This is what happens when I text my dad to see if mum has written a birthday wish list, my dad has an IPhone with docScanner, my mum definitely doesn’t (though at least she has legible hand writing)!
Category Archives: Humor
I may be a geek….
Posted by Tommy on December 23, 2010
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…but that doesn’t mean I know everything about things with wires.
I was reading this comic from theOatmeal.com which illustrate really well what happens when people find out you work with computers.
It also shows peoples un-willingness to learn, for some reason, people have a mental-block to getting to grips with the tool that (i would estimate) over 50% of us now use on a daily basis at work. In 2005/2006 65 per cent of UK households owned a home computer [1], this must be well over 70% now. Why are all but the few (who are derided as ‘geeks’) willing to get to grips with using computers?
Is it to do with their usability or how complicated they are perceived to be? How many of the endless number of features do you use in Word or Excel for example?
I have often suggested Microsoft creates a Word light, containing only the basic features and formatting options, in particular it could do away with the fonts option and ‘force’ people to use styles.
Anyway, it is nearly Christmas so I’ll stop my moaning and wish you all a happy New Year. God Bless. Here’s an image to get you in the christmas spirit:
[1] National Statistics News Release 18 January 2007: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/efs0107.pdf [PDF document, 130KB]
Lift accessibility
Posted by Tommy on November 25, 2010
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I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to the accessibility of web sites and don’t really get too tired explaining to people why a PDF of a scanned-in document is a no-no. I always assumed that the accessibility of web-sites was still in its relative infancy compared to other industry’s.
Take lifts (elevators!) for example, according to wikipedia:
The first reference to an elevator is in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator, probably in 236 B.C.
Yes, you read that right, the lift was invented in 236 B.C.
Obviously lift technology has moved on somewhat and advances and additions have been made over the years since 236BC. Once such advancement is the addition of the audible announcement of the direction of travel, door status and floor position. The reason for this is for visually impaired lift users, who cannot see the electronic display indicating where and in which direction the lift is traveling.
In our building we’ve recently had some of our lifts replaced, it is these new lifts that I have noticed a change in the order of the announcements. They start by announcing the direction of travel and floor number before the lift doors have opened. The only people who can hear these announcements are the people already in the lift, surely they’re much more useful to the people who may be getting on the lift.
I’m probably being a bit picky but I would have thought lifts would come with a standard configuration which had been tested.
Have we learnt nothing in over 2000 years of lift design?
Content owner apathy
Posted by Tommy on January 20, 2010
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[Rant alert.]
My focus is mostly Intranets, however I sit next to our Web Team so often hear their grumblings of discontent, therefore I fairly confident what I am about to write translate to the world wide web as well.
We rely on subject experts to create and write content, often these subjects experts are policy officials with little understanding of what makes valuable web content. Most of the time, publishing content on the Intranet (or web) is a box ticking exercise and something done at the last minute. Very rarely do they think about the web when they are formulating and beginning to write their new policy. Often when you tell them about how people want web content and read the web you are treated to a sigh and a roll of the eyes and told to just ‘publish the content’.
Content owners often give the excuse that they’re too busy and hard pressed to worry about accessibility, well structured content and the user goals of people looking at their content. They’re apathetic to the concerns of us webmasters!
The result: a sprawling website of inconsistent, unstructured content which is too long to read and a nightmare to search and navigate. And who gets the blame for said poor website? That’s right, us webmasters.
[End of rant.]
How to create a media storm
Posted by Tommy on August 27, 2009
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