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!

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!

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.

Here’s a great article which could be used if you are seeking the best sources for some great tech blogs to read.

They’ve been analyzing historical TechMeme data to dig a little deeper than the leaderboard information on the site that shows top blogs over the trailing 30 days. They’re slicing the data in a number of ways and plan to publish it shortly on CrunchBase.

It appears that TechCrunch holds top honors with three writers in the top ten accounting for almost 50% of the posts over the observation period, and I’m delighted to see Thomas Ricker of Engadget at position eight.

That’s a pretty broad, yet bold title. But, it gives me lots of latitude which I’ll try to use to point out or comment on the many amazing things happening in the media world these days. Here’s what I’m thinking for now, but like the ever and quickly changing horizon in media these day, I’m certain categories will be fluid, topics will be added, and what I’ll talk about will expand.

Web - Kendall Media Group originated in 2005 as a side business to my full time job allowing me to maintain some hands-on experience by developing or updating small web sites for folks whose budgets were shallow but had deep needs. Little did I know that KMG would expand in 2007 and become the full time gig. I’ll be monitoring and posting about trends I see in the ever diversifying areas surrounding web development.

Video - One of Kendall Media Group’s area of expertise is web and offline video. I’ll be monitoring what’s going on across the Web related to video for the web as well as video for offline use and posting things I find interesting or stuff I think readers should know about.

Internet Marketing - Art? Science? Maybe a little of both. I’ve had people tell me for years I am a marketer (but I’ve had people tell me for years I’m organized also… yeah, right). Nonetheless, you can’t be involved in new media and not at least be aware of and attempt to understand how marketing and the Internet collide. So, whether you consider me an expert or a novice I plan to point out stuff I see that falls in the category of marketing that relates to the Internet.

Terminology & Howtos - Because I have such broad interest in tech stuff, and because I am a teacher/helper at heart, I often find myself attempting to assist others in understanding technical stuff. There’s a wealth of help and tutorial content showing up on the Internet these days and I intend to point out stuff I think can be helpful for those of you looking for information.

Cool Gadgets - Having been tagged by others as a gadget geek, you can be sure I’ll be watching what’s going on in gadget world and when something peaks my interest I’ll post something about it.

Operating Systems - Okay, this one has potential to be interesting. I reserve the right not to pass judgment on what OS is the best or worst. I sometimes refer to myself as tri-puter. While I grew up computerwise on windows based PCs, I am fairly fluent in MAC/Apple as well as having some Linux experience. While I’m by no means an expert on the technical stuff behind the various OS’s out there I reserve the right to express my opinions on the usability and user experience of what’s out there.

Hardware & Software - This kind of goes with gadgets, but part of staying on top of what’s going on in the world of media also requires monitoring developments in hardware and software which are necessary to pull off the cool media stuff we all love or curse.

Web-based Productivity Tools - Call this an interest. As I said earlier, for some reason people think I’m organized. In actuality it’s a survival technique I’ve developed over the years. I have difficulty processing information and assimilating it to a point that it all makes sense together. Hence, I developed the ability to take a bunch of stuff, see patterns, and throw that stuff into buckets that seemed to help me make sense of that stuff. Along the way on that journey I discovered what I consider to be the holy grail of organization methodologies… David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Because of my fascination with those of you out there who are organized get things done-ers I tend to take notice of systems which help with this discipline. I’m sure some posts will details my thoughts and experiences with these tools.

I’m sure everything I’ve listed above will look different in a matter of weeks. Nonetheless, I thought it would help me to try to outline some of where I think the anything media blog is headed. Now, I intend to press on!