Author: Stan Shinn

Stan is a seasoned digital strategist professional with broad Fortune 1000 and financial services sector experience. His specializations include accessibility, digital strategy and product roadmaps, large-scale digital projects, complex web redesigns, and enterprise website governance. Stan is also a published author and active innovator.

List-O-Matic Tools

April 15, 2005 /

Some great web developer tools:

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/default.asp

List-O-Matic - Generate navigation bars based on list items (<li>) that are styled with CSS. It's as easy as falling off a chair, only less painful.

Accessible Form Builder - A new version of the form builder tool, this time with more advanced features, including the option of selecting what type of input you need.

Pop-up Window Generator - Following the tutorial 'The Perfect Pop-Up', comes the Pop-up Window Generator - a tool to quickly let you generate a link that is both accessible and XHTML compliant.

Form element generator - Lets you easily build individual form elements that are accessible (requires JavaScript to work)

Accessible Form Builder - A hybrid of the Form Element Generator and the Accessible Table Builder. This tool lets you enter a number of fields for text input, then creates a table (or CSS-based layout) to lay them out in, and puts in the necessary mark-up for accessibility. Forms have never been quicker!

Writer’s Guide to Reading Blogs

April 14, 2005 /

How to Get Into Blogs, 101 is a great starter article for those who are not familiar with blogs and blogging. If you're not using Bloglines or another reader to read RSS blog feeds, you should read this very basic, step-by-step blog reading guide. Reading from a news aggregator is a quick and efficient way to read blog posts, will alert you instantly when new articles appear, and will give you a competitive edge as a writer.

Photo

How to Get Into Blogs, 101

April 14, 2005 /

How to Get Into Blogs, 101 is a great starter article for those who are not familiar with blogs and blogging. If you're not using Bloglines or another reader to read RSS blog feeds, you should read this very basic, step-by-step blog reading guide. Reading from a news aggregator is a *much* quicker way of reading news, and will give you a competitive edge as a writer or in any vocation.

Is MySQL Gearing Up To Take On Oracle?

April 14, 2005 /

This article has some interesting perspectives:

With new features in the latest version of MySQL, like subqueries and a new binary format, the company has become a stronger competitor against much larger companies, and seems poised to bite into their revenues. Even more importantly, MySQL might actually spark some fundamental changes in the market.

Read Full Article

A Message Users Should Never See

April 11, 2005 /

My wife was browsing an automotive site and came across this error message. This is a top 100 type web site (I'll not embaress them by naming names). My wife had to laugh the message was so cryptic and cyber-geekish. Here's a sample:

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.

Sounds pretty personal! (translation: "I hear you, but I refuse to listen")

It is pretty easy to customize your web server error messages. It's pretty embarrasing to have end users see text like this.


Error 403--Forbidden
From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.4 403 Forbidden

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated. If the request method was not HEAD and the server wishes to make public why the request has not been fulfilled, it SHOULD describe the reason for the refusal in the entity. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

The On Demand Dilemma

April 5, 2005 /

Online retail giant Amazon.com has acquired BookSurge, which maintains a catalog of thousands of print on demand book titles.

Greg Greeley, vice president of media products for Amazon.com says:

Print-on-demand has changed the economics of small-quantity printing, making it possible for books with low and uncertain demand to be profitably produced

Is this a good thing for writers? Depends. Often the perception of Print On Demand books is they are self-published, poorly edited books rejected by mainstream publishers. But this in not necessarily true. Best sellers such as "Rich Dad Poor Dad" and "Chicken Soup for the Soul" were originally self-published. Most of these successful self-published works were non-fiction pieces the authors marketed heavily. What about fiction? There are some success stories, but they are few and far between.

Greeley continues:

BookSurge makes it possible to print books that appeal to targeted audiences, whether it's one copy or one thousand...thanks to print-on-demand, 'out of print' is out of date.

In general, don't self-publish fiction if you think it will enhance your resume. But if you're writing a highly-targeted non-fiction book and you don't mind doing all the marketing yourself, this can be a great medium.

Christian Writer's Blogs for Dummies, anyone?

Read Full Article

A Totally Non-Techie Explanation of What You Need to Know About RSS

April 4, 2005 /

A great review of RSS technology, and from a marketing perspective no less. Check out what Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble says:

If you do a marketing site and you don't have an RSS feed today you should be fired. I'll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed. Saying that RSS is only for geeks today is like saying in 1998 that the Web was only for geeks. No one knows how long this 'honeymoon' will last. But ride the wave - and get into search engines quickly, inexpensively - by submitting your RSS feeds to them.

Read full article: What You Need to Know About RSS

Using Index Cards

April 4, 2005 /

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor, 1995) mentions how how she uses index cards for more than just composition:

I have index cards and pens all over the house—by the bed, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, by the phones, and I have them in the glove compartment of my car. I carry one with me in my back pocket when I take my dog for a walk. In fact, I carry it folded lengthwise, if you need to know, so that, God forbid, I won’t look bulky. You may want to consider doing the same. I don’t even know you, but I bet you have enough on your mind without having to worry about whether or not you look bulky. So whenever I am leaving the house without my purse—in which there are actual notepads, let alone index cards—I fold an index card lengthwise in half, stick it in my back pocket along with a pen, and head out, knowing that if I have an idea, or see something lovely or strange or for any reason worth remembering, I will be able to jot down a couple of words to remind me of it. Sometimes, if I overhear or think of an exact line of dialogue or a transition, I write it down verbatim. I stick the card back in my pocket. I might be walking along the salt marsh, or out at Phoenix Lake, or in the express line at Safeway, and suddenly I hear something wonderful that makes me want to smile or snap my fingers—as if it has just come back to me—and I take out my index card and scribble it down.

Quote courtesy of mleddy.blogspot.com.