You can't tell by the photo but there were around 50-60 people at the event -- all levels from programmers to newbies. There was free beer and pizza -- so you know I had a good time. To sum up, it's just plain interesting to see what's happening in the 'community'. Different perspectives are great -- invigorating even.
Got a call from a student wanting to research a topic in marketing. I coached her through finding the right database for her subject and only after we had found a number of promising articles did she mention that some of the pdf files were giving her problems -- using her screen-reader. I can imagine what a mess some of these pdf files are for someone with a screen-reader. I showed her how to look for other versions (i.e. text versions). Also, the Disability Office will convert the PDFs to MS Word which is a big help.
It's bad enough you see these things all over the place -- usually without any indication of what they're going to do. Here, not only do you have the usual enigma but you're required to choose your operating system before taking the plunge.
Midterms -- computer labs are full, plenty of students needing help finding articles. Subjects ranging from Biology to Original Sin.
I came upon of slew of emails I had written while at NYU in the mid-to-late 90's. I hadn't seen them for years. Here's one from 1997. In it, I'm telling the Grad Adviser from NYU's History Dept. that I'm dumping him in favor of the far more attractive "Multimedia" Program at NYU's 'Interactive Telecommunications Program" (ITP):
Dear Mr. W*:
You were assigned as my adviser, so I guess you're the one to whom I should address this message.
The gist of it is that I am a new grad student in the History department. Over the summer however I had a moment of epiphany while taking an intense course in multimedia. It was something I found intensely rewarding and when the course ended (a week ago, by the way) I felt like a kid at the amusement park when a really good ride is over. In other words, I wanted it to continue or at least for me to pursue something similar. Since then, I heard that Tisch offered a program in this area called the Interactive Telecommunications Program. So I ran over there and spoke with a Mr. G* who told me to come back on Friday, Aug. 29.
I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen on Friday except I think he may be able to sign me up for two courses. I won't be an official student there of course since I've succeeded in missing every deadline for application possible and will have to wait till next year to be officially entered into the program.
I know this is rather pathetic--much like being engaged to be married and then falling in love with another woman. It's particularly awkward since I don't know exactly what I am supposed to do or how to go about doing it other than I want to somehow be involved with that program at Tisch. After I meet with Mr. G* again on Friday, I'm sure I'll have a clearer idea.
Sincerely, LEO
Okay, so here are the slides from my presentation on Responsive Web Design that I gave today at the UIC Webmasters Brownbag. It's not the longest thing in the world -- I was only supposed to talk for 30 minutes but ended up going the whole hour. The group was great -- very engaged and asking a whole lot of good questions.
UIC Web Professionals,
Join us for a discussion about Responsive Web Design on Thursday, February 2, noon - 1 p.m. Leo Klein, Coordinator for Web Communications in the Office of Admissions and Records, will discuss Responsive Web Design as a significant development in how we approach web design -- what's got us to this point, the need to design for various platforms from PCs to tablets and smartphones. The session will include discussion of key topics including Media Queries and Mobile First.
Audience: all levels. Also, experience and thoughts from others on this subject is encouraged and highly appreciated.
Not much fun at the moment. Working on a big web design project (with a deadline).
Ethan Marcotte on the inadvisability of setting up a purely mobile site:
Current Cites for November 2011 is out! You can find the issue here...
I've got two 'cites' this month: one on Libraries moving to Drupal and another on the use (or non-use as the case may be) of Library Subject Guides by college students.
Can it be called research when these are the results?
"The analysis revealed that Facebook offers a dynamic environment for academic libraries to cultivate relationships with students. Libraries present information through status messages which suggest who they are and what they do. In addition to being informational, libraries attempt to engage and establish rapport with students through Facebook. The university setting not only creates a context for messages, but also offers a mutual set of experiences and values shared by libraries and students."
Josh Marshall, publisher of Talking Points Memo, looks at traffic on his site and points to the still modest but continually increasing share that 'mobile' is taking:
"The additional wrinkle here is that 77% of that mobile traffic you see in the chart is from iOS devices, i.e., iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc. So give or take, around 40% of the visits to TPM come from computers or devices that use an operating system built by Apple. Compare that to 20% only 5 years ago."
The question is, is this really mobile? iPads for example are far more likely to be connected via wireless rather than through a phone company and screen-wise, it's a whole different user-experience. For purposes of analysis, I think it'd be far more helpful -- in fact, increasingly so -- to approach the data as 'mobile' AND 'tablet'.
Everyone's assuming, for this reason, that Flash's days are numbered. And well they may be, in which case, there's no better time to extol its virtues -- particularly the contribution it's made to our online world -- than now.
It's important to remember that before the Web, most communication online was largely through command line input. In fact, one of the great 'side' achievements of the WWW was that it liberated us from this tyranny, giving us a 'graphical user interface' instead. In the library world, this was the difference between DIALOG which only a consultant could make head or tail of and current versions of Ebsco or Proquest.
Flash (and its predecessor, Shockwave) took this a step further by introducing a far higher level of interactivity. It allowed us to click on things, enlarge them, drag them across the browser window. It allowed us to better coordinate various types of media -- images, audio and video -- into a unified user experience. In fact, it did this with video so well that many people nowadays think of Flash as primarily a video delivery system.
And maybe it is, or was. Things move on. What we used to do in Flash, we're slowly being able to accomplish using Javascript, CSS and eventually HTML5. That's the path -- but it was Flash that showed us the way.
The Dominick's at Fullerton and Sheffield had signs on all the entryways saying, 'Sorry, No Masks Allowed in Store!"
Here we go again. Everyone's talking about the following comment by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia:
[Chicago's Deep Dish Pizza is] ... "very tasty ... but it should not be called ‘pizza.’ It should be called ‘a tomato pie.’ Real pizza is Neapolitan. It is thin. It is chewy and crispy, OK?”
Here's the third report I've come across, this time in the Chicago Sun-Times.
This is a complete myth based on ignorance of what qualifies as 'pizza' in Italy. It's not just thin crust! Naturally that's what you get if you only go to sit-down pizzerias but there are also places, particularly in Rome or Naples, called 'Pizza Rustica' which are walk-in carry-out places where you can order elaborate thick-crush pizzas that put our Deep Dish variety practically to shame. These are the forerunner of Deep Dish! It's there for anyone to go and see.
Another example is 'Pizza Bianca' which is a staple of good Italian breakfasts -- served up practically at every Cafe/Bar in the country: a totally plain very thick crust which is filled with cheese and other delicious things and then toasted and served crispy hot along with your cup of cappuccino. Again, a harbinger of Deep Dish.
So I'm sorry, but this really is a sort of idiot test: if someone doesn't like Deep Dish or claims it's not Italian, bingo, they win the Bozo Award!
Today was a big day. I started it off at MPOW with a meeting at 9am sharp. At noon I left for Rosemont and the Illinois Library Association Conference. They were featuring not only a free pass to get in to see the exhibits but a free lunch as well: carved roast beef and turkey along with two kinds of pasta and either a tomato or cream sauce. Heaven! Following a quick stop home, I next headed downtown for the monthly meeting of the Chicago Drupal Meetup Group. The meeting this month was starting early because they had three people giving presentations instead of the usual 2. One was on the switch to Drupal over at the Field Museum.
We've been here before -- from a usability study looking at how students use (or don't use as the case may be) various library database pages:
"In 2006, Steve Krug said internet users were mostly looking for something clickable to click on; BGSU students, by contrast, often looked for a search box to search in. When a search was unsuccessful, instead of retooling it, the student looked for a different search box and tried the same search again. The students in the study tried to change the subset of information they were searching, not the search they had already decided was the best one."
Okay, so the next logical question might be, is this a student preference or is there something about the design of the website that drives them to it? Maybe yes, maybe no but considering the effort we put into all of this, it's certainly worth testing.
But hark! A bit further down in the same study -- apparently vendor consolidation will save the day:
"Therefore, if we want students to use a wider range of our resources, it is crucial that we teach them to recognize the resources that will be useful for them. As the brand diversity of our resources narrows, vendors and publishers merge, and vendors market more and more to end users, this strategy may become easier to adopt."
