Slightly Remarkable

Yea, long title, bite me.

So I signed up for orkut today, without knowing what it was. You might say “What? I thought you were all web 2.0-savvy” and such, but the truth is, a lot of stuff flies by the radar. The web moves too fast for me to consume all of the new stuff on a daily basis and keep my job.

Anyway, I read a Google blog entry from several days ago where they mentioned orkut. I have a tendency to Cmd+Click every link in a blog entry, and orkut was no exception. But when I swapped over to the orkut tab, I wasn’t on a “Welcome to orkut! Please sign up!” page. I was taken directly to the “Complete your registration!” page.

It got me thinking. At first, I was like “Oh, this is a Google thing,” so there was acknowledgment of credibility (but not brand — interesting, yes?). The site had the audacity to start asking me questions like my date of birth, and this wasn’t like an acquaintance asking you such a question — it was more like a stranger asking the question. I’d never, ever met orkut before to my knowledge. Why would I tell it my date of birth?

Well, as it turns out, I did sign up. I didn’t know what the service was, or what it did, but it wasn’t asking me if I wanted to sign up. It was telling me to. It didn’t say “Would you please,” it said “Come on!” I was captivated.

I wonder if this more direct, no-BS method of getting people involved is over-the-top or not. I don’t think it was intentional, because orkut automatically detected my Google cookies and knew my name/email address already, but if I had been taken to a “Hi, stranger! Sign up for this thing, please?” page, I wouldn’t have signed up.

So, recap. The most immediate approach to getting someone to sign up: tell them to sign up, immediately. I didn’t even know what the service was until after I registered. Of course, this comes with one caveat: if people don’t recognize you, your brand, or your affiliate(s), they will be disoriented, confused, or suspicious, so be advised that this may be the reason your introduction is important. I guess the balance is to make a landing page that says “Hi, we do this. Sign up,” although that still requires a person to be interested in what the product or service does.

Interestingly, I find that I’m drawn to sign up for Google services or products that I probably will never use, simply because I want to see what they’ve done. I think this is very similar to what Apple has done (sans the sleek cool factor, unless, of course, you’re a geek such as myself) with their products. Apple’s iPad sold twice the units they anticipated. I’m not even sure that the iPad is such a great product (although, after having played with my boss’s iPad, I have gotta say, it’s pretty cool!!) compared to other products, but I think that Apple sold the iPad over the years by making so many people uncontrollably curious about what the next Apple product can do, or what can be done with it, as the case may be.

Dear Apple Inc.,

You may not know me. In fact, you may not care. But, I am writing to you in hopes that you will share a brief moment of your time to hear a couple thoughts that I have regarding the future of Apple as it relates to the health of figurehead Steve Jobs.

Now, despite having recently become an avid Apple fan and returning customer, I am concerned about the health of CEO and face of Apple Steve Jobs. In specific, though, I am worried about your future as a company. Although Mr. Jobs has allegedly overcome a rare form of pancreatic cancer and is working through a hormonal imbalance that has caused undue weight loss, it is becoming increasingly evident that Mr. Jobs will not — much as we may wish — live forever. The fact that Mr. Jobs’ health is so critical is easily seen when the stock price of Apple sways so quickly based on reports of Mr. Jobs’ health. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that. You already know. Why else would you have attempted to conceal details regarding Mr. Jobs’ health to the best of your ability during his struggle with pancreatic cancer?

In all fairness, I do wish that Mr. Jobs continues living a long and healthy life, but as a man ages, he naturally incurs more health problems as the immune system breaks down and the body wears with age. Since Mr. Jobs is not superhuman — mentally, perhaps, but not physically — we know that eventually his health will be a real issue, an unrecoverable issue, to the point where he must retire. When this circumstance becomes a reality, there is no doubt in my mind that Apple will take a hit from this news. This is inevitable — no one can live up to Mr. Jobs’ name as it stands.

The question now becomes, what can Apple do to make this inevitable event cushioned, less detrimental? My suggestion is to create a new face for Apple, a shift from the face of Jobs to the face of another charismatic, trustworthy, honest, cool dude (after all, that’s what Jobs is, isn’t it?). It may seem too early to reinvent an image that glows so brightly, and indeed you are right. Yet, Apple’s face has Mr. Jobs written all over it, and that face is slowly fading out. Naturally, the way to curb this problem is to nip it in the bud. I recommend that Apple begin moving toward a new face and slowly provide a transition so that faith and credibility — much of which is held by Steve Jobs — are seceded by a successor. Phil Schiller seems to be your worldwide marketing executive and first choice, but now you must qualify him based on his charisma, because for Apple, it is about image. It is about the “cool factor.”

Now, Apple, I must ask you. Who will be the next face of Apple? Will it be Phil Schiller? Please, choose soon. Not only as a customer am I eager to see this new face, but your investors will certainly be uniquely interested in the future of Apple, the success of which is largely attributed directly to Steve Jobs. I don’t think that Apple will continue so strongly without a figurehead, and it would seem your investors agree with me.

To clarify my reason for concern regarding the future of Apple — I think we both know that nothing is written without purpose and intended audience — as a customer, I chiefly enjoy the utility and simplicity of your hardware and software products. Unlike what some may suggest, I have completely switched to Apple products because of their feature set and ease of use. To ensure that I may continue receiving the highest quality products on the market, it is in my best interest to ensure that you, Apple, continue providing them. To that effect, I am seeking your attention, if for a moment, to consider your future and how the decisions you make now will affect your customers later.

Please consider deeply my thoughts on this topic. I don’t expect a response — you may never even see this letter — but I pray for Steve Jobs’ health, and I pray for many more years of the highest quality products Apple has so keenly developed in recent years.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

Jona
Just another blogger at Slightly Remarkable.com, and not simply an Apple fan boy.

Many of us today are aware of accessibility and usability issues. We have Section 508, the Web Accessibility Initiative, and a host of other accessibility-related web sites and organizations.

I myself am an accessibility-aware Web developer, and I have made it my job to ensure accessibility standards are met in Web sites I work on, whether I am programming in JavaScript, writing HTML, using image replacement techniques, or beautifying pages with CSS. But this entry is not about Web standards, and it’s not about me. It’s about a new kind of standard; we need an initiative for something else.

Web Appearance Standards

Now, I’ve no idea at the moment just how such an initiative could be organized, but before we get into creating an online organization for making Web sites in general more beautiful, let’s look at the reasons behind my preposterous idea.

The Problem

Let’s identify a few problems with the Web as it is. First off, people are used to ugly and poorly designed Web sites. It has become commonplace for even the most popular Web sites to be ugly, poorly designed, huge in terms of page weight (kilobytes), and broken. I see more personal blogs and hole-in-the-wall (pardon the expression) Web sites that few people get to see, and these Web sites are beautiful, light weight, easy to use, and just plain fun to look at. Yet, when I visit Yahoo!, MySpace, MSN, Amazon, and so many more of the most popular sites on the Internet, they all have poorly selected typefaces, ugly or difficult-to-use interfaces, bland colors, a complete lack of simplicity (information overload), and so many other inadequacies that they would cause any competent designer to vomit. It is severely appalling to witness such high-end Web sites with a complete lack of professional, quality appearance. It is sickening. The only reason these Web sites succeed is because the public is used to seeing ugly, half-assed Web sites that only function correctly a fraction of the time.

Case in point: MySpace is a perfect example. This Web site is ugly as they come, and despite their recent changes (oh, yeah, they added gradients to their ugly menu — big deal), there is no sign of improvement. The Web site is, and always has been, ugly as sin (and I mean the worst kind of sin). They continue to try to develop new features, and yet for some reason frequently have to post messages to their users that certain features or aspects of the site are down. At least once per week, I get an error message that is “forwarded to the MySpace technical group” simply when logging in.

Like our wonderful accessibility standards projects, which have done an excellent job at creating buzz in the online community and slowly creeping into the mainstream, a Web appearance standard initiative will require a great amount of exercise to provide direction and consulting for both existing and new Web sites alike to carefully design their Web sites with appearance, accessibility, and usability in mind. Fortunately, many (I would say most) accessibility-aware Web sites and developers have a great eye for developing beautiful Web sites while adhering to standards — although the same cannot be said for the majority of the actual accessibility standards Web sites themselves, ironically — but we need to bring into focus appearance as well.

The Mission

“The Web Appearance Standards project is an initiative to strongly and adamantly encourage the aesthetic and visual amelioration of all Web sites while supporting complementary initiatives for accessibility and usability standards.”

The Road

Now I’ve had my rant — and perhaps that’s all this really is — but I think it’s time for action. I haven’t started this organization, and I currently don’t have the time or resources to do so. Perhaps someone else does. If so, the Web site will have my full backing, and any support I can provide in my free time.

Following are three things that need to be done to get this started.

First, make a Web site. WASIP.org (Web Appearance Standards Initiative Project — I know it’s long, but WASI was taken; if you’ve got better ideas, go for it). This Web site should exemplify the beauty that the project aims to spread, but also meet accessibility and usability standards.

Second, spread the word. Build buzz. Make it the next Web Accessibility Initiative. Get all of those popular bloggers like Jeffrey Zeldman, Dave Shea, etc. involved and on-board. If the initiative becomes a large enough organization, it will have a great amount of political influence in the business realm, which will weigh heavily in favor of raising the bar for Web design and usability, which brings me to my third and final point.

Third, start getting in contact with these larger, more popular Web sites and get them involved. Pressure them to redesign their Web sites. As a public relations tool, it will be useful for them, as they can have some kind of stamp of approval for beautification or something. Obviously this would be derived by a committee of industry-leading designers. Furthermore, the companies would benefit because their users would benefit. For example, I use Facebook instead of MySpace for two reasons: it looks nice, and it’s fully functional, 99% of the time. The effects are not immediately realized, but as a late competitor into a social-networking scene, Facebook is actually doing more than phenomenally well against is less-than-beautiful counterpart.

The Future

The Web has an incredible, powerful future ahead of it. It’s still very young, but already we are seeing problems, and these initiatives are very critical (particularly as early on as possible) to nip issues in the bud before they become even more severe down the road. When Web sites are designed as an afterthought, or by people who have no experience designing with high-quality, or by lazy, careless individuals who are satisfied with the status quo and working their 9-5 jobs, then everyone loses. Don’t let that happen. Find vision. Find visual.

Oh, and before you post a comment about it: yes, I am an avid Taylorist.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned many times how fond I am of entrepreneurship, a model that creates the basis for wealth generation through the free market system. Without getting into politics, although the short story I am about to tell you may involve them to a degree, capitalist economics is the foundation on which I have made my living. It is where I have come from, and apparently, where I am staying.

Yes, I am staying here. Not because I am unable to move on or find better things, though I would be hard-pressed to discover something more gratifying and fruitful, but because I can go nowhere else. The power behind creating a business and independently generating wealth and prosperity lies not just in the sheer amount and quality of its benefits, but it has one additional critical factor that may be frequently overlooked: it is open.

Allow me to demonstrate a life experience which has been in development over the past six months. In April of this year, after being dumped by a gorgeous girlfriend for reasons unbeknownst to me to this day, I was hired as a part-time Web Specialist at my college campus, LSC-Montgomery. My supervisor, Elisa, whom I am still acutely fond of, had been keen on teaching me the ins and outs of her job since day one. From the beginning, my technical background made the transfer of her knowledge and experience into my hands very swift and smooth. Within about a month, I had mastered the majority of the part-time job I was hired for, plus a great deal of the work she did on a regular basis.

I won’t go into the details concerning whether or not her teaching me so much was intentional or for another purpose. Those suggestions are not mine to make. The point here is that I learned Elisa was looking for another position within the college about three, perhaps four months after I’d been hired. She was applying for a technical training job on the same campus. In addition, she applied for a job at University of Houston as well, but evidently she did not expect to get the job, since she barely qualified for the position (or something like that).

Not long after, my supervisor ended up getting the job at UH. I was very excited for her (because she’s a great worker and deserves it, if not better). She mentioned that it was possible when her position became available, I may be eligible to apply.

Several months passed during which I had been doing both my part-time and Elisa’s full-time jobs in my part-time hours. A recent district-wide incentive to merge the infrastructure of the colleges in our college system brought on confusion and possibility of the removal, reorganization, or change of various positions, including the position I was hoping to apply for — the Program Coordinator, Web Content & Design position (that’s the official title). After this period, perhaps two months ago, the position was finally posted. When I saw it, I was excited that they had removed an associates degree requirement (since I had not the privilege of being born a few years earlier, as I am working on, but do not currently have, an associates degree). This made me eligible to apply for the position.

As a hard working and highly capable individual, I’ve managed to more than surpass the highest expectations. I have done a lot of work, and although I may sound like I am bragging, I have put a lot of work into efficiently completing all of the innumerable tasks that come my way. I have filled in some very large shoes while still wearing my own, and although part of the reason is simply because I am a hard worker, I had hoped that my display of capabilities and eagerness to exceed expectations would be a testament of how great a candidate I was. Surely this would provide a great advantage when the interviews began.

To review, my qualifications are quite important. First, I know what the job entails and how to do it. Second, I have proven that I am capable of doing it (and more) in less than half the time than my predecessors. Third, I am working on getting my associates degree, although I do not already have it (it does take a couple years); I have a GPA that has gotten me Phi Theta Kappa invites and assorted college letters with congratulations to my academic achievements. I have never gotten a grade lower than an A on a written paper in my entire academic lifetime. Fourth, I have years of experience in the field of Web design, content, development, programming, technical skills, graphics design, editing, journalism, and so on. I have written code that has been published in a book. I have spent six months providing that I can quickly and thoroughly learn anything that comes my way. I picked up a manual on the Lasso programming language and started writing programs for my supervisor in the same day. Fifth, I had glowing recommendations from my ex-bosses from past jobs, clients I have done work for, and of course Elisa herself (a huge factor). And sixth, according to both the dean of our department and the president of our college campus, my performance in the two interviews for the position was outstanding.

So what is all of this ranting about? I got the position right?

Wrong. After six months of work and meeting all the qualifications, I did not get the job. “Yeah, he’s got everything we need, but — aw, no letters behind his name.” The degree is not a requirement, but it is the only reason I did not get the position. So who got it? They “want to keep searching.” That means they probably won’t have anyone in that position until sometime next year, since everything moves as a crawling pace in such a huge bureaucracy. And considering the current situation that the college system is in with respect to the college Web sites (I won’t reveal the details), even if they hired someone today, that person would have to go through so much training that they would be useless until after all the work they should be doing was already done. To make a long story short, I’m the person they need; no one else can do it at this point, because you are not going to find a person who has the knowledge of the current systems like I do (and that is needed to develop the new systems we are moving to).

So let’s see what this all boils down to. As I mentioned before, I’ve got a lot going for me. The only thing I don’t have is an associates degree. We’re not talking bachelors or masters, just associates, which I’m about 1/3 (maybe 1/2) completed with at this point. I would already be done, but I was born in 1989 and didn’t know about dual-credit classes until after I became a college student. So essentially, I am eligible but not hirable because I was born a year late. Yes, I just randomly got shafted.

What’s the reason behind this? Well, the dean of our department put it to me something like this (paraphrased). “I think it’s because they want to show the importance of having a degree.” Yeah, so we’re going to punish those who work hard and are more capable (and have more experience) than those who have degrees purely for the purpose of demonstrating how important it is to have a degree.

And this brings me back to my opening statements. I love entrepreneurship. It’s not just the potential to become filthy rich working for yourself (since you can never become rich by working for someone else). It’s not the fact that I can work from home and sleep in every day. It’s just because entrepreneurship is open. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a degree. I can show you my work, and show you how capable I am. The problem with getting a degree and obsessing over mere letters behind your name? By the time you get the degree, everything you have learned is obsolete. This is how people at a higher education institute think, and it is exactly the reason why I see so much waste of resources (both human and monetary) across the entire system. I won’t go into the details, as I needn’t bash higher education institutions or their constituents further — I think my argument can be plainly seen.

To conclude my thoughts on this subject, for those of you who are attending college (and for some reason reading my blog), please remember that everything you learn will be expired, old, and useless by the time you get out of college. We live in a fast-paced information age, and what you learn today may be useless tomorrow. Keep in mind that if you are going for a web design degree, you should change your major to something that will be useful in the future (something like agriculture so you can feed yourself and your family when we go into another Great Depression due to financial institutions’ circumvention of regulatory requirements). It doesn’t matter what your degree is in. If you plan on working for someone else (and living a cozy, comfortable 9-5 job for the rest of your life, then retiring on social security that won’t be there by the time you’re 60), then you need letters behind your name.

Now, to address those of you who are smart, consider entrepreneurship. We need you. The market needs you. The economy needs you. Every single American — no, every single person on this planet needs you. You are the core of the wealth creation process, and it is from you that prosperity grows. If you are willing to put your heart and soul into creating and managing a business despite not knowing where your next paycheck will come from, then join us. The future awaits, and it is only darkened by increased taxes, lavish government spending, and unregulated economic exchanges.

That’s all for now, folks. I promise to resume blogging more normally, particularly now that I expect to be spending more time working from home now than ever (seeing as I am unsure how long my job at the college will last — I don’t want to leave them hanging without the support of an on-campus Web professional, although the vengeful side of me really would like to). Feel free to post comments on just how much you sympathize with my situation, and if you’re a perpetual college student or president of a college who has spent half of your life getting letters behind your name for bragging rights, please don’t bother commenting on anything, as I am really uninterested in hearing your defense. Only in a court of law can injustice be defended, not on my blog.

Here’s some food for thought… You know the expression “reinvent the wheel,” as in, “Don’t reinvent the wheel” or “I don’t want to reinvent the wheel”? That statement is silly! Doesn’t this way of thinking encourage an apathetic perspective toward innovation? Think about it. There are corporations devoted to reinventing the wheel.

Don’t believe me? Go look up these companies: Firestone, Goodyear, and Michelin. There are others, too. Has the American culture become so lazy that we are raised and conditioned to avoid doing what has already been done? With this way of thinking, companies like Google and Facebook wouldn’t exist; after all, they had predecessors. Why reinvent the “wheel”?

In addition, reinventing the wheel is what a capitalist market is all about, isn’t it? We need competition. If no one reinvented the wheel, there’d be no competition, which is important in a capitalist market.

Discuss.