It was bound to at some point. I have a whole long post I've been writing up about this year (I'll post soon, I swear). It was a great summer though. I could never say enough good things about them. Probably the high point of my last 6 months was the day they closed out the Yankees (we beat the Yankees) and Michigan blew out Michigan State. It was a GREAT day! I can't thank them enough and in no way was this year a failure because they lost in the Series. They revived baseball in Detroit - something they desperately needed - and for that, I cannot complain.

To Be Continued... So, as you cal tell, I've been kinda caught up with sports lately. It's been a great fall. I'll get back to this blogging thing soon.

I've created a few typefaces in the past, one was even shown at the ATypI conference in 2003, but ever since getting my feet totally immersed in web design, my "typophilia" has been put on hold. It's not something I'm proud of, it's just I never had to time actually start caring about type on the web. I would define my "font" attribute in the CSS and that was that.

It's mainly out of this frustration that I've decided to redesign this site with a greater focus on the typographic elements. This is a blog after all, a place to read content. It's not going to be big type (aka Shaun's new redesign) it's going to be more focused type (it'll also include a few new features). Maybe this time I'll get around to that About page as well.

And that's where I've been for the past month.

chicago . driving. uneasiness. nd. elkhart . elhart. elkhart . hiseys. bar. drunk. sleep. wake. uneasiness. breakfast. casserole. shower. driving. uneasiness. keg. groceries. driving. nd. tailgate. drinking. eating. football. drinking. walking. walking. bar. drinking. lunch. uneasiness. kickoff! eating. interception. TOUCHDOWN! bearhugs! winning. eating. interception. dammit. touchdown. tied. henne! mario! TOUCHDOWN! PAT. missed. dammit. winning. drinking. henne! mario! TOUCHDOWN! bearhugs! oh. my. effing. god. drinking. fumble! recovered! hart! TOUCHDOWN! bearhugs! holy. sh!t! henne! mario! TOUCHDOWN! bearhugs! wow... wow... again?! defense. DEFENSE. touchdown. dammit. halftime. smoking. drinking. hydrate. drinking. kickoff. uneasiness. drinking. uneasiness. rivas. good. uneasiness. rivas. good. uneasiness. touchdown. dammit. leon. INTERCEPTION! over! breath! breath! breath! fumble! TOUCHDOWN! bearhugs! officially. over. wow... drinking. walking. walking. tailgate. dave. wet! boxers! driving. hiseys. eat. highlights. drinking. sleep. wake. smile. driving. chicago.

Just three notes here:

1. I hate Notre Dame. Have for a while now. But here's what surprised me... the fans there were incredibly nice (nothing over the top to 12 guys cheering for the other, hated team). It's like we've all come to a community hatred of Ohio State. Well, that or the game wasn't really close so there's wasn't much for them to say.


2. My god. South Bend is in the middle of NOWHERE. I knew it from the '02 trip, but this just reinforced it.


3. That defense I saw, was unbelievable. I haven't seen such a strong showing from a Michigan defense in years.

3 down, 9 to go.

Anyways, I'm rocking the suburbs... just like Quiet Riot did (well, not really, but I am listening to that right now). You can tell from the lack of activity around here I've been a bit busy. I'm going to try and dust off the keyboard and get down to business.

Reason One.The World Cup. I'm a bit disappointed in the Cup this year. I watched every game except two (missed the Angola-Portugal game because I feel asleep midway through the first half and I missed the USA-Italy game as I was busy watching my Tigers run all over the Cubbies at Wrigley). Did I think Italy was the best team in the tournament? No way. Germany impressed me most, especially offensively. Brazil was a let down. England finished about where theyshould've considering the only brought two real strikers with them - and one was coming of a broken ankle while the other twisted his knee. Truth be told, I was rooting for the French in that final game - which made for a great betting war between my ITALIAN girlfriend and I. Ha.

Reason Two. I've been traveling basically non-stop for about a month and a half now. Finally, it's looking like I don't have anywhere to go for a couple weeks. My schedule is settling down some, I'm sure it'll pick up though as my sister's wedding approaches.

Reason Three. Work got extremely busy around here. I was pushing myself in so many different directions being on my own that I really couldn't take the time out to sit down and write a comprehensive blog post. I had a lot of work coming and going out. It was tough to find time to myself. I learned my lesson. I'm not ready to be out on my own yet. It was pure madness.

Which leads to the next bit of news. I'm now the official "web guy" at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. They offered me a job that I just couldn't resist. Expect more about that here (as well as a full site redesign at WOMMA) in the near future. Needless-to-say, I'm incredibly excited by what I've seen in the first couple weeks there and what we'll be able to accomplish. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Reason Four. There's not really a reason four but I wanted to let Eric know good luck out on the west coast. I'm going to drag Alexis out there sometime in the fall so you and Titus keep the place warm for us. Seriously, it gets cold here in the fall and we'll need a little warmth.

That does it for now. I have a few more blog posts that I still need to get to - they will be thought out though, not like these past two where it's just been typing what I'm thinking. So expect those soon. I'm off to catch a little sleep. "Goodnight inkernet.

It was 6 months ago, in Tampa, where the first mention of "Vegas?" was uttered and, after 6 months of planning, it has come and went.

I was one of the "early arrivers," along with Vinny and Craig on Wednesday morning, when we set off to the hotel. This year it was a condo, off the strip, but extremely roomy (and full of the 1980's favorite father, Jason Seaver). In fact, roomy doesn't quite do it justice. It was a spacious 2 bed, 2 bath, 1 and a half-kitchened playground. Granted, the resort was full of families and - *ahem* - older persons, but we made the best of it.

We started slowly, Craig and Vinny sleeping off the night before while I did the much needed beer run (our resort was conveniently located near numerous restaurants and a liquor store) and getting caught up on my SportsCenter. Around 4 we headed down to get the first glimpse of our pool.

It was a smaller pool than expected, but luckily it wasn't nearly as full as last year's "Freeway of Death" fiasco. In fact, we were the only ones there, sitting around, drinking, joking and catching up with one another. We stayed out there as long as the sun allowed then head to In-n-Out for a little deliciousness.

If you know me, you know I LOVE In-n-Out. I can't make a trip out west without getting it. We order and get our food. We're still hungry. We go get another burger. Oh. My. Goodness. I was in heaven. Until we decided to walk back to the condo, which was about a mile and a half walk. As we hit the Orleans, we're reminded on why it's called In-n-Out. You know the saying "My stomach was doing back flips?" Well, mine had the entire US Trampoline team in there. Whew boy... I've never been more relieved in my life. After the quick pit stop, we get back to the room to get ready for the arrival of Scotty and Jeff.

We rolled up to the Flamingo, Scotty's hotel, around 10:30. Scotty was greeted with the "Zidane handshake", a full round of headbutts to the chest. We all met Tara for the first time but quickly were saddened when we learned of her sickness and "non-going out" ability. Luckily, between Jeff and Scotty, they had nearly polished off a fifth of Vodka by the time we arrived. Looks like a guys night out.

We left the Flamingo and headed north up the strip. Walking past the usual places, knowing already they won't have the tables we're looking for - the $5 blackjack tables. At this point of the trip there would've usually been no doubt where to we would've gone, theol ' Boardwalk, it's just that MGM has decided to throw a mega structure there and bulldozed the stomping grounds. We ended finding what we wanted at the "oldshithole" (as described by our cabbie) that is the Frontier.

Scotty went on a run. Hisey, Jeff, Vinny and I didn't. It was a sign of things to come.

The next day we woke to a free all-complex lunch of burgers, hot dogs and potato salad. Solid! Luckily, the BBQ was in the pool area so we just sat around drinking all day in the sun, jumping in the pool and let's not forget the 7-year-old goggle-toting lad (let's call him Greg Boygaynis) who kept trying to give uswethead in the pool, and Hisey's subsequent beating of said boy with his giant purple noodle.

We make it down to the MGM just in time for a little horse racing and Tiger baseball watching. We sit around The Book for an hour or so. Vinny and I place afebets on the ponies. We lost on the eighth race, I had Allan's Trasure, and on a dog race - Roger Cumming just couldn't pull through. But our shining moment happened when Fastnloose came through in the 9th race at Charles Town, putting Vinny and I both up for the hour. Winning money and free beer. Now THIS is Vegas.

We wait for Scotty and Tara to finish up their dinner. While we wait in front of the Belligo, Vinny and I take some fun pictures. We head out for another strip walking adventure where Vinny gets yelled at by some midget (I had a picture of this somewhere but lost it). Good times.

We end up at O'Shea's playing blackjack. Vinny and I bring a little karma to this table, and the good kind of karma. We sit down and the table loves us already. I'm making small talk with the guys next to me, wishing the luck on the aces, they're pulling for us, we're cheering for them. Maybe the best table I've ever sat at. I hit a little run and end up $200 for the trip which, after last night's beating, is a big win. I end up tipping the guy sitting next to me (hey, he knew DC so I reminisced with him all night), walk away hammered and with money in my wallet. It seems everyone was winning tonight. Vinny finished up $50 or so, Scotty came away up another few hundred, Hisey wins about $30, Jeff won like $5.Ohhh poor Jeff. A successful outing even still.

The next day was much the same. Get up. Get breakfast/lunch. Pool. Finally, Dave arrives fresh off his flight from Atlanta. We all get ready and head out to the strip. We ended up that night at our old favorite, the Piano Bar at New York, New York. We had some luck there last year so decided this would be an appropriate place this year as well. We danced, we sang Journey - "Born and raised in south Detroit!!" - and Vinny got maybe the most obnoxious line I've ever heard. It was all fun but we're in Vegas, we need to gamble.

So we head out to the floor to play a little Blackjack. Vinny and I make a quick pit stop and come back to Dave, Jeff and Scotty already at a table. So Hisey, Vinny and I stand back to check out the table when Vinny and I have this conversation:

Vinny: "Dude, I don't sit with with Asian dealers."
Me: "Yeah, I know. Good rule. Let's look over there... It's a non-Asian dude."
Vinny: "Sweet! And there's three seats open! Let's go."

It was about this moment that the pit boss called for the righty, an unassuming Asian woman. Literally, we walked over to the table, pulled out the chairs, see the switch and turn around. It was unreal. Something only you see in the movies. It was in this exact moment that the other three people at the other boys table got up. Awesome! Free seats for us to all play at the same table... except it was an Asian dealer. We dismissed the rule and sat down at the table anyways, thinking the table karma will turn and we'll start winning again. Well, we were...

WRONG. W-R-O-N-G. Effing wrong. This lady, in a matter of maybe 15 minutes, cleans the 6 of us out for nearly $1,000. No joke. We all lost. Majorly. It was a fun table... for the time it took for us to walk up to it. Night not ruined, we head back to the Piano Bar and drink away our sorrows.

Numerous characters present themselves to us. In fact, too many to list but the night was fun. We roll out of NYNY to head to Drai's - well, at least I think that was the plan - for some post-bar/club action, when we're stopped by Vinny who, apparently, has made best friends with some girls from Iowa. It was during this little interlude we meet the coldest girl I've ever seen. Which turned out well that we sat Dave and Hisey next to her, as they finished off her dinner. OK times were had and we left.

Some gambled later... others of us just drank. It became a rule that I will never gamble in NYNY again (just another reason for me to dislike that city). We head back to the condo and chill out. We had a big day of drinking and eating tomorrow.

We awoke on Saturday excited about the things to come. My dad arrived early that morning and so did the 4/5 of the Sladewski clan, which meant Eric has replaced Kangas as the honorary "High School Friend" on the trip. Sorry Kangas, this is what happens when you're on the other side of Earth. It also meant that Eric's dad had bought my a ticket to the Vargas-Mosley II fight Saturday night. A little problem arose as we already had a dinner reservation at Smith & Wollensky that night for 2.5 hours of eating, drinking and laughs. It was too late. I had to pass on the fight. Really a gut-wrenching decision. I passed on a great fight in Vegas. It still hurts me to say that.

The day was full of pooling and drink, per usual. The night, however, lead to a DELICIOUS dinner at the aforementioned Smith & Wollensky.Hisey set us up with the "drink all you can in 2.5 hours, eat five courses" meal. Amazing. Just amazing. We had our own little private corner of the restaurant. We drank. We drank. We ate. We drank. Did I mention we drank? I know what you're thinking and yes, we did shots at a steakhouse. I should mention here that Scotty was dressed properly. As we all know, there's usually that one guy in the group that dresses like a slob, and in this group, when it's not Scotty, it's me (902 Love!). We were all pretty nicely dressed and actually looked pretty good if I do say so myself.

Well, dinner ended and everyone heads to the club. I, however, go meet up with "broken foot Eric" and Brian (I'll get into the broken foot in a later post). Sure to be some good times with these two. We walk up to the Wynn and sit at the bar. We grab a table on the outside to check things out, Eric's foot by this time is throbbing. He's needs alcohol, STAT, yet there's no waitress in sight. I mean, there are waitresses in sight, just none of them are coming to our table. Eric's getting more upset by the second... I can see it. After about 20 minutes, a waitress comes over and tells us just a second.Ok cool, service finally. Well, 10 minutes after that, our waitress finally comes to take out order. Eric's visibly upset at this point. It's been a half hour and we still don't have drinks. So we order and she goes away. Alright. Drinks. Not even two minutes later, she returns, not with drinks, but with a question for Brian "What's in your drink?" she asks. Without missing a beat, Eric slams his hands on the table and announces "That's it. We're leaving" and proceeds to get up and leave the bar. It was comedic genius at it's finest. Although, Eric wasn't joking. Brian and spend the next few minutes trying to figure out what's happening and decide we should go after him. That's it for the Wynn...

We walk over to Pure in Caesear's to do a little clubbing but soon decide that on a Saturday night, at 1am, trying to get into one of Vegas' best clubs is not a smart idea, unless you want to stand in line for an hour. We end up in a sidebar in Caeser's, drinking my usual Tanqueray and tonics, joking and turning the overall feeling out the night around. Eric's foot "healed" we start venturing off in one of those drunken Vegas stupors when Eric eyes a cute girl walking by herself. So he leaves with her, letting us know he'll call in a few minutes. I sit down and start playing a little bit while Brian frets over his brother's previous actions. Eric calls as promised and we head to yet another sidebar in Caesar's.

Upon arrival, I meet this girl, shake her hand and immediately know she is a hooker. It's funny, two years ago, I would've never known. It's become sort of another sense in Vegas though. You can weed the hookers out from the normal girls almost instantaneously. Back to the situation at hand, I walk to the other end of the bar to order myself a drink and call Eric and Brian over, as if asking drink orders. It was at this point, I fill them both in and we take off. The rest of the night is a bit blurry. I think we were at the Imperial Palace playing Keno (?) for a long while but I'm not quite sure.

Sunday was the last day and didn't involve much. We went to the Orleans for a little more blackjack then took off for my redeye back.

All in all, a pretty tame trip. At least I thought. On Tuesday afternoon I get this email from Eric, "Addam, hope you made it home safe and sound. We ended up at Pure on Sunday night and afterwards me and this girl got bounced from the Flamingo's pool @ 430AM...naked...ahh Vegas!"

Ahh Vegas indeed...

Not only will I be up at 8AM tomorrow to watch my England squad take on Paraguay, I will most likely be up at 8AM everyday for the next month. There is no doubt that this is the great sporting event in the world. Even bigger than the Olympics.

I should've been there but everyone bailed and left me sitting here in Chicago watching it from home. Ahhh well, there's always South Africa.

A little time went by...

And a little more...

And I started reconsidering. "How would I do this? ...Naw... It's just too time consuming." A little less time...

"Well, it would be fun to try and solve." Even less time...

"Well, Photoshop's open. I'll just take a screenshot and think about it."

Five minutes later I was trying my hand at the problem.

Approaching the Task

As always, I thought about the current "competitors" this page has for eyeballs across the internet. There's My Yahoo!, personalized Google, netvibes and Protopage. I'm very familiar with each of these site and use them regularly - mainly as RSS readers and content "bulletin boards." It was only natural I take this idea and apply it to the BBC homepage.

I sat down and thought about the current appearance of the BBC homepage. It's compartmentalized. There's the "Explore" box, the "Showcase" box, the "News" box, the "Weather" box and so on. There's something to be said about keeping related content within the bounds of each other. It's a simple solution to fit as much information on a page as possible. I decided then and there that using boxes was the way to go about designing.

Implementing the Design

The first decision was to implement a fluid, flexible, full screen, three column design. Instead of forcing the design to a set width, I felt that by using the full browser size, the overwhelming amount of content a person could have would beminimalized and spread across the full browser window.

The header in the current site is extremely important. It shows the user which area of the site they have landed on and some of their other choices to navigate through the site. It is active across the entire BBC site and provides the "compass." I cleaned the look of the header up by anchoring the search box to the right hand corner of the browser and cleaning up some of the choices. By breaking the BBC site into these major categories, the user will have total access to all the content the BBC has to offer.

Tabs were included to give the user control of homepage sections. Using tabs, content can be divided, categorized and renamed in anyway the user sees fit. They could have a "Movie" page that contains only information about upcoming movies that interest them. Maybe they'll want a "Sports" section, or "Business," etc. The possibilities are endless. With the tabs found globally across the homepage, they act as a table of contents, allowing quick access to each section.

The main content area is defined by different "modulals" that can be created from either user-input RSS feeds or from a predetermined design by the BBC. The Calendar section is an example of this. This can be used to schedule, remind or help the user stay organized. By a simple colored box (also customizable), the user can see what they have on tap for the day, week or month. Each box will then relate to a specific "calendar" using a simple color-coded relationship found in the legend.

"Top news stories" will be changed as well with a comment area for each stories. No longer will the BBC news be a one way tunnel. User interaction will be put to the forefront of the new BBC.

The footer has been long overlooked as a place to throw extraneous information about copyrights and disclaimers. By utilizing this space as site map, it gives the user more options as to where to jump to next within the BBC website when they are finished.

Keeping it Uniquely BBC

With all the personalization happening on the BBC 2.0 version, how does it stay true to the BBC brand and entice users to stay around the website? There are a few new features that I added in, not even knowing if it's possible.

Similar to what ABC and CBS have done in the States, the BBC can offer full episodes of their shows online with only minimal commercial interruptions. Who wouldn't want to watch their favorite episode of "Little Britian" whenever they wanted to? This is found in a module that the user can either use a view station or as a gateway to asubstite housing previous BBC shows.

Podcasting is another technological advancement that the BBC has embraced. Allowing users to access their new podcasts or listen to older episodes will allow the BBC a more personal interaction with the end user. A system would be built where find,subscribing and even creating their own podcasts is a possibility.

Anchored to the right side of the tab bar is a BBC Radio callout. This allows the user full access to the wide variety of BBC radio stations. The radio can be shown and hidden, allowing the user to decide it they want the module visible while listening. Within the module itself, with the click of a logo, theshow's title, host, guest and/or band and song name will show on the screen.

Other moduals could include Flickr, Google Maps or del.icio.us. Popular web services that have an customizable API.

That's All Folks

This new buzzword laden "Web 2.0" phase of the internet is, at it's core, about the users and how they interact with content. By allowing as much personalization as possible to its homepage, the BBC will keep it's reputation as a leader in the tech world.

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As a typophile, I love type; creating it, kerning it, shaping it, studying it. Subtle variations in typefaces entertain me. I can spend a whole night wrapped up in one type sample, studying it and seeing what I would've redrawn to "smoothen the S out" or have the "E match the F." It's a guilty please of mine.

As a slashie, type bores me. To be truely standards-compliant and fully accessible to everyone, everywhere on the internet, there are all of about six typefaces to use. It's a boring thought process. "I haven't used Georgia in a while, let's try it out." [ makes change ] "No, doesn't look correct. Verdana it is." That's about how it works as a developer. Our typeface choices are limited and dull.

But there's no reason as a developer to completely ignore type either. Too many times I've seen poor type treatment on a site. Even with limited choices, can we as developers, please stop haphazardly throwing type onto a page? Type is still an important part to any website - in fact, in most cases, type is what makes the site. There's no reason as a developer to completely ignore type. Too many times we overlook type treatment on a site. For instance, it's not a inch mark for quotations; it's supposed to be a “ and ” (smart quotations). It's not a hyphen; it's a — (endash) or an — (emdash).

Which brings me to the point of the article. This week at work, I was coding a page that was reading my punctuation as "?". I had just dumped the text from a Word doc into the HTML. An obvious encoding issue, I was informed to check out the <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> line in my header.

I consider myself fairly well-versed in accessibility issues but, for whatever reason, have never really put much thought into this line of code. So I researched and what I found was extremely interesting, to both my typophile and slashie side.

In June 2004, the ISO/IEC working group responsible for maintaining eight-bit coded character sets disbanded and ceased all maintenance of ISO 8859, including ISO 8859-1, in order to concentrate on the Universal Character Set and Unicode. In computing applications, encoding that provides full UCS support (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16) are finding increasing favor over encoding based on ISO 8859-1.

What?! So this ISO 8859-1 standard that I had been coding in was, now, almost two years out of date? How could this be? How did I let something this large slip? I've never paid attention to this line and, am figuring, the majority of the developers out there haven't either. I read more and found out that UTF-8 is becoming the most accessible of the charset choices for numerous reasons. It's backwards compatible with ASCII characters, it can easily represent any of the Universal characters with Unicode and, at four bytes, has the smallest loading time for each character. Basically, it's flexible and light.

Why, if I'm such a type guy, have I not researched this before? I've never needed to really. ISO 8859-1 worked perfectly in all browsers still; it was compatible and compliant. There are a few issues as to why. I'm a developer in the United States, speaking English and coding that way. That's the audience ISO 8859-1 was created to reach. Even in England, where the € is used, ISO 8859-1 will not translate. There is no € sign in the character set.

If you get one thing out of this article, please be in order to code your sites in the most accessible way, use UTF-8. It's universal (it's in the name! Universal Transformation Format). Pay attention to the details. Just because we have limited type choices doesn't mean we get a free pass. We need to start paying attention to the little details.

Related Links:

• http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
• http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset
• http://www.webtypography.net
• http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/

I will talk to my personal experience, albeit limited, with the site and it's functionality. First things first, no, I do not have a MySpace account so you can't add me as a friend (you'll just have to come hang out with me instead). But I did have a page for all of a couple hours a few months back so I have been inside the realm of MySpace and played around with the clunky interface enough to write up this little post.

I can't disagree with Mike's conclusion that the site's pageviews would decrease by 66% if they updated to modern web design and application technologies. From the short time I have played around with the site, I've already been frustrated by the poor/broken functionality - to the point where I gave up and quit. But I also hung around and clicked maybe 60+ pages each time, trying to find the results I wanted. It makes me wonder if this was an intentionally built-in "feature" to MySpace in an attempt to raise pageviews and, in turn, profits.

As an example, Alexis just signed up for an account last week and I was trying to find her page to take at peek. She told me to go search and type her name. I did this but received results that, the majority of which, didn't have anything to do with either term "alexis" or "o'connor." In fact, the top result was for jonah d. who, to the best of my searching, has neither an "alexis" or "o'connor" anywhere on the page. What is the point of the search function if it gives me results that have nothing to do with my original query? My thought, up until today, was this is done to bump up pageview numbers, thus raising the amount of money MySpace can charge advertisers. Based on the Times' article, however, this doesn't seem to be the case... at all. In fact, the are charging a mere $0.10 CPM! So what is the advantage to this broken functionality? I'm not quite sure.

With over 70 million users I would imagine this has to be a complete drag on their servers and the cost of these inaccurate results, broken pages, etc has to be extremely expensive. By cutting down pageviews that are making little revenue for the site (a measly $200 million this year when Yahoo will be making 20 times that with a comperable pageview tally) and pageweight (I haven't mentioned the table-based layouts), I would imagine MySpace could not only make the site quicker but also save millions of dollars in bandwidth.

I understand part of the appeal of MySpace it the ease of customization but isn't this a poster child for moving to web-standards? The ease at which you can change a whole site just but using one file? Why would MySpace not have a user hidden style sheet and a user driven one? In fact, this would make the site even more personal but just creating a small template subsite where users who don't know CSS can change color, text, images, etc.

I've already seen some MySpace backlash in my demographic. Sure, most of the people I know have an account but there's only one (now two with Alexis) who actually use it. Most have given up on the idea. Granted I am on the crest of the MySpace wave, almost on the outside. Even so, in my younger sister's age range, she is more into Facebook, a site that does everything MySpace should be. Well designed, modern in it's technology and, for the most part, follows proper web standards. I would say Facebook will be bigger than MySpace but the site's one major drawback is having the [dot]edu email address. It's a great way to contain your user base to students but is a poor way to grow your business in a similar style to MySpace. But maybe that's not what Facebook wants and more power to them.

All this isn't to say that I'm against the social networking craze. I love my Flickr account, I use last.fm everyday, and, just recently, I found a old college friend on LinkedIn (James, I know I owe you a return email. It's coming dude... I swear). It's just the way MySpace, the largest of these types of sites, is going about it that irks me (does MySpace actually employ any designers?)

Either way, MySpace seems to be at a fork to me. It's vulnerable to competitors like Facebook but seems to oblivious to them.

"People are truly invested in the site," he (Chris DeWolfe, founder of MySpace) said. "All their friends are on it. They spent months building their profiles. And so the cost of switching is too high. If we keep building the features they want, they will stay on the site."

He is correct there. But if a site could come along where users could input their MySpace user name and password then transfer over the information on the account into a more usable interface, watch out. Until then, I guess I'll just have to keep rooting for the Facebooks of the world.

It's days like this you need to be outside, taking advantage of this weather... and that's why I had to get a place here in Chicago with a patio/porch/outside seating area. There's nothing like sitting outside on your patio, looking skyward at blue skies, listening to a little Panic! at the Disco, - thanks Alexis for getting it into my head this weekend - drinking some great wine and doing a little blogging/pre-design. Life cannot get any better than this.

In our first installment, I retold the tale of how I locked my keys into my apartment then couldn't get in for an entire weekend. Well, number two happened last night.

I'm a tea drinker. I drink a lot of it. Every night, I fill up my snazzy tea kettle, get the water going to nice boil, pour it into one of my French presses and add some of that awesome Belgium loose tea. Every stinking night I do it! Makes three cups. It's awesome... Heck, I even did it this past weekend on a night when Eric and I both blacked out. Apparently, I've done it enough times, I can actually do it in my sleep.

Last night, I go through the routine. I pour the water in the kettle. Turn the stove on high, throw the kettle on and wait for the water to boil. Now, I do actually leave the kitchen at this time. I'm a busy boy. I've got things I need to take care of. Last night was no exception. I left the kitchen to go save the world (Note: I didn't actually save the world. I just can't remember what I was doing.) A few minutes go by, kettle is steaming nicely and making it's usual "heating up" noises. But something's wrong. It's starting to smell... like... SMOKE! I think to myself, "what is that?" and carry on with what I was doing. 5 seconds later I realize it's from my apartment and it's *cough* effing *cough* smo-- *cough* --key in here. With all the urgency of Michael Jackson leaving a courtroom, I casually amble over to the stove and... HOLY SHIT! IT'S ON FIRE! WTF?!

Now, this wasn't some small, put out with your shoes fire. This was a full blown, "someone get the fire extinguisher" fire. I'm talking level 3. Flames about a two feet high. "How the hell did I set my tea kettle on fire?!" Then I saw it.

A dishrag.

I left a dishrag underneath the effing tea kettle... and it lit itself on fire. You have got to be kidding me. I grab the dishrag, the three square inches that weren't on fire, and threw it into the sink. Thank the lord for those mini hoses off the the side and douse this fire until it's totally gone. Now it's bad. I feel like an idiot. It stinks in my apartment and it's smokey as hell in here. Plus, the dishrag was one of my new ones! I just bought the thing at Target!

So I open up the patio door as far as it'll go and freeze for the next 45 minutes trying to air this place out. Luckily it did and there was only one causality - a brave dishrag that went down fighting.