I noticed today that Google has added a Hurricane Gustav – maps & resources link to their homepage.  I think that’s actually quite nice of them and all.  I remember for Hurricane Katrina they did the comparison map to help see the devastation.  I thought that was really cool.

I’m not sure Google is aware that there was a major catastrophe here in Eastern Iowa this summer though.  It would be really cool/scary to see a comparison map of Cedar Rapids and the many towns that were wiped out.  I guess I can kind of understand it because Iowa is a less populated area.

I think I’ll go tell Google about my idea.  Searching for contact info with Google….hmm.  Google has limited it so you can only contact them regarding specific issues.   Now there are two sides to that. From the end user standpoint I am very frustrated!!  I can’t contact them to tell them about my good idea.  They kind of stink at customer service.  From their perspective – they can solve every issue anyone ever sends them.  How…simple?

PS. We don’t need another stinking browser, tyvm.

It’s that time of year again. Christmas card time! I don’t know why, but I love sending out our Christmas cards. This year I discovered a great way to do my mailing labels faster. I used to use an excel sheet and do mail merge to word. No more! With Address Book, I select y’all, File -> Print, change ‘Style’ to ‘Mailing Labels’ (very cryptic, I know) and then choose my label style and viola! I have labels. I love it.

The iMac!  It is fixed!  I’ve been very productive tonight getting everything back in order.  All of our data was saved.  Once we upgrade to Leopard, we’ll crank up the Time Machine and worry less.

Ok, I am so sick of invites to Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. No offense guys, but if I want you to know my every waking move, I’ll call you! And to clarify *cough*, Pownce is pronounced “pounce”.

Hmph.

A List Apart did a really interesting survey last spring for people working in the web design field. They recently released the results in an 82 page document. It’s great read if you get the chance. It was the first survey of its kind and so we’re learning things that we were always guessing at before.

What I found particularly interesting was the percentage of women in the field. Astonishingly, women only made up 16.1% of the respondents. I really thought it would be higher than that and I wanted to figure out what the trend was. Because they have the raw data (minus personal info) available for download, I was able to work with the data and get a breakdown of what is happening in the field. I was even more surprised to find, that the number of women is likely decreasing. I did this by looking at the percentage of women in each age group. Here are my results:

Under 21: 6% Female, 93% Male
21-24: 12% Female, 88% Male
25-32: 14% Female, 86% Male
33-38: 18% Female, 81% Male
39-50: 28% Female, 71% Male
51-60: 42% Female, 57% Male
Over 60: 39% Female, 60% Male

Is there some perfectly legitimate reason for this that I’m missing? I’m trying to think of ways to explain this data and I just can’t. Women in the web design field are slowly decreasing. That makes me a little sad, but also proud of myself for sticking with it.

Note: web design field is used loosely here. They weren’t just looking at a specific job, but broadly at all peoples involved with all the different parts of web sites (development, usability, accessibility, design, editing, etc).