I’ll be visiting Toronto on the weekend of August 6-8. While it might seem crazy to spend 12 hours flying to spend 36 hours in a city, it’s going to make for a great story when I’m boring and 80. The only downside is that I’ll be traveling alone. My husband’s Klout score wasn’t high enough to earn a free ticket and we couldn’t justify the $900 fare.

Here’s where you come in: I haven’t been to Toronto since 1999. Tell me the best things to do, see, and eat. I want to pack as much Canadian goodness into my weekend as possible.

Of Mickey Mouse and This Man

My last day at The Walt Disney Company will be Monday, April 12, 2010. The 99 magical days will comprise the shortest period that I have ever had full time employment and the largest company that I have ever been employed by. I am excited, scared, and excited about my next career move: software engineer at Snowball Factory.

Big Details

I am moving to San Francisco the day after my last day at Disney. Arthur will be staying in Los Angeles for a few months while we find an apartment and make moving arrangements. I’ll be commuting home to LA on the weekends. Being away from Arthur will be the most difficult part of this big decision.

The Startup

Snowball Factory makes Awe.sm, a powerful social sharing analytics platform. I learned of it through Jonathan Strauss‘s presentation at BarCamp LA and immediately signed up Digital Dandelion to try it. It’s an impressive product that provides insights on how content is shared. I can’t wait to work on what’s next.

Of course, I might not have met Jonathan or learned of Awe.sm had it not been for its other cofounder, Laurie. He blogged about me in the Apple Switch commercial in 2002. We kept in touch online and finally met in real life in 2009. He’s smart, sassy, and awesome in general.

Attending Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, will be one of my first acts of startup glory. Snowball Factory will also be throwing a Chirp preparty. Not a bad way to kick off an intense position!

(Snowball Factory is also seeking an incredible backend engineer who wants to work with emerging technologies like Hadoop, Hive, Redis, and Cassandra. More…)

Moving On Up

With this job, I will be bidding farewell to Los Angeles. I recently wrote a best friend that I always seem to discover a fondness for the place that I’m leaving as I’m leaving. This is oddly true for Los Angeles, a place that I never particularly liked and had no intention of staying in when I arrived. It grew comfortable over the last three years. Arthur and I have the most incredible condo-partment that we’d buy if we could. We have our favorite coffee shop, butcher, farmers’ market, and hikes. Most importantly, we have amazing friends in Los Angeles. I can’t put into words how I feel about leaving them. It’s too difficult.

Something about San Francisco stole both of our hearts on our first trip there. I hope that the charm we’ve felt on our last five trips there welcomes us when we become residents. Certainly, San Francisco offers the career opportunities that both of us haven’t found in Los Angeles. We’re picking the opportunity to grow over the comfortable certainty the start of the new year blessed us with. I hope it’s the right decision. I know it is. Regardless, it’s going to be an adventure.

Photo credit: San Francisco Bay Panorama by Kevin Collins CC BY 2.0

To earn points in Bejeweled, a player must swap jewels on a grid to form a sequence of three or more similar colors. Players have one minute to earn as many points as possible. Gameplay for Bejeweled on Facebook is the same as it is on other platforms. However, access to a player’s friend list on Facebook increases the competitive motivation for continued play. Players not only desire to beat their own high scores, but those of their friends.

Bejeweled Blitz goes further into the social graph by pitting friend groups against each other and awarding real world prizes to top scoring teams. Beyond the social graph, a player’s score is ranked globally.

Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook effectively utilizes the news feed by prompting players to post stories of high scores. To decrease monotony in the news feed, particularly for Facebook users who have many active friends playing Bejeweled, news feed stories vary when posting the same story type. They’re also seasonally adjusted.

A new high score triggers a Facebook notification to be sent to a player’s friends who were overtaken in the leader board, further encouraging repeat play.

For more feisty players, the Facebook publisher interface allowed direct challenges to be brought from a friend’s wall.

Pop Cap’s enhancement of Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook is an excellent example of how a classic game can become more engaging by becoming more social.

I participated in “the survey for people who make websites.” Take it.

1. Setup your Google Profile. Note your profile URL.
2. Add the two lines below the head of your website’s index. Change the second line to reference your Google Profile URL.

<link rel="openid2.provider" href="https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/ud?source=profiles">
<link rel="openid2.local_id" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/your_google_profile_url_here">

1 How to Setup OpenID with Google Apps
2 TechCrunch: Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs

A bookmarklet is a special bookmark that uses JavaScript to add functionality. When you click on a bookmarklet from your Bookmarks Bar, a prompt will appear. Type your search, hit return, and the search results will be loaded in the browser window. If your Bookmarks Bar is not visible, go to View > Show Bookmarks Bar in Safari.

Other Useful Search Engines

I made some bookmarklets of popular searches. Simply drag the links below to your Bookmarks Bar to use.

• Bing
• Wikipedia
• eBay
• Amazon

  Note: the above bookmarklet includes my Amazon Associates referral code that gives me a small kickback if you use it and purchase something.

Quick Keyboard Access

Bookmarks in Safari’s Bookmarks Bar can be accessed through a keyboard shortcut. Press command (⌘) and 1 to load the first bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar. Press 2 for the second, 3 for the third and so on.

Create Your Own

Here’s the base JavaScript for the bookmarklet:

var q = prompt('Search for','');
if (q != null) {
	window.location = 'http://example.com/search?query=' + q;
}

When merged to a single line and URL escaped, it looks like:

javascript:var%20q=prompt('Search%20for','');if(q!=null){window.location='http://example.com/search?query='+q;}

To create your own, replace http://example.com/search?query= with the actual search provider’s query URI. Copy the URL escaped single line of JavaScript with the javascript: prefix. Open a blank Safari window and paste the line. Drag the site icon (the blue sphere in the Address Bar) to your Bookmarks Bar to save.

This is an easy and flexible way to have different and multiple search providers in Safari.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

Pete LePage used this quotation to introduce his session HTML 5 Features in Internet Explorer 8 at Web 2.0 Expo in NYC last week. He explained that this quotation was the guiding wisdom for the Internet Explorer team. I was surprised and delighted to hear someone from Microsoft admit Internet Explorer’s past shortcomings were motivating the creation of a better product.

But then he continued: When Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, some web developers were upset that their websites no longer worked as they did in Internet Explorer 6. This outrage has haunted Microsoft so much that backwards compatibility is the biggest past mistake Microsoft wants to avoid repeating.

I was shocked.

Websites that behaved as the web developer expected in Internet Explorer 6 “broke” in Internet Explorer 7 because Microsoft corrected its implementation of web standards. The websites were always broken. Internet Explorer 7 just revealed them as such. However, had Internet Explorer 6 better implemented web standards, web developers would not have improperly coded websites.

The solution to this chicken and egg problem is for both web developers and browser vendors to adhere to web standards as best as they can at all times. Everyone must strive for more perfect code. Backwards compatibility cannot be guaranteed if there is a dependency upon a bug. Microsoft must stop using compatibility as an excuse for slow correction and continued support of proprietary implementations of web standards.

What Needs Fixing

1. Release more frequently.

Mr LePage pointed out that the HTML 5 specification is over 900 pages when printed and that no browser vendor would implement it perfectly all at once. He is correct. This is why Apple, Opera, and Mozilla release updates frequently. Microsoft aspires to have a 24 month release cycle for Internet Explorer, justified with the assertion that business customers don’t want more frequent releases.

Two years to improve web standards support between releases is a long time. Given how far Internet Explorer has to go to support current standards, and even more so on emerging standards, this pace is not fast enough. The web’s dynamic nature has created incredible value. Businesses have benefitted greatly from continual improvements in web technologies. Microsoft is slowing the innovation that occur on the most important platform ever created.

2. Create official standalone versions of Internet Explorer.

Enterprises that already have invested significant resources into web applications dependent upon Internet Explorer’s broken behavior deserve some form of compatibility. This compatibility should not come in the form of continued support for broken behaviors in future releases of Internet Explorer, but from frozen stand alone versions of Internet Explorer.

Compatibility with a flawed past is an act of condemned repetition. Fix the bugs and let those who need the bugs use an old version.

3. Open source Internet Explorer.

I’ve already said that I believe Internet Explorer is the most important application in the world. Web developers, enterprises, and end users would benefit from an improved Internet Explorer. Safari and Firefox have proven that talented programmers are willing to contribute to a worthwhile project. I’m certain developers would enthusiastically join Microsoft in improving the most widely used web browser in the world.

Source: YouTube, transcript

I’m organizing the Los Angeles meet up of the third annual Blue Beanie Day on Monday, November 30th, 2009. The blue beanie is homage to Jeffrey Zeldman, who led the web standards revolution six years ago with his book Designing with Web Standards.

Join fellow Los Angeles Standardistas (people who support web standards) at The Cat & Fiddle from 8-11 PM. Happy Hour with $3.50 wine and cocktails is 10-11 PM! There is street parking around the area and a $6 valet. The bar also has a great food menu if you’d like to have dinner.

Don’t forget to wear a blue beanie to show your support for accessible, semantic web content.

RSVP on Facebook or Twtvite

Microsoft previewed Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles yesterday. The new features for IE 9 read more like confessions of past wrong doings. Better JavaScript performance and uncommitted partial support for HTML 5 just aren’t good enough. Web developers can’t effectively utilize any standard Internet Explorer doesn’t support because Internet Explorer’s market share negates Firefox’s and Safari’s swift innovation.

A Business Proposition

At Web 2.0 Expo in NYC this week, I tried to convince a Microsoft IE Product Marketer to get his company to acquire Opera. He laughed. The Opera guys loved the idea.

The Opera web browser is a feature rich product by an truly innovative company. While the company started developing its browser long before Safari and Firefox, it hasn’t been widely adopted.¹ This makes it perfect for acquisition. The portable design of the Opera rendering engine would give Microsoft a speedy desktop and mobile browser with better standards compliance than is planned for Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft would accomplish more on day one of its acquisition than in the last five years of renewed Internet Explorer development.² It would then be free to concentrate on building a product that leverages Windows and continues the implementation of emerging web standards. The hybrid rendering engine model of Internet Explorer 8 could still be available to render improperly coded websites when needed for compatibility. Everyone else would benefit from Internet Explorer behaving similarly to Firefox and Safari.

Tim O’Reilly predicted that Microsoft will become the champion of the open web. That can’t happen until Microsoft fixes the application most people use to get online. I don’t like or use Internet Explorer, but Internet Explorer is the most important application in the world. We all need it to succeed to build a better web.

1: 2.3% as of October 2009

2: Gates Highlights Progress on Security, Outlines Next Steps for Continued Innovation

Edit: The Dilbert strip that came out three weeks later was perfect.