It looks like a set of recommendations to help web-creators to improve web sites in users’ eyes.

What’s important for me is font size. My eyes are weak. I see many beautiful web sites that have small fonts. At least too small for me. It’s a shame that web designers seem to have forgotten reader convenience. I even think if web designers with healthy & young eyes think all the web viewers have the same eyes as them.

In the past I talked about the importance of font size to some web designers. None understood my point. “I don’t mind as resolution of my screen is at professional level”, or just “Really?”. If the problem is not technical, font size may not attract engineers’ attention.

This is where I see a gap between web users and IT creators.

WAI  is right to have hit a stress point of web users. It does more than that. It provides solutions, proposals for improvements.

W3C consortium, a creator of WAI, has got one more vote by me.

Now, it’s time to start it again.

It’s nice to find many improvements in the wordpress site! As it has become more user friendly than before, it’s up to me to benefit from it  and keep going.

I wanted to separate English and Japanese blog threads, but it looks I can’t do it. Or I may not have found how to do it.

Never mind. I’ll start with what I understand.

Yoshiko

LIFT 08 is coming soon.

It’s sunny Sunday morning. I logged on my Mac, went to the LIFT 08 web site.

I’m getting energy from the LIFT web site!

LIFT web site is full of human flavour. I’m not technology savvy, but feel comfortable in surfing in the LIFT site.
And voice from participants — Workshop descriptions! I enjoy reading them, feeling how much thoughts are behind. There is only honest attitude. LIFT web site made me wanting to dive into the community this week.

Web is “technology”, and may be used to encourage people!

Are you joining in LIFT? Look forard to seeing you all!!

Corporate culture appears in the web sites. You can’t hide it from readers.

Recently, I looked at for my research job more than 50 web sites of various IT system vendors, large an dsmall, worldwide. The purpose of my research was to find if or how much these companies have customers in the aviation sector.

I was reassued my old thoughts throught the web search; if you look at 20 pages of each of 30 corporate web sites to find the same information, you’ll naturally understand the horizontal difference across the companies.

Some may people say that what you see in a corporate web site is a marketing hype. This may be true to some degrees but surely not by 100 %. You can’t hide yourself. There is the power of comaprison.

In my research, some companies have immediately brought me the dynamic spirit of the founder, while some others, inward looking spirit of the companies. In the latter, the web sites were organised in the eyes of the insiders of the companies. These sites are not pratical or convenient for outsiders like myself to find a simple information, such as customer case studies in a certan industry.

Where does this difference come from? — The ability of a company to put itself in customers’ shoes.

Good companies — IBM, Business Objects, CSC. There would be more but I just didn’t have a chance to see the web sites of other companies wih good sensitivity to customers and markets.

Easy to say, difficut to do; Watch what you do in your customers’ eyes.

Customers are watching your behavior.

Yoshiko

自己紹介
多国籍、多言語の職場と生活を18年。日本は近く、遠く。

本文
「あの人はトランスアトランティックだ」という言い方が英語にあります。本人は生まれも育ちも英国人で、米国が好き、その人の雰囲気も、どこか、アメリカ人ぽい人を指すそうです。そういう人は、英国にある米国企業によくいるとか。それを聞いたとき、言い得て妙だと感心しましたが、同時に人ごとではない気もしました。私も、ヨーロッパでの暮らしが長くなるにつれ、生まれ育った日本と、今自分の住む土地との、両方の感覚を持った人間になりつつあるかもしれません。
　私は、1989年、パリに仕事を得て日本からヨーロッパに来て以来、フランス語で生活、英語で仕事を続けてきました。その間、思いがけずも、パリとジュネーブに二度づつ住み、今ではジュネーブに落ち着いています。もともと、日本社会の外に身を置いてみたくてパリに来たので、今まで、仕事で日本との関係を積極的に追うことはありませんでした。
　ところが、こういう環境に長くいると、仕事の外で日本語を話す機会が、とても貴重になります。夏冬の休みに、日本人の友人と、最も親しんだ言語を自在に使って、文法も語彙も気にせず、あれこれ気ままに話す楽しさ！これはもう、心の健康に欠かせません。自宅にマックを買って以来、日本語でメールが出来るようになったことも、私の日本語へのアクセスを向上させてくれました。
　最近、私は、ジュネーブのTG新聞を購読するようになりました。これは私のフランス語人生では画期的なことです。ずっとフランス語圏に住んできましたが、私は今まで、フランス語の上達にはあまり熱心ではありませんでした。昼間、読む、書く、話すが、すべて英語なので、家ではアルファベットよりも、日本語を目にしたかったのです。アルファベットはちゃんと見て、文字を読まなければ意味がわかりませんが、日本語ならパッと見てすぐに意味が取れます。聞く方も同様。アルファベット漬けの仕事の後、ものを読んだり聞いたりするのに緊張がいらない日本語は、ちょっと大袈裟ですが、心の癒しでした。
　アルファベットに鎖国をしていた私のプライベート空間に届くようになったTG新聞。これが意外に面白い。フランス語を読むのは時間が掛かるので、平日の夜は、見出しと、いくつかの記事の導入部分を読むのが精一杯ですが、それでも充分。自分が、記事に出ているあれこれの地域、人々に親近感を持って読めるという、新鮮な発見。ローカル紙って楽しい！どちらかというと、フランス語を避けてきた私が、ローカル紙に親近感を持てるのも、ジュネーブに長く住み、地元の友人も増え、いろいろな経験を重ねてきた賜物でしょうか。同時に、いつのまにか、この社会に思っていたよりも深く入っていた自分に気づき、少し嬉しくもなりました。これからは、もっとフランス語を受け入れよう、、。
　自分の生活感覚が自分の住む土地に馴染むにつれ、その分、日本在住の家族や友人たちとは、いつのまにか、ものの見方、感じ方が違ってきているように思います。私も、日本で生まれて育った人間ですが、日本から来た友人たちと話していると、ときたま、あれ？と思うことが出てくるのです。感覚の隠れたすれ違い、といいましょうか。これが私なりの国際化なのよ、と腹を括り、これからも我が道を付けて行こうと思います。

For Verizon, the company posts valuable industry in its web, such as “Telecommunicaitons Industry Overview”. Its study co-sponsored with Microsoft on collaboration in a corporate environment is eye-opening.

For Boeing, I’m a fan of Randy Baseler’s blog (link)  and Current Market Outlook (link), a long term view of the civil aviation and aircraft market outlook.

For IBM, — One of the richest in intelligence, Innovation (excelent think tank on the web!), strategic thinking for enterprises, easy search, cross references, very well organised, e.g. customer case studies, video, documents, — varuous media on the web

What made me feel “this company must be good!”? Where does this inspiraiton come from?

Intelligence, mind-stimulating thoughts, and analysis

The information posted on the web makes me feel these companies have vision, a corporate culture to create their strategies based on the strong thinking, and are open minded not to hesitate to share their thoughts and results of thinking with the wide public. like me.

Above said, I’m not in a position to stand by any company. I’m a user of web sites without commercial interests. Web sites are my archive and windows to the real world.

I don’t inted to favor any country, language or culture. My evaluation is merely my personal one. I think I like hacing good food for thoughts when searching the web.

The idea looks simple but the work involved in not. The site lists a number of IT-related terms and provides the facts, mostly in terms of numbers. These are grouped in 40+ categotires. Each category contains a number of short description of the relevant facts. For example, in “3G” category, a fact like “402 mln 3G subscribers worldwide” is listed with a short article. Likewise, in “Digital imaging” category, “11% of Americans have more than 10,000 digital photos”, “10 mln digital cameras shipped in Asia-Pacific in 2004″.

I was impressed by the sources, too. The site lists 50+ sources, that include many famous names, such as Forreetse, IDTec, Jupiter Research, Gartner, Deutsche Bank Researcn, to name only a few.

Simple things are important, but we know from experience that ways to find simple numbers are not as simple as the numbers in search. When we write something, when a simple question occurr to me, I sometimes spend hours.

These numbers are however important in making me aware of the facts closer to the reality, allowing me to feel the size of the market or problems.

There is a large value-added in collecting simple facts and displaying them in one place. We all need it but not many people dare do it.

A challenge of this site would be up-dating of these “facts”. I don’t know how often the facts are up-dated in the site, and will see.

Financing of the work could be a challenge. Everyone would agree that this site is convenient, but who’s ready to pay for that? There may be many who’d pay, then how would the web organisers collect money? I have learned with surprise at the LIFT conference in Geneva (7-9 February, 2006) that Wikipedia is supported by donnation and the people behind Wikipedia have the remaining chash to run it for the soming three months only! I wonder how the IT Facts is funded.

Above said, I fully congratulate ITFacts for its idea and the work to make it happen as a user. Is it user’s egoism to enjoy high quality intelligence free of charge from the web?

Interested in the web? Here it is! –> http://www.itfacts.biz/

What a conference it was! The fresh shower for my brain!!

What a smart web it is! –> LIFT
AND What smart people they are who exploited the web power for the conference!

The LIFT web is an intelligent and hard-working colleague for the conference participants and organisers. It works as an information board, e-commerce, blog, self-service who’s who?, archive, pod casting collection, LIFT wiki, and more. Unlike us, it doen’t get tired.

Interactive communication empowered by the web has given birth to a new working style

1. Administration, as usual – conference information, registration, notice board, inquiry, etc.

2. To get idea widely from the people and select the ones for the conference agenda – To ceate a conference agenda, the organising group didn’t stop with their ideas of agenda items, though they were good. They went out of the group to get other good ideas from the people. Thy left created one and a half day free within the three day conference for the open session, which was the place to put good and most supported ideas sourced from outside world. The LIFT web enabled this idea. Participants could post their workshop proposals directly on the web and vote to the ones they wished to join. Workshops were selected by a collective opinions of the participants. No authority was there.

3. I witnessed during the sessions my neighbourors typing their lap tops. They were surfing web sites and writing something. I came to know later by looking at the LIFT blog that some were reporting what was going on in the sessions with their comments. It was a real-time volunteeered reporting! Conference infrastructure enabled these activities – WiFi network all over the conference venues, 8 out of 10 people brought their own lap top PCs & Macs with WiFi card equipped.

4. The web site is the means to carry on the opinion survey of participants on the conference.

5. The web site is a cyber archive of conference sessions by video podcasting on the web. The podcasting started only one week after the conference. So quick and efficient!

6. The web site is beautiful, light and pleasant appearence. The organising team has pleasantly convinced us that colors and design are as important as technical functions.

7. All were voluntary work! No commercial interests were involved.

Joining in the conference community via the web site is fun, because people will look at me & my postings, and I may get reply to someone I may not know otherwise. It’s a nice feeling to know that someone is reading to my views and that s/he responds to me. This experience grows a feeling that I’m in a community.

The web has successfully created a self-forming community. Laurence Haug and his team stimulated responded to people’s desire to be connected. Their open-mindedness was the key to the success. Congratulations!!

The conference gave me full of stimulating hints and ideas to drive my work and life to the direction I want to go. I met many people who are open minded and who are working hard to build their ways on their own power. These all recharged me with the fresh energy to move ahead.

Thanks to Vic and Oli who were at the same conference with me this week, I came to know this site and, voi-là, I’ve started blogging!!!! Getting together gives birth to unexpected good ideas and actions like this. I’m happy being with good friends.

Yoshiko The Network