Bebo has welcomed the cross Web site application trend and has become the first to adopt the Facebook Platform Standards. They’re also planning to support OpenSocial in 2008. I really like their attitude, the idea of opening up APIs is semantically brilliant. The Semantic Web is about ‘common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources’. Of course the facebook model and that of all social networking sites relies on advertising, advertising largely based on the valuable information gathered from each sites’ members, so the information becomes a commodity. Wherever there’s a potential commodity there will be competing forces trying to get their share of it.

Profit will always win over semantic interest, but, well done to Bebo for the move!

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I wrote about the importance of the Email Standards Project a while back. It’s great to see awareness and its popularity growing. Gmail has my emailing love at the moment, I can’t fault the service compared to its competitors, it’s fantastic! It will upset me, though, if they don’t sacrifice a little of their genius to implement the changes needed to bring them into compliance, or, at the very least give an explanation for not doing so.

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I came across a post on the Brightspark Blog last week linking to The Email Standards Project, something I was thrilled to hear about.

The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

A couple of months back this probably wouldn’t have meant much to me but a good mate of mine has recently had his heart broken and rebroken trying to get his client’s e-zine to render correctly in as many email clients as possible.

It’s one of the most frustrating things to develop for cross browser compatibility, it’s almost impossible to get you’re design to render 100% across all email clients, without sacrificing you’re beloved layout that is.

The email standards project has tested the dominant email clients and information on supported and non-supported CSS elements are all available from their Web site. It’s a valuable resource for designers and an initiative that will see us all emailing more happily into the future.

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The second, showcased attempts at making virtual worlds accessible. The project featured voice interpretation of the users surrounding environment and a 3D sonar soundscape for finding locations.

Queens University Belfast showed off some amazing stuff. Navigating and route mapping indoors via audio output and sensory input of the building the user is in. Interpreting map information for blind users, the map was taken in one application where a large range of information could be added.

A sight impaired user can then retrieve this information by exploring the area of the image, upon encountering an area of importance the user receives the information through sound. A graphics tablet was demoed to provide a user with absolute positioning, meaning a mental image can be built up of certain places in relation to others.

Possibly the most interesting out of the three for me was finding a way to describe the visual layout of a site to a blind user. The layout of any web site is linear, for a blind user. Screen readers read through a web page top to bottom, left to right. So, spatial information can be lost in this translation.

To provide a different means of interpreting a web site’s layout different sounds were associated with different elements of a page. By explaining the meaning of the sounds, a video showed a blind user actually able to sketch out the rough layout of the web page, fairly impressive!

I had the chance to showcase accessible web design. To keep it simple but try and get the message across I put together two simple pages, one good, one bad, to highlight some of the straight forward steps taken that make a huge difference in terms of accessibility. I was happy with the response, the idea seemed to click with most. I then had a design student come up to me fairly enthusiastically and the following conversation ensued…

Enthusiastic design student: ‘Accessibility, this is what I came here to see, I have an assignment due on web accessibility…’

Very happy me: ‘Do you have any questions in particular?’ (Score, I can be of some help here)

Design student: ‘It’s the thing where you put the hidden thing in the images for blind people’

me: ‘That’s one thing, yes, there’s a little more to it, here’re a couple of good resources…’

Design student (now halfway across the room): ‘Cheers bud’

Confused me: (What just happened there…?)

And that was it, he just kind of wandered off mid sentence and I hadn’t really said a word to him. It turned out a couple of his fellow students were with him, they wandered over a little later but it must have been bad timing or something because the ceiling tiles became incredibly interesting all of a sudden.

Not that I care if people find accessibility interesting or not, it’s not my place to be preachy and awareness can be as powerful as advocates of the initiative, but when the only potential future designers of the web have the least interest good design, it worries me a little. Surely college is the time to place a little importance on good practice and standards.

Brent Grainger and myself have to opportunity to speak to a Multimedia class about web accessibility in the coming weeks, it’ll be interesting to see what their general opinion is…

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When I was working in Belfast earlier this year, I picked up a copy of Jacob Nielson’s ‘Designing Web Usability’ for a pound in a small secondhand book shop. You can’t really go wrong for a quid. I vaguely remember lectures from a few years back discussing Nielson’s work, the main thing I remember though is what I considered to be his over simplistic approach.

Simplicity is definitely priority for good usable design. The perfect case study is Google versus Yahoo. Bring up Yahoo. Every inch of retail space is used, which isn’t good. There’s so much redundant stuff that it gets in the way of finding what you’re really looking for. Now look at Google. The search box is right in the middle of the screen, it’s the first thing you look at and there are no distractions crammed all around it. Even using iGoogle, that nice spacious feel is still preserved at the top of the page.

I was looking through Useit.com, Nielson’s own site and his understanding of perfect usable design put into practice. I searched around and found the newsletter subscription page and searched a little more to find the little RSS (Really simple syndication) feed icon, but no icon or feed was found. I emailed Nielson asking why there was no option to subscribe to his new updates via RSS. The reply I received pointed me to this page, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will find the heading RSS / News Feeds, where Nielson explains his preference for newsletters.

The arguments for and against both newsletters and RSS or news feeds are more than valid, Jacob Nielson is probably the most qualified and experienced usability expert around, but I don’t believe the comment about RSS being a cold technology is totally true. Nielson says, ‘feeds do not form the same relationship between company and customers that a good newsletter can build’ and adds that newsletters are a warmer and much more powerful technology.

I don’t like newsletters, I subscribe to two, gamespot.com and Nielson’s own, but compare that with the 50 odd blogs I follow. Blogs are warmer for me, I find the writing style generally a little more informal and personal and I can select what I do and don’t want to read from the reader I use. It just works for me.

I suppose what I’m getting at is there’s room for both, why risk potentially alienating some of your audience, however small a number it may be. I’m sure answers will be slightly biased as I’m publishing this on a blog, but what is the general feeling of newsletters versus blogs?

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The points were well made but when it came to Microsoft fulfilling each of these areas the speaker came on a little too strong. Showing a video, via Silverlight, in full screen, HD and the volume up high doesn’t showcase how Silverlight delivers a cinematic experience. Sitting in a large tiered room with a large screen gives that effect. Saying that the rest of the presentations picked up and I have to say I have gained some faith in the company.

Michael Tirion, user experience evangelist from the Netherlands, spoke about his desires for a better designer – developer workflow. He went into Microsoft’s Expression studio in detail cover each package, how they tie in together and how they aid the design – developer relationship.

Most surprising to me was to hear the W3C mentioned. Microsoft’s Expression Web package is standards compliant. ‘So they say’ of course, but, I spoke with Michael after the presentation and I’m convinced they made a decent effort at the very least. On top of the source code for the .NET framework will be available to developers now. The explanation is that Microsoft’s IP doesn’t rely only on their code but in the combined package and development structure they are offering through the Expression Studio.

Something that really caught my attention was the Blend package, mainly because it supports ‘real’ 3D, e.g., importing .obj files from applications such as 3D Studio Max and Maya, seriously looking forward to getting my hands on that. Tafiti is worth having a look at, their take on the next gen search engine and Photosynth was really impressive, there’s no dev kit yet, but there are a few examples to play around with on their site, great fun!

I’m finishing up while I still have some soul left. I’ve never been a huge Microsoft fan and I’m far from devoted now, even after my rant. I’m an open source fan but I still use Microsoft products and services. I suppose similar to the Mac/PC debate, there’s room for both and ignorance to either means losing out on an easier more productive solution or missing a beat on what your competition is up to. Either way it’d be a shame to ignore what these guys are doing.

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Apart from the slightly daunting size of the auditorium, our presentation was recieved well and the event was an excellent opportunity to showcase our game, Heaven2ocean. We had the chance to meet like minded people and those really moving things in the right direction up North.

Wayne Hemingway, Designer/ Founder of Hemingway Design & Red or Dead, was the keynote speaker and gave a really entertaining talk, not only discussing issues related directly to creativity in the arts but touching on areas such as housing design and playgrounds. Aside from his famed fashion label, the areas Wayne has tapped into are impressive to say the least. It was really cool to see ways people are being creative where it usually wouldn’t be expected and it’s going to be really interesting to see what’s produced in the next year!

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As part of the festival there is a showcase featuring the games developed by the two Irish teams who competed in this years Dare to be Digital competition. I was part of the Southern Irish team this year and will be around, along with the rest of our team zerO.One, from 2 – 4pm, Saturday 15^th September. We developed a 2D puzzle platformer Heaven2ocean which is available to download free from heaven2ocean.com. Members of the Northern team, AE Games, will also be there showing off their game, Bathroom Buccaneers.

The Digital Exchange is where the events will be taking place, the address is Digital Exchange, Crane Street, The Digital Hub, Dublin 8. Crane Street is just off Thomas Street, near the Guinness Brewery.

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Darragh Coy and Adrian Murphy are both BSc. Games Development students from Carlow IT and have collaborated with Scott Bryan, Kieran McCabe and myself, BSc. Multimedia DCU, and have been working hard over the last few months to form our team and develop our game concept and application for the competition.

Running for several successful years, Dare to be Digital is the largest video games competition in the UK and Ireland and is growing with teams as far as China and India participating. The event is usually hosted by The University of Abertay Dundee but is being co-hosted this year by Queens University in Belfast. So from June we’re packing up and moving to Belfast to begin development on our own game in our own studio for 9 weeks, after which we’re flown over to Scotland for the Dare Protoplay where the teams showcase their work.

It’s such an amazing opportunity to gain experience and meet people within the industry. Ireland hasn’t taken any prizes in the competition to date so we have our sights set high and we’re going to continue to push ourselves and see how far we can go!

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All the proceeds from the 11,000 foot Skydive go to the National Council of the Blind of Ireland. At least €600 (£406 / $800) needs to be raised before I get my hands on a parachute. Everything above that is a much appreciated bonus for a very worthy charity.

Thanks for the help! I’ll make sure the photos get posted if I make it back in one piece. (Paul Walsh says – “I’ll post more photos if his shoot doesn’t open).

For anyone interested in jumping themselves visit the charity jumps Web site for all the information and to register.

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