Recently, a client asked me to make a change to her site to make the FAQ link reach FAQs. This is a very interesting request as it prompted me to think about what FAQs actually meant. After all, TLA (three letter acronyms) are really short abbreviations for stuff we talk about regularly but don’t want to have to say over and over. Used on the web, they make a long phrase shorter.

In this case, FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. So does that mean that FAQs actually stands for Frequently Asked Questionss? I know, looks absurd. But that’s what it is. And unless someone’s business, site, etc. was incredibly obvious and simple, it wouldn’t make sense that anyone would have a Frequently Asked Question. That’s the only way FAQs would make sense.

So, how’d it get this way? I mean afterall, FAQs is a fairly common reference on the web. Having worked with a number of programmers over the years, they are less concerned with content and more concerned with functionality. But, often they must generate content initially to create the functionality (sometimes foobar or foobar1, foobar2, etc. just doesn’t cut it all). So in order to do their job they enter some text and continue writing the code around it. FAQs makes total sense when you are in a hurry and don’t really thing about it. However, I’ve seen far too many editorial types turn my TN and CO into Tenn. and Colo. because they adhere to some antiquated style guide to believe they miss it.

Could it be the Internet and programmers have just created a phenomenon where some misuse repeated over and over across thousands of sites has actually changed the mindset of those who proofread?

So today I was working on a PowerPoint presentation to pitch KMG to the marketing department of a major company who outsources most of their PowerPoint development. One of the features I was working to build into the pitch (which demonstrates some of what we have to offer) was utilizing the hyperlinking within the presentation to create a navigation giving a presenter a non-linear capable approach to his presentation. Imagine my surprise when the nifty hyperlinks I placed on the master slide didn’t work! I knew I had done everything right… or thought so. I finally realized what I thought was the hyperlinks randomly taking you to somewhere in the beginning of one of the sections, but never by any discernable pattern was actually just the presentation advancing to the next slide.

This took me back to the master to mess with it and I realized that the small box I had placed over the text to create a rectangle that would serve as the link (rather than the hideous underlined text they stock offer) and which I had given no fill color and no outline was only showing a linkable area on what would be the outline of the rectangle. Hence, I went back to the master, selected the set of boxes, gave it a color (any color will do) and set the transparency to 100%. Viola… it now works like a charm. WHEW!

So a friend of mine tweeted a link to an awesome video today. I find trying to explain social media, networking, twitter, and on and on and on to folks who are way out of the loop is terribly difficult. Thanks to these guys, there’s now a GREAT source for explaining and I don’t have to do it. Here’s a sample:

Twitter in Plain English
These guys do great work, and that’s why their whole series is on my list for how to watching.

Well, the much anticipated and speculated iPhone 3G specs as well as the iPhone 2.0 update details are official. Below are my (current) list of disappointments:

1. No video (agrees with iJustine - “Steve, what WERE you thinking?” or who wasn’t thinking may be more like it)
2. No two-way camera for video chat
3. Though it sounds like there’s a way to save photo from email, no save picture from web page
4. No picture via SMS/text
5. No solution to the lack of copy/paste (but we have Exchange/ActiveSync support… woohoo?!?!)
6. Ability to add a phone number from an email or text message, not just call it
7. Icons for clock and weather should be updating on the home screen by now
8. Press and hold on a web page or email should initiate a submenu with all those useful options we need

Perhaps some of these they figure some third party apps will solve and thats why they have not tackled them yet. But to me these (at least) seem like some of the no brainers which should have been done by now. Am I missing something? Did I say something wasn’t available and it was announced?

UPDATE June 15, 2008

Oh… how COULD I forget.

9. Yes, FLASH. C’mon! Even though I despise FLASH websites, so many folks are enamored with it so what’s that old saying… if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? Hasn’t Apple enjoyed a delightful affair with Adobe all these years?
10. (Because Letterman says you have to have 10) Why can’t I change my desktop from black to a photo of my choice. I don’t stay on that unlock screen long enough to make changing that a useful thing.

11. Phone as modem! I want to be able to hook my phone to my computer and use my unlimited data plan to access Internet through iPhone from laptop.

I remember the first time I heard this phrase. It was used in conjunction with a new employee being fed loads and loads of info on his first day of work. I’d never heard it before but it so fit the look on the guys face. He was so overwhelmed by information pouring into his head.

The other day I got a Twitter message from a friend about an interesting application built on top of twitter which is called Firehose - Realtime Twitter Timeline. It’s built in FLASH but shows the flow of Twitter updates going on near to realtime across their public network.

I signed up for Twitter back when it first showed up but have just recently gotten back into it. Not real sure what to do with it yet, but I’m having fun experimenting with how to capitalize on the eyeballs it affords as well as how to mash it up with all the other toys out there. If you are not Twittering… you should be!

Follow me… craigkendall on Twitter!

It seems there’s a growing interest in video on the web and hence many folks looking to figure out how to get into video blogging.

My friend Bill Seaver over at MicroExplosion media posted a simple and user-friendly review of the Flip Video Ultra which seems to be a great solution if you are looking for a way to get quickly into the video blogging world.

How about you… are you using something to create video blogs? What is it? What rocks about it? What sucks about it?

Why is it when I give people my personal email address they look at me funny? Why does the fact that I own my name as a domain and maintain it as my personal email address surprise folks. It’s kind of like I’m a leper or something.

It all begin back in 2002 when I was one of the many bit by the demise of @Home cable company. I awoke one morning to discover the email address many of my friends, family members, and co-workers had used for me for several years was no longer in existence. Sure, Comcast had graciously agreed to provide service to the @Home subscribers displaced by the bankruptcy however, due to no action on my part I suddenly found myself having to get the word out to folks who had me in their address book that I could no longer get email at the address they had always used for me.

That was the day I decided to change my email address to something over which I had almost total control. So I registered my name (craigkendall.com) and the names of my immediate family (juliekendall.com, jeskendall.com, adamkendall.com) and began the journey of managing our own “permanent” email addresses. At first I just redirected at the server level all email to my “permanent address” to my new Comcast account and spoofed the return to my “permanent” address. But, shortly thereafter I ditched the spoofing due to my email being perceived as spam by some servers and started fully hosting my own email address through my web hosting account.

Since then, I have moved the hosting of my email to Google Apps due to their superior spam filtering. It’s a simple yet really sophisticated solution. I point my domain’s MX record to an address specified by GoogleApps and shazaam… my own email address through webmail@craigkendall.com that looks like Gmail, works like Gmail, but is mine. Not an address forwarded to a Gmail account, but my own with all the cool features of Gmail and IMAP functionality to allow me to access my email directly through my iPhone and it stays in perfect sync with my webmail and Thunderbird on my notebook computer at home.

So, it’s too easy to set it all up and you should do the same. Then, you “own” your email address permanently and folks can look at you weird when you give them your email address too.

I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done several years ago and attended a GtD training where I worked. It was amazing. I’m still striving to implement the things I learned there. This week, I discovered a new chapter in the GtD saga. Inbox Zero. I won’t confess here all the “oops, I do that and I know it’s really useless, but I still do it” moments I had while watching Mann the Man’s presentation. Awesome. Now I have more things to target.

Thanks TechCrunch for the post about the two new Eye-Fi cards! This stuff is way too cool. Eye (attempt at humor) can’t wait to get my hands on one for my digital camera! Hey, Eye-Fi! How about a Memory Stick model to put in my digital camcorder?

Eye think the biggest news in this is what I’ll call the consumer version (Home they call it) for those folks who always call me to help them hook their camera up to get their photos off of it. Yes, even MAC users on this one. It truly is easy, but for some reason it really scares people connecting something into their computer. If they could make it as simple as plugging in the card to the camera and hitting a “YES” button on their computer they’d have a real winner in the consumer market. Eye think so anyways. ;o)

If you haven’t seen the Charles Schwab commercials which popularized the cartoon look in video most recently I have no idea what hole you’ve been hiding in. Now, NewBluefx is offering this capability for most of the popular editing softwares as a FREE downloadable plug-in called Cartoonr.