Not having a tablet has limited my ability to convey ideas.

That will all change shortly. Also, my book project is officially stalled because I need to work more billable hours.

Doodles are coming. Cool doodles. Workflow doodles that make fun of workflow doodles. Doodles that will make some people upset and some smile. Doodles. By nature, they are informal. Stay tuned… I am excited.

Also, a new project landed in my lap that has been taking some seriously unexpected time. I will not tweet this update, but for those who do read the blog (there is 120 or so subscribed to my feed!) I wanted to give an update because I have that illusion that people care about what I say and want to know where I am.

BTW – CMMI is a gauge, a guide, a more or less academic set of guidelines that originated with the United States Government. It is not something to be emulated, just a mirror to view your organization. These efforts for CMMI for Agile are extraordinary and I don’t know how to say it, but you can imagine how I feel about it, maybe.

Feeling sassy today.

Check out this really slick graphic that I did not do (credit goes to Sarah Chong) depicting Social Media demographics. No idea how they got the data, but it looks slick. We dig slick.

Best,

Josh

Cue the Unsolved Mysteries Music….. UPDATE!

Thanks to Laura, who is practically gifting a brand new tablet to the MiT Team (right now, just me). When she has a site, I will link to her, but for now the world will have to wait for her design and advertising talents. She is busy. Doing stuff.

I’ve been saying for a long time that “Don’t Be Evil” is a nice slogan, but in reality we all know what comes with tremendous amounts of data and information – tremendous power. Google may not be outright evil, but this centralization of all things G- and movement towards high speed fiber, cloud processing, etc., I just think that this article about disabling Google Buzz is useful. I did the silly tweaks that you could do before and was in the process of changing free email providers for personal use, but I am glad CNET points this addition to the settings tab within GMail. I would not have noticed.

I have been known to be a conspiracy theorist and really want to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, so I get where you are coming from if you shrug this off, but every time there is a new shiny gadget I am the first to want it. I had every Nextel phone that came out, as they came out for no real reason. Google Buzz is about as useful to me as Google Wave – but is extremely useful to data hoarders.

Anyhow, I found this on Twitter @andrea88 - I actually have the flu and just turned 36 so I am not doing much besides moping around today. Thanks, Andrea.

Thanks, be well. Don’t get this bug I have. Enjoy your dogs. Eat something bad for you. Be easy.

Best,

Josh

Metadata is data about data. It is data.

Social Networking is functionality regarding data about people.

Data is as data does.

What you do with that data is what matters, eh?

So what is Google doing with the data that they are capturing data in support of the Semantic Web? I am sure they will not tell me, but I still wonder, and still do not trust them.

Right now, there is an old “supervisor” of mine shaking his little head at that last comment.

And he is probably still using Chrome like the other cool kids. I wish I was a cool kid.

Best,

Josh

Have you ever seen anything so ugly? I am not talking about ME. I am different, but not ugly. Mom promised.

I am talking about the badge itself. Aren’t badges supposed to be something you want to show off? What is the idea of a badge if not to display something you are proud of?

In addition to the template below, there are two other versions:

1. horizontal (with scroll bar)
2. 2 column (where things are split in apparent random manners).

Also, I am curious as to the utility of this. Thoughts? Throw a badge on random pages and have someone join your fan page or whatnot? Because of course, a link isn’t groovy enough I guess and if people are fans, they sometimes need some coaxing to realize that they are, in fact, fans.

Enjoy the weekend.

Josh

Okay, I really try to not give plugs to projects that I know very little about, but I will make an exception in this case for a few reasons:

1. I know the lead developer, and he is top-notch. He is also a very solid dude, period. He is probably one of the only people that can make me believe it is possible to develop off of a vision alone. I owe him for that, because it is true.

2. It is actually a useful webapp.

If you tweet, twit, or user Twitter, there may be times where you want to display functionality either to your sales team, a potential lead, or a colleague.

Check out this twitter screencasting tool that is worth a mention if not 5 minutes of your time in case there is one time that this thing might be useful to you. I have already found an occasion to use it and as much as I wish I could claim I had something to do with it, that is not that case.

Best,

Josh

I really wish I had more time to write about this, but I am both hurried and excited. When I am excited I either wet myself or blog. I will choose to blog since I am seeing a Client later today and do not have a clean pair of pants.

I am joking, obviously. I must have like 4 or 5 pairs of clean slacks and at least one pair of jeans.

Mike Miles is a developer whom I have had the pleasure of working with and managing (although he did not need much, if any real management and is one of those developers who just GETS IT). Together we came up with the idea of www.findatweeter.com and he did most of the hard work; he actually coded the thing while I fired off an initial brainstorming document (ouch), rudimentary architecture, Wish List items (oh boy…), and comments on what he had done. It worked out great, although when you actually like a developer you are working on a pet project with, you find yourself reluctant to make critique. At least, that is what they tell me.

Mike nailed it. The guy’s UI skills are awesome. Take a look. UX will be under constant redefinition, although I think we are looking pretty good as-is.

Anyhow, I am excited at what has been built and hope that you find it useful. You can plan and publish Events, locate people near you, basically do all the things that the *other* similar site does but better and with fewer annoyances. I do not like annoyances. Mike has a tolerance, or he would have stopped communication with me a long time ago.

If Mike knows this or not, the project was built using abstract kanban (TM). The board was in our minds, and tasks shifted position without sticky notes. We don’t need no stinkin’ sticky notes! We even blended phases into a singular process of “let’s get it done” and that, also, will soon be trademarked and certification in Get It Done Methodology A.K.A. Limber Development will be available via online course and Money Order (please do not put a name on it – only the dollar amount, which is yet to be determined).

Please enjoy: http://www.findatweeter.com and PLEASE send feedback to contact@findatweeter.com – I know both Mike and myself want this thing to rock and fill whatever void you feel in your Tweeting experience, extend your experience to places never before dreamed of… and if you send us something that would be a good addition, it WILL make it into the next release. Releases come quickly. Sometimes, too quickly. No, you should not read into that.

Thanks so much! Stay LIMBER!

Best,

Josh

How hot is Twitter?

Right now, the graph says it all. I thought this was interesting.

A neat app I found, btw: www.findatweeter.com

Best,

Josh

And yes, red font means hotness. But I am colorblind, so for all I know it’s maroon or mauve or something.

That is about all I have time to say right now, but if you are evaluating CMS Systems, please do not take anything you see on CMS Matrix as accurate. Lots of Clients mention it, and I cringe. Right now, the best source for this kind of information is due diligence. Short of that, you can always look at CMS Watch and if you have money to burn, buy their publication (it is pricey, and not on any torrent system as of today, sorry). Keep in mind that the publication itself is out of date as soon as it is printed, so I would use it maybe as a starting point, followed by due diligence. Sorry. Twitter is especially helpful in this regard.

Or, you could just drop me a note.

Best,

Josh

Hello again,

I have blogged on this in the past, but lately a few Clients have asked about it and so I find myself revisiting my old conjoined friends: Compliance and Accessibility.

First, a few notes on each and then a direct comparison.

508 Compliance: This is in regard to section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I always thought it was interesting that following the basic tenets of 508 compliance is very close to doing good foundational search engine optimization. I suppose in some ways the search crawlers and bots are a bit like a site user, without sight or hearing. Does that sound insensitive? I don’t mean for it to. I am just trying to draw a metaphor; to make a site 508 compliant is to make it friendly to those with disabilities (my parents included) and search engines as well.

This is a nice quote summarizing the genesis of 508 compliance (now looking at incorporating broadband internet access as a standard!), taken from the official 508 site:

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual’s ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ‘ 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.

Various “checkpoints” of 508 compliance involve directly leveraging the WCAG guideline – which is the W3C. A checkpoint is something like “all images need ALT tags” – which  you are hopefully doing already, perhaps for SEO purposes.

508 compliance is ostensibly an “all or nothing” judgement. Either you comply, or you do not. Now, in reality (especially with SASS models and CMS systems where content is rendered dynamically) you will hear people say that they are *mostly* compliant or that they are working on being fully compliant or that at 3rd party tool will shortly be available that will ensure compliance. There seems to be a good deal of “looking the other way” going on. I have been on projects where 508 compliance was mandated but the software could not provide it, yet the grant had been spent and the software built, so it went live. Maybe I knew 508 better than those who were looking at it. I don’t know. There does not see to be a group of techies out there inspecting for compliance, although I have certainly heard of it. For things like blindness and screenreaders where non-compliance will be a nonsensical string of computer voice garbage, I would expect complaints.

The government is even aware of the difficulty to find a “508-ready” application, at times:

If products are commercially available that meet some but not all of the standards, the agency must procure the product that best meets the standards.

So… yeah. 508 is kinda loosey goosey in some ways.

W3C or WCAG compliance: a bit more difficult to meet in full, because “in full” has been defined as “in part” for practical purpuses. You have the option of meeting various levels of WCAG compliance. This is straightforward:

[Priority 1]

A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.

[Priority 2]

A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.

[Priority 3]

A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.

Yes, I have seen TWO projects (out of hundreds and hundreds) delievered at the Priority 3 level (or very very close). Generally, however, since time is money money is time and people get nervous when time and money are running short, Priority 1 is generally regarded as the Must Have. This of course, depends on the specific requirement and the specific audience. As with most things, it depends. That is a recurring theme for me lately… especially with the pure Agilists. Ack.

The interesting part, to me, is the last item on the WCAG Priority 1 list and a little blurb from their statement of purpose:

11.4 If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.

The government also doesn’t want to sprain anything. See their statement of purpose for 508 compliance:

…The purpose of this part is to implement section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C. 794d). Section 508 requires that when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, Federal employees with disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access and use by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency…

Let’s tell those with disabilities about undue burdens, shall we?

• Since you will want them:

1. Here is a description of 508 Compliance and
2. Here is the latest description of WCAG (W3C) compliance (they are due for an overhaul, as the W3C last updated their requirements for complance about 9 years ago. A couple things have changed since then.   That is also part of the adoption problem, and why it is not something people generally lose sleep over, although I do think they should and that it is very important.
3. Here is a pretty neat piece of analysis by Jim Thatcher that puts each side by side, and then side by side again. Not sure how current his document is, but it is a good starting point at the very least. That is why I listed it last. I am hoping you read this and spend time here.

Any questions? Shoot me a note. We have a handy contact form for that. Have a project mandating compliance? We can help. Want to evaluate a product / service? We do that too.

Best,

Josh Milane

Having failed miserably and inexplicably with TweetMe, I am giving WP to Twitter a shot.

If you see this in my Twitter feed, you will know it has my seal of approval, which is worth a lot. WP plugin creators try to pay me off all the time. Its a pain. Like Project Management groupies, and the MIT Technical Framed Agile Methodology Cheerleading Squad… more of a liability than anything.

Happy Wednesday! Coming soon, a new site. You will be amazed. It is built with a hybrid OS/MS platform, especially created using the Azure cloud for me.

Its WordPress. Want to show how cool the new version is.

Best,

Josh