Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

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>

Here’s some TV commercials I think are really good:

• Burger King - The latest TV spots use that big, goofy “King” character in different situations. They’re kinda weird, but quite memorable. Here’s a low-quality bit of the BK football commercial.
• Any Victoria’s Secret commercial - Professional, tasteful, and sexy. A recent features legendary model Heidi Klum singing along to a cute holiday jingle. [view Victoria’s Secret ad]
• Casino Royale - The commercial for the new James Bond film does a great job of (and the movie’s good too). Couldn’t find the video on the web, but here’s the Casino Royale trailer.
• Pepto Bismol - The classic stomach remedy has a great ad with old-school monsters and superheroes, and a very funny but effective jingle. [view Pepto Bismol ad]

Bad and Overplayed TV Commercials >

I hate SPAM. And it’s worse every time this year–the holiday shopping season. Because of the web development and various projects I do, I maintain several web site addresses. And no matter how hard one tries, he’ll always get spammed. Just overnight I received 75 spam emails, and 98 the night before! Don’t know how many I get during the day because I delete them most times I check my email. This has become a bad habit since there’s spam in my email box every time I check it…

Here are some goofy subject lines from my spam:

• Propelled Dude
• Delacruz
• Ham Insider Information
• Three Steps to the Software You Need at the Prices You Want
• Confirmation link

The Office 2.0 Experiment article on Vitamin really got me thinking about how business and technology is changing, particularly open-source technology and web applications. It’s so cool how anyone can easily and very inexpensively create an online office with all the required services. The list of tools in the Vitamin article is good, but here’s some that I recommend, all of which are FREE:

• OpenOffice - Open source office suite. Can open, edit, and save MS Office files.
• Nvu - Web authoring application, XHTML editor. I feel the best of its kind.
• CutePDF - Create PDFs online. Nuff said.
• W3C Schools - Training on all aspects of web development. Very good tutorials, quizzes, etc.
• GMail - Great email and calendar service.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Create office documents and collaborate with others online.
• K7 - Fax and Voicemail.
• Box - 1GB of free file storage. Pay small amount for 5GB.

Went to Chicago over the weekend. The trip was half business, half pleasure. It was good to visit the windy city again; it’s been about a decade since I’ve last been there. You can view pictures of my Chicago trip on Flickr. Here’s a summary of the trip:

• Went to a cool jazz/blues club called Andy’s Jazz Club.
• Ate at a trendy Thai/French restaurant called VTK (Vong’s Thai Kitchen). Also drank a Tiger and a Sapporo!
• Saw some of the financial district which was pretty neat.
• Paid a whopping flat parking fee of $22 at the Navy Pier, ugh!
• There are Starbucks everywhere which is great, but can get expensive!
• Went to the Apple store on Michigan Ave.
• Watched the Michigan-Ohio State football game at the ESPN Zone sports bar.
• Traffic wasn’t bad except a major detour for some construction on I-94 on the way there.
• The Sears Tower is 1,450 feet (443 meters) high–1,730 feet (520 meters) including twin antenna towers.

“A Brief History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads” is a really cool article by PC World, so I just had to share. It’s about past television ads for computers and contains many of them embedded on the page to view (via YouTube). The commercials include Atari 400, Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh, Tandy 1000, IBM, and many more. Brings back the old days when I was a kid and my brother and I would write funny BASIC programs and save them on a special cassette tape recorder (seriously). And didn’t we all just love the dot matrix printers, monocrome monitors, and powerful 133Mhz processors?

Here are a few useful web tools that are definitely worth recommending:

• Google Docs & Spreadsheets - write documents online and even collaborate with other authors
• Shopify - easy shopping cart service
• MarkupMaker - cool tool for creating structure of an XHTML document
• FavIcon From Pics - make FavIcon’s right on this web-based service