My wishlist for 2010

I’m not really one for New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. I don’t smoke or drink cof­fee or alco­hol, so those vices I don’t need to cut down on or quit alto­gether. I play ten­nis at least once a week, and have a Kung Fu/Tai Chi/Qigong class every week. I take the stairs when­ever I can. And I also enjoy good food, which includes fresh veg­gies and lots of fresh fruit. Sure, there’s always room for improve­ment. I’m far from liv­ing the per­fect life. But I love singer/producer/DJ Ben West­beech’s motto “Wel­come to the best years of your life”. Live life to make the best of it. But this year, I’m mak­ing an excep­tion. Read more…

Tags: p52, webstandards

New site for Child Support Ghana goes live!

Finally, after many hours of work, the new web­site for the Child Sup­port Ghana NGO and Dutch Foun­da­tions is live. Child Sup­port Ghana is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion based in the Upper West Region (UWR) cap­i­tal Wa, Ghana, West Africa, who sup­port needy chil­dren by pro­vid­ing them with a roof over their head, lov­ing care, edu­ca­tion and health­care. This orga­ni­za­tion is the vehi­cle for the awe­some work my dad is doing in Ghana. His work is sup­ported by a Dutch Foun­da­tion who raise funds and vol­un­teers for the projects. Doing their web­site, has been a long stand­ing side project of mine.

Screen­shot of the Child Sup­port Ghana homepage

Read more…

Tags: Child Support Ghana, sideproject, webdesign, webstandards

I support web standards!

Mon­day, Novem­ber 30, 2009 is the 3rd annual Blue Beanie Day. Started by Doug Vos, Blue Beanie Day is a way to show sup­port for web stan­dards and accessibility.

Herko sup­port­ing Web­stan­dards Blue Beanie Day

Excerpt from the 3rd Annual Blue Beanie Day Event Page:

It’s easy to show your sup­port for web design done right. Beg, bor­row, or buy a Blue Beanie (or Blue Toque in Canada) and snap a photo of your mug wear­ing the blue. (Or get cre­ative with Pho­to­shop). Then on Novem­ber 30, switch your pro­file pic­ture in Face­book, Twit­ter, Flickr, (and any other social net­work) and post your photo to the Flickr Blue Beanie Day 2009 group.

Want to help with plan­ning the 3rd Annual Blue Beanie Day? Plan­ning a meetup or tweetup in your home­town? Orga­niz­ing a group photo in your city? You might qual­ify to win a free copy of Zeld­man and Marcotte’s (brand new) Design­ing With Web Stan­dards 3rd edi­tion. Con­tact Dou­glas Vos.

Kevin Cor­nell makes it even eas­ier for us this year by pro­vid­ing an illus­trated blue beanie pho­to­shop file.

So don a blue beanie, spread the word and keep work­ing towards a truly open web.
Some of my col­legues also sup­port Webstandards:

Raph dons his blue beanie

Jules also sup­ports webstandards

OWMS Smurf sup­ports any­thing for a beer

@michellethonen man­ages to look like a kitten

Stan­dards in da hood! Word.

Euhm… no comment.

A Lean Mean Blue Beanie Machine

Tags: BBD09, webrichtlijnen, webstandards

Long live XHTML!

Smash­ing Mag­a­zine pub­lished a comic strip writ­ten by Jeremy Keith and drawn by Brad Col­bow about W3C’s recent announce­ment to end the XHTML 2 work­group char­ter by te end of the year. There has been a huge amount of dis­cus­sion on this topic within the web­stan­dards com­mu­nity, and Jeremy Keith’s expla­na­tion of the exag­ger­ated reports of XHTML’s demise is a great way to get the gist of the matter.

Comic explain­ing why XHTML isn’t dead

Tags: HTML5, webstandards, XHTML

Misverstand Webrichtlijnen in De Volkskrant

Gis­ter ocht­end zat ik rond een uur of zeven in de trein naar Den Haag, rustig De Volk­skrant te lezen. Heer­lijk vind ik dat, zo rustig het nieuws van gis­ter (en in dit geval ook van zondag) door te nemen.

Kom ik aan op pag­ina 6, staat er een vetge­drukt artikel met de kop “Gemeen­te­site moet drem­pelvrij”. Nu werk ik bij het project Webrichtli­j­nen bij ICTU, dus ik dacht gelijk ‘Wat goed! Ein­delijk goede gratis pub­liciteit!’. Alhoewel, nog niet zo lang gele­den is er veel onjuiste per­saan­dacht ron­dom het onder­w­erp geweest, waar­bij ver­war­ring was ontstaan na een brief van Staatssec­re­taris Bijleveld (BZK) waarin ze aan­gaf geen wet­telijke plicht op toepass­ing van de webrichtli­j­nen te leggen. Geheel in lijn met het beleid (en ons eigen stand­punt): de lagere over­he­den hebben eigen ver­ant­wo­ordeel­ijkheid, en ze hebben zich op 1 decem­ber 2008 gecom­mi­teerd aan real­isatie van het Nation­aal Uitvo­er­ing­spro­gramma Dien­stver­len­ing en e-overheid, dus een ver­plicht­ing is er wel –alleen geen wet­telijk man­daat. Miss­chien dat dat mis­ver­stand in dit artikel wordt recht­gezet. Read more…

Tags: accessibility, e-government, webstandards