blog

Let me start off stating that I’m the administrative assistant here at Beaconfire, and an unlikely candidate to write a tech blog. With that in mind, let me tell you what I know about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 

In 1769, a Hungarian fellow by the name of Wolfgang von Kempelen created a life-sized robot that could kick your butt at chess. It kicked Benjamin Franklin�??s butt; are you trying to tell me that you think you�??re better at chess than Ben Franklin? The invention was commonly known as �??The Turk,�?� on account of his thick (Turkish looking?) mustache and turban. How did this early model of artificial intelligence work, you ask incredulously? Well, von Kempelen crammed a guy who was really good at playing chess inside of the robot. Von Kempelen was eventually exposed as a hack, though I personally continue to be impressed with his ingenuity, as apparently do the good folks down at Amazon.

(more…)

My Must Haves:

• Web Developer
• Firebug
• Tab Mix Plus
• View Source Chart
• IE Tab

For Convenience/Fun:

• Context Highlighting
• Cooliris Previews
• del.icio.us Bookmarks
• Download Statusbar
• FireShot
• Split Browser

(more…)

I do not own a Blackberry or an iPhone, but I still dish out a fair sum of money every month for my cell phone service and I would not say the device itself was too cheap either. So, is it too much to ask for a decent interface on my phone? The Open Handset Alliance does not think so.

According to them, it is estimated that there are close to 1.5 billion televisions in this world, and 1 billion people using the internet. Still the most successful consumer product is clearly the mobile phone with around 3 billion users [Source]. So why aren�??t cell phones easier to navigate and customize to our needs, the way our computer operating systems are?

Google and others have come up with a way to change all this. Follow me below the fold for more�?�

(more…)

When was the last time this happened to you: you’ve got a killer new idea for a campaign. You’ve found a name that fits perfectly. You run a WHOIS check on it, and, because the ICANN gods are smiling down on you,  your domain name is open. You run it around the office to get the final approval, come back the next day to pick up the domain name and… it’s taken. And no, it wasn’t your officemate playing a joke on you (though you should consider putting his phone in jello to be safe).

While it may seem like bad luck when this sort of thing happens, it’s possible that you’re actually the victim of a new type of fraud called, "domain name front running." An AP story explains:

That has led to suspicions that someone with access to search requests has been using the information to gauge interest in a domain name.

By buying the domain first, that person can then try to sell it to the interested party for a profit. This is different from traditional domain name speculation because the buyer knows for sure that the address is of interest.

This is just the latest in a long line of abuses of the domain name registry system, and it’s causing companies and non-profits to have to go through costly procedures to get their good name back. Find out more, and what you can do to stop it, below the fold.

(more…)

The past two weeks have seen some exciting developments as both Kintera and Convio launched Open API programs, Kintera Connect and Convio Open respectively. Here at Beaconfire we�??d like to applaud both vendors for listening to the nonprofit community, vendors and organizations like NTEN etc as the concepts of openness, APIs and the transparency of Web 2.0 communities have changed the software landscape for good. See we can all have an impact!

In the interest of full disclosure, Beaconfire is partners with both Kintera and Convio and we share some of our largest clients in common. We have been involved in discussions and briefings with both vendors and are discussing projects with clients that will give us the opportunity to really dig into these APIs. We hope to share our findings from working with the APIs based on these real world examples.

Rather than comment on the differences and pros/cons of their offerings, I do have some thoughts on how to evaluate or compare these APIs, programs or approaches. I�??m actually working with the good folks at Idealware and NTEN on evaluating APIs so this is top of mind for me already. So, let�??s talk about the things that could be important in comparing APIs and not worry so much about how these two compare just yet. For initial reviews, check out fellow Nonprofit techies Michelle Murain, Allan Benamer, and Judi Sohn.

(more…)

Until recently building a Facebook application meant either having to use your own real account, which could cause friction with friends who get with invites for your application in development or having to create a test account that would likely get banned and force you to start over. As the Facebook Wiki notes:

Facebook’s Terms of Service require that all accounts be linked to your real identity, so its not allowed to make fake accounts to test things with. The status quo is the following cycle: developers make test accounts, developers test with those accounts for a little while, our Customer Support team comes across those test accounts and identifies them as fake and disables them, developers are annoyed and frustrated, developers make more test accounts. This is pretty bad.

No longer - in a little-ballyhooed announcement, Facebook recently opened up the ability to create test accounts that would live in a quarantined zone, free from fear of banning. More below the fold…

(more…)

A article in the Times caught my eye earlier this week - it purported that HP had developed an easy way to print using a mobile phone. The idea intrigued me - I’m always on the lookout for cool SMS tools (there’s got to be more to it than poorly spelled messages filled with “ur” and other expressions used to save people the agony of typing two more characters… but I digress) and being without a printer on the road can be a nuisance - having to transcribe Google Maps directions by hand sort of defeats the point.

So I read the article and was disappointed to see that it’s not so much printing from a mobile phone as using a mobile phone as one of several devices in the process of getting something to print, sort of like saying you walk to work because there’s a parking lot between your house and your car. Here’s how it works:

The service requires users to first �??print�?� their documents to H.P. servers connected to the Internet. The system then assigns them a document code, and transmits that code to a cellphone, making it possible to retrieve and print the documents from any location.

Later, using the SMS message the service has sent to the user�??s cellphone, it is possible to retrieve the documents by entering the user�??s phone number and a document code on the Cloudprint Web site. The documents can then be retrieved as a PDF, ready to be printed at a nearby printer.

The service will include a directory service that will show the location of publicly available printers on Google Maps. The system currently works with any Windows-connected printer. A Macintosh version is also planned.

Make sense? It’s all the fun of using Kinko’s web upload service combined with the hassle of saving every text message that relates to a document you might one day need. But I decided to put my skepticism aside and give it a try - maybe the Times was just making it sound convoluted.

(more…)

I’ve been seeing demos of this technology posted around the ‘net for a while now, but Microsoft’s announcement of their new “Surface” technology brings it a lot closer to a consumer market. I initially wanted to post this simply because I thought this technology was really cool, but in thinking about it more I couldn’t help thinking about how this may affect web site designs in the future.

The technology, in a nutshell (see the videos below for a larger bowl of nuts), is a way to allow people to interact directly with “objects” on a table-top computer screen. The new advancement that makes this exciting is “multi-touch” (the ability to touch an object in several places at once, or to touch and interact with multiple objects at once.

As I watch the demos of purchasing and paying for meals at restaurants, sorting and arranging photos, and using maps, I start thinking about how on-line shopping carts, community networking sites, and even the concept of a web site itself could be affected by this kind of technology.

We have already had to adjust how we think about planning and building websites to use newer, dynamic, web technologies. How much further will this re-tooling have to go when users are demanding the ability to remix an entire website to their liking. OK, so that’s pretty extreme and arguably not something that will necessarily result in a friendly user experience, but what about this:

Take a search result of action alerts, draw a circle with your finger around several of the results to group them together by keyword or tag, and then drag them all to where your Wi-Fi phone is sitting on the table-top. The results are automatically cused to create a “related” RSS feed to your phone based on those results. Go to another site and do the same thing. Then call up your contact list on the table-top (pulled from your phone, still just sitting there on the table, not even plugged in to anything) and send your new RSS feed (or selected items from it) to selected people from your contact list.

We’re probably talking about at least 5 years before this stuff is priced for even first-adopter users; currently pricing of around $10,000, and functionality is geared toward businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, and Casinos. I’ve no doubt, though, that some form of this will be in general use in homes as soon as it’s affordable.

Take a look at the videos — Especially the third video on the Microsoft Surface site about paying for meals at a restaurant — and you’ll see what I mean. In this paradigm, devices like phones, PDAs, laptops, credit cards, and even web pages, become simple buckets to move things to and from. The ability to do this simply by placing the objects on the table is what makes it all so amazing.

I guess a big question is, will people want to browse the web on a table-top, or is the vertical screen we all use already going to stay with us? And don’t let’s even start with accessibility issues with these devices! A lot of cool potential, but a lot of potential pitfalls as well. Isn’t that how it usually is?

Jefferson Han:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RPwaUp4gepU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY

Microsoft Official Site:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Popular Mechanics behind the scenes look:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

Recently, we had two different clients ask us for assistance in finding mass email tools that have built-in support for multiple languages. They were specifically interested in sending out Arabic and Chinese emails to their supporter list.

If you dabble in the area of internationalization (i18n) in tech tools, then you would agree with me when I say that it is particularly difficult to find a technology solution that can fully support languages like Arabic and Chinese. Generally, tech tools are really good in supporting languages that have a Latin-base (ex. Spanish). They are not that great with a non Latin-based language like Chinese. They are downright poor when it comes to a non Latin-based language that also reads from right-to-left (RTL) like Arabic. And, don�??t even get me started on RTL languages that share most characters but not all (Arabic & Farsi/Persian).

Before we delve into the multi-lingual mass email support issues, here is an over-simplified version of the technically complex process of creating emails:

Email written up or “encoded” in a language (i.e. Arabic, Chinese, etc.) –> Sent out by bulk mailer –> Received by email server –> “Decoded” for view or display in your email client.

Side note - Problems in the decoding end of things require a separate post, so I will ignore it for now.

Most email solutions including < insert most eCRM and email marketing tool names here > do not go beyond Spanish for their multi-language support line item in the features list. So, no multi-lingual support, no encoding, no sending out, no nothing.

A small number of vendors and solutions support multi-lingual emails, but it ends up being an interim solution. In the encoding process, they create HTML emails where letters are represented by their numeric character references. This is somewhat akin to using & in HTML code to indicate &. All HTML-enabled email clients display this fine for the recipient to read. Most email clients, including the browser-based ones like Google and desktop-based ones like Outlook, are HTML-enabled these days. So, most recipients would have no problems with this solution.

The issue with this approach however is what happens in the back-end. This approach means that you can send out only HTML emails and not plain-text ones. If you viewed the source in these emails, you will see a string of these numeric character references. This means that many of the functions that depend on actual letters instead of numeric references (ex. search) will not work. Sort of reminds one of those Hollywood studio sets that look grand from the outside. :)

This approach runs out of its usefulness if your organization wants to (or is mandated by its mission to) provide the full-spectrum experience to your supporters, donors, and advocates who speak other languages. This is becoming an important need. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we recently had TWO clients ask for bulk email tools supporting multiple languages. So, hopefully things would change soon. But, much of this innovation will probably originate from regions where multiple languages are the norm rather than the exception.

A note in the �??somewhat related�?� category - European Union has 23 official languages and India has 22. Conflict of interest or disclaimer or something of that sort - My native language is one of those non-Latin-based languages, so I may have “vested” interests.

A note in the related category - If you are developer, here is a slightly dated, but still relevant article on email, MIME, Content-Transfer-Encoding header, etc: http://www.eveandersson.com/arsdigita/asj/mime/

There is an interesting discussion following an AlistApart.com article entitled Where Our Standards Went Wrong, in which the author, Ethan Marcotte discusses two sides of the web standards debate. In the article, Ethan tries to refine the message we as standards advocates are delivering.

Yet while the benefits of valid code may not be glamorous, we can�??and should�??talk about them. Validation isn�??t an end result or a final deliverable; it�??s an ongoing process that continues long after a site launches. If we don�??t put the proper tools and commitment in place, our work will start looking like a late �??90s throwback, and if we don�??t provide guidance and education on validation, the polished, perfect pages we produced will be snapped into software that�??ll produce tag soup in seconds flat.

Ethan also discusses some of the problems with Content Management Systems (and their often third-party) text editors, which are often central to the standards issues we face when deploying web sites for clients. In the discussion following the article, several people touch on this aspect, and even (gasp) offer some solutions.