Surveys

As a small busi­ness own­er, I often get people call­ing up with some sur­vey or anoth­er. They want to know wheth­er my busi­ness is grow­ing, wheth­er I’ll be hir­ing more people this year, and what soft­ware and ser­vices I sell. If these sur­veys are the basis of the eco­nom­ic polls pre­dict­ing what’s hap­pen­ing this year, I’d advise the world to dis­count most of the answers. The ques­tions sounds like they were writ­ten pre­sup­pos­ing par­tic­u­lar answers; since the ques­tions often don’t make sense the answers won’t either.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Sur­veys”

Technology Works?

I’ve been slowly work­ing on a tutori­al for using entity res­ol­u­tion cata­logs that I prom­ised the OASIS Entity Res­ol­u­tion Tech­nic­al Com­mit­tee (ERTC) I’d do (I chair the TC). As befits a prop­er tutori­al, I figured I should test out the bits as I’m writ­ing them in more than one imple­ment­a­tion, just so I can warn people of the poten­tial pit­falls. This has proved to be a frus­trat­ing exper­i­ence for me, and I can see why so many people say tech­no­logy is just too hard.

I’ve been slowly work­ing on a tutori­al for using entity res­ol­u­tion cata­logs that I prom­ised the OASIS Entity Res­ol­u­tion Tech­nic­al Com­mit­tee (ERTC) I’d do (I chair the TC). As befits a prop­er tutori­al, I figured I should test out the bits as I’m writ­ing them in more than one imple­ment­a­tion, just so I can warn people of the poten­tial pit­falls. This has proven to be a frus­trat­ing exper­i­ence for me, and I can see why so many people say tech­no­logy is just too hard.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Tech­no­logy Works?”

Sometimes you have to laugh

The Nigeri­an spam action shows no signs of dying down, but some­times you do have to laugh… on scan­ning the TAG archives I came across this post­ing in which the sub­ject line is STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL but the email has been sent to no few­er than 6 pub­lic W3C mail­ing lists, as well as a bunch of mem­ber-con­fid­en­tial mail­ing lists and oth­er email addresses. I sure hope the thou­sands of dir­ect recip­i­ents keep it con­fid­en­tial, as requested ;-).

Adding Accessibility

I’m up to Day 26 of Mark Pil­grim’s excel­lent series on access­ib­il­ity. For­tu­nately, the Word­Press tem­plates are mostly com­pli­ant out of the box so I had very little to change.

I’m up to Day 26 of Mark Pil­grim’s excel­lent series on access­ib­il­ity. For­tu­nately, the Word­Press tem­plates are mostly com­pli­ant out of the box so I had very little to change.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Adding Accessibility”

DOM Level 3 a W3C Recommendation

It’s taken a long time, far longer than we anti­cip­ated when we star­ted. The W3C DOM Level 3 Core and Load and Save mod­ules are, as of today, W3C Recommendations.

It’s taken a long time, far longer than we anti­cip­ated when we star­ted. The W3C DOM Level 3 Core and Load and Save mod­ules are, as of today, W3C Recommendations.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “DOM Level 3 a W3C Recommendation”

Changing Schedules

The XML con­fer­ence I chair has tra­di­tion­ally run from Tues­day to Fri­day, with a clos­ing key­note at lunch on the Fri­day. Fri­day has always been a slow day, and was so last year des­pite some excel­lent talks.

So we’ve made some changes this year.

The XML con­fer­ence I chair has tra­di­tion­ally run from Tues­day to Fri­day, with a clos­ing key­note at lunch on the Fri­day. Fri­day has always been a slow day, and was so last year des­pite some excel­lent talks. Part of this is because people are tired, and par­tially because the exhib­it­ors pack up and go home on Thursday evening.

So we’ve made some changes this year.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Chan­ging Schedules”