Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

My long-time “flagship” web site O.D. Mag is gone. It was an online magazine that I created with friend Mike Pfeiffer (see Most People Are DJs) way back in 1996. It featured poetry and prose, music articles, movie reviews, etc. The web site spawned from the O.D. fanzine that we has published during the two years prior.

O.D. had gone through several design revisions and had become quite interactive (with the power of PHP!). But the site was requiring too much time to maintain, and without making a buck (gotta feed the kids). So sorry to see you go, Opinion Dominatrix.

I’ve canceled a hosting account with CIHost that hosted the O.D. Mag site and others. I wouldn’t recommend them, try StartLogic. It was quite the hassle to cancel the account since it was connected to other projects. I had to move another web site and domain from this account and had to move a fair amount of files to another server for my Web Axe podcast. Then I had to fax a confirmation form to CIHost.

So now it’s all done. Good-bye O.D. Mag, it’s been fun.

Here’s a cool slideshow of some strange characters I created quite a while ago:
View my old, funny digital artwork on Flickr!

So you want to embed an interactive Google Map on your web page? Here are the basic steps/instructions to do so.

1) Go to the Google Maps API page and request a free API Key. You’ll get the key and some sample code. It’s good for all pages under one domain. Keep this open and/or save the page content.

2) Open the HTML page for the map, and copy the linked JavaScript from the sample code into the document head. This is the first SCRIPT tag.

3) Copy the load() function from the sample code into the HTML page or into an externally linked JavaScript file. This is in the second SCRIPT tag.

4) Call the load() function in the body onload event, and the GUnload() function in the body unload event.

5) Replace the longitude and latitude values in the load() function with the values of your location on your map (these are the two numbers after “GLatLng”). You can find the longitude and latitude of your location. Here are some sites to help with this:

• GeoCoder
• Maporama
• Find the location in Google Maps, the run this code from the browser’s location bar (paste and hit Enter or Go): javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

6) One way or another, be sure to have alternative content (such as a static map) when JavaScript is not available on the client side (browser). A popular method is the NOSCRIPT tag.

You’re done! check out this Google Map example on this salon web site that I did. Go to the Google Map documentation for more details.

For the Web Axe podcast/blog on web accessibility, I’ve made some good contacts in the last couple days. I’m lining up interviews with a few excellent folks in the field. I’m really looking forward to it.

• Mike Cherim, web developer focused on web accessibility, WordPress, PHP.
• Joe Dolson, web developer specializing in web accessibility.
• Mark McKay, founder of SpokenText which is an online application that creates audio files from computer files such as Word and PDF.

Here are some good songs that are in another language (other than English):

• “Der Kommissar” (Falco, Greatest Hits) German
• “Jardim” (Henri Salvadore, Room With A View) French
• “Girl From Ipanema” (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Finest Hour) Portuguese
• “El Clavo Y La Cruz” (The Plugz, Repo Man Sountrack) Spanish
• “Tour De France” (Kraftwerk, Tour de France Soundtracks) German

So like many Americans, we watch a fair amount of television in my household. And that means a lot of commercials. Some good, but many bad. And some overplayed to the extent that I change the channel to anything during the 30-seconds.

Here are some really bad and overplayed TV commercials:

• Jessica Simpson’s DirectTV (satellite television) - I haven’t seen the movie “Dukes of Hazzard”, but I’m assuming Jessica Simpson is acting like her role as Daisy in this commercial for DirectTV. Either way, I can’t stand it–it’s so corny! Why would I pay attention to what a dumb blond has to say about high-tech television service?
• Geico Caveman (auto insurance) - talk about overplay; I’m so sick of the “cavemen” and the “gecko”. At first these commercials were new and hip, now they’re just completely obnoxious. The “caveman” should just start a blog to keep the marketing going with those actually interested.
• Disaronno (liquor) - I don’t think that anyone stupid enough to fall for this sexually blatant commercial has enough money to purchase this liquor. (But I must be wrong as these ads are still running.) The woman in the ad is not even attractive.
• Rock Financial/Quicken Loans (Michigan) - These commercials for mortgages are so overplayed it’s not cool. Yes, I like the Detroit Pistons NBA basketball team, but man, are they ruining it for me with their partnership. And it’s not just TV, it’s radio, billboards, etc. If I hear or see David Hall and that terrible rock jingle one more time I’ll puke! Don’t do business with this Rock Financial either (that includes parent company Quicken Loans)–they’re terribly expensive, then they pass your mortgage on to a completely different company.

Good TV Commercials>