I’m a long-time supported of the ACLU, and send letters, give money and sign petitions on their behalf. Today is a reminder of why it’s worth it to participate.

I just received an email from them summarizing the many victories of this term. Here are some pullquotes from the full press release.

The Supreme Court Term that ended today will long be remembered for its emphatic repudiation of the Bush Administration’s claim that it can conduct the war on terrorism as it sees fit with virtually no opportunity for meaningful judicial review.

The administration has treated the rule of law as an inconvenience in the war against terrorism. In response, the Supreme Court has sent a powerful message that the end does not justify the means, and that it will not sit on the sidelines while the rule of law is ignored.

As Justice O’Connor wrote for the plurality in Hamdi: “[A] state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.”

In the end, however, this Term will be known for the Court’s terrorism decisions. “The state of civil liberties is always perilous in periods of national crisis,” Shapiro said. “The Court deserves great credit for recognizing that the rule of law cannot be enforced in the absence of meaningful judicial review.”

It’s good to be reminded that even in the face of shamefull leadership, international scorn, and wave after wave of bad news, the system still works and Liberty get’s it’s day in court.

Here are some links i gathered as part of a quick exploratory project at work. They are related to developing for mobile devices.

Mobile Links

• Oreilly Wireless DevCenter

• Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers, Part 1
• Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers, Part 2

• Table of contents
• Chapter 2. Guidelines for mobile browsers
• Chapter 10. Further reading

• Mobile Channels Design Guidelines, Microsoft,
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/delivery/mobile/dsn_guid.asp
• Web Clipping Applications - Web Developers Tutorial, Palm OS,

  http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/webclipping/tutorials/tutorial_web.html

• How to Make a Simple Webpage, Miraz Jordan,
  http://www.firstbite.co.nz/training/web1/index.html
• Creating Web Pages for Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer 2.0, Chris De,
  http://www.cewindows.net/commlink/pie20.htm
• Tag/screen image correspondence tables for i-mode compatible HTML 1.0 & 2.0, NTT DoCoMo, Inc.,

  http://www.nttdocomo.com/i/tag/

• List of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, W3C,
  http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/checkpoint-list.html
• Designing Web Sites for the Internet Explorer for Pocket PC, Microsoft,
  http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/developer/PIE_dev.asp
• WAI Resources,

  http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/

• Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines, Page Author Guidelines - Version 8,
  http://trace.wisc.edu/archive/html_guidelines/author.htm
• Extreme HTML Optimization,
  http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/html/optimize/
• HTML Tags, MIME Types, Security Types, and URL Types Supported in Pocket Internet Explorer,

  http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q158/4/79.asp

• Style-free XSLT Style Sheets,
  http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/07/26/xslt/xsltstyle.html

Paul Boutin over at Slate has a story today called Are the Browser Wars Back? How Mozilla’s Firefox trumps Internet Explorer. It’s good to see the masses coming around.

the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the tech industry and Homeland Security, recently took the unusual step of advising people to consider switching browsers.

It’s tough to understand why tabbed browsing is such an improvement until you’ve tried it…[it’s] an order of magnitude more efficient and organized than popping up a whole new window for each link.

The latest version of Firefox, released this Monday, has a more professional look, online help, and a tool that automatically imports your bookmarks, history, site passwords, and other settings from Explorer. Meanwhile, all-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions.

Dave Shea over at Mezzoblue has posted An ongoing conversation about web applications is highlighting key points about the future of computing, the web, and the industry.

Definitely read it through, and follow any of the links that you haven’t previously read. By the end, you’ll likely agree that

It’s a lot to digest and that’s only scratching the surface. The obvious trend is the key to understanding the future of computing: the web is it. Servers are becoming more important than clients. While raw processor power will remain useful for applications that need it, simple and general purpose data management — including email, scheduling and time management, office applications, and all other text and information manipulation tools — will increasingly move to a globally shared environment that makes it easier to collaborate and easier to access. The recession is over, the slump is ended. Web development is in demand, and the demand is only going to increase.

Dashboard

“It’s really hard to manage an online life” - Geoff Ralston

Dashboard

A quick-reference, high level display of information. Dashboards are often used by Executives to see their top-line business metrics. Info in a dash board may often be reduced to neutral/standard terms, such as red-light green-light instead of the actual metric itself.

I don’t think the “dashboard” name should necessarily be used customer-facing, but it’s a useful internal tool to categorize functionality and info-type.

“Dashboard” was one of the concepts presented to us in the ethnographic research. (It was a pyramid diagram (reproduced as a outline here):

• Ads/ Deals
  • Popular Interests
  • Targeted + Local
• Programming
  • News
  • Local News
  • Popular Interests
• Dashboard
  • “Habit Center”
  • Alerts
  • Notifications
  • Recommendations
• Y!Search *AND* Y!Portal
  • Two ways to find information
  • Find & Explore

Information that could be on a Yahoo dashboard.

• Online Status
  • Instead of just prompting users to Log On, we should always display the online status on the browser/user. At a absolute minimum, this provides a continual reason to log in: if you don’t, you’ll be seen as “logged out”. Just changing this icon is more of a reason to log in that many users current comprehend.
  • By displaying their status, we may introduce users the continual and beneficial aspects of the Network.
• PIM Status
  • Next upcoming Task
  • Next upcoming Appointment
  • Unread/New Message Count/Notification
  • Newest Contact
  • Recently “now online” buddy
  • Upcoming birthdays
  • New shared photos received
  • etc
• Alerts / Watches
  • [[ Please read my blog post at this link for my comments on alerts in general ]]
  • “2 New Stock Alerts”
  • etc
• Community Status
  • # New comments on your blog
  • # New viewers of your photos
  • # New people in your Mingle
  • New reply’s to your message board posts
  • New singles in your area
  • New restaurant opening in your zip code
  • etc
• Buzz Movers
  • Top Books
  • Top News Stories
  • Most Emailed Stories
  • Most emailed photos
  • Maybe the average news headline gets 2% click thru — it’s be interesting to set up an alert so I could be notified when the click thru rate was above normal. (Alert me when twice and much traffic as normal is going somewhere/anywhere.
  • etc

How is a Dashboard different from “My [Personalized] Content”?

I think *Dashboard* and *Personalized* are different. (Ask Reid: I discussed this with him on Monday). In brief I view “Dashboard” as a Tool and “Personalized” as Content. What I mean is that Dashboard is only pointers and indicators, while the real content lives elsewhere. In a small “dashboard” [that may follow me across the network] I don’t need the Subject or Sender of my newly received email, I just need an indication that *any* new mail exists.

It’s possible to think of ALL information/experiences on the network as being personalized. For example, the 2nd page I see in news is personalized based on which link I check. (In a paper newspaper, the 2nd page is always the same for everybody!). The dashboard on the other hand, is the home of meta information the exists solely for me. That my dashboard is notifying me that a new Alert has been received is Only useful/pertinent to me.

If my dashboard tells me that a new story matching my previously setup Alert has been published, that Alert is personal to me even if the story itself is pertinent to many.

I think it’s also worth remembering that term “Habit Center” that came out of Ethnography. What online habits / habitual actions / very-common actions exist that could be gathered together on the homepage?

Ways to Track Stuff

Overview and Definitions

Being notified when something happens is a powerful efficiency enabled by the Internet (and Yahoo!). Instead of needing to actively monitor [multiple] data sources, you can set up an Alert and be passively notified when some criteria is met.

Alerts are the common name for this (”I’d like to set up an alert”; “please alert me when…”). This functionality is also talked about as “tracking”. For example, “I’d like to track this stock, therefore alert me when it ____.”

Sometimes “Saved Searches” behave like Alerts, in that new items in a SRP (search results page) will be emailed or alerted to a user. This is the how HotJobs, and other Yahoo! “listings” site (such as autos, real estate, and auctions) behave.

Channels

Alerts may be delivered in many ways.

Email Alerts

Receive notification via one or more email addressed.

Instant Messenger

Receive an instant message notificaion.

Tool-tray / Desktop Alert

if you have Yahoo! Instant Messenger installed, a notification will appear/float directly on your deskop.

Audio Alert

some types of alerts, generally through the IM platform, may be audio-only. (Just a computer chirp, not a popup window or text message.)

Voice Alert

choose to be telephoned when something happends…

Mobile email/SMS Alert

receive a SMS or email message delivered to your mobile phone.

RSS / Feeds of Alerts

receive a syndicated feed on current information. This psudo-push technology delivers new content as available. (It’s not true “push”, as your feed reader will generally look for aggregated updates on a set time schedule.)

Features / Opportunities across the Yahoo! Network.

• Personal Information Management (PIM)
  • Yahoo! Mail Alerts
  • Yahoo! Calendar Alerts
    • Birthday Alerts
    • Meeting Reminders
• Financial Alerts
• Finance Alerts
  • % change notifications (e.g. “when it goes up 5%”)
  • total $ dollar change (e.g. “when it goes up $5″)
  • threshhold alert (e.g “when it gets to $40″)
• Credit Alerts
  • Be notified when inquiries into your credit report are initiaited.
• News / Information Alerts
  • News
    • Editorial, such as “Breaking News”, or “Morning Headlines”
    • User-entered Keyword, such as “Kobe”, “Google” or “San Francisco”
    • Editorial-suggested Keyword. Usually a module next to a popular news story.
  • Weather Alerts
    • Severe Weather
    • Snow/Ski Reports
    • Suft/Tide Reports
    • Daily/Weekly forecasts
  • Travel
    • Airport/Weather Conditions
    • Flight Status/Change
    • Best Fares
  • Sports Alerts
    • Your team’s news
    • In-game, when somebody scores
    • In-game, when period/game ends.
    • In-game, when lead changes
• Price Watching Alerts
  • Shopping
    • Be notified when the price of X goes up/down by % or $.
    • Be notified when a pre-release product is released.
  • Travel
  • Best Fares
  • Last Minute Deals
• Listings Alerts
  • Autos
    • When new used cars matching your criteria are available
  • Auctions
    • When there is X time left.
    • When you win, or are outbid.
    • When new products match your interests.
  • HotJobs
    • When new job openings match your criteria (realtime/daily/weekly)
    • When somebody views your resume
  • Other “listsings” properties
    • When new used listings matching your criteria are available