Jim Barraud

I’ve been trying to articulate what the election of Barack Obama means to me. At least beyond the knee jerk reaction of “Thank God!”. Surprisingly it’s been the response from some of the McCain supporters I know that have helped me focus on how I feel about this.

This was a historic election. Yes, he’ll be the first black president of the United States of America. But for me, that’s only half of the “historic” part. I grew up with the story of John F Kennedy. All my life I would here from history lessons, tv shows, baby boomers and pretty much anyone older than me about how great JFK was. How it was such a loss when he was assassinated and all the potential he had. He inspired an entire generation. That generation knew that if this country was to move forward, they would have to do their part and not just rely on the government to do it for them. His election was historic not only because he was the first Roman Catholic president, but also because of his ability to inspire a nation.

I’ve always admired that generation’s fondness of Kennedy. I’ve never really felt that for a president. Ever since I turned eighteen and was able to vote, I usually placed my vote with the feeling of “At least he’s not as bad as the other guy” and went on my way. Sure, I felt stronger for certain candidates than others. But there was never that sense of this is the guy I want to lead this country. It was more “I really don’t want that other guy to lead this country”.

Flash forward to the 2004 Democratic Convention. A little known State Senator from Illinois gave a speech that’s still talked about today. I still remember after watching him give that speech and telling my wife “He’ll be president someday.” But it wasn’t just his speech, it was how he delivered it. The conviction in his voice. You could tell he really meant and believed what he was saying. It was free of the bullshit tone I heard from all politicians up till then. It gave me hope.

There’s a lot a criticism centered around the concept of “It takes more than being able to give a great speech to lead this country”. Of course it does. But it also takes more than coming up with policies and signing some bills into law. It’s the ability to inspire a generation of people to come together for the greater good. These are qualities contained within the inauguration speech of John F Kennedy and the “I Have Dream” speech of Martin Luther King. Iconic speeches that inspired generations to deliver change.

If there’s one thing that the majority of Americans can agree upon, it’s that our current sitting President lacks all of the above. His economic policies have placed us in the worst economic situation since the great depression. His foreign policies have damaged our reputation with the rest of the world. And his inability to speak eloquently or conduct himself properly in the presence of other foreign leaders has been embarrassing for our nation.

We had two choices in this election. To continue on the course we’re currently on, with the same foreign and economic policies that have brought us to where we are today. Or change course. Elect a president that not only talks of the need for change, but that can also inspire a generation of Americans to make it happen. A president who’s election will send a message to the foreign community that we as Americans, have had enough. And for the first time in my life, elect a president not only because he’s not the other guy, but because I want him to lead this nation.

I don’t expect Barack Obama to solve all our problems. And I don’t expect to agree with him on everything he does. But what I do expect from him is to make decisions based on sound judgement. To try and unite an already divided country. To be straight with the American people about the issues we face in this country. To heal our currently bruised relationship with the global community. That’s the change I’m hoping for and voted for.

Last night the wife and I went to see David Byrne perform at the newly renovated Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ. Mr. Byrne is touring in support of his latest collaboration with Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”.

The tour entitled, “The Songs of Davd Byrne and Brian Eno” is just that. The setlist consisted of an even mix of songs off their latest collaboration as well as earlier Talking Heads songs in which Brian Eno was a producer and collaborator. Songs such as “Once in a Lifetime”, “Houses in Motion”, “Heaven”, and “Life During Wartime”.

The performance consisted of not only David and his band, but also dance numbers during certain songs. The dancers added a visual element to the songs that was welcoming and not overly distracting. If they were present throughout all the songs, it would have probably been too much. But a nice balance was achieved in how the dancers were utilized in select songs and not in others.

Musically David and the band were top notch. I’ve seen him perform solo twice previously and this was the best I’ve seen him. He appeared to be having a great time and the crowd was giving off an overwhelming positive energy. The first standing ovation came after the fifth song, “Houses in Motion”, and were frequent after that.

I voted at 7AM. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but today is a historic election. Make sure you vote.

This photo is my submission for the New York Times Polling Place Project.

Email newsletters are popular form of communication when it comes to companies marketing their products. The most popular being HTML based email newsletters. These are the newsletters with the pretty pictures and text that look like a web page. Well, sometimes they look that way if the developer of the newsletter took the proper email degradation precautions. Often though HTML email newsletters resemble some random blocks of colors with random links thrown in. But it doesn’t need to be that way.

Lets take an email I recently received as an example.

At first sight this resembles a typical spam email. Usually a spam email that made it through my spam filter that’s trying to sell me something I don’t need, which I would just mark as spam. But looking closer I see it’s from MINI. I signed up to receive information from this company, but due to it’s poor presentation I would have just assumed it was spam and trashed it. But why does it look like this?

The common default for most email applications is to not display images that are contained within an email. This is an anti-spam measure. Spam often tracks the success and validity of the email it was sent to through the display of the images contained within the message. In order to view an HTML based email properly the user either needs to change this default behavior in the applications preferences (not a good idea) or by clicking the “display images” button that your email program will usually display. But as you can see from the following screenshot, even pressing the “display images” link only gets us half the way there. We’re still missing the text that’s displayed above and below the images because it’s black text on a black background. And the text that’s missing is important. It explains how to unsubscribe from receiving these newsletters should I want to. And ironically it also explains that if I’m having trouble viewing the email, I can click a link to view it properly. So much for that.

So how can this be fixed? I’ve gave myself one hour to create a fixed version of this email from scratch to demonstrate.

First I removed the black background that spanned the entire email. This allowed the header and footer text of the message to be shown, since it wasn’t visible due to the text color also being black. Instead of changing the text color to white, I choose to remove the black background so there is more focus on the message and less on the header and footer of the email.

Next I added alt text to all the images being used in the email. When using images that contain text within the image, use the alt tag. The image alt tag will display the text contained within the image if the image is not displayed. Also keep in mind that the default display color of the text will be black, so if you choose to you use a black background such as in this email, you’ll need to apply a color style to the image to change the color of the alt text so it’s readable.

With those small changes, the email that the recipient would receive would look like the following.

But this can be improved even further.

I’m a big advocate of using pure HTML text and not using images to layout your text. Images are often used to ensure a particular font is used. But I believe the cost in lost usability and accessibility is too high for ensuring your particular font is displayed (the one exception being logo branding). So I’ve created a second version of the email removing the image based fonts for pure HTML based text.

As you can see in the following screenshot, even without the images being displayed the visual style being sought by the company still comes through.

When we choose to display images, here is our final email.

As I mentioned previously, these changes took less than an hour. But they moved the visual presentation and accessibility of the email miles ahead of it’s previous incarnation.