Video of the presentations from the Reboot technology conference in Denmark is available for download. Presenters include Jason Fried (37signals and Signal vs. Noise) on contingency design and Cory Doctorow (author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) on digital rights management and copyright (a good talk – worth watching).
Always use the form Label tag
Late last year, a co-worker asked me why we weren’t using the <label> HTML form tag. I wasn’t sure, but it’s my job to know things like that. A little research revealed the answer: because I suck. From that point on, we’ve used the label tag wherever appropriate (some historical work hasn’t yet been updated, but it will be eventually).
If you ever find yourself writing (x)HTML forms, you should always use the label tag. In case you aren’t familiar with it (I thought I knew all there was to know about HTML, and I hadn’t even heard of it), here’s an example (try clicking on the text labels):
<form>
<div><input type=”radio” name=”options” id=”option1″ />
<label for=”option1″>Apples</label></div>
<div><input type=”radio” name=”options” id=”option2″ />
<label for=”option2″>Oranges</label></div>
<div><input type=”radio” name=”options” id=”option3″ />
<label for=”option3″>Papaya</label></div>
</form>
The label and corresponding input don’t have to be adjacent – they are associated with the for/id attributes. The label is then clickable just like the control and the browser does all the work for you – no messy JavaScript required.
It works in most every browser on the planet and the few that don’t support it (Safari being the most notable) ignore it gracefully. There are accessibility benefits and we all get clickable form labels that mirror the functionality of most operating system controls.
This tag has been around forever and smarter people than myself have been urging us all to use it for a long time. Since I was so late to the game, I thought I’d share, in case others like myself weren’t in the know.
Hey New York, Thanks for the smog!
From all in Atlantic Canada, to all in the Eastern US: Thanks for the smog.
Today, in our small capital city of Charlottetown (population approx. 35,000), we have an “Air Quality and Health Advisory”. Apparently, a hot, humid air mass has moved in from the northeastern U.S. and brought with it smog.
This map shows our approximate location relative to the eastern United States. You’d think we’d be safe up here. Apparently smog isn’t just a problem for large cities.
Interview with HomeStarRunner.com Creators
Wired News interviews the creators of HomeStarRunner.com. Hearing the voice of Marzipan in a real interview is uncanny. If you haven’t seen HomeStarRunner.com, it’s an amazingly funny flash cartoon site run by a team of brothers. They live off of t-shirt sales and are way funnier than any million-dollar/episode sit-com.
Listen to the interview (QuickTime).
Smart Chart from Toyota Canada
The Toyota Canada site pleasantly surprised me with this useful pricing chart showing the relative price range of most of their models. It might be even more useful if it were ordered by price rather than alphabetically, so I tried it out.
The silverorange Labs weblog
Regular readers will know that I work at the web development firm, silverorange. Several of us have weblogs of our own (Acts of Volition, CEOBlues.com, and newrecruit.org). We’ve now setup a weblog and site for our side-projects called silverorange labs.
As the introductory post explains, the silverorange team will be posting info on our weblog platform (used to publish Acts of Volition and discussed here previously), our photo gallery system, and other tools and toys.
Hello from UPEI
Hello Dita. See a photo.
Reminder: Weblog Night in Charlottetown
Tonight at 7:00PM at UPEI, Weblog Night in Charlottetown: a seminar introducing weblogs and personal web publishing. All welcome. Tune into CBC Radio PEI this afternoon to hear Peter Rukavina and Catherine Hennessey disussing their weblogs and the seminar.
Update: A good time was had by all. Peter has a good summary of the evening. We’ve also got a gallery of photos from the evening (thanks to all of the camera people).
The view from a Delta II Rocket
Regardless of your views on space exploration, the fact that we can send a rocket to Mars is amazing to the point of being difficult to fathom. This makes the video of Nasa’s recent launch of a Delta II rocket en route to Mars all the more striking. They streamed live video from a camera mounted to the rocket, pointing down towards earth. The video shows the entire launch, uninterrupted, including the jettison of the solid rocket boosters.
Watch the video in RealVideo format. MSNBC has a slightly lower-quality and abbreviated version in Windows Media format if you don’t want to install RealPlayer.
Weblog Night in Charlottetown
Peter Rukavina of Reinvented.net is organizing a Weblog Night in Charlottetown on Monday, June 16. The aim of the evening is to introduce people to the world of weblogging. I’ll be speaking about how and why I publish Acts of Volition.
Reinvented.net has all of the details:
On Monday, June 16 at 7:00 p.m. a group of weblog publishers will be presenting an “introduction to the world of weblogs” in Charlottetown. The general public is invited to attend — everyone, young or old, Internet literate or not. The seminar will be held in Lecture Theatre A, Atlantic Veterinary College on the campus of the University of PEI.
Presenting will be Steven Garrity, Catherine Hennessey, Rob Paterson and me [Peter Rukavia].
We’ll each talk about our own weblogs (how they came to be, why we publish them, how we publish them, and so on), and we’ll demonstrate the tools we use to publish. They’ll be a healthy time for questions.
We’ve prepared a poster for the evening [30KB PDF file] that you can print off and post if you like (we appreciate help spreading the word).
The evening is sponsored by the University of PEI, Reinvented Inc., silverorange, The Renewal Consulting Group and Island Identity.
Come one, come all!