CIW Community - Get caught in the Web!

Remember Tim O'Reilly's premise that with Web 2.0, people contribute to applications in order to make them better? Well, it looks like social networking sites want folks to do the work, and then take all the credit:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/18/facebook.privacy/index.html

So, who should own all that wonderful user-generated data that your favorite social networking site made possible?

--Tangent

There's been lots of talk about bandwidth throttling, protocol blocking, and deceptive bandwidth speed advertising in the broadband industry over the past few years. Web designers and developers have also argued for quite a while about what bandwidths to assume as they develop. WebSiteOptimization.com has provided a pretty good stab at providing some useful statistics for everyone:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0901

Check out the recent article about how Microsoft's developers are getting Silverlight to work in Google Chrome:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/18/silverlight_chrome

Seems that Microsoft thinks accessorizing Chrome is the right thing to do for busines.

--Tangent

Hey, folks. Some interesting trends to think about. For the CIW Web crowd, think "cloud computing" and "virtualization." It's interesting to also see there's a trend towards taking more risk in regards to projects undertaken by industry. Finally, notice that many of the new trends involve convergence (VoIP, video, and presencing), as well as more "pure" Web technologies. As I've said before, true convergence always involves the Web:
http://www.govtech.com/gt/617530.

Ever want to back up files on the cloud? Here's a link to an article that, in The Register's own inimitable way, summarizes some of the most popular options:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/10/symantec_consumer_cloud

Enjoy!

--Tangent

Over the years, I've had instructors ask me for a practical comparison of common resolutions. They've asked for a graphic that shows the trend over the years to allow larger and larger resolutions. Well, check out the image below. This image hasn't been resized, so it's accurate. While most folks stick with 1024 by 768, more conservative designers (like me) stick with 800 x 600. It all depends, actually, on the audience and the function of the image or movie you're creating, of course.

Ever want to get deeper into typography and font choice but never really had the time? Check out the following video about the history of the Helvetica font:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/helvetica

Pretty cool stuff. Those of you who are instructors can use this for your students. If you don't have Internet access, download the Flash file and play it locally.

--Tangent

Just got back from a groovy little kayaking jaunt around a tiny bit of the Puget Sound near where I live. Used Google to map where I went:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=104512030745224720149.0004616d9159da1b6a9af&ll=47.106064,-123.043748&spn=0.001335,0.002435&z=19.

Well, it's official: As far as social networking sites are concerned, Facebook has surpassed MySpace:
http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2009/01/26/daily5.html?ana=from_rss

Students, use the window below to practice coding HTML: