C’mon, little camper! Remember what we used to say? Yes we can! C’mon, you can say it: yes we can! Yes we can!
Oh fine, nevermind then.
Seriously. In this shot from President Obama’s post-election press conference in Thursday’s New York Times it looks like he just had to put down his dog Bo with his Pappy’s hunting rifle.
–lori
So apparently the editor of Cooks Source, a New England regional — and until yesterday obscure — cooking magazine, thinks that “the Internet is public domain” and that writers should be thrilled to have their work lifted wholesale and without permission or compensation. This led to a very entertaining day on the Twitters yesterday, as writers and bloggers pounced and the social channels exploded — if only briefly.
Read the backstory and some analysis from Robin2go.
Anger a writer?
If a writer’s in the right,
A writer will write.
What was that you said?
“The Web is public domain?”
Oh, hell to the no.
Cooks Source to #crooksource
All in less than twelve hours?
Respect the hashtag.
–lori
I despise Daylight Saving Time. To paraphrase Ford Prefect, time is an illusion. Daylight Saving Time doubly so.
This outdated construct, which ends this Sunday, was supposedly intended to increase the amount of sunlight that industrial workers experience by essentially tricking them into waking up earlier. It was also an attempt at saving energy during World War I by reducing the amount of time people relied on artificial light. Today all it really does, in my view, is screw with our natural rhythms so that people will shop more.
Every year, Daylight Saving Time kinda sneaks up on me, and every year it freaks me the heck out. When there is still sun in the sky at 9pm in western New York, that is just freaky.
I admit that part of this aversion to DST comes from the fact that I love night time. I love the dark. Night is exciting and fun. Ever since I was a kid, I could not wait for the sun to go down so I could go outside and play. Lighting bugs, shadow monsters, epic games of kick the can — all are much more fun in the dark.
The website www.standardtime.com/, has an interesting take on the issue. “If we are saving energy let’s go year round with Daylight Saving Time. If we are not saving energy let’s drop Daylight Saving Time!” Seems reasonable to me.
So on Monday, when I leave work and step out into the real, dark, night, I will probably be alone amongst my colleagues in celebrating the darkness. I just wish this happy state of affairs was not interrupted once a year with reminders to move our clocks ahead and check our smoke alarms.
I have to be honest and admit that I have not been paying as much attention to the political scene as I once did. After last summer’s healthcare town hall screech-fest, I just kinda lost my liking for it. But the pizza is in the oven, and the wine is on the table, and I feel like it’s going to be a long night.
7:01 – The one hope the Democrats had to pick up a GOP Senate seat is gone right out of the gate, as the first Tea Partier of the night — Rand Paul of Kentucky — is projected the winner. Paul wants to get the federal government off our backs, but would criminalize abortion in all cases, including rape and incest. So he’s one of those guys.
7:30 — More projections. With 0% of the precincts reporting (huh?) Rob Portman wins the Senate race in Ohio.
7:40 — CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television” is more like “The Most Dysfunctional Committee Meeting on Television.” They’re jumping all over each other, speaking all at once, not even listening to each other, and just waiting to get their turn to be the cleverest kid in class.
8:00 — “Everyone remembers Christine O’Donnell. She’s the candidate who said she was not a witch. She’s not going to be a US Senator either.” Ooo, that’s cold, Wolf. As cold as a witch’s tit.
8:45 — CNN projects the gun-totin’, rootin’, tootin’, cap-and-trade shootin’ Joe Manchin is the next Democratic senator from West Virginia. That’s a relief.
9:00 — New York polls close and — surprise! — Schumer, Gillebrand, and Cuomo are in. In sad news, the awesome Rochester mayor Bob Duffy will now become the pointless lieutenant governor of New York.
9:46 — Christine O’Donnell’s concession speech is a long list of things she asked her opponent to do during what I’m guessing was a very awkward phone call.
10:20 — Haven’t heard much about my home state yet. My parents’ Bucks County, PA, district has once again been held up as a bellwether race for the soul of the suburbs, or something like that. All I know is it’s one Irish Catholic running against another.
10:40 – Well, crap. I asked for news from PA and I got it. PA governor goes to GOP, Senate race 50-50. C’mon, West Coast! I need some good news.
11:00 — OK, gotta switch over to the Daily Show.
So after a bottle and a half of wine and a GOP takeover of the House, I think it may be time for bed and the hope that the Republicans stated top priority of repealing the meager healthcare reform bill stays the stuff of nightmares.
–lori
November is National Blog Posting Month. The goal: to encourage bloggers to rejuvenate their blogs by posting something every day for a month. And if you look at that woefully out-of-date list of movie reviews over to the left there, you’ll see that my blog could use some rejuvenation.
To get things started, I thought I’d try answering a simple question: why do I blog?
I’d like to become a better writer
And the only way to do that is by writing. I firmly believe that Twitter makes you a better writer because it forces you to follow the first rule of good writing: Omit Needless Words.
I want to share what I learn because I benefit from other people’s blogs all the time
From technology fixes, to great ideas on how to do my job better, to political analysis, to suggestions for tonight’s dinner, I’m always benefiting from the kindness of bloggers.
I need a creative outlet
As an editor, I don’t get too many opportunities to create things from scratch. In the first entry for this blog, I wrote:
Rather than tearing down the hard work of others, it’s time to put myself on the line for a change. To create rather than destroy. To use my powers for good, never for evil. With great power comes great responsibility!
Like I said, I might be overreaching.
I think that still holds true.
Because I can’t write fiction
I once tried my hand at NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo’s better-known November cousin, and I crashed and burned. Hard. In trying to write a novel in one month I learned that I have no sense of threaded narrative and that writing dialogue is hard.
Good luck to all the WriMos out there! And I hope I can keep up my little effort here this month.
–lori
To paraphrase Jon Stewart, “be an eff-ing person!”
He said it in relation to the GM executives who were closing decades-old car dealerships via form letter. But it really stuck with me and has become a kind of life mantra. If you’re unsure of what to say or how to react in a situation, just be an eff-ing person! Happily, this mantra also applies nicely to the world of social media, Twitter specifically. It is — after all — PEOPLE who are social, and it is — after all — PEOPLE who are writing and responding to all these tweets.
I’ve always understood what it meant for ME to be on Twitter, but after nearly two years of tweeting as the University of Rochester, I’ve never really had a firm grip on what it meant for the UNIVERSITY as an institution to tweet.
At first, I kinda liked the sense of anonymity. I mean, who am I to speak for the University anyway? And yet, here I was, speaking for the University in this admittedly limited way. Why should I pretend otherwise?
So I’m trying a bit of an experiment starting today: I’m pulling back the curtain behind the institutional Twitter account and being open about the fact that, yes — this is me. I’m just a woman who works in Wallis Hall and I am your “head twit.” As such, I’ll do my best to pass along interesting stories and useful information about the university, and to help you out whenever I can.
So no more logo! Starting today, the face of the @UofR twitter account will be this old mug (or my glasses at least. They loom large in my legend.) I’m thinking that over time — as new folks take on Twitter duties during events like our reunion weekend, for example — we’ll update the profile pic accordingly.
Ya know, just like a person would.
–lori
My presentation materials: Talking To Your Boss About Twitter
Penn State 2010: A Web Odyssey is in the books, and the first thing to say is thank you to all the organizers at Penn State for inviting me and for putting on one heck of a show! My biggest takeaway from the conference overall: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once and awhile, you might miss it. Now is a good time to stop and look around, and the tools we will use to do that are held in our hands, not sitting on our desks. Mobile design is simple design. Design for mobile first. Now, how do I go about making such a fundamental change in thinking? Hmmm …
DAY ONE
Penn State is so big, they’re able to bring the mountain to Mohammad, and in this case the mountain was Jeffrey Zeldman. Zeldman of A List Apart and Designing With Web Standards fame kicked things off right with a rollicking history of telecommunications from movable type to the iPad. At the 2003 HighEdWeb conference, Zeldman convinced me to push our University of Rochester homepage redesign toward Web standards and table-less, CSS layouts. This year, he’s convinced me that it’s now time to dip our toes in HTML 5. And he did it all wearing cargo shorts.
Google Wave Workshop
Robin Smail and Audrey Romano bravely battled wireless connectivity issues as a room of 50 workshop attendees struggled to push a giant Wave through too-tiny pipe. For someone who still thinks, “Google Wave … wait, what?” (and don’t even get me started on Google Buzz) it was a little frustrating not knowing whether something wasn’t working because of network issues, or because I’m a total noob. Biggest takeaway: if the team is small and the project is focused, Wave looks like a useful coordination tool. But I can’t see it replacing email within the next couple years. Even projects that successfully use Wave will still generate email too, and that means it’s just one more thing I gotta check.
Don’t Be a Twit: When the Backchannel Goes Rogue
For the afternoon session, I sat on a panel with the aforementioned @Robin2go, Mark Greenfield of SUNY Buffalo, and Patti Fantaske about lessons learned and questions we should ask given the new environment that Twitter, uStream, and live blogging creates for presenters and educators. Biggest takeaway: technology now allows people to share their thoughts with their friends and the world simultaneously, in real-time, and pseudo-permanently. That has HUGE implications and potential; among these are changing responsibilities for (a) public speakers (b) event organizers and (c) audience members. And we’re still figuring out what those are.
DAY TWO
In a knee-baring homage to Mr. Zeldman, Brad J. Ward of BlueFuego continued the theme of kick-ass, pants-less keynotes: “Everything I Learned About Higher Ed I Learned From the Office.” Fans on both Michael Scott and Web development were left happy. Biggest takeaway: 4 rules of copywriting – is it useful, is it unique, is it ultra-specific, is it urgent.
How to Avoid a Hot Mess: Managing Your Social Media
Robin2go (wait, MORE Robin2go?! Hell yeah!) described the challenges involved in keeping all this social stuff straight, especially for a large institution. Biggest takeaway: There’s no reason to be on every possible platform, and definitely no reason to repeat yourself across multiple platforms (no Twitter feeds on Facebook pages, please!). Focus on what you’re trying to achieve and use each tool to its best benefit.
The Cluetrain Stops at Higher Ed, Will Anyone Take Delivery?
Biggest Takeaway: Next, Mark Greenfield breaks down why real public relations is more important than ever, and why most institutions are not doing real public relations. Mission statements can be inspiring, but never are. Some faves: “Discover the World Within,” “Find Your Passion, Find Your Place.” Why do we pay outsiders to come up with how we describe ourselves? Biggest takeaway: PR needs some PR, ‘cuz PR is now synonymous with BS.
Making Your Campus Map Mobile Friendly
Chad Killingsworth of MIssouri State University knows his maps! He presented at the recent Google I/O conference on the customizations to his campus map. Biggest takeaway: templates, stylesheets, reference guide: everything you need to get your map ready for multiple mobile devices. Thanks, Chad!
Thanks again, Happy Valley! I hope I can come back next year, if you’ll have me. 
–lori
Wow, I had no idea there were so many first-round games.
On to the last eight matchups; let’s see who’s homepage is the top seed, and who’s is at the bottom of the bracket.
Marquette v Washington
Kudos to Marquette for having a link to “Majors and Programs” right in their top navigation. However, that top navigation is locked inside graphic buttons. And the bottom two thirds of the page are very text-heavy, including one of the more wordy presentations of a calendar I’ve seen. The U-Dub page also links to their departments from the homepage and also has lots of text-y news , but features a nice student-friendly photo essay up high as well.
Winner: Washington
Montana v New Mexico
Both homepages are oddly similar: they both have a very narrow photo near the top, with menus above and below. In both cases, the presentation feels a bit wimpy. I’ve never been to either campus, but I have to believe they must be gorgeous being, as they are, in Montana and New Mexico. New Mexico’s site though has an audience-focused navigation with the Future Students tab on top and easy links to Admissions. Montana’s site features a link to something called “Enrollment Management;” I have no idea what that is.
Winner: Montana
Clemson v Missouri
This is going to be a tough one as both sites are instantly impressive. Mizzou has the best of the rotating feature sliders I’ve seen yet, with clever art and headline writing. It also validates XHTML 1.0 Strict. Clemson presents lots of information while still feeling airy and graphically interesting. And I like the clever use of little factoids in the footer.
Winner: Clemson
West Virginia v Morgan State
Morgan State’s site has its issues, I think. Chief among them being that I found it a bit challenging to find what felt like the correct “front door” for the undergraduate admissions process. You’re also dropped into a login screen pretty quickly. West Virginia does have a link to Majors and Programs on the homepage, though it’s buried in the Quick Links dropdown. The West Virginia site also makes better use of photography, though neither site comes close to validating.
Winner: West Virginia
Duke v University of Arkansas Pine Bluff
Arkansas’ site has one of the more creatively presented rotating feature sliders, all with a student focus, plus a link to majors right in the Academics dropdown. But it’s also pretty densely packed with text that manages to take up a lot of space without actually explaining much. Duke recently underwent a redesign (I think) and it is definitely “on trend” — clean, WordPress-y, magazine-syle layout; top-image slider. Unfortunately, the Admissions site looks like it’s been left behind.
Winner: Duke
California v Louisville
Louisville’s site is lovely: simple photography and a pretty complete set of grid-based headings and links, followed by more details on news, events, and video. Plus — sing it with me! — a link to majors in right on the homepage. The Cal site is looking a little long in the tooth, I’m afraid. It presents less information in a more cramped package.
Winner: Louisville
Texas A&M v Utah State
The Texas A&M site has a rather squished looking slideshow at the top and some uninspiring news and events below. However, Utah State has three columns of links headed “Welcome,” ”Information,” and “Featured Links.” Umm…
Winner: Texas A&M
Purdue v Siena
Siena College continues the trend of simple columns of text links to great effect. Purdue also presents a ton of links, but in crammed dropdowns that are a little harder to scan. Both Purdue and Siena have a top rotating slider, but Siena’s is a little more polished. And Purdue has a link to a President’s Message and something called “Sustaining New Synergies.” Umm…
Winner: Siena
So that’s it for the first round! Next, we’ll see how the second round shakes out.
–lori
The race for the homepage championship marches madly on. The next round of first-round contests:
Syracuse v Vermont
Syracuse goes with the “big picture,” while Vermont tries to get two bites at the cherry with two photo features side-by-side with the result of a loss of impact for both. Syracuse is one of the longer pages I’ve seen, but it’s clean white-and-grey grid layout looks infinitely flexible. Vermont’s page seems a little land-locked, but Vermont mounts an impressive late-game run with its link to “Majors, Minors, and Graduate Programs” right on the homepage. Syracuse featured links to both “Academic Departments” and “Departments and Offices.” I think I know the difference, but that’s ‘cuz I work in higher ed.
Winner: Syracuse
Gonzaga v Florida State
Gonzaga is one of the more navigation-focused homepages I’ve seen. Beyond the narrow photo feature “banner” at the top, the rest of the page is given over to a neat and tidy grid of headings and links. One issue: two slightly different ”Programs” links go off to different pages with different lists. Is there an Advertising major or isn’t there? Florida State on the other hand has precious little in the way of navigation — six links on a left-hand menu — and it doesn’t really work. A ton of stuff has been crammed into a “Key Links” dumping ground, and the large area of real estate given over to text stories about faculty and student honors is in my view wasted.
Winner: Gonzaga
Xavier v Minnesota
This was a close match. Right off the heals of Gonzaga, Minnesota presents a very similar top-photo-then-grid-of-links approach, and again it’s very effective and flexible. Both schools have a link to majors and minors right off their homepage, and Xavier’s top links are obviously aimed at prospective students with prime real estate given over to financial aid and campus visits. But I found Xavier’s Flash top-third feature slider is a little jarring; the features zip by pretty fast with no way to control them that I could find. And Xavier doesn’t come close to validating, where Minnesota falls just short (pesky ampersand!)
Winner: Minnesota
PIttsburgh v Oakland
I don’t mean to pick on Pitt, but my first thought when looking at their site is that it’s a pretty good microcosm of everything that is wrong with conventional higher ed homepages: tiny graphic buttons for links, text-y news sections heavy on the faculty awards, multiple postage stamp-sized photos. And riddle me this: I’m a 17-year-old in Erie; why exactly do I care about your chancellor’s speeches or your provost search? Oakland’s page has its issues — a clunky top feature slider and no real list of majors that I could find — but the focus is obviously on an external audience. I especially like the timely link to info for admitted students.
Winner: Oakland
Kentucky v East Tennessee
Kentucky’s is the first homepage with marketing intro text that I actually read. Must have been the combination of clean typography and honesty that drew me in. They also make heavy use of video on their homepage, and I’m not sure that works. I think video should be supplementary, not primary. It’s asking a lot of users to expect them to watch multiple videos when a simple scannable Web page would do. Over on East Tennessee State, I could not two, not three, but four different navigation schemes each competing for primacy.
Winner: Kentucky
Texas v Wake Forest
Texas and Wake Forest present an opportunity to compare two different approaches to presenting lots of information on a homepage: put some “up front” and let the user click through to see the rest (Texas) or just put it all up front to begin with (Wake Forest). With the first, you run the risk that the user never bothers with the “hidden” stuff; with the second you run the risk of creating a busy overloaded page. The Wake Forest site is not busy or overloaded. It’s a lot cleaner and simpler to parse than the Texas site because it’s not trying to do too much at once.
Winner: Wake Forest
Cornell v Temple
Cornell’s homepage is a solid if conventional grid layout with lots of info wrapped up in a tidy presentation. The focus is a bit institutional for my taste, but the pages and navigation are remarkably consistent and the admissions process feels friendly. Over at Temple, the homepage is also fairly conventional but a bit less solid. The rotating feature slideshow doesn’t allow me to click through to any additional info if I were interested in learning more. And clicking through to the Admissions site on Temple, my first reaction is that the process looks scary.
Winner: Cornell
Wisconsin v Wofford
Ok, there is a lot going on on the Wofford homepge, but not any more than there is on the Ohio State homepage, for example. It’s just that nothing is given any space to breathe and so a similar amount of content is made to look dense and daunting instead of parsable and compelling. Wisconsin’s site is pretty standard higher ed fare, but the navigation is clean and atleast my eyeball can focus enough to find the links to the list of majors, housing, etc. And it validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict!
Winner: Wisconsin
One more set of first round match-ups to go. Will my alma mater Washington upset Marquette like it did on the court? Stay tuned…
–lori.
Here’s my second batch of first-round picks in the NCAA bracket of homepages. Will the crazy run of upset wins continue? Let’s take it to the paint and find out!
Kansas v Lehigh
I suppose it would be folly to ask why the University of Kansas is called “KU?” No matter. The #1 seed does have a lot of great content on its homepage. I especially like the March Madness fan banners available for easy download. But the site suffers from a bout of “squished-itis” with lots of tiny photos and graphics competing for scarce breathing room. The condition is even more pronounced over on the Lehigh site, with all the navigation text rendered as tiny graphic buttons. Lehigh’s site does not even try to validate to its declared HTML 4.01 DOCTYPE; KU does validate to XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Winner: Kansas
UNLV v Northern Iowa
These two schools are pretty evenly matched. Both schools employ the rotating features in the top third — UNLV’s is a little more polished looking, but both a run too small to have much impact in my opinion (sensing a trend: maybe I just like big pictures). Northern Iowa has a very nice presentation of its majors right off its Academics page (both an alpha list and organized by interest area) but UNLV’s list is easily found and scanned, too. And both schools employ one of my pet peeves: links to both “Prospective Students” and “Admissions” on the homepage that take you to two different places. The UNI page is a lot friendlier though, with slightly cheesy but endearingly earnest videos from students acting as guides to different aspects of the process.
Winner: Northern Iowa
Michigan State v New Mexico State
Michigan State seems to be playing homage to Cornell with their homepage design, but doesn’t quite pull it off. There’s way too much text on the page; text that isn’t given enough room to stand on its own (that’s the key, I think. I’m not so much “text is bad” as I am “text needs space.”) New Mexico emphasizes the “big picture,” has a lot less in the way of news on its homepage, and a much simpler navigation structure.
Winner: New Mexico State
Maryland v Houston
My immediate impression when looking at the University of Maryland site is that they don’t seem to have prospective students in mind as their primary audience. As someone who knows nothing about the University of Maryland, I don’t even know what some of the features in their top feature slider are about. Maybe they have more meaning for an internal audience? The features on Houston’s site are a mix of student and alumni profiles. The Houston site has a list of majors in its dropdown navigation, and it’s the first school I’ve seen so far with a list of required high school courses prominently featured on its Admissions page.
Winner: Houston
Tennessee v San Diego State
The UT site is very clean looking and consistent when clicking through several top-level pages. SDSU is a little less polished looking, with several small images competing for attention. Both schools’ Admissions sites commit some flagrant fouls. UT still prominently features a link to a 2009 open house event, and SDSU has a link on its Freshman page for those who seeking admission in Spring 2010 that returns a page with this message: “San Diego State University’s is not accepting first-time freshmen undergraduate applications for spring 2010.” Um, thanks.
Winner: Tennessee
Georgetown v Ohio
I don’t mean to be unkind, but I really hope there is a redesign effort afoot at Georgetown. The site is a blast from the past: a 750-pixel wide table with tiny tiny tiny rollover graphics as navigation buttons. The Admissions site manages to look both spare and complicated, with not much in the way of guidance, friendliness, or specifics. The Ohio site on the other hand does a great job I think at presenting a lot of information while still looking clean and streamlined. The top rotating features are both photo- and student-friendly. My one issue: The “Future Students” page is nice and succinct and direct, but most of the links take me off to another “Undergraduate Admissions” site that was obviously *not* included in whatever recent redesign process Ohio went through.
Winner: Ohio
Oklahoma State v Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech’s site is pretty sweet! It’s another example of a site that manages to pack a big punch in terms of sheer amount of content without feeling heavy and confused. They use a rotating feature area — which I think is the new “girls under trees” in terms of its ubiquity — but they make the smartest use of headlines and photos that I’ve seen. I actually clicked on a couple! Also nice: a list of degree programs is one of the main links off the homepage. Oklahoma embraces the “big picture” idea — which initially gives the homepage a clean, dramatic look — but their drop-down menus are crammed and confusing. I looked around for about seven minutes and never found a list of majors. And why does the freshman admissions page feature a story about the “Campaign for Oklahoma State” right at the top?
Winner: Georgia Tech
Ohio State v UC Santa Barbara
UCSB’s fixed width table optimized for 800×600 screen resolutions and its PDF summaries of its majors just did not stand a chance. Wow, Ohio State! Such a variety of content in such a smooth and multi-faceted presentation. Love love love the tag clouds for most popular sites by audience — gets me to the list of majors right away. Love the user-generated content, the image of the day, the simple and consistent top-level navigation.
Winner: Ohio State
So we’re now halfway through the first-round games and we’ve already seen some stunning upsets and some solid performances. More March Madness (Web Weirdness? DOCTYPE Dementia?) to come.
–lori
