• Call to Action: Help Keep Accessibility and Semantics in HTML
• The New York Web Standards Meetup
• Standardistas…
• Locating Google Earth KML/KMZ files using Google
• Serving XML and XHTML with PHP
• Serving XML and XHTML with Classic ASP
• Three about the Google Maps API
• NYT on Flickr and geotagging
• Free Google Maps Icons
• SQL does not stand for “Structured Query Language”
• MCAD boot camp…

What is currently going on in the W3C HTML Working Group is very disappointing and something I never expected to see when I joined it. I was naive enough to think that everybody joining the HTML WG would be doing so out of a desire to improve the Web. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case […]

In Roger's opinion, if nothing is done, "the next version of HTML will do nothing to improve the Web," and conscientious designers will be "better off sticking to HTML 4.01 Strict."

So, if you have an interest in improving the accessibility of HTML, want more semantic and less presentational markup, and are good at arguing your case, apply for HTML Working Group membership by following the instructions for joining the HTML Working Group. Do it now.

jqln suffers with us—you can read her take on the cleanse here.

Online music is in danger. A recent ruling by an obscure regulatory board threatens to put independent and public radio on the Internet out of business.

The "Copyright Royalty Board" is dramatically increasing the royalties "webcasters" must pay every time they stream a song online. Public Internet radio like NPR is especially at risk.

The rules could shut down nonprofit and smaller commercial Internet radio outlets and force larger webcasters to play the same cookie-cutter music as Clear Channel. So much for new online alternatives.

Rescue Internet Radio—Sign the Petition:
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/internetradio

This is not just another petition. The Copyright Royalty Board isn't used to hearing from the public, so your action can really make a difference. And we need to stop them before the new charges go into effect.

Artists must be compensated for their work. But the new regulations don't even differentiate between public outlets, small upstarts, and the largest commercial companies. The proposed increase would silence many outlets that play independent artists and musical genres you can’t find anymore on the radio dial.

As soon as smaller webcasters start to attract a sizable audience, the royalty costs would be astronomical—and likely fatal. And nonprofit stations like NPR should not be forced to pay so much money that they actually fear an increase in their
listeners.

Industry-wide consolidation has destroyed musical diversity and shut out independent and local artists on broadcast radio. We can't let the same thing happen on the Internet.

The Copyright Royalty Board—or if necessary, Congress—needs to fix the rules so that artist and musicians thrive alongside a new generation of Internet radio webcasters. Send them a message by adding your name to our petition.

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/internetradio

Our goal is collect 50,000 signatures by Monday. Help us get there by telling all your friends that now is the time to take action.

Attention, boys and girls: fans of DIY hardware, physical computing, circuit bending, hacked gear and gaming machines, custom code and patching, independent hardware makers, mad scientists, and even the casual fan of the above who want to check out some cool projects—if you're anywhere near the NYC area, we want you next week.

Thursday March 22, we'll be having the first informal get-together for a regular series of events, and we'd love to have you there. [Note that I went with the music angle to keep things simple, but motion-y projects are equally welcome.]

Musicmakers @ Etsy
Hosted by MAKE and Create Digital Music
Thursday, 22 March 2007 . 7 pm–whenever
At Etsy Labs in downtown Brooklyn, near the Manhattan bridge
→ more info about this event
→ more about Etsy Labs

all right, this is what the labs like to see—power to the people, public participation style, open source applications! gCensus was built by a Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University who was fed up with the slowly rendered, crappy display of the Census Bureau's online mapping interface. his question [our question]—why can't people have access to dynamic, high-resolution maps without paying the ginormous bucks for professional GIS software? his answer—gCensus

it's "an effort to make geographic data freely and easily accessible to the public, without the need for expensive GIS software packages. With Google's excellent free mapping program Google Earth, you can use this site to visualize a wide variety of data best displayed on a map. Currently, only the US Census 2000's Summary File 1 (displaying population characteristics such as race and age) is available for mapping."

right now, though, gCensus is more proof-of-concept than ready-to-release application. it needs to integrate more datasets and it would probably benefit from other eyes looking at the code. so, here's the flipside to radical democracy—with free software comes great responsibilities. "the student" is looking for development help and hardware and hosting donations. contact him at gcensus [at] gmail [dot] com and let's make this happen!

22 March 2007 . 6:30 pm
theMechanism|eEmerge
440 9th Avenue 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001 [map]

→ read the article

Here are some research guidelines that I use for my projects. Only use design research when:

1. You don't know the subject area well. I'm not an expert in investment banking, so if I had to design a product for investment bankers, I'd need to learn about what they do and why they do it.

2. The project is based in a culture different to your own. Chinese culture isn't the same thing as the culture of the United States. Or India. Or Western Europe. Cultural differences can cause differences in behavior and expectations for a product.

3. You don't know who the users are. This should be self-explanatory, but amazingly enough, many companies don't know who uses their products or why. If you find that your view of the users is different from the stakeholders', you might want to establish a consensus around that—the type of clarity that only research can provide.

4. The product is one you'd never use yourself. Luckily, as an affluent white male in my 30s, I have a lot of products directed at me. But I'm not a doctor or nurse, and I'm not likely to use medical devices, so if I was working on a medical device project, I'd have to rely on research to teach me how the device would be used. Note, however, that this approach can make for some narrowly focused products, which only work well for a small group of people.

5. The product contains features and functionality that are for specific types of users, who are doing specific types of work, work you don't necessarily do yourself. MS Office contains a bunch of features that I would never use, but if they were removed, key power users would scream bloody murder. Sometimes you have to conduct research to understand the nuances of a specific feature, as well as its importance to a specific group of users.

6. You need inspiration. Sometimes you get stuck and an afternoon away from your computer screen can spark ideas and provide unexpected directions to take a product.

7. You need empathy. Some types of people and groups are harder to identify with than others. Illinois Neo-Nazis for example—not that I'd ever do a project for them. But what about the elderly or infirm? It's difficult to understand their situation unless you know about it.

8. You don't have much expertise. Admitting this is humbling, but necessary. Research might not make you a good designer, but it might make you a better designer by exposing you to new things and preventing you from making simple mistakes that a more experienced designer would avoid as a matter of course.

→ read it all