Month: December 2006

Net Neutrality

Kevin HallAsides, Business, Ethics

(via Donklephant) Net Neutrality is the principle that traffic to and from all website should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). They should not be allowed to slow down or speed up traffic based on what it is or whether they were paid a toll by the website operator. Basically, you paid for your connection to the internet and the people who ruin the website paid for their connection. The ISPs want to charge the web site providers an additional charge on top of that. The effect is that they can extort fees from richer companies and prevent new companies and new services from prospering. They can also use this technique to crush competitors such as when they […]

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Australian Court Rules Against mp3s4free.net

Kevin HallAsides, Ethics

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Federal Court Ruling against mp3s4free.net on appeal. The reporting indicated that this could hurt search engines, YouTube, bloggers, and anyone who might link to copyrighted material. However, I think that this may be overreacting to what is in essence a pretty reasonable ruling by the court. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am not a fan of the RIAA or draconian copyright enforcement. I am a staunch supporter of fair use and balancing the very real interests of the people who collectively grant copyrights via the government and the content creators who are trying to profit from their work. In this case the site was trying to skirt the […]

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John McCain Loses My Vote

Kevin HallBusiness, Content Management, Ethics, User Experience

For while he almost had me with his maverick attitude and independent slant. His talk about compromise and ethics reforms. His sudden decision to speak at Bob Jones University without holding to his earlier pledge to tell off the racists running the place was, well, disheartening. Now he has decided to push for a ridiculous legislation that essentially bans sex offenders from using any website that requires registration, including blogs, chat rooms, social networking sites, product review sites, e-Commerce sites, etc. and potentially levies 6 figure fines against individuals who don’t police their blogs’ comments tightly enough or turn in people who post offensive material in comments.

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Valour-IT – Laptops for Wounded Soldiers

Kevin HallAccessibility, Asides, General, Hardware

(via Boing Boing) Valour-IT is a non-profit that is providing wounded U.S. soldiers with laptops loaded with voice recognition software. These laptops help soldiers who are struggling to cope with new disabilities to communicate with family and friends and empowers them by providing a tool they can use even without the use of their hands. This is a great cause and well worth your support if you have even a few dollars to spare. You can donate online or by sending a check through the mail. This is a great opportunity to bring up again the topic of accessibility and how important it is that the web sites and software we build be made as accessible as possible to help […]

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Handling Mistakes

Kevin HallAsides, Design, Ethics, Web Design

At some point in time it happens to everyone, you make a mistake. Sometimes they are big, sometimes small and sometimes they are perceived by others to bigger or smaller than they are. How you handle your mistakes can make a big difference in your relationship with a client. There are no hard and fast rules for handling these things. You have to apply some judgment based on the people you are working with. Are they fixated on blaming someone or on fixing the the problem? If their focus is blame, then you are dealing with a dysfunctional, paranoid culture, the type of environment where CYA (Covering Your Ass) is the most important activity you can participate in. If their […]

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Websites That Don't Suck

BradUser Experience

I recently came across a great article that gives 14 of the biggest mistakes you can make in web design. The article makes sense and in my opinion is almost dead on. The video that is linked to at the end of point number three is great. It is a really simple video made by a guy named Matt Cutts. He talks about search engine optimization versus end user optimization. It seems that there are a lot of SEO companies out there these days but not a lot of EUO (end user optimization) companies. I don’t even know if EUO is an acceptable acronym but i like it, so i’m going to use it Kevin and I recently had the […]

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