"In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to ignore the ordinary stuff."

In the words of the marketing guru Seth Godin there is a glare of hope for beginners and everyone starting on the design/media business.

We are all being freely trained by companies in the art of creating content. Companies like MySpace, Facebook or youtube (until Google bought it) are entirely based on User Generated Content (UGC). If we look around there are many companies beneficing from the content generated by users, wikipedia, mysql, and many others.

The point that Seth made in 2003 at his TED hosted talk was as “remarkable” then as it’s now for the people that are starting now in the business. Look for original ideas, safe is unsafe, be remarkable. Easier said than done, in order to progress in this so competitive world there are risks to take, but above everything else there is a lot of work to do!

Let’s see the video:

Seth Godin, remarkable ideas (tedTalks)

What do you think, can you get your idea to spread?

We’ll talk more about these guidelines in the future but I would like to talk about cross browsing testing and the challenges that it presents.

For a small team of developers like us cross browsing testing can be troublesome because not all the platforms/browsers are available to us. We use our own equipment for developing and testing, so not always there is an old Pentium II machine with IE4 installed for testing purposes.

Luckily our team is well balance and we have users for the three main operating systems Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux. Now with the arrival of Vista we have a new operating system to test and honestly after trying it up none of us is excited with the prospect of installing Vista in a (otherwise) productive machine. Microsoft is currently the biggest problem that web designers/developers face.

Their Internet Explorer policy is continuously changing in the last 5 years so they have gone from completely different from every other browser (and W3C standards) to just partially different them but half way supporting standards.

Internet Explorer 7 has brought a new set of inconveniences. Now if a user installs IE7 in his machine, inevitably IE6 will stop working. There are several methods that allow the users install both, but nevertheless it’s still a problem to ensure that new websites can be displayed properly in IE6.

Internet Explorer 6 is the most annoying thing in the web world, full of bugs, it would display the content of websites in its own very peculiar way, which forces the developers to create hacks and other alternatives if they want to achieve a decent grade of usability.

I am currently using a website to test how our websites look in other operating systems and different browsers. The website is called browsershots.org and it provides a very simple yet powerful functionality, it creates a screenshot of your website displayed in any(almost every) browser under any (almost every) operating system. The images take a little bit to be created so if you test your website under 44 different browsers it can take a while before all the images are uploaded, but it’s worth a try. A very useful tool for developers.

We will be talking more about this issues and about what can we do as community to improve our user’s experience.

Thanks.

[1st part] [2nd part]

Designing websites for accessibility means using the solutions available to create websites that are accessible for people with disabilities. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the entity that regulate, produce and promote the guidelines that most web designer and developers follow to create their work. Among these guidelines the W3C has established what it’s called the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0“. It this guidelines is clearly explained how to make websites more accessible but also how to make them easier to find in the web:

Following these guidelines will also help people find information on the Web more quickly. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, video, etc., but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience.

For those unfamiliar with accessibility issues pertaining to Web page design, consider that many users may be operating in contexts very different from your own:

They may not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all.

• They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
• They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.
• They may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection.
• They may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.
• They may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or interfered with (e.g., driving to work, working in a loud environment, etc.).
• They may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

[1st part] [2nd part]

We have more news about the reports of hundreds of thousands of attacks to MS servers on the week. Apparently websites as important as some UK government sites and the United Nations website have been attacked by hackers in the last month. The hackers have been using code that tries to exploit a security flaw in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitor’s machines, The Washington Post reports.

Several anti-virus and security companies have reported the issue to MS months ago but the vulnerability is still there and the hackers are taking advantage of the situation. In their article the mentioned source comments:

"The attackers appear to be breaking into the sites with the help of a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web servers. In an alert issued last week, Microsoft said it was investigating reports of an unpatched flaw in IIS servers, but at the time it noted that it wasn’t aware of anyone trying to exploit that particular weakness."

Dancho Danchev is an independent security analyst, he advices:

"all of the hacked sites appear to have Javascript coding adding to their page source that silently pulls down malware from a few domains in China, namely nihaorr1.com, and haoliuliang.net.

Needless to say, if you run a Google search for these sites you will find tens of thousands that contain the script that redirects any visitors to these malicious sites. I would strongly urge people to steer clear of those sites: I mention them here so that Web site owners can more easily search the HTML code in their pages for these domains.

There are indications that this attack is coming in waves, with the bad guys swapping in new malicious downloader sites every few days. According to posts on an IIS user forum, Web site administrators first saw signs of this attack on April 17, the day before Microsoft issued its initial advisory on the IIS vulnerability.

If you run your site with IIS, please take a moment to consider applying the workarounds in the Microsoft advisory for your version of IIS. Also, that IIS.net post I mentioned earlier has some great tips to help administrators lock down their systems.

These types of attacks that infiltrate legitimate, trusted Web sites are precisely the reason I so often recommend Firefox over Internet Explorer. There is a great add-on for Firefox called “noscript,” which blocks these kinds of Javascript exploits from running automatically if a user happens to visit a hacked site. Currently, there is no such protection for IE users, and disallowing Javascript entirely isn’t really an option on today’s World Wide Web. True, you can fiddle with multiple settings in IE to add certain sites to your “Trusted Zone,” but that option has never struck me as very practical or scalable."

Now I have been doing websites for almost a year. I manage to meet a few clients in my spare time and it seems that this could be a company in the next few months, if not weeks. So I’d like to think that I am almost a pro, inexperienced and not so good, but a pro at least.

At the moment, my major single problem I can point out as web developer is Internet Explorer 6. If you have ever developed a website using CSS and complying with the standards of the WCC you know what I am saying.

Let’s have a look to the statistics on how web browser versions are used in the net, the following graphic displays the percentage of the most used browsers out there:

data obtained from www.netapplications.com

The graphic shows how IE6 is receding against IE7, a logic updating process since Microsoft automatic updates are included in most Windows installations. Anyone with a little knowledge of strategy could tell you that this graphic shows something else.

Even if the sum of this two versions of IE still account for almost an 80 percent of all browsers, this is the lowest rate for IE in years. There is a window of hope for all the other major browsers, name them Firefox, Safari and Opera. Now the main reason that IE6 is still there is us, developers. Every time I modify a CSS stylesheet to be compatible with the weird rendering of IE6 I am helping old Bill to get more dollars in his pocket, also I am perpetuating the martyrdom of every developer by supporting this platform.

The thing is that we are supposed to be the experts yet we are manipulated in a way that we have to do it to satisfy our customers. I believe there is a chance here to tell the people to stop supporting IE6 as soon as possible. I already started so why you can’t.

Why? Well if we stop developing for IE by politely telling our customers (which supposedly came to us to ask for advice) that the platform is insecure, unsafe, unstable and that MS itself won’t be supporting for long time, we may have a chance that they will listen.

I was recently developing a website for a Pizza Restaurant here in Brighton. I follow my normal steps:

1. My designer handed me Photoshop design with the website look.
2. I created a temporary page (XHTML and CSS) with the look suggested by the designer. (just a background and a polite message to future users really).
3. I code the home page layout, using appropriate semantics and XHTML with BBedit.
4. I started a CSS stylesheet (BBedit again).
5. I opened Firefox 2 (my testing browser) to start testing my CSS styles.
6. I used the Firefox Developer Bar to test the XHTML and CSS. I tested with the W3C standards.
7. Once I was happy with the home page design I showed to the client in a private testing server. I kept the temporary page as intro page, suggesting the client to use Firefox as browser for testing purposes, I even added a link to Firefox and clear instructions on how to download and install it.
8. After the approval from my client I proceeded to complete the website adding other pages and the required styles for the new pages.
9. I used the W3C (XHTML and CSS) testing facilities thorough, as well as other tests like accessibility (WAI and Section 508)
10. I tested the complete website browser compatibility using Firefox, Safari and Opera.

All I had from this ten steps is joy and satisfaction, I really like being a web developer in these terms. The website requirements were very simple so this is an easy example, no complicated scripting or internet applications for this Pizza website, just a simple static website.

After having the site working, complying with standards and displaying beautifully over 20 percent of the world browsers I knew that this wasn’t finished. My personal hell of each project had just started. Now I had to adapt my design to Internet Explorer.

When I tried to load this website in IE6 I just wanted to cry, it was rendered completely different to the other browsers, anyway as expected. I noticed that IE7 doesn’t create as many problems as IE6. Creating an alternative IE7 stylesheet was not a problem, a few extra lines in an external CSS and a conditional comment was enough to fix the problem. But IE6 is another beast on its own. I tried to add extra lines to an external IE6 stylesheet but I wasn’t going anywhere. The site was just rendered too different in IE6 and to straighten it up I would have had to redesign entirely the main stylesheet, crazy non-sense, anyway why would want to use IE6? It’s full of bugs, unsafe, and outdated.

My solution for this site, I used the same conditional comments to create a page exclusively for IE6. Now every time a user tries to load the Pizza site with IE6 will receive a message like this one:

“Webmaster Important MessageOur website doesn’t support Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), our strong advice is to download the latest version of Firefox (link) to see the website. You could see the website with the last version of Internet Explorer (IE7).If you want to enjoy the experience of surfing the web have a look at this two other browsers, Safari (link) and Opera (link). If you decide to keep using IE6 is our duty to tell you that you may putting all your information in risk. … ”

I am getting away with this one because I installed myself Firefox in my client’s computer and also because he trusted me, but nevertheless, he came to me asking for advice, what should I have done?Most customers will demand IE6 support but I believe we are not paid the extra bucks that represent supporting IE6 in our designs and since the trend shows that users will upgrade to a newer version sooner or later why don’t we experts push up a little so this users stop using IE and start using something else.

The browser market will be healthier, we will have better products (browsers, and websites too), and the most important thing for us developers, we’ll work a lot less for the same money.

There are many alternatives to Internet Explorer but I will name only the top 3, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Each one of these browsers are proved to be more effective, more secure, faster and complete than any current version (and maybe future versions too) of IE.

Firefox stands out of these three. If there is a direct competitor to IE dominance currently is Firefox. In some statistics it shows up to a 20% of total users in the web using Firefox as main browser. Firefox is part of the Mozilla Foundation, one of the world leaders in Open Source development. Firefox is here definitely to stay, so trying to switch IE users to Firefox is a good bet for the future of web development, it’s good for all of us as users and developers.

Safari will have its time, maybe is not ready yet but it will definitely come to it. Apple is growing at amazing rates despite the recessing period that the industry is going through. Apple legendary user centred approach captivates users with their sleek interfaces and easy of use. I love Safari and it my personal choice of browser. Safari used with Apple OS X is unbeatable in usability and elegance. Now we have Safari in the iPhone and it’s been a revolution so far. We’ll see how long it takes Safari to reach bigger share figures in the browser market.

Opera is like the best sport player who has never won anything. It’s a fantastic browser, probably the fastest out there. In usability terms it could well beat Firefox and challenge Safari, definitely a very well thought and design internet browser, but with a very tiny little share of the market.

My point is that we should be the ones who educate our clients and customers, show them what it’s good for them. Microsoft has its time and personally I think they blew it. This thing could (and should) go only one way: good bye IE, welcome something else better!!!

Jose Blas

Web Director
None Interaction Projects

PD: What do you think? Do you have any positive or negative experience regarding this issue? Please let us know, make a comment!!

MySQL is a multi-user SQL database management system, it was created in 1995 and first released in 1998. In ten years of history it has became the first choice of use for more than 11 million installations. The statistics for total number of users are difficult to predict but there is a fact, MySQL is one of the most used applications in the open source world.

That’s why we have presented a plan to develop a very interesting game. There will be more details soon but all I can tell you is that is an Open-Source game, for the Linux platform, and with the remote controls of the Wii…doesn’t it sound really cool?

We will be looking for help with the project in the form of collaborations, anything will be really welcome. We are setting up a website with forum, support for iCal calendars, and a collaborative environment. This project will involve lots of work, and there will be rewards…

Drop us a line, or contact us for more details.

Thanks,

ijoselito

None Interaction Member

I am in a awkward position you see. I know the potential that we all have, if just we could pull this one it would be amazing. I have been following the beginners case book, name it undercharging, working extra hours beside my bed, taking all the hassle off my customers in things like setting up Outlook for them…start up a software development company like this sucks!

Certainly we weren’t in a position of doing it any other way. Most of us work in the lower job positions there, at the end of the day we are immigrants in this country. I arrived here 4 years ago and boy, I must have used my days here to get to this point. In my way I learned languages (English among them), computing skills, managing skills, how to put up with some people (priceless skill), and many more things. At the time I started this our only assets were our skills and a couple of computers.

Today we have capital enough to start setting up the company and a few clients in our assets. Our portfolio has a small amount of work but the quality of it stands out, we are getting valuable data from our customers and we can assure them that our work and service will satisfy their needs with excellence.

The last customers to enjoy the quality of the service with us are Devon French and Kingsway Pizza. Both of them had very special requirements, and both are very happy with their products. We will continue supporting these websites to ensure they both maintain its appearance and usability throughout the service.

The web designed for Devon French is an state-of-art implementation of XHTML, CSS, and Flash. The web is prepared to allow Mr. French to create an online shop in top of the framework. The requirements for this web were very special. Mr. French is a entrepreneur trying to set up his business, pretty much like us, so patience and communication have been key skills throughout the project. You can visit the website to see the results.

www.devonfrench.com

Kingsway Pizza is an Italian restaurant in Hove seafront. Situated in the basement of the cozy Kingsway Hotel, they wanted to launch a pizza delivery campaign for their business. Their key for this campaign was their new website which had to be delivered in a really short period of time and with very limited resources and, in general, budget.

We have created this stunning website is less than 2 weeks. The functionality of the site is excellent, it loads in fractions of a second, it provides a solid platform for launching other campaigns, and it has been delivered using only standards in XHTML and CSS, again. We have integrated a googlemap in it and it’s actually really cool. You can get directions and it works even in the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.

You can visit the website and tell us what you think.

 www.kingswaypizza.co.uk

We have a few more projects in scope but I can’t tell you everything here, why don’t you register with us and we’ll may even have some work for you…What are your skills?

Thanks,

ijoselito

None Interaction Member

We are currently working to present (finally) the fashion design website www.devonfrench.com. We have been working on this project for the last 5 months and it seems that we are almost ready to publish it. We will post here as soon as is finish.

One of the members that has actively collaborated with us in the development of devonfrench.com is Nathan, of Quadrivium Audio. We are delighted with the work that he has done, sure he will be with us in more projects to come.

Our latest signing is Karim Larbi. He is like a family member for us. He will be in charge of bringing us customers and contracts.

We started this thing with the idea of creating a network of freelancers. If you are a designer or developer and your skills are rusting away, maybe it is time to contact us and see how you can help to build this network.

If you are a customer looking for innovating solutions we can provide diverse services, from website design and programming, to enterprise applications, multimedia presentations or games. Stay tune for new updates about exciting projects.

Thanks!

I would like to share my experiences with WD with you all.

I bought 2 WD external drives last year, an 120GB passport and a Mybook Pro Edition 250GB. I was quite happy with the performance. 

To be fair, I am a Computer Games student (I would like to do software engineering after that) and I do a lot of stuff with my hardware, I really use it a lot. I do like good quality hardware (and software), that’s why I have 5 Macs, an Apple Cinema Display, and other pricey gadgets. 

The 120GB passport drive was a cheap external drive for my Macbook (only has 60GB). I used to travel with my 40GB pictures library and my 50GB music library plus some movies and the occasional project that I wanted to show off with. The original files were stored in my iMac 24″ 250GB hard drive (which I trust). 

As my iMac hard drive was getting full with my files I sought an external solution to free some space in the populated hard drive. Macs make extensive use of virtual memory so having free space in your hard drive can make a big difference in performance. I bought the MyBook Pro Edition 250GB from a local retailer. I wasn’t looking for the best deal, but for the best performance and reliability possible. I was advised to buy it because its triple interface would allow me to use it with my Mac’s firewire 800 connection, that means fast.

Here is where my mistake comes. I put all my valuable data and files into that drive. For me I wasn’t doing wrong because in fact I had another copy of most of the data, stored in the passport drive. Both of the drives were formatted to HFS journaled (the OS X file system) before I put all my data in them.

Performance like it wasn’t as good as having all the data stored in my iMac but it was good enough. One of the greatest things about Macs is that they are so easy to connect to each other. So I have a network at home and all my drives are accessible from every location. My PC friends (sorry I don’t want to create controversy!) seem amazed every time they come home, and they think that I am sort of a genius (far from reality, it really is easy). The drives just worked fine for a while.

Then last christmas arrived. My girlfriend took the Macbook to her holidays with the family. She went to Spain for a week, and she took the passport drive with her so she could show off her latest designs (she is a designer). Also she wanted to have the pictures, music, and movies. When she arrived to Spain and connected the passport drive to the computer it didn’t work. She called me and we tried some troubleshooting solutions over the phone but the drive was dead. Without any warning signs or anything like the drive was DEAD. 

When she came back, I had a look at the drive to confirm what she told me, DEAD. Luckily the drive was still in guarantee so I order a replacement (RMA) from WD through their website. I used the standard replacement option (BIG MISTAKE) and I send them the drive carefully shipped and packed. That was the 5th of January and the drive was 8 months old (bought it from Amazon).

Two days later my MyBook drive failed in exactly the same fashion. It just stopped working. No scratching noises or anything, just DEAD. This drive was only 6 months old. It was carefully placed in a shelf to avoid the computer head and other vibrations. I really looked after it. No scratches in the surface, no overheating, really really well looked after. This time I was furious. I didn’t have time to complete another copy of my data and suddenly I had lost everything. My university projects, my freelance projects, the music, the movies, 40GB of pictures, mostly of them irreplaceable. That was really an annoying thing to happen. 

So this time instead of an “Standard RMA” request I decided order an “Advanced RMA”, the difference is that they would charge me 300$ of my credit card and then they would send me a replacement drive. After receiving the replacement I was required to return the FAULTY drive to them (with all my data) in order to get my 300$ back. I honestly didn’t know what to do. If I’d gave them the drive I would lose my data, if I’d kept it would be 300$ poorer. 

I researched the Internet looking for information, this is when I found you guys, I really feel for you all. I browse the WDC website. I found information about “data recovery partners”, I contacted the centres close to my location (UK). The cheapest solution they could offered me was £300 (about 600$) because I was an student and the WD discount (10% total). So clearly not my solution, I mean I value my data but, was there a better solution than 600$? 

I contacted a local data recovery company formed by young Mac users, they offered me to have a look at it for £60 (roughly 120$) but by doing so I would void the WD guarantee, losing my right to have a non-faulty product. I couldn’t move in this direction. I emailed WD but no response back. Have anyone of you had any response from WD by email? 

I waited. The 15th of January I received an automated email from WD saying that they had received the passport drive (remember I sent it ten days before) and that the information could take up to five days to be updated in the website. Also I noted that they had shipped a replacement drive for the MyBook and it was on its way to me. Four days later I received the replacement drive. I had learn in their website that they sometimes used different drives to replace, I was expecting a new model with a bigger capacity (so naive) as compensation for the damages and inconveniences caused. In this case the drive was exactly the same model (250GB Pro Edition). 

At first I thought I did well by not sending them the FAULTY drive first, because at least I could use the same packaging they send me to return it. So this doesn’t seemed a bad idea after all. Then something unexpected happen. I test the new drive. I used all the interfaces, first USB, then FW400, and finally FW800. Well the results were terrible. USB and FW800 worked straight away, FW400 WOULD NOT WORK. 

At this point, if you are interested on a FW400 external drive for your Mac forget about WD, it just doesn’t work.   

I was interested in the FW800 though so I started using it by formatting the drive to the right file system (HFS+) for my requirements. This is a quite regular procedure that it’s documented in both WD and Apple support sites, I wasn’t doing any wrong. Within ten minutes of use the drive DIED. Not even copying anything, nothing, just DEAD. Like the other drives before the problem didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the drives but rather with the power supply or the components of the case, it just didn’t have electric power, it didn’t turn on the lights or make any noise, DEAD. 

I wasn’t up to wait for response to my emails from WD, so I researched and I found several UK Tech support phones (0800-960249 but you’ll need the Personal Service Number for your drive, and 00311204467651, I used the latest) in the old boxes and papers that I kept my girlfriend away from (she would dump them). I called the number an this is what happen:

- I contact a very kind person from their support team, who actually listened to me, and also provide with answers to my problems. His name was James Wareham.

- I told him everything about my problem, my data, my three faulty drives, my economic situation which prevented me from using a £300 worth recovery service, and about my knowledge and ability to recover the data myself.

- James agreed (in behalf of WD) to allow me to keep the original drive with no charges, so I could either recover the data by myself or by a local service provicer.

- James agreed to send me a NEW replacement (not a refurbished) drive. The one he sent me looked new, the previous one had the surface all scratched and was clearly not new. I received the drive within 5 days and at the moment is still running (there is nothing important in it, so pretty much a useless drive if it wasn’t because I am using it as scratch drive for photoshop cs3).

- James arranged a courier to pick up the faulty drive from my house. The service was paid by WD, the next day I had a courier from UPS (best couriers around) to collect the hard drive.

You’ll tell me of bad luck, I don’t believe in such a thing, what I do believe is that WD is letting down its customers by bad quality manufacturing and ever worse customer service, even if they managed to fix it at the very end.

After all this hassle I finally ended up my relationships with WD, boy I couldn’t be happier. Now I am thinking, which drives should I buy? I do need some extra storage so I am ready to try something else. I have purchased a couple of LaCie 500GB-USB2. They are really cheap, £120 for 1TB. I am going to give them a chance until I find a professional solution that fits my needs, and my budget!

I hope this helps someone, please feel free to leave your comments… 

Until last month, the maintenance work required to run my system in an optimum way was the odd research to find new tools or just applications that would fit with my requirements. One month ago I first got a copy of Leopard and I was ready to test it. Or was I?

I did installed the copy of Leopard in my second laptop ( the one under the bed ) and hey! this beta version was rock solid apparently. I ran a few tests, all the important ( for me CS3, BBedit & FCS) applications were running, obviously iLife and iWork 08 would run as soft as hot butter in their own environment, so I didn’t think about it as I rushed to install it onto my first laptop ( the one in the stand ). After the installation which did run very smooth, everything seemed to be working. The first crash was Parallels. The software was about to be updated to be Leopard compatible but when I tried to run the last update of Parallels I had a “blue screen” and after that the whole Parallels installation when off. I followed the instructions in the Parallels website and some other forums but I didn’t manage to get it back to work. I think that there was something wrong with the permissions in the beta version of Leopard because after a couple of days the OS did became a little bit unresponsive sometimes and it would create a fair amount of error messages and application crashes.

Now you are thinking “that was a beta version”, and that’s true, it was the BETA version. Other problems were low WI-FI signal (I have an AirPort Extreme Station set up to use the ‘n’ protocol), Time Machine errors while backing up, display mode “lid-closed” never worked, and the odd Safari hang.

Friday 26th, October. Leopard is released to the public. Monday 29th, October, I went to the closest provider to buy a copy. That was most reasonable solution, or that’s all I wanted to do really. I started installing my copy of Leopard and the first thing was to make sure I wasn’t going to lose any files. Ok, done, the “Archive and Installed” function option did very well, OK, very smooth now, that’s it! Installation superb. Let’s see my applications, umm all fine, very good. Let’s see Parallels, umm very nice, it’s all working!, wait a second….sorry I have to restart because there was a “blue you have to restart your computer screen”…..and another one…..and another one. Well in just one day I have to restart my computer more that in the last two years, that’s worrying. The reasons, kernel panics “normal in the first version” of an OS, but not what we Apple users like to have from the Cupertino firm.

So I am keeping an eye on what’s happening, the Leopard is staying in my desk for the moment because I just can’t live without its neat new features…

Jose

Today is a great day, we have been looking for this for a while and now this is our chance to shine. Two new projects already agreed and running: ZONEone Club Wear, and Stunningarts.org.

The first one is the UK based fashion desiger Devon French, who is preparing the website to launch his range of handmade high quality club wear designs for 2008. The quality of the finishings and the materials of this brand is outstanding, and its original designs will made future customers stare in awe.

We are designing the website, and I can promise this one is going to be really good. We have agreed to work in this project for the next few months and we’ll be making an scalable solution that should be running soon. I will keep updates about the project’s latests as I am already working some extra content for our collaborators (guys I want to hear you). Keep an eye here, there is a lot of work coming now.

The other project is a remake of the online art gallery based in Brighton, Stunningarts.org. We’ll be updating the current site, keeping the simple structure but implementing new technology behind the scenes.

The site is a MS-FrontPage site very simple, with a few gallery where pictures of the art sold are displayed. We’ll create a similar looking site (don’t worry we’ll improve the look as well) but with PHP and MYSQL. This combination of scripting language and database will remain unknown for most of the users navigating through the interface, but its power will enhance the site with file uploading capabilities and an easy to use administration interface.

Anyone willing to earn some extra money and collaborate with the development?

Thanks,

ijoselito.

At the moment I can’t tell you more about this project, but I will post soon with more news.

Watch the interactive presentation:

The future of computers in education.

The years to come must bring not only better performance rates but accessibility and adaptability as well as deal with other important concerns of the IT industry in general and the education community.

One of the main issues concerning this and every other industry is the environment. Policies and regulations should be deal to aim to provide an environment-friendly education at all cost.

Accessibility is, or it should be, nowadays one of the main concerns in the IT industry as well as in the educational field. By law each individual should be able to access the information available whether if she is in a school or a website. Designers shall treat this issue with clever solutions fully accessible, still well looking and attractive.

Accessibility means better interaction and here is where some of the most exciting research goes. Multi-touch screens and user-friendly GUI are already being developed so they should be available soon for the mainstream education community.

A bigger embrace of the open-source resources available could improve the quality of both the research and the educational area. Using open-source applications and VLE means less spending in expensive OS and application licences and allow the students to discover how the systems that they use are developed, even to improve and customise them.

Better accessibility, better interfaces, better security, would be the three major improvements outside the feature pure list likely to be: greater speeds (processors, downloads, graphics…).

Conclusion.

Big is the discussion about how to make open-source systems profitable so they can fit in this consuming world, true it’s that education should be free of financial pressures or monopolies and is in it the foundations of tomorrow’s future. As big companies come and go drown by the stock markets ups and downs, Education should remain impartial and here is where it comes open source.

In recent years it has been seen an attempt from some of the major companies in the are to monopolise the growing markets in the Education area. Some of the improvements made through these supporting companies have been major improvements too.

Still there is a sense of underachievement among the communities. The current systems have been iterating for a while now and nevertheless they haven’t achieved a good level of usability and accessibility for the students, neither for teachers and tutors. A revolution in the concept of interaction between computers and users is needed in order to improve the quality of the services offered.

Here in the Uk students of all years have been included in e-learning environments and have improve their education, but not to forget that still there is a lot of work to do to make a better, impartial, independent, greener, educational system that would prepare students for a better future.

Bibliography

All the web pages visited within April 2007.
general research on history of Learning Environments:

Butler, J. 1997. A history of Information systems and technology. [online]. (http://www.tcf.ua.edu/AZ/ITHistoryOutline.html) [accessed 2007]

wikipedia 2007a. History of Virtual Learning Environments. [online]. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments) [accessed 2007]

Feldstein, M. 2007. E-literate, what I learnt about e-learning, online. [online]. (http://www.mfeldstein.com). [accessed 2007]

Mackie, Sara. 2004. VLE tracking – shepherd to the flock or big bad wolf. [online]. (http://www.alt.ac.uk/alt-c.ppt). [accessed 2007]

ukGov, 2007(uk government). Education and learning. e-learning. [online]. (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/AdultLearning/LearningOutsideTheClassroom/DG_4016860). [accessed, 2007]

The big players of the industry.

In 1997 Blackboard Inc. was founded as a consulting firm. By this year all the features that are included in the Virtual Learning Environment offered by Blackboard as we know it today, were up and running in different systems of similar characteristics all around the globe. Almost ten years later a series of patents filed for Blackboard Inc. on “Internet-based education support systems and methods” claimed that they have invented all those features. The patent was later withdrawn and Blackboard forced to admit the merits of the open-source community and liberate some of the code behind their system. (wikipedia,2007a)

Digitalbrain plc, has been one of the most successful learning platforms here in the UK since the late 90’s. The Digitalbrain learning platform was one of the first to be designed using a user-centric approach (wikipedia, 2007a) which lead to many companies focusing in the needs of the users.

Angel, webCT and Desire2Learn are other two examples of Enterprise e-learning software, here called Learning Management Suites(LMS). These companies are among the most successful in the current market, but as well as tailored LMS and expensive enterprise software we can find some companies offering free applications of similar characteristics, the likes of Moodle or Sakai.

It has to be mentioned the impact of software companies like Microsoft itself, search engines like Google, and hardware makers like HP or Apple has had in the education industry. Microsoft Office is among the most used application in the educational fields. Same for other companies who have strong influence in campus and research centres.

The Open Source alternatives.

Communities based in open-source, like the Moodle organisation or Sakai project have many advantages over private companies. The lack of funds is balanced with the human resources and the freedom of the open-source developing style. Users are free to develop and distribute (under the GNU license) their modifications, improvements and bug fixes of Moodle versions since 1999. Moodle is only second to Blackboard in popularity nowadays, and it’s popularity increases at a good rate.

The open source companies offer a completely different approach. “The stated philosophy of Moodle includes a constructivist and social constructionist approach to education, emphasising that learners (and not just teachers) can contribute to the educational experience in many ways.” (wikipedia, 2007a)

Sakai is another example of open-source VLE. This project started in early 2004 with the meeting between five institutions: Indiana University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Michigan and Uportal. Each of this institutions contributed with their works in course management systems and e-learning projects. The first version to came to the light was in 2005 and included many of the usual features: document distribution, gradebook, discussions, live chat, assignment uploads, and online testing, as well as collaborative tools, a wiki, mailing list distribution and archiving, and a RSS reader (wikipedia, 2007a).

In the general support office-like open-source community there are all sort of alternatives to “expensive” software enterprise solutions. Among those which have impacted in the education community are OpenOffice, ganttProject, filezilla and many others.

Why use computers in education?

Certainly the access to resources provided for the Internet is a great advance for the teaching community. After a period of adaptation and acceptance of new technologies, the implementation of e-learning environments in educational centres provide with an extra enhancement of the students capabilities.

Among the improvements already achieved are: economising time teaching staff, provide the students with a GUI dedicated for their increasing research on the Internet, ensure quality control, facilitate accessibility to campus-based students and distance on-line courses, promote the use of the electronic resources available for the students.

The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) has provided some research on students performance over VLE. In a recent report publish on the Internet they show figures that prove (citation needed here ) the impact of VLE in students. In the graphic in the next page they show how students whom used the system more regularly achieved better grades. The report is based in a study over students at the Bristol university using the Blackboard VLE in two different modules.

The authors of the report pointed to an improvement overall but nevertheless they questioned if the possibilities of the systems are underachieved. (Mackie, 2004).

The UK government is fully supportive of e-learning environments since the early stages and offers updated links to institutions and general information from their website. (ukGov, 2007).

Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) is an agency of the Department for Education and Skills in the UK. Created in 1998, the Becta is in charge of controlling the equipment and e-learning strategies for UK schools and institutions.

• *Computers and Education Part I
• *Computers and Education Part II
• *Computers and Education Part III
• [ download a PDF version (zip file) ]
• [ view a PDF version (you'll need a PDF enabled browser like Safari) ]

Investigation in computers have been one the main successes of many Universities and the greatest discoveries and advances in the field have traditionally come from the educational backgrounds. In this report we try to identify the keys for computer development in the educational field by looking at the past and the present of the industry. This report analyses the biggest players in the game and their role in the past and present, to try to work out a possible scenario in the future coming.

The beginning of the computer age.

Computers were first linked to educational purposes through the use of mechanical devices to help humans with numerical calculations. Early devices like the abacus(around 875 ad) or slide rule (aprox. 1600 ac) might have been used in some scholar form in the past. By the end of the nineteenth century early models of what we define as computers today started to appear worldwide among these machines we found the Analytical and the Difference Engines which would introduce the Binary logic and Fixed programs that could operate in real time (butler, 2007).

Telecommunication was a new field then, the development in this new science was always related to the development of new computers. In 1880 Herman Hollerith created the first form of electromechanical computer, 10 years later IBM (International Business Machines) was founded. In the years to come research and investigation in universities was frenetic. British scientist used a report on the design of the EDVAC (electronic discreet variable computer, Von Neumann’s 1940) to develop and operate a machine which could store and run a program, the Manchester Mark I, in June 1948. Universities were at the top of the research but computers weren’t them used as a medium to teach or educate but just as a new science (butler, 2007)

Most of the students those days were still using the traditional pen and paper method, and lectures were tutor-students based with little graphic support rather that the occasional drawing in the blackboard and early forms of projected images from slide-projectors. It was in the early 60’s when computers, networks and education were first linked by a project called PLATO by the University of Illinois (wikipedia, 2007a). The definition of the PLATO system by the University of Illinois read:

“An interactive educational computer system using text and graphics to teach a wide range of subjects. An early example of Computer Assisted Instruction.”(wikipedia, 2007a)
Although PLATO wasn’t very successful as a financial project it did set up the concepts of e-learning and pioneered such things as online forums, chat rooms, instant messages or remote screen sharing.

how e-learning systems were developed

After several iterations the PLATO system reached great innovative success, including multiuser capabilities, a tutor programming language, the monitor mode, notes, gaming capabilities. Much of today’s e-learning techniques were invented by then, they also open a battle to control e-learning environments as businesses, as big corporations came to play in this game, we all lose and won something at the same time.

A path of the history of e-learning environment has been traced by Michael Feldstein (Feldstein, 2007) in a wikipedia page where he revises the events that took part in the development of the concept.(wikipedia,2007a)

Although most of the research and investigation were in the United States. There were examples of early e-learning deployments in Universities in England, like the development of the language Pop11 at Sussex University which would later became Poplog. In other countries, As the networks grew, e-learning environments did became popular worldwide. (wikipedia,2007a)

The term e-learning was first used in the early 80’s with the arrival of networks and consumer computer power. There are several terms which define the combination of electronics and computers to help educate and provide learning environments; Computer-Based training, Computer Aided Instructions, On-line learning, Managed Learning Environment, Virtual learning Environment, they are all connected in the way that they are all computer and human interaction in a learning environment.

This is a list of the technologies that may be used or combine to achieve better results on a e-learning environment: Screencasts, ePortfolios, EPSS(electronic performance support system), Palm pilots, mp3 players, web-based teaching materials, multimedia and hypermedia, websites, discussion boards, collaborative software, email, blogs, wikies, text chats, computer aided assessment, animations, simulations, games, learning environment software, and the number is growing. (wikipedia, 2007a)

The impact of the consumer market in Education.

The 90’s brought a new era for computing, technology came more accessible to consumers and as the prices went down more and more schools and universities in the developed countries signed for a form of e-learning. Systems like PLATO were implemented in thousands of institutions and more systems were developed. In 1988 the Open University launched DT200, Introduction to Information Technology, with 1000 students per year.(wikipedia, 2007a)

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a young british engineer working at CERN in Switzerland created the concept that we have today of the Internet, he firstly described it as “web of notes and links”(wikipedia, 2007a). This would revolutionise the way students would learn in the future.

In the early 90’s in the consumer market companies like Microsoft and Apple were taunting at the IBM corporation, which at the time were almighty. Both, Microsoft and Apple came from and University backgrounds, most of the successful companies in computing after this era, like Google, were founded in an university background. The consumer market would be a very important part of the development of e-learning environments. As computer power grew for consumer users it became easier an affordable, to develop and implement on-line systems. By this stage, almost every school, college or university would have their own computer related courses, and some institutions started teaching in a online environment for some of their courses.

As a example of a user-centred approach, I prepared this document called “Design for Users” as part of my work at university. I think is interesting to clean the dust of the cover and show this document here, you can check “Design for Users” by clicking here . There is also a report on one of the products featured in the first part.

Links:

• Design For Users
• Design For Users Part B, the report.

Also below here you can check a small keynote with some testing carried over the application Pages, from Apple.

The company in this case, presented us with special schedule requirements. This website has been developed in just 3 days, with such time restraints we are happy to conclude that the customer has been satisfied with the quality of our work. The work featured the following tasks:

• A new logo for the company.
• A website composed by three pages: home, products and contact.
• Setup and configuration of domain name and hosting service.
• An animation SWF has been added to the final design.

The website has been design according with the WWC standards and it’s compliant with XHTML and CSS we will be able to modify it or improve it very easily. The animation is very simple, we are thinking of opening a contest with this theme, would you like to send us your version of the animation?