It has been an interesting couple of decades watching language evolve rapidly around substantive, swift changes in our technological lives. The speed of innovations in technology has not always been met with a similarly quick development in language or, at least, in a consistent, agreed upon form of expression that we can all use to describe the same concepts. The announcement by the Associated Press last Friday that their recommended style guide for the phrase “Web site” will now be “website” would seem a small update, but reflects the enormity of change wrought in our lives by technology.

The human condition has always been illuminated in art and science and manifested through a persistent hunger to know more. For millennia, people have explored curiously the worlds around and within us and, along the way, produced momentous works of art, knowledge and scientific discovery. In tandem with those explorations and discoveries, the framework in which to discuss them has also required innovation. By definition, innovative concepts require innovative tags, labels, words and symbols to facilitate a conversation about them.

So, as we move from Web site to website and, most likely, from e-mail, e-commerce, e-anything to eeverything, consider also how our language or symbols of communication, representation, identification and meaning are changing in tune with our understanding of our technological lifestyles. (more…)

I almost exclusively watch T.V. shows online, either on hulu.com or a network’s Web site. I am never at home when shows are typically aired and I like the format of short 30 to 15 second ads rather than 2 minute blocks that interrupt the show you are watching. The commercial that was constantly on was a new advertising spot for Frito Lays’ healthy line of snack food.

This advertising is directed exclusively at women. The segments end with a little flag that says “only in a woman’s world.”

I have to admit when I first saw these commercials I was offended. I think that so often advertisers end up talking at women rather then developing a conversation with them. I also think that advertisers play to the typical stereotypes about men and women. See Stuart’s previous blog post “Men are stupid and women are scheming” here and then watch Webisode 7, where the husband is played as well meaning but stupid and the wife as harried yet indulgent. I don’t see myself in these ads. (more…)

Invention has many mothers. Aside from necessity, which we get from the old saying, there is also thrift, boredom, sloth and efficiency.

I wrote my first CMS (content management system) tool in 2002 using Visual Basic 6.0. I wanted to maintain a blog, but did not want to use one of the popular blog hosting sites that used banner adds. I also wanted control over how I skinned the site, and archived the stories. I wanted to host it on my ISP’s free static hosting, and wanted control over this data should I move it to another hosting solution.

My solution was to build a series of templates that would represent portions of the blog page. This would include the header, footer, navigation, and repeating items such as the stories, and links in the navigation. The repeating items had field variables that would be populated from an Access database. No need for speed. The final HTML would be spit out into static pages, and FTPed up to the site for viewing friends and relatives. (more…)

The Web acts as a gateway to an immeasurable amount of resources and information. However, the main access point for all of these sites are a relatively small number of sites – the bottlenecks and watchdogs for Web content – search engines. So, as a Flash Developer, one of the first questions you learn to fear is, “How will this Flash content show up in search results?” Flash is, unfortunately, by and large invisible to search engines – which is a major detriment to the growth potential of the technology. And although the best answer is to provide an alternative HTML version of the content, any programmer worth his salt will go out of his way to avoid having to do repetitive labor. So, here are a few tricks we’ve picked up along the way.

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Web 2.0 is hailed as the democratization of communication. The sheer mass of user generated content and the proliferation of tools and applications facilitating the creation and posting of this material in the virtual world has handed control of message dissemination to the masses (read “consumer.”) This has sent a spasm of strategic renovation down the spine of corporate marketers everywhere, as well it should. Brands and their meanings have always been a two way conversation; it was just that brand managers are like your ex: they don’t listen and just kept talking over you. (more…)