Target's Lack of Web Accessibility == SIX Million Dollars

Look for more organizations to increase their focus on web accessibility — Target and NFB just reached a $6 million dollar settlement. See http://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled/ for an overview.

One Trillion Pages....

Google's Official Blog recently reported, "even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!" The article also has a high-level overview of how Google keeps up with the Web. :-)

Web Standards Project Curriculum Framework

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) just announced the WaSP Curriculum Framework. The framework's goal is to identify the skill sets and competencies that aspiring Web professionals need to acquire to prepare them for their chosen careers. Outlines for a set of foundation courses that can be readily adapted into an existing program at a college, school, or university will be released in March 2009. This curriculum framework is intended to be a "living" curriculum with contributions from web educators and web professionals.

The WC3 Question & Answer blog post on the proposed framework states, "After years of hearing people lament that we would not get a better web until we get better ways of teaching the Web to the professionals (of today and tomorrow), is very exciting to see the recent crop of community driven efforts to provide material and guidance for the teaching of Web technologies."

New Google Knol

Google has launched a beta of Knol — kind of like Wikipedia with a twist. Google defines a knol as "a unit of knowledge" and explains that a knol is an "authoritative article about a specific topic".
Just like Wikipedia, anyone can post an article. See Web Design Best Practices for an example. :-)

Alexa : More than Search Results

Alexa lives up to its tagline: A Web Information Company — providing more than search results. You can use Alexa to find out more about a web site: with displays of an overview (including a screen capture and contact information), traffic statistics (when available), sites linking in, and a direct link to the Web Archive to view how the site looked in the past.

Do You Grok Grokker?

Grokker offers both an outline view and a visual view of search results. This provides a way to easily drill down into topics of interest in an organized manner and search within the results. Grokker searches your choice of Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and Amazon Books for information. An interesting twist is that Grokker can be licensed by businesses as an enterprise search management tool to mine their databases for information.

TouchGraph: Visually Show Connections Between Web Sites

TouchGraph's Java applet will visually display connections between websites related to the search term you enter. There are three flavors of TouchGraph:

• TouchGraph Google offers an intriguing method to explore a topic when brainstorming.
• TouchGraph Amazon visually displays books related to a topic.
• TouchGraph Facebook provides an new way to explore your friends and connections.

KartOO: A Mind Map of the Web

Continuing this week's topic of search engines — you may want to explore your favorite topic using KartOO. This visual search engine builds a mind map of websites related to your search terms. Somehow, exploring a cloud of websites is more fun than looking at page after page of text-based search engine results. :-)

New Search Engine - Searchme!

Searchme is a visual search engine that begins to show you results while you are typing your keyword or phrase. In addition to the expected search engine results page (SERP), Searchme displays the home pages of the web pages in a "deck" across the upper part of the page. A handy tool for those who think visually!

Firefox 3 Launched

Well, I've really been in "summer vacation" mode recently and missed posting about the launch of Firefox 3. A world record was set for Firefox 3 downloads — over eight million — on 6/17 for the most software downloaded within 24 hours. Check out this screencast of Firefox 3's new features and the download your own copy at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/.

ICANN Approves Recommendation for New TLDs

ICANN will initiate a process for applications for new top level domain (TLD) names. In addition the current TLDs such as .com, .biz, etc., the press release states, "This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable."
So, the sky's the limit for creativity here — whether it's a brand-related name (Wouldn't .cola be fun for the soft drink companies?) or a geographically-based name such as .chicago — it's going to be fun to see what new TLDs are proposed.

New Accessible Web Design & Compliance Certificate

Harper College's new Accessible Web Design & Compliance Certificate was just approved by the State of Illinois. There is an increased focus in the technology industry and in society on accessibility. Information technology (including web sites) is expected to provide accommodations in order to be accessible for all individuals. The certificate was added to address learning needs generated by the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act.

New Adobe Photoshop Express Beta

Adobe launched a new beta version of Adobe Photoshop Express. This Rich Internet Application (RIA) is free -- all you need to do is sign up! You'll be able to store up to 2GB of images, edit your images, and share them online.

WOW Technology Minute Podcast

January 2008 is turning out to be quite a month... check out my one-minute podcast interview about web design best practices and accessibility at the WOW Technology Minute.

Outstanding e-Learning Faculty Award

The Instructional Technology Council (ITC) recently announced the recipients of their 2008 Awards for Excellence.

Harper College Associate Professor Terry Morris was named the recipient of the 2008 Outstanding e-Learning Faculty Award for Excellence.

The ITC is a national organization that promotes effective use of technology to enhance distance learning. Member institutions may nominate an exemplary faculty member for this national award. The nominations are reviewed and the recipient is chosen by a panel of judges including ITC board members, past awards winners and other ITC members.

See a press release issued by Northcentral University, where I am a doctoral student, for more information.

Netscape's Demise

AOL announced that support of the Netscape browser will end on February 1, 2008. Back in the days of Netscape Gold, this browser was considered the latest and greatest. Netscape made available an open-source build called Mozilla, which has grown in popularity as Mozilla Firefox.

A Preview of HTML 5

Want a preview of the next new version of HTML and be the first on your block to know about the new <section>, <article>, <header>, <nav>, and <aside> elements? Check out the thorough and informative Preview of HTML 5. The author, Lachlan Hunt, is one of the editors of the W3C HTML 5 Working Draft and a software developer at Opera.

10 Future Web Trends

Read/Write Web has posted a list of 10 Web trends to watch for. Some may be familiar to you but others may be new. The trends are: Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Worlds, Mobile, Attention Economy, Web Sites as Web Services, Online Video / Internet TV, Rich Internet Apps, International Web, and Personalization. Intrigued? Explore the post and its related links.

New Adobe CS3 Tutorials

New tutorials are available for Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Fireworks CS3, and Adobe Flash CS3. Each tutorial walks you through creating a logo banner for a web site. The Fireworks and Photoshop tutorials also introduce techniques for creating navigation buttons. The Flash tutorial introduces motion tweens, shape tweens, symbols, and behaviors.

The Rise of Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails has been around for a few years as one of the open source server-side programming languages for the Web. With Microsoft's announcement of its own implementation, IronRuby, you can expect this language to get a lot of attention. Read eWeek's Rise of Ruby on Rails for an overview of where this technology is headed.