Archive for September, 2008

Fred brought to my attention that a few political links in HumGuide were broken. It’s hard to keep up with them all as the election seasons come and go. But one really surprised me, especially at this time just before the election: The web site for the Humboldt County Republican Party was not working. I called the party office and the person I spoke to told me they didn’t know what had happened to the site. “We should have one.  But we don’t, I guess. We have lots of bumper stickers and yard signs though if you want to come by.”  He also said, they had been cleared out of them recently, “We’ve been hammered.”

I did some checking and it appears that no one bothered to renew the domain name (humboldtgop.org) since it’s been deleted from the whois database and is now available, if anyone wants to grab it.

Just for the record the Humboldt County Democratic Party site is doing fine.

Kind of strange that our local parties reflect the national party candidates as one being technically forward thinking and the other not so much.

Yesterday, wearing my web hosting service provider hat I sent out an email to the main contact for each hosting client. My attempt was to update each client regarding a change in policy regarding invoicing and  payments. The policy change really would only affect 2% of all clients. But I thought it fair to inform everyone. I also felt I needed to put the policy in to context by explaining why I felt the step necessary (it had to do with actually implementing an already state policy of suspending delinquent account after a rather long grace period). Unfortunately, I think because I personalized the message by letting the email software insert each client’s first name in the salutation, I had many clients believe I was addressing them personally, setting off a bit of a panic. I had to respond to a fistful of worried email messages and phone calls. Eventually, I felt I had to send out a follow up message apologizing for the confusion.

The thing is, I spent days crafting and thinking about that dang emai (except for the first sentence which I injected at the last minute and so contained TWO TYPOS!! I thought it was clear and thorough, so I was really taken aback by the response. Usually, email goes to one or maybe two people (unless you’re in the habit of forwarding jokes and rumours to your address book). So, when you make an error in your message and it goes out a whole host (pun intended) of people, the reaction can be rather, uh, disconcerting.

I think I have learned some lessons: 1) You can’t be too careful when crafting an email to a big list of people, especially clients; 2) No matter how careful you think you are being, don’t have a stroke when a bunch of people make it clear that what you thought you were saying was really something else; 3) Keep smiling!

Technorati Tags: communication, confusion, emai, web hosting

I don’t know what picnic that Bob at the NCJ went to, or Jack, for that matter (although I think I did see that guy over at the kid’s swings), but I was there and this photo is proof. People ate, drank, talked and there were no knife fights. Although I did leave a little early. Fun! Let’s do it again.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, picinics

The Redwood Technology Consortium is looking nominees for a new program called the Technology Leadership Award. The Award is designed to recognize an outstanding technology leader (or leaders), who are current RTC members. This new, yearly award program will grant a $1000 cash prize to a person or group who demonstrates leadership qualities in the technology field. Nominations can be submitted online until September 30th. Award winner(s) will be announced at RTC’s annual holiday party December 3.

Technorati Tags: award, Redwood Technology Consortium, RTC

There have been some recent interesting comments on Suddenlink, their HD and DVR service and other issues on this old post of mine. I thought it worth pointing out.

This weeks RTC meeting is a little different and should be lots of fun. The featured speaker will be Jessica Gillette of Fortuna based C. Crane Co. Gillette will spotlight some of C. Crane’s newest gadgets, including a wi-fi radio that picks up web stations (11,000+ stations at current) and plays them at a nice fidelity, and their LED lighting system, which produces the equivalent of 60 watts at 7-9 watts and doesn’t contain any
mercury.

Other gadgets include LED Flashlights, CCrane Radio and possibly more. C. Crane has been around for 25 years as has a catalog chock full of cool gadgets many of which they have designed or had a hand in designing.

The meeting is Thursday, 5:30 PM at the Humboldt Area Foundation Community Center. 373
Indianola Rd. (Google Map). Meetings are free and open to the public.

As Fred Mangels points out on his blog, City Councilwoman Polly Endert has her web site up for her campaign for re-election to the Eureka City Council’s 2nd Ward seat. Fred complains that the page(s) are too wide for his browser and he has to scroll horizontally to see all of them. He must mean his screen resolution is set too low to allow him to expand his browser window to accommodate a wider view port. He is also wrong that this is a problem for “most” people. I don’t know what resolution his monitor is set at, but my guess is that it’s 800 x 600. Statistics indicate that by far most people are running at resolutions of 1024 px or higher. Here is a link to another site that backs this up. Very few people are still running at 800 X 600. However, even if it’s only 8%, when you are running for city council should you be annoying that many potential voters?

For the record, all the pages on Polly Endert’s site are images. Not that they contain images. Each whole page is a single image. The home page is 1040 pixels wide. So even people (about 48% according to the statistics) that are running at 1024 resolution would have to scroll sideways to see the full page. The other pages on her site are 958 pixels wide.

Fred also point out that the George Clark/Linda Atkins combined web site is also wider than his browser view port. Since their site is 875 pixels wide this seems to confirm that Fred falls in to 8% still using 800 X 600 resolution.

But beyond the width issue, using a single image for each page as Endert’s site does, means there is no text to be read by people who are visually impaired and using screen readers.  Perhaps there are not many visually impaired computer users in the 2nd District of Eureka. But it still seems like a lack of sensitivity to the issue. Target recently settled a law suit over being unfriendly to the visually impaired, and their trangression was far less egregious (they weren’t using text descriptions in the page code on product images that screen reading software would read to help identify content). It may just be laziness on the part of the web designer. Or maybe they don’t really have one and the site is being managed by someone’s nephew who is “good with computers.”

Technorati Tags: accessible design, polly endert, target law suit, visually impaired

I attended the first part of today’s “Canopy” event at the WildRivers 101 Film Festival held in Access Humboldt’s site at Eureka High School. It got off to a slow start and was sorely under attended. It’s too bad, because a great discussion took place for those who were there. Topics ranged from collaborations between video and film professionals, to training resources for youth, to the grey areas surrounding intellectual property and fair use.

Before the session began I got a tour of what will become Access Humboldt’s impressive video facilities. The layout includes a sound proof production room with lighting grid something not available anywhere else in the area as far as I know. Editing workstations and  complete editing “rooms” give this facility the potential for a huge amount of creative activity. An unusual addition is a room they call Studio B that provides all the equipment for presenting a live talk show with room for guests. You can even switch to a live feed from the larger production room if you want.

Beyond that Access Humboldt allows you to air you products on the cable access channels and will soon include the ability to distribute them on the Internet simply by checking a box when you submit your video to them for airing.

In addition to this opportunity, Paul Benson, a local entrepreneur is offering an outlet for local producers to to present their productions online in a commercial environment and share in the revenue. Humvidx.com promises not only revenue share but a better presentation environment than YouTube.

FILMHumboldt (link doesn’t work, at publishing time, but maybe will later) seeks to promote the area as a digital hub encouraging out of the area productions and locals alike to use the region as a backdrop and to pool the resources of producers, directors, actors, editors and technicians in developing digital media products for current and emerging markets.

It’s impressive how much energy, time and money is going in to providing resources for people to create and share digital media. The question I have is whether there is really a pool of talent and expertise that can take advantage of these opportunities. As Sean McLaughlin director of Access Humboldt said “We have the tools, but we don’t have the people”. A good deal of training is going to have to happen in order for people to take full advantage of what’s being offered. Is there a enough drive and creative talent out there to start producing quality material for all these venues? It’s not as easy as blogging, folks. With today’s meager turnout it’s hard to imagine where this talent will come from. Perhaps tomorrow’s session at the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center which focuses on film/video and social change will have a larger audience. Check the WildRivers 101 Film Festival site for more information.