Infinite Web Design

I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the years studying, debating, and working to understand the creation, distribution, and use of information. I strongly believe in the freedom of information. Freedom of speech, thought, and conscience are not just nifty ideas they are the foundations of a just society and a happy life. Information and knowledge yearn to be free. Ideas have a need to grow and spread or wither and die based on their validity and usefulness.
Continue reading Freedom isn’t always fun

Yesterday I wrote about the Supreme Court stifling innovation. I went on and on about the personal responsibility of the individuals who use a product for illegal activities such as running over children with a car or copying music illegally using P2P clients. I’d like to address the other side of the coin now, the responsibility of people who build things.
Continue reading The Designer’s Responsibility

Ah, I love a good play on words… and I hate it when fools are in charge of very important things. In this case I’m referring to the recent United States Supreme Court decision regarding P2P file sharing services. This ruling makes a mockery of all sorts of common sense. Where to begin…

Personal Responsibility is for Chumps

I think the biggest lesson to be learned from this case is that the whole concept of competent individuals being responsible for their own actions is being thrown out the window and cheered by the masses as it splatters on the sidewalk below. This case hinges on the idea that makers of a product with a legitimate legal use should not be held liable for illegal uses of that product. It should have been open and shut. Our society has always protected companies from liability for an individual’s misuse of their products. Gun manufacturers are not liable when a hunter finds his wife cheating on him and shoots her or if he starts to pick people of on freeways. Ford and GM don’t get sued when some jerk decides to run over people for sport in a parking lot. Farmer Jack isn’t liable if I throw coconuts from their produce section at people’s heads. All of these examples are clearly the misuse of a product and only the individuals who perform the illegal actions should be held responsible.
Continue reading Stupidity Reigns Supreme

…vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or more simply, lock-in, is a situation in which a customer is dependent on a vendor for products and services and cannot move to another vendor without substantial switching costs, real and/or perceived. By the creation of these costs to the customer, lock-in favors the company (vendor) at the expense of the consumer.
–Lockergnome

So let’s ask ourselves who the fancy pants custom software or website we just built should favor — the customer or the developer? Hmmm, this is the blog for developers so perhaps the answer is the developer? Wrong. But neither is it the customer. This is a trick question and the answer is it should be fair to both parties. One of the ways to ensure that is to avoid lock–in of the customer’s data.
Continue reading Why to Avoid “Lock In”

The Google Blog posted an entry today revealing a feature that helps users get to their search results faster. It takes advantage of a feature that is present in the Firefox and Mozilla browsers. You can read more about how prefetching works on the Mozilla website.
Continue reading Google plays nicely with Firefox

I’m removing the entry on the W3CAG due to a mistake on my part regarding the scope of a non-disclosure agreement. I had thought that the material would be okay to post since it was taken from the W3C guidelines, not realizing that I had transformed it into an internal process that was protected under my contract. This was an unintentional breach of professional ethics and should serve as a lesson on how a little ignorance can harm others. To compensate for my mistake I promise to create a new tutorial on accessibility on my own time (using my own material) that will go up here this week. I apologize for any inconvenience this mistake may have caused.

In the meantime you may go to www.w3c.org to read their accessibility guidelines.

If you are looking for the information on validation go to validator.w3.org.

After reflecting on this for a little while I think it is important to note that, while such an error could seem trivial in this instance, it is important to be aware of your commitments to those you do business with and to always hold to your promises, particularly those regarding confidentiality. Trust and credibility can be lost through a seemingly small action and can be impossible to restore once they are lost.

As information professionals we must always try to be aware of the confidence placed in us by our employers and clients to safeguard their private information. In order to do our jobs effectively we must have access to a great deal of information, often of a sensitive or proprietary nature. Even unintentional slips like mine undermine the trust that has been placed in us. I hope that my story can serve as a cautionary tale for those of you who, like me, believe in the freedom of information and the sharing of knowledge but also bear a responsibility to those who you do business with to protect their private information.

There is another bill before Congress, proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, Patrick Leahy, Bill Frist, Tom Daschle, Barbara Boxer, and Lindsay Graham are all sponsoring a bill titled the Inducting Infringement of Copyrights Act which is essentially designed to roll back all of the progress that has been made since the Sony Betamax decision on the legality of VCRs.

This is a stupid idea. I hope that is clear enough for a Senator to understand, apparently the group listed above has little to no grasp of how copyright law is meant to work, or how any of the digital media technologies function. This law is an egregious example of how a few groups like the MPAA and RIAA can make huge campaign contributions and then parlay that money into ill advised, ill conceived laws.

These Senators are either complete fools or they are blatantly corrupt and I’m not sure which I’d prefer it to be. Such a law is akin to Prohibition, taking a common, legal, and everyday act and criminalizing it. Who do you know that hasn’t recorded a movie on a VCR to watch later, made a mix tape or CD for a significant other or for a road trip, or decided to back up their CDs onto their computer after replacing six scratched copies of the same disc?

This law is part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act family of laws that should be recognized as antithetical to the Constitution’s description of copyright. In no way will this promote the development of useful arts and sciences. This will stifle countless technologies that are used legally by millions because they could potentially be used for an illegal purpose as well. That clearly not what copyright law is meant for.

Furthermore, it goes against the most well known and fundamental precept of our legal system that we are all innocent until proven guilty. Laws such as the Induce Act assume that we will be co-opting all such technologies for the most illegal possible use rather than the countless useful and common legal ones. This is a slap in the face to every person in the country.

So join Google, Yahoo!, Intel, Verizon, eBay, Cnet, MCI, and dozens of other companies and countless individuals in fighting this and other offensive laws. Visit the EFF website and SaveTheiPod.com for more information on this and similar issues and to take action. Each of us has a voice and a responsibility to use it to fight irresponsible, unjust laws such as this one.

One of our responsibilities as professionals in the Information Age is to stand up and speak out when others are doing bad things that only we can understand. Most people don’t know or care about Digital Rights Management (DRM) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or other important issues that we are equipped to debate. They lack the time to learn about them and the technical knowledge to understand them in any but the most basic terms. Unfortunately, in many cases the people who make the laws regarding these issues are in the group that can’t understand them.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation works hard to make strong ethical and legal stands on important issues that affect not just techno-geeks but millions of everyday people who have no idea they are being affected until it is too late, and even then they don’t really understand how or why.

Go to their web site and register. Once you do you can read up on important issues and take action by writing to Congressmen and others involved. Don’t sit by while copyright is twisted and fair use is destroyed. Don’t sit by while reasonable expectations of privacy and due process are thrown away. Stand up, speak out, and fight for what is right.

This is not an article about the kind of shady accounting found at Enron or WorldCom or the anti-trust cases against companies like Microsoft. Rather, today I’d like to look at the ideals and world views that drive companies and individuals to certain destructive, ill-conceived behaviors in the business world. In particular, what drives some companies to embrace a cut-throat approach to doing business and others to take a more holistic, socially conscious approach. In the former category we find the organizations that ruthlessly squeeze their suppliers, undercut competitors, and lie to their customers to make an extra buck. In the latter group we find the companies that refuse to sell their customers personal information, that treat their employees generously, and that deal fairly and honestly with even their stiffest competition.

Let me provide some more concrete examples for us to examine. In dealings over the last few years with Verisign and Network Solutions I have been horrified at their actions. When trying to transfer the registration of a domain name to another registrar, who incidentally charged a third of the price for the same domain registration, they stalled and refused to cooperate in an effort to get a few extra dollars out of me for the privilege of not doing business with them. This is a process that should take at most a few minutes and it took months of phone calls and e-mails. In the end I had to give up and register a new domain name somewhere else. The point is not that they are shady, though they are, but to ask why they would behave like this.

In contrast, I recently dealt with another hosting company and registrar and I had to cancel some services that were no longer needed. This time the company in question, Hostcove, dealt with me fairly and had the process done in a couple of minutes. As a result I wanted to bring them my business in the future. Heck, I almost regretted taking down the site.

So, why would one company fight and scratch for months to hold onto a single domain registration that nets them all of $35 a year while the other quickly lets it go? Is the extra couple of dollars worth the ill will that I now fell toward Verisign and network Solutions? I will never voluntarily do business with them and I discourage others from working with these companies as well. I now regularly direct new business to Hostcove.

It seems that this is a matter of differences in perception of the world in which we operate. Verisign seems to perceive a highly competitive world of limited resources. This breeds a kill or be killed attitude. It also leads to deceptive, unethical, and destructive business practices. Hostcove looks at the world in a different way. Instead of an environment with limited resources where they perceive each interaction as an opportunity to build up themselves and their customers. Seeing success on the part of others does not indicate that they failed. They understand that economics is not a zero sum game.

It is not just businesses that have these attitudes. It occurs on an individual level as well. In my search for full time employment I have seen two distinct approaches to the competition for open positions. The job market is tight right now, meaning there are many applicants for each position. There are opportunities in the application process to try to undercut the competition or take a negative tack. This achieves two things, first it alienates potential colleagues in the form of the other applicants. These are your peers in your profession and you may end up dealing with them many times in the coming years. Putting them down or trying to undermine them now can bite you later. Second, it reveals that you are petty to your potential employer. Nobody wants coworkers that will hog credit, block promotions, and fester like an open sore in the office.

Reputations can be built and broken on little actions. Being respectful, sharing credit, and acknowledging the worth of others will end up elevating everyone in the end. You may lose out on a job opening or a few dollars from lost business in the short run, but in the end the reputation you build and the respect you earn will help your business or career thrive.

Do professional ethics play a role in your work? Have you had to deal with unethical actions on the part of the people you work with or work for? Does money always trump other considerations for you? I think that for web designers, usability professionals, and other information professionals ethical dilemmas can be serious and the consequences of our actions far reaching.

We deal with a great deal of information in our jobs, often of a sensitive, personal nature. We know names, addresses, e-mail addresses, credit card numbers, passwords, and other data. We have the opportunity to collect and access this information in the course of our daily work. We have real responsibilities to the people that such information belongs to. The consequences when an information professional betrays that trust can be dire.

I rarely, if ever, see discussions in forums, blogs, or online communities about ethics. I wonder if this is a result of unethical people being disinclined to participate in online communities or if people just don’t think about or talk about these things. So I would like to know, have any of you faced a situation where you have had to deal with others behaving unethically? Have you ever been asked to do something unethical on the job?

I once had the opportunity to help define the privacy policy for CIMdata as I developed a new registration system for the web site. This gave me a reason to discuss how we collect and use private information from customers and to clarify what we should and should not do with that information. In particular I was able to solidify our policy of not releasing the data to third parties. I think this was a really valuable discussion to have. I’m wondering if any of you have been through similar experiences or perhaps ones where the company really wanted to sell or distribute such data.