Saturday 15 March 2008

Your Best Pop, Your Worst

NEEDING TO GET AWAY FROM STANDARDS and browsers and conferences, I’m interested in a conversation about the best and worst pop culture right now.

Whether journalism, fiction, television, film, photography, illustration, diaries or mixes thereof, I really need your help expanding my horizons.

It can only help!

I’ve been watching “Ashes to Ashes” and waiting for a new episode of the “Big Bang Theory.”

What are you following? Reading? Watching? Doing?

Share your worst, your best!

Filed under:   faith(less), humor, blogging, pop culture, poetry & fiction, society, creativity, molly asks you, community, nmby
Posted by:   Molly | 7:23 pm | Comments (70)

Monday 18 February 2008

Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History

Guess I’m going down in those history books, because I am scandalous!

What fun! I love the fact that Matt (the fellow whose shirt I unbuttoned the top two buttons of) used to “smuggle” my books into class. In the sixth form, no less! Oh, the irony.

Filed under:   humor, blogging, pop culture, web design and development, travel, blog slut, food and drink, society, conferences
Posted by:   Molly | 7:25 pm | Comments (19)

Sunday 17 February 2008

Happiness is Sexy

As a depressive, I’ve always found the people I get involved with during the dark times end up being my worst mistakes.

But happiness, I’m sure, is sexy. I see a plain person frown, and that’s just a plain person frowning. I see any person, no matter their physical being, alive with happiness, and that is very appealing.

Happiness is sexy. I may not always be able to be happy, or sexy, but damned if I don’t love being both.

What do you think?

Filed under:   blogging, pop culture, blog slut, society, molly asks you, community
Posted by:   Molly | 3:23 am | Comments (40)

Friday 8 February 2008

Melbourne, Australia

If it isn’t on your “places to see before you die” list, put it on.

I might never leave.

Coolest most awesome, broad minded, multicultural city I’ve ever been in.

I love Melbourne. What an amazing, unique town.

Filed under:   blogging, travel, food and drink, creativity, community
Posted by:   Molly | 9:15 am | Comments (34)

Saturday 2 February 2008

Avoiding the Melting Pot while Embracing Global Differences

Earlier this month there came an interesting post on the “Top 15 Women Bloggers” courtesy xfep.com. The list is surely a good one, citing strong women bloggers from a variety of backgrounds, interests and talents.

This morning, I woke to find a link to a post by Hùynh Vĩnh Sơn, a Vietnamese blogger who has published the top 15 list in his native language. He then followed it up with a thought-provoking image questioning “Vietnam female blogger where are you?”

One of the most awesome things about the Web is surely how global we have become. Yet, our blogging and social networks, while becoming more international in readership and scope, still have gender, language and cultural boundaries that will likely remain for a long time to come. And, these distinctions are important. I for one want to see the values of culture preserved. I’m sure most will agree. I mean, who wants to have one language, one food, one way of life? Much of life’s experience is in fact in our diversity, and the fascinating things that happen when we are expanded as individuals and groups through different views of the world.

I think about translation tools and online social environments as well as global interaction guides to help us understand some of the etiquette and behaviors involved when dealing across cultural boundaries, and even divides. I see that these are good tools to use to begin with, but I’m interested in discussing how to create social software that can assist us in avoiding a melting pot and embracing our global differences.

The Web, which often progresses socially a lot faster than the actual world does, offers much to enhance, assist and aid both the opening of the world to its true global potential while maintaining a respect and awe for the individual cultures that makes our world so very rich.

Hùynh Vĩnh Sơn’s post, which I could not read but for the fact there were translations and a high-impact image, has brought these thoughts to the forefront. What are your thoughts about blogs, the social network and cross-cultural enrichment? I’m truly fascinated to know.

Filed under:   blogging, software, society, molly asks you, community
Posted by:   Molly | 6:49 pm | Comments (25)

Friday 19 October 2007

Double Dare: Your Last Meal on Earth

So I posted this to Twitter:

Twitter Poll: If you had to decide your final meal on earth, what would it be?

Which emerged from this post:

you know, if I ever get the death penalty for offing some bad ex boyfriend, my last meal will be exactly that. (Rib Eye bloody, plus taters and veg)

Then a lovely fellow emailed me from Ask500people:

Hey Molly, Just saw your tweet, would you like us to run your question on Ask500People.com? We could gather 100 votes for it.

And snarkily, after eating a really good steak and “hopped” up on Pike Pale and red meat, I responded:

So you’re saying if we ask 500 people we’ll only get 100 responses?

Double dare you to make more than 100 posts about what is your perfect last meal on earth.

GO!

Filed under:   humor, blogging, food and drink, creativity, community
Posted by:   Molly | 7:20 pm | Comments (76)

Tuesday 10 July 2007

Stop Blogging

I like to blog. But I’ll stop if you want to.

(yes this is a joke in response to Jakob. Please don’t always take me so seriously my darlings!)

Filed under:   faith(less), humor, policies, blogging, pop culture, software, society, Blogroll, announcement, innovation, community
Posted by:   Molly | 4:56 pm | Comments (49)

Sunday 22 April 2007

The Online Tribe : Three Commitments

Lately, things have been so busy, and so difficult in many ways.

I still believe in my online tribe. Are you with me? Here are my commitments:

1. I will not give up.
2. I will not stop blogging.
3. I made mistakes and I shall steady on.

Are you with me? I need you. Claim your truth in comments below.

Filed under:   professional, faith(less), policies, blogging, pop culture, poetry & fiction, society, Blogroll, creativity, innovation, family
Posted by:   Molly | 4:15 pm | Comments (90)

Saturday 7 April 2007

Stupid Things You’ve Done Online

It’s confession time again, and time for a little leverage. I can always put leverage to good use, as gravity seems to delight in having its way with me.

Physics aside, here are three of the stupidist things I’ve ever done online:

• Drunk IMing/Emailing. This is an extension of “drunk n’ dial.” For those unfamiliar, you have had a lot to drink and are probably alone and looking for someone to rant to. So you begin to call, or in this case, IM or Email your friends. You wake up the next day thinking “Oh god, who do I have to apologize to” and scanning your outbox for faux pas and crimes against others. A common stupid activity.
• Sent the WRONG Attachment. To the wrong person. You know, like the sexy video you made your last boyfriend ends up in your boss’s inbox. Oops.
• Wrong Person Conversations. This is when someone IM’s you and you’re sure you know who it is, so you go about having a conversation, perhaps even a complete personal discussion, and then find out the person wasn’t who you thought they were. Oh my.

Okay, your turn!

Filed under:   humor, blogging, pop culture, society
Posted by:   Molly | 1:02 pm | Comments (56)

Monday 19 March 2007

A Blogger’s Paradox

“ I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” - Mother Teresa

Personal or topical? Small posts or essays? Write for a specific audience? Purge the soul in front of thousands? So many questions face someone who sets out to blog. As a person who began formally blogging in 2000, I’ve had to question, and re-question, how I use my blog, and why.

My blog grew organically in that I really didn’t spend any time thinking about a blogging plan. Even in retrospect the idea seems ludicrous. Blogging has taken on a far broader spectrum of content and topics than what was ever anticipated. In fact, early blogs were often much like Twitter, where spontaneous thoughts of the writer would speckle the blog throughout the days. There were no real comment systems, so blogging for a time was not a very interactive experience. There were no pingbacks, there was no Technorati, blogging was in its essence a more introspective, personal experience.

As blogs became commonplace, and began to be used for a variety of things via an influx of richer tools and a very enthusiastic community at large, questions about how to approach blogging became a popular topic. And, we really don’t have any solid answers today about the “best” way to blog. Some people have multiple blogs to deal with multiple needs and interests, and some people keep a private blog just for themselves, or family and friends to share the more intimate issues.

Can I Get a Witness?

In some cases, my blog has served as a confessional. The important piece in that is that the experiences of my life, be they what I do for work or how I deal with the challenge of being human, the posts are not just confessions, but they are witnessed confessions. It is the witnessing that makes the experience work.

Whether it be community gathering influence and identity about browsers and the technologies with which we work, or community gathering to aid a suffering friend, it is that interaction that has made blogging so valuable.

I’ve had one fortunate piece, though, and that’s that because I have no significant other, no children and only have to abide by a few NDAs regarding topics, I’m free to blog my heart. And so I have.

Wearing Your Heart Outside Your Body

People have different ways of coping in this world. Since I was a child, I have never been able to keep my emotions in check. Watching Carolyn Meyer playing one day, Auntie Molly here was astonished to be looking at herself. One moment Carolyn would laugh and be joyous in play, the next she would fall down and get a boo-boo and cry and need a big hug from her silly Daddy, and then she’d be peaceful until the next go ’round.

I have never outgrown that, nor have I been very successful in controlling what is a very natural cycle to human emotions, I go from laughter to tears to laughter to needing a thousand hugs and it keeps cycling and I’ve lived that way always. Readers here, and those that are close to me surely have seen this aspect of my personality, but it took me years to gain any insight into it, and to begin the questioning of whether it’s appropriate to be that way in adult society.

Furthermore, wearing your heart outside your body means being constantly vulnerable. I believe on some level I have done this purposely because I have an incredible need to be seen as a whole, feeling person instead of this very strong, outspoken, ambitious and aggressive female. Because essentially, those things might be part of me, but they aren’t me. I’m really very gullible, easily hurt, fragile, and want people to know that because when they see me as strong, they always think I can “take it” when the fact is, I can’t always.

A Mother’s Wisdom

So I wrote to my mother and I asked. What is this paradox? My mother of course has known me from the moment of conception, and she is an extraordinarily insightful person into human nature. She writes:

“ People present themselves to you in their appearance and their verbal promises in a variety of ways: nurturing, supportive, loving, disappointing, inimical, etc. Because of your purity of heart you are forever hopeful, forever innocent, forever vulnerable because you assume always that people are their presentations, appearance, promises. Then, gradually, some people expose themselves to you as time goes by as not what they have appeared to you to be.” - Molly’s Mom, Dr. Phillipa Kafka

Defining the Paradox

After years of thinking and re-thinking whether the personal should be separated from the “work” I have come to the same decision over and over again. I am me. This blog is called molly.com for a reason. It’s about me, me, and me. Okay, and my work. But, really, it’s about me and always will be. It’s also about you, because you are the witnesses, and the friends and family who give me hugs when I fall down and get a boo-boo. So it’s fundamentally now about the strongest and most unexpected relationship in my life, a one-to-many experience that I crave and seem to truly benefit from at best.

But what happens when an issue is so deep, so complex, and involves other people arises? I’ve been struggling to deal with a very difficult issue in my life for several years now, to the point of exhaustion, near suicide, extreme grief, loss of hope and deep anger at myself for choices and behaviors I made in that time. My mother continues:

“You don’t want to admit that you live in a world where you have entered a relationship with people in which you reached out to them fully, in which you bestowed on them all the benefits of your clear, high, beautiful, trusting soul and they were ultimately not there for you. You suffer almost unbearably when you realize that once again you had assumed that based on their promise you would in the future experience mutual, beneficial, supportive, lofty interactions of loving relationship with these people whether they were lovers and friends and colleagues, even your own mother on your level. Once again you found yourself abandoned, all alone out in space with no one there.”

So you can see this is not exactly a new issue in my life, but here where the witnesses are both known and unknown, clients, students, children and so on, it becomes very difficult to know what is ethical and right. The paradox is finally a simple one: If this is about me and my life, what about situations where it’s not just about me? How do I get the witnessing I need plus the hugs that never seem enough if I can’t let it out?

And most importantly, if I can’t tell my story, if circumstances and the people in them censor me, I become weaker, not empowered. I need my tribe. I’m nothing without my peeps, and this is how I can best express myself, particularly because I am often on the road, alone, and very busy.

Addressing the Paradox

So I’ve come to a point where I’m seriously examining the ethics of personal blogging, and just how far one should or shouldn’t take their personal stories. For me, it feels absolutely stifling to not be able to do so. It has hurt me a lot to feel like I can’t express myself fully, because my personality is such that I seem to have a significant need for all of your support and love in order to make it in this life. Maybe one day that will change, but for now, I don’t have the succor and safety of home and family to hide away in. You are my home and you are my family.

On the other hand, I hold integrity, love, and kindness dear. Is it more important to take care of me or others? What do you do when faced with questions, and what might you recommend to me to make things easier as I work through the most difficult pain I’ve ever been faced with?

Filed under:   professional, faith(less), blogging, society
Posted by:   Molly | 10:24 am | Comments (68)

Tuesday 26 December 2006

Twitter: Best Kvetching Tool Ever

I avoided Twitter for all it was worth. Oh, sure, I’d go over and half fill-in the sign up form. Then, I’d think how insane it was to add yet another diversion to my list of all-too-many diversions.

In fact, I was sitting next to Twitter’s dad, Ev Williams a couple of weeks ago when Dave Shea popped on IM with a tagline proclaiming “Abstaining from Twitter.” Ev seemed marginally amused, and there I was, not twittering, with Ev twittering away next to me, with Tantek not just twittering but IMing and IRCing and emailing on not one but two macs.

I gave in. I joined Twitter. And I’m so glad I did. It’s become my personal complaining tool. Talk about firing my therapist!

To that end, I’d like to tell Dave: Abstinence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, and to Ev, thank you for giving me a place to dump all my woes and have people provide pithy if not useful advice in kind.

Filed under:   humor, blogging, society, creativity, innovation
Posted by:   Molly | 11:51 am | Comments (114)

Thursday 14 December 2006

Who Questions Bill Gates’ Commitment to Web Standards?

On a rainy Wednesday in Redmond, Washington, 14 invited bloggers and industry leaders gathered at building 20 of the Microsoft campus for a full day of discussion regarding Microsoft’s outreach to its communities via the upcoming MIX07 conference. The very interesting and productive meeting was topped off with an hour spent with none other than Bill Gates, during which we had the fantastic opportunity to discuss issues of concern to the industry.

We were asked not to publish any audio, video, or photos (except for the group photo here, which you can also see on Flickr for more detail). I wish I could publish the audio, I think folks would enjoy it, but since I promised not to, I’ll make good on that and provide you the transcript of my discussion with Bill on the issue of Web standards here. I also have some video from earlier in the day that will be of interest to the standards community. The photo that’s on Flickr is tagged with all the attendees if you’d like more information on that. So, here’s my five minutes of Web standards banter with Bill Gates, which I hope you’ll find as intriguing, charmingly stubborn and witty as Mr. Gates himself.

Molly: On behalf of the constituents that I represent . . . standards-oriented developers and Web standards supporters around the world, I think they see a tremendous leap forward in IE7 and the work that has been done as well as the evangelism, the outreach. What would you say to the people that remain skeptical about Microsoft’s agenda in terms of committing to the implementation of standards for the browser and other development tools instead of this paranoia that seems to be out there that Microsoft wants to own the Web. What would you tell the skeptics out there regarding your commitment to the implementation of open Web Standards in your products?

Bill: I don’t know what it would mean to own the Web. It sounds attractive! [group laughter]. We’re a software company, and we write software tools that let people do productivity, content, write applications. You know, we have our track record. I don’t know what date you want to start in. 1993, when we started IE 1.0, or 1995 when we shipped Windows 95, or when we shipped IE 4.0? We have our track record.

Molly: Well that’s the irony. You [Microsoft] were always ahead of the curve until the IE6 issue occurred, and this . . . five year gap really caused some issues for the development world, and that’s continued.

Bill: No, no. Come on! There’s stuff in IE 4.0 that people are starting to take advantage of. I mean . . . script has been there!

Molly: Scripting, yes.

Bill: Well? Now people are finally using it.

Molly: Well, how about CSS support specifically? It comes down to CSS implementation . . .

Bill: Well, okay. That is up to Dean . . .

Molly: [amidst laughter] Oh, I see, passing the buck, Bill?

Bill: No, no, there’s two things. There’s what we expect we’re trying to do; and the state of implementation of the things we’re trying to do. We’ve done the Mea Culpa . . . that yes, we should have kept the browser innovation curve to be a more continuous curve. Believe me, we wish that we’d done that differently. Dean’s group is getting more resources, and so you’ll actually see us not only going back to the state of what we were innovating before but actually innovating at faster speeds than we were before. A lot of that has to do with implementing standards. It also has to do with doing user interface things that make our browser a cool browser and ultimately preferable for people to use.

Molly: But the question wasn’t answered, which is: What is the commitment?

Bill: Who has done more implementation of Web standards than Microsoft? I mean . . .

Molly: I’m not arguing you. I’m asking a question . . .

Bill: No, no but eventually a question has to be answerable. What did we do in 1995? What did we do in 1996? What did we do in 1997 . . . you can skip like three years and say we did nothing. We didn’t do anything proprietary, either! That’s criticizing not our intent, our strategy, that’s criticizing our execution and we fully accept that. But every year for 13, 14 years now we’ve not just followed and implemented standards, we’ve contributed. This WS stuff, . . . we contributed more Web standards than anyone! We have our smartest people who go and work on that stuff . . . we just did the OpenOffice . . . our office XML formats we contributed to them . . . we’ve got XML at the core of all our products. Back in 1996 it was us and a few small companies that proposed XML in the first place. At some point you just have to say hey, look at our track record and if somebody’s track record doesn’t prove something you, then I’ll probably never convince you of something. What is it that we’re not doing? You know if you name some obscure thing and say hey, Microsoft ought to do more on that I’ll probably just send Dean mail and say hey, she said that such and such a thing we should go and do and we’ll go and do it . . .

Molly: That’s absolutely what’s happened, and I’m acknowledging you for that and Microsoft for that. I’m just saying there are a lot of skeptics still out there.

Bill: How can they be skeptical? I guess if your job is to be skeptical, you’d hate to be out of a job!

Filed under:   professional, standards, blogging, software, web design and development, WaSP, society, w3c, browsers, microsoft, ie7, innovation
Posted by:   Molly | 8:09 pm | Comments (137)

Saturday 26 August 2006

Oh, Just What I Need, More Stalkers

This is a post about the way we define personal versus how we define private.

I log on this morning and Faruk IMs me a link to my “page” on AboutUs.Org.

AboutUS is apparently some kind of “who’s who” of the Web. The disturbing issue is how much personal information is gathered on a page, including address, phone numbers, and maps to your place.

Social networking encourages us to share information. My thought is that AboutUs isn’t going to XFN or RSS or Technorati or respective networks such as 9rules to ask for information.

Rather, information is gathered independently and apparently via domain registration information. Which, as most know, if you want to make contact information on domain names private, you’re going to likely pay more money and make it more difficult for legitimate people to find you.

I think AboutUS is creating a blurry line as it gathers all this information into one grouping. I’m not the only one who is concerned and I think a solid conversation is in order.

There’s a boundary here that even I, Ms. Spill-it-all-Personal can argue for. Some of life’s concerns are personal. Some are private.

Personal. Private. There is a distinction of great importance between these two issues.

Any network that decides on its own to determine how, where and when information that should be private is made public is challenging a very sensitive concern.

Here in the U.S. I cannot control certain information being published about what I own, what I owe, and where I live.

Otherwise, that information, which to my way of thinking should be private anyway, is already public. It isn’t as easy to get to, though, and hasn’t been for a long time.

AboutUs changes that, or tries to.

I don’t mind people wanting to get to know me, but I do mind making it easier for even the best of guests to show up at my doorstep uninvited.

The good news is, at least for me, none of the information on AboutUs regarding my real location is quite up to date. Otherwise, who knows? John Dvorak might have even showed up at my door.

AboutUs: Think about what you’re doing. Readers, what do you think? Check it out and let’s discuss where the lines really should be drawn between what is personal and what is truly private.

Filed under:   professional, policies, blogging, pop culture, society
Posted by:   Molly | 12:04 pm | Comments (70)

Tuesday 25 July 2006

Transcendent CSS: Creating the Aesthetic Web

For those folks working with Web standards, particularly CSS, the road’s been a bit of a difficult one. We’ve faced a lot of challenges and continue to face them. But there’s hope on the horizon, lots of hope. This hope has emerged from the hard work of many people who are attempting to transcend the technical problems and create great Web sites. Our joint goal is to create sites that are structurally sound, accessible, usable, and designed with aesthetic appeal for multiple platform use including screen, print, and wherever possible, mobile devices.

Understanding the Challenges

The first challenge we face is that we have to learn CSS, which isn’t particularly easy for most people, especially visual designers accustomed to working in visual design tools such as Photoshop, Fireworks, and so on. There’s a reason for this: CSS was developed by technologists for designers, and it’s only been recently that the W3C’s CSS Working Group has even had input from a visual designer.

This has extended a gap that’s long existed between “creatives” and “techies” and has left us all at a disadvantage. Designers are expected to learn programmatic concepts found in CSS such as conflict resolution, application hierarchies, and the specificity algorithm. Conversely, developers tend to find these concepts familiar, but struggle with aesthetics.

In a typical work environment, these seemingly separate factions are, in fact, separated. Designers sit in their area, developers in theirs. But this is a critical mistake. Because technologists tend to grasp CSS as a technical language, while designers are trained in aesthetics, separating them does nothing to advance our understanding, education, and progress. My first recommendation is that we use the buddy system to solve this problem, and get developers and designers working together. It’s a great divide in some ways, but one that must be breached in order to progress beyond our current state of affairs.

Please, Can’t We All Just Get Along?

We’ve also had to deal with browser compatibility issues. Fortunately, with better CSS in the upcoming IE7, most of us are now in a place where we can design with CSS confidently. Where we cannot, there are good practices to follow, such as using surgical correction techniques and hack strategies; grading browsers and supporting them accordingly; and for some, implementing proprietary techniques such as conditional comments to correct IE-specific concerns. So, at least for the desktop, we’re seeing great strides in this area and out of that will come the opportunity to do progressive work.

So Now What?

We know we’ve got a major learning curve and transition on our hands, and while the software products we use as Web designers and developers are getting better all the time, we still have to know the code. I like to compare using a WYSIWYG tool without understanding markup or CSS as allowing Word to correct your spelling and grammar. If you don’t know that something’s correct or incorrect and allow Word to do all the work, you can end up with a document that is downright unintelligible! So we have to accept that designers must learn as much CSS as we can, and developers must look to designers for help with esthetics. Again, not necessarily an easy task, but one that I believe is fully necessary.

As our skills grow, and our tools become more mature, it becomes imperative that we begin thinking not only about retrofit solutions for existing Web sites, backward compatibility, and how to make something work today, but that we look toward a progressive future where the technology isn’t the focus - the entire quality of the project is.

Principles of Transcendent CSS

The principles of Transcendent CSS are very straightforward:

• Use CSS that is currently available
• Deliver better CSS to those browsers able to manage it
• Use CSS that might not be currently available in such a way that it anticipates a feature. Such features might include attribute, child and adjacent sibling selectors as well as bits of CSS 3.0
• Embrace a philosophy that combines the value of the designer with the value of the developer to achieve results that literally transcend the limitations of current technologies
• Look for inspiration off of the Web, not just from other Web sites
• Collaborate and share your work with the world, don’t keep techniques and solutions private

The interesting reality is that we can do all of these things today, at least theoretically. The problems we’ve faced in the past can be worked around or resolved. What remains for us to manage is accepting and dealing with the learning curve, creating more effective workflows and processes, and getting designers and developers working together.

Changing an ingrained infrastructure and finding the resources to do these things is no doubt a daunting task, but again, one that I feel is absolutely necessary. We need to change in order to move above and beyond the limitations we’re dealing with today and face tomorrow with strong, agile skills; better communication and organization; and ultimately, better Web sites for all.

Filed under:   professional, policies, standards, blogging, software, web design and development, WaSP, blog slut, society
Posted by:   Molly | 4:57 pm | Comments (37)

Sunday 14 May 2006

Personal Priorities

Here’s a riddle. Let’s imagine you have five activities you could be doing right now. You can’t do all five things at once, so you have to order them in terms of your personal priorities. Here are the five activities:

• Working with your shiny new computer
• Buying shoes
• Watching Star Trek
• Making love with a person whom you adore and desire
• Catching up with an old, beloved friend or family member

What would be your priority order?

Filed under:   faith(less), blogging
Posted by:   Molly | 3:46 pm | Comments (106)