We agreed to adopt the name VoxPop instead of Better Letter to reflect the various capabilities built into our innovation.

We will have a new logo to reflect that change

Brian and Heather will be our presenters in Toronto.

We will finish working on the presentation scripts and power point this week.

Prof Greg joined the conference call. He will work with his programming team to streamline the prototype.

Thank you again for your participation and for the great ideas. You rock!

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Here are the comments that have been thrown around so far..

Tina noted:

-need a better font (maybe Helvetica or Arial)
-better design of "Better Letter" header
-coordination/incorporation of color
-text box for writing the letter is too small
-when ready to write message/upload content, it gets the user lost
-possibility of a text editor or way to upload a Word file
-the form layout is inconsistent
-on the View Letters screen: there should be a break after the
introductory paragraph
-validation code is confusing
-static back and forth buttons
-pop-up should be resizable

A few thoughts that I had:

-Use VoxPop instead of Better Letter from now on
-Put "back" button at top of window
-Maybe create a bunch of icons and let them sit near the top
-A small description of VoxPop on the splash screen
-New logos and buttons

Any others? I'm going to get cracking this weekend on redesigning the logo/icons/other buttons. When can we finally get a conference call with the programmers?

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Though this video is "on" this web page, the resources for hosting it are provided by YouTube.

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1) Before our second Ithaca trip, we hit on another name for Better Letter, which seemed to be a little catchier: VoxPop. We would have rebranded if it hadn't been three days out from Ithaca. Now seems now is the appropriate time to do this.

For anyone who doesn't know: In Latin, Vox Populi, means literally, "the voice of the people." Politicians used the term to refer to the collective power of the vote, which was wise not to disobey.

VoxPop seems appropriate for a pop-up based application that aggregates the voice of the people, and is a little "webbier" to boot.

2) I'm not pro or con video/audio/images, etc., but I would say we will enlist the greatest number of adoptors if we make this as modular as possible. That way, we don't shut out anyone who doesn't have the bandwidth/storage space/processing capability to host video, and we don't shut out anyone who does.

I've talked to Chris Raine about the fact that we really need to invest some time into our presentation with some "possible uses" slides. Maps, video, audio, comments sections; we've had a tremendous number of fantastic ideas, but we do a less fantastic job of sharing them with our audience.

3) The functionality of this program is really in the backend, i.e., a server that aggregates the contact data and the user/letter data. If we do not have a solid backend prepared when we go to Toronto, it is likely that each organization will have their own in-house programmers build one, thus defeating a major benefit:
A national standard for this data that can be shared and data-mined will never be achieved.

Essentially, without the proper steps taken initially, creating any sort of national or regional map-based information will be nearly IMPOSSIBLE.

Now is the time to set this on the right path.

I've spoken to the head of our news information track about the possibility that KU could host a server that would provide this functionality, and he was quite receptive. This is not a large investment; wouldn't it be great if K-State could house a similar server, and together, the fruits of this project would be hosted at our two schools?

It seems like quite a legacy for us to leave. It takes nothing more than a little upfront planning.

The only thing that concerns me now is that a team of programmers is going to start working on building something without knowing the full functionality that is desired. Sort of like hiring a deck-builder and saying "Build me a deck!" without any other instructions or parameters.

We all now the pains that occur when we undertake a task without a very clear idea of the desired parameters of the end-product. I'd hate for these programmers to have to discover the same pain.

Because it seems quite likely that any news organization will want to modify the appearance and perhaps even the interface of this program, coding the HTML is useful for our demonstration, but less so for adoption by news organizations.

In my opinion, we need an efficiently programmed server that can aggregate nationwide contact and user/message data, and provide it through a simple API, allowing news organizations anywhere to tap into the server, add information, retrieve contacts, and make meaningful use of the stored data.

This is no tiny task even for the team of coders at K-State, and so I think that it would be a fantastic project that they would be quite proud of. One that would, perhaps, have more longevity than an HTML frontend.

If this is achieved, I see us standing on the stage in Toronto, announcing, "And, by the way, servers are already established at KU and KState to share, store and transmit this information nationwide. Let us know if you'd like to access it."

This way, we can ensure that this information stays free and accessible to all nationwide. Awesome.

Quite naturally, I assume there may be some disagreement about these thoughts, but I'm interested in having a discussion.

Onward and upward, folks.

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Can someone look into recording audio and what that would take to add to the application?

As for the petition, I don't think that's hard. If we have the option to read other letters, it should be easy to have the option to create/sign a petition.

Greg, from MIS, thought it would be pretty easy to add a mapping feature. They will have some good advice about how to do that.

As for the city council, they meet here in Manhattan every other Tuesday night. I'm not sure if they meet today, but one of us should find out and get down there with a video camera. But if no one can make it, maybe we can make an appointment to speak with the mayor and a couple of council members.

Heather

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(Brian Lewis-Jones on Sep 19, 2007 8:33 AM) Patrick was adamant in his thought that we could find a coder who would knock out this project in a week. Not only that, but that we could find a coder with the same open-source philosophy we carry who would do it for free. A thousand bucks is way too much, but I guess if the carrot on the stick has a price tag, then we should pay our way to nibble on it.

(jeff tatanus on Sep 23, 2007 3:05 PM) hi there, jeff from rockchucks (team 2) here... just found a link which may be useful to you guys. http://consumerist.com/consumer/your-government/how-to-write-to-congress-302775.php

(Nate Martin on Sep 23, 2007 6:08 PM) Thanks for the link, Jeff. I agree that we should find an open-source coder (did I miss something that said that the person who said s/he would do it for a grand is opposed to open source?). That said, yes, it would be wonderful to find someone who would do it for free but I'm not particularly certain that I want to use that as a deal-breaking stipulation, especially if there's a chance that the schools will fit the bill (any word on that?). That said, I'm not certain I understand the particular concern about video hosting sites being around in five or ten years. Sure, that's an issue, but it seems to me less of an issue than asking news orgs -- especially if we'll be courting smallish community orgs -- to give up a crapload of bandwidth for videos.

Thanks folks for great presentations on Friday. We got pretty good and useful feedback on both projects. Regarding Better Letter, the
overwhelming response from our audience is that Better Letter is a
simple idea that fills a need and that they see this as something that
can be easily adopted by the media, especially at the local level. They
feel we should start courting local media instead of waiting to pitch
it to the Toronto audience. I agree. But we need a prototype.

I met a coder who is interested in helping us with our prototype. He
was present during our Friday presentation and liked the idea. He also understands HTML, Php, and MySQL. He will do it for a thousand dollars. I have sent an e-mail to Angela to see if we can split the cost with KU and I am waiting to hear from her. BUT keep talking to other coders so we can pick the best from the pool. I hope to have this sorted out by the end of the week so the coder can start working on it. We don’t have much time.

The written feedback from our Friday presentation is pretty good. Here is a list of some of the suggestions we received to help improve our Better Letter project:

(1) That we should think of a better way of identifying users to make
sure the innovation is not misused by the same vocal people (safeguard against nuts).
(2) Consider grading responses from politicians/public officials
(3) What do you do when response to an issue is overwhelming, especially at the state and national levels? (Address issues of scale)
(4) Make it possible for users to add their name to a letter/petition
that may be circulating
(5) Try and approach public officials in Lawrence and Manhattan and get their feedback on Better Letter
(6) You can add to that list our earlier suggestions that we need to do
some research and find out the best ways to incorporate video, voice
and Google maps to our project.

The best way to do these things (effectively) is to assign
responsibility and set some benchmarks (XYZ volunteers to do a
particular task by a certain date). So here is my suggestion: Let's
look at the above suggestions and discuss them on this blog. Once we have agreed on which ones to incorporate, then we assign duties and deadlines. Thank you.

--Sam Mwangi

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Heather -

Wow; lots of questions! First, thanks for considering students with
disabilities. Second, let me see what I can do on the rest.

I think I have a basic handle on what you are trying to do: essentially
to provide an interface for people to be able to use the web page to
send email; make, store and link to videos; and possibly to call public
figures on the phone?

I believe that there are two separate issues at work here with regards
to disability. Let me try to answer them individually.

First, the web site you are building should be accessible in and of
itself. The web site is the user's access to the content you're
wanting him or her to use, and if the site itself isn't accessible, it
won't matter what you do with anything else.

Think of it in these terms: you're going on vacation and you've found a wonderfully accessible hotel. If you can't drive the car because the
CAR isn't accessible, that lovely accessible hotel isn't going to do
you a bit of good.

Fortunately, making web pages accessible requires a combination of good web design sense and good code. All of the information on this is freely available and only costs whatever time it takes you to learn
what it is and how to implement it. Examples include: don't make
things flash/flicker (you can trigger seizures in some people). Always
use alt text to describe important images on your site, and if the
images aren't important, put in a null string (" ") so that speech
readers will ignore it. Don't use "click here" for your links - make
your link the document/page name instead. Make sure that changes on your web pages are always "announced" in some way - or in other terms, don't make any changes to the web page without telling the user. This means that newer programming practices such as AJAX may not work. Make sure the site can be navigated with a keyboard. This last may mean that some JavaScript controls have to be modified. For example, onMouseOver does nothing if you're using a keyboard. Have you noticed that some sites have a "go" button next to a drop-down list that you have to click before the new page will load? This is an accessibility thing - instead of using JavaScript to load the new page when the user releases the mouse button, the user must deliberately click a link.

K-State has some good pages that can help with these basic things, and there are tons of good resources out there from other entities. I've pulled together some resources (including the K-State links) on a page that you might find helpful:
http://www.k-state.edu/dss/k-access/web_page_accessibility.html

Second, on to the content - the bells and whistles. First, the variety
of tools that you plan to offer is very nice, and the good news is that
by offering a variety, you reach a wider range of people. A deaf
student can write an email OR make a video - you might be surprised how many video blogs are out there with people signing. Many students with mobility impairments will be fine as well. Since you are about creating content - not about being a repository for content - then you don't have to worry so much about captioning or providing text transcripts.

The tricky part comes in when your user is blind and uses text-to-speech software or has an impairment that requires navigating the site using speech recognition software. Let's start with text-to-speech.

Text-to-speech, or screen reading software, relies on the structure
within your site's code to "know" what to read and how to read it.
Navigation is generally entirely keyboard-based and relies heavily on
the tab key and many keyboard shortcuts. If elements are not coded
properly - for example, if form fields don't have labels assigned to
them - then the screen reader will not "see" anything and will not be
able to tell the user what's going on. Imagine trying to fill out a
form with your eyes closed....but when you tab to the next field the
computer says "text box" but you don't know what's supposed to be *in* the text box. Text-to-speech readers are exactly why your site
shouldn't do anything that isn't "announced" (like pop up a new window) - the user can't see it and therefore doesn't know anything happened.

Some programs are more friendly to text-to-speech software than others. Most email programs will work fine....except Webmail, which only works halfway. A good rule of thumb to start off with is this: do NOT override a browser's default settings or behavior. The screen reader software is built on those default behaviors being there. Changing them is bad design and will lock some users out of your site.

Speech-to-text users rely on their voice to manipulate software (open, close, open menus, etc) and to dictate text. Users may have mobility impairments that limit or prohibit their use of a mouse or keyboard. Again, you want to make sure that the software you're using will work with these programs - the most popular is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Whether or not your software will work with Dragon would be an excellent question for the folks at Nuance, who have a technical support team.

I might suggest that you offer people the option of recording video OR just recording audio. Some people - disabled or not - want to be heard but aren't so keen on being seen.

Now - as for the cost and difficulty questions, I have no idea. Those
questions are better answered by vendors or groups that are working on that particular software and/or in that particular application. Check out the Skype webpage, for example, for accessibility. The Yahoo JavaScript library has a whole accessibility initiative. There are
TONS of good people out there who will be very excited to learn that
you're thinking about accessibility up front and who will bend over
backwards to help you. When you have specific questions about software and/or applications, I may be able to put you in touch with specific people who have better advice. Let me know when you get to that point.

Thanks, and good luck!

Stacy

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Only after agreeing did he learn that the job was to put together an MP3 music player that would work with Apple's existing iTunes application and would not suck.

At the Ithacan conferences, we heard several times about how the creation nets process helped develop the iPod. Something important that should be pointed out is:

There is no single "father of the iPod." Development was a multitrack process, with Fadell, now on staff, in charge of the actual workings of the device, Robbin heading the software and interface team, Jonathan Ive doing the industrial design, Rubenstein overseeing the project, and Jobs himself rubbernecking as only he could. For specific tasks, Apple drew on experts working elsewhere in the company. Fadell also contracted with key outsiders, notably a San Jose company called PortalPlayer and a small firm of Apple expatriates called Pixo.

The net built by Apple wasn't just an ad hoc team thrown together, it was a targeted group of experts who were all aimed at a single, pre-established goal. Finally, those experts didn't go into the process with a goal of changing the world, only building a really good music player.

No one mentioned that this product might transform Apple and set the technology world, the business world, and especially the music industry on their heads. Because no one suspected it would.

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(Courtney Farr on Sep 7, 2007 4:18 PM) Sam had mentioned earlier that you guys might present Novus, I wasn't sure if that was still the plan or not. If that's the plan, then cool, we can roll with that.

(Nate Martin on Sep 7, 2007 6:14 PM) Okay, so who is taking over my half of the BL presentation in Manhattan?

(Nate Martin on Sep 8, 2007 2:12 PM) After reading Sam's email (the part about answering questions industry folk are likely to ask -- i.e., How is this going to make me money?) I think we need to redo that part of the presentation. I mean, I thought it was pretty clear in our presentation (of Better Letter) how empowering news site users will make them loyal customers and keep them at the news sites longer, but it seems that people have almost unanimously missed that point. I think the basic tenets of our argument for how it will make the moneysuckers more cash is sound, we just need to elaborate. And use kitty pictures.

BLPP-v2.ppt

Someone want to volunteer to start making the new slides that need to go into it?

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(Angela Powers on Sep 10, 2007 5:45 PM) Would this site be of any help to your project? It addresses the video news component. http://mogulus.com/

(Courtney Farr on Sep 11, 2007 9:35 AM) Thanks Angela, I have seen mogulus before, though not really played around with it. We should take a deeper look.

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(Chris Raine on Sep 5, 2007 11:09 AM) The Powerpoint needs to be updated to include mentions of embedding video links, the logo thing, and possibly mention other improvements we're working on. If Nate still has his index cards from the Ithaca presentation, he could email the text from those and perhaps someone from K-State could take his place?

(Nate Martin on Sep 5, 2007 12:11 PM) I might have my cards. I will check. They're probably scribbled in gloopity glop code language though, but we'll see. Don't feel pressured to include anyone in the presentation. Just because people are on the team doesn't mean they have to help present. Tons of teams of tons of types have tons of people who never present anything. It's okay. This isn't a class project where everyone has a presentation participation grade. Try and make the best presentation possible.

(Courtney Farr on Sep 5, 2007 12:46 PM) I don't necessarily think we need every person involved, but I do think there should be a representative from each school.

(Brian Lewis-Jones on Sep 5, 2007 4:15 PM) I still have my cards, which I can either use to present or hand off to somebody else who wants a shot. We should definitely devise a few more slides for additional features, but the core of the presentation could stay the same. I dig it. We should get together soon to work out kinks/create the additional slides.

(Nate Martin on Sep 6, 2007 1:00 PM) Okay, I can't find my cards, but I'm confident that I could tell whoever is presenting my half (are we doing halves?) roughly what I said for each slide. So do you think it should be Brian and a K-Stater? Which K-Stater is confident enough to present? Who can do a good job?

In the UK, the BBC's iPlayer has come under attack for it's popularity as a video service and providers are looking at ways to charge the BBC extra for the traffic it generates (and possible charge consumers extra too).

In a University of California-San Diego study, Professor Michael Kleeman warned that a "massive" investment in bandwidth needs to be made in the US to keep up with demand.

"Unless we ensure an adequate supply of quality bandwidth at reasonable prices, many current and future business models will be stranded, which will have serious implications for economic growth and national competitiveness in the Internet sector," Kleeman writes."

The chorus of warnings just keeps growing too. Cisco has forecast "that video streaming and downloads will increase to make up to 30 percent consumer internet traffic in 2011," according to an iTnews article.

Cisco found that American video websites currently transmit more data per month than the entire amount of traffic sent over the internet in 2000.

This isn't to say that video shouldn't be considered as part of a online model, but those doing so should be very aware of the development of bandwidth usage and whether or not video could cost them more than they expect.

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1. Explore ways to integrate video into the design, including something as simple as embedding a link into the message (saves bandwidth and email size).
2. Explore how to export geographic data from Better Letter to build maps based on who is writing letters through it.
3. Research technology that would allow people with disabilities to use Better Letter (including options like voice recognition software).
4. Incorporate comments and a Talk Back feature into the design.
5. Try to locate a local (to either part of the team) coder who can help in the further development of Better Letter.
6. Explore testing the product on KU and K-State student media web sites.
7. Adopt the name Team Kansas.
8. Continue to think of ways to improve Better Letter.
9. Blog folks, blog!

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I did a little research on Skype and how it works since no one really knew for sure. I compiled a list of things I thought were important to know if it's something we want to try to implement. Also, Skype is closed source, so if we want to try to use it, we'd have to get permission. Happy reading!
Heather

Skype information
• Skype is a peer-to-peer program, so that would mean the for Better Letter to work, the user and the news organization or public figure would also have to download the program.
• How it works:
o Download the free version
o Choose a Skype name
o Find contacts by name, e-mail address, location, etc.
• “Skype allows for users to call other users from their computer and communicate via microphone, as well as call and be called from regular phones. The Skype communications system is notable for its broad range of features, including instant messaging, file transfer, short message service, voice and video conferencing, its ability to use peer to peer (decentralized) technology to overcome common firewall and NAT (Network address translation) problems, its use of transparent, strong encryption and its extreme[2] countermeasures against reverse engineering of the software or protocol.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype).
• Authenticity of user:
o “Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users: registration requires no proof (by means of state-issued ID card) of the identity of the user. This works two ways: you can use the system safely without revealing your real-life identity to other users of the system, but on the other hand you have no guarantees that the person you communicate with is the one they say they are in real life. The downside of this is that it is easy to use the personal name (but not identity) of a trusted person as a Skype nickname and trick a naive user into revealing information or executing a program sent to them.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype).
• Voicemail:
o Skype voicemail can be purchased on their website
o If you are logged into Skype and are online calls will be forwarded to the phone number or Skype if you do not answer the call within the number of seconds you have specified. If you have voicemail and have checked "Send unanswered calls to Skype Voice”
o You can leave a message with a friend even if he/she isn’t online.
o More Skype Voicemail related FAQs at: http://support.skype.com/index.php
• Other options:
o Video calling, conference calling, dial land lines or mobile phones for $.02 per minute (lots cheaper), global user directory (28 or so languages), call forward, instant message (same as chat), file transfer and call logs (you can save conversations!).
• Additional features:
o Skypecasts
o Public forums – like a community chat room for online phones
o Forums – a place for users to voice concerns/complaints/compliments
• For more information:
o http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html

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