Digital Parsimony

WebKit, the fastest open source web browser engine.

There are a lot of reasons why WebKit is used in so many applications. From Apple’s Safari—the default browser on the Mac and iPhone), Google’s Chrome—their flagship browser on both Windows and Android mobile platform, and Palm Pre’s Web OS operating system, WebKit has proven to be widely accepted amongst the giants of the industry. Even KDE and Nokia’s S60 use WebKit and this is one of the biggest reasons why:

Performance is a top priority for WebKit. We adhere to a simple directive for all work we do on WebKit.

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Do you use Google Reader or Netvibes to read all your news? I do, and they are both missing one critical feature. I have 2 news sites that I always keep up with that have no RSS feeds I can subscribe to. What can you do? Before I found out about Feed43 I had to the sites manually. So I go to their main page, this is the first thing I see:

Your favorite site doesn’t provide news feeds?
This free online service converts any web page to an RSS feed on the fly.

This is what at least Feed43 advertises they can do. So I tested it with my two favorite reads: Jeremy Clarkson’s column on Times Online, and NewOrder’s Network & Security portal.

With a little bit of tinkering (about a 1/2 an hour), I was able to configure my very own custom RSS feed to subscribe to in my news aggregator. Sure, it requires a little knowledge of code, but their instructions were pretty good. I love how specific the tool gets, letting you extract even the smallest snippets of information and make the feed as usable and good looking as possible.

Check out the two feeds I created and feel free to subscribe:

1. Jeremy Clarkson Column | Times Online
2. NewOrder – computer security and networking portal

The little things say a lot about a politician and his or her campaign. The one I want to address is specifically design and utilization of technology. Everything from good organization skills to breaking things down the right way should be an important aspect of selecting a candidate.

What am I getting at? The importance of technology and design. Brittney once talked to me about an entire book that was written to help navigate through all the programs that the Veterans Affairs (VA) offers. Someone actually had to write a book to sift through all the legal garbage and technical lingo our government uses to keep our people from their entitled rights.

When my friend Jeremy (a veteran that just came home) showed me a link a printout of a VA website and vented his frustrations about not being able to find any contact information, I was mildly amused at how tactfully these assholes could hide this stuff or at how chalked-full of morons our government really is. Barack Obama seems to be the only one looking at this as a current issue, and hopefully if he gets into office he carries these organization skills into government, making government programs like grants for students, taxes, forms, and (I cross my fingers) the VA easy enough to navigate for the average joe.

I finally got around to looking at the current candidates websites to see if there’s anything I like. So here’s worst-to-best as far as technology goes:

Worst: John McCain
This is by far the worst site of the three covered. The navigation bar is cumbersome at best, and the grammar on certain pages is so typical “politics” and “business” that none of it is understandable. I also see lame and stretched RSS buttons on his blog, with crappy content. Sorry man, your site likes like it was born when you were. Not only that, but no technology policy to be found.

Better: Hillary Clinton
Unlike John McCain, this lady’s site tends to make more sense. Alright, she at least has links to communities like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter (to which she has no followers…). My worst gripe is her issues drop-down menu on the navigation bar, it’s nearly impossible to read any of it! So sorry, you too fail a designing a functional and well organized website.

Best: Barack Obama
From proper organization, and a clean layout, Barack wins my vote. Obama’s website uses Web 2.0 architecture and has wonderful statistical features. On the right pane, he has a results center that gives live statistics on his current amount of votes and delegates. Also, he has technology identified in his issues, in which he has a great deal of content of keeping the internet open and using technology to help solve our problems. Social bookmarks seem to also be the site’s forte, it links to Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter (where he has 14,000+ followers), Digg, and LinkedIn to name a few.

Yeah, I can tell all that from a website. Organize the government and its programs like Obama’s site and he will make enough difference to change the way our government programs work entirely. If you didn’t get it, I’m not ranting about me choosing a candidate based on how pretty his or her website is, but on the ability to organize and manage information through the use of technology and having a policy to improve technology and its function in government, which will hopefully carry on into the candidate’s term as president.