Whether experienced first-hand or heard of in cautionary tales, everybody is familiar with the horror of not being compensated for one’s work and not being able to do anything about it. Enter a possible solution: a remote kill switch, which gives web designers a back door into a client website via PHP, AJAX or CSS to disable it in case something goes wrong, i.e., one doesn’t get paid.
Avoiding the technical details and instead focusing on the general idea of a remote kill switch, let me say this:
It’s a sad, sad reality that people have to resort to these methods, but it’s just a symptom of a bigger problem. I also see it as designers and developers defending themselves with tools they are familiar with, rather than legalese that could only throw them for a loop and might not even work. Which isn’t to say they should abandon the usual way of going into a project altogether; the kill switch can just be an additional safety net.
Is it unethical? There is no reason to use a kill switch underhandedly, or consider it as a sign of distrust or respect. It’s not about having the upper hand or treating clients unfairly, it’s about protecting one’s business. But to earn your keep you need to stay professional, not paranoid. Integrating a kill switch into a contract, where the client is fully aware of the consequences should it be breached, sounds fair and should achieve those two things. One must remember, however, that once both parties complete their respective deliverables, the kill switch must also be killed.
I wonder what percentage and type of web professionals incorporate this into their business process. This is a controversial issue for sure, but I think people can avoid the unnecessary drama if their intentions are sincere. What do you think? Apart from a contract and this kill switch, are there any other ways to protect web professionals from clients running off with their work?
Take an ordinary blog post, highlight a passage you want to comment on, and have it appear on the comment form without having to scroll all the way down. Or mouseover a comment, then show replies to it as well as all other comments made by that person. That’s all in the spirit of Encouraged Commentary, which is a jQuery-powered script by Jim Jeffers.
Now this, I would say, is what JavaScript was meant to do. Not that fading, zooming, and sliding around are pointless applications of JavaScript. Impressing people is a lot less important compared to making them feel welcome, and that they’re a part of something. In this case, taking part is by quoting text or keeping track of conversations more easily.
Of course, what Jim did may seem more subtle an achievement than what designers and developers try to come up with, or what the ordinary blog visitor would appreciate.
But it’s one more contribution to that great experience. I’ve talked about Issuu last time, so this counts as number two. To that “wow, I had a pleasant time commenting on your blog today, Jim, you’ve made it so easy!” kind of feeling.
I hope that I encounter more examples of this—not just in commentary, but for every other aspect of a website.
Opera is at it again: they’ve announced a project called MAMA, short for “Metadata Analysis and Mining Application”, which figures out what different websites are using to construct and run their pages.
They used “3,509,180 URLs in 3,011,668 domains, from 217 identified countries”. How I wonder what Google would do in their shoes given their crawling prowess. Still, I commend Opera (again) for initiating a project like this. They continue to impress.
It will be tough digesting all the data they’ve gathered so for now, read up on the Key findings, which tackle 8 main sections. Here are some statistics I clipped from that article:
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thesixtyone, which calls itself “a music adventure”, is an online community where artists upload their music and listeners decide which songs are the best. As The Drop puts it, the site is an “almost game like format [that] consistently keeps you interested” with its “influence points” system. Points measure your influence as a listener or your popularity as an artist.
- As a listener you spend points to vote for or “bump” a song. When others like the songs you bump, or when you spend more time on the site, you gain points and reach higher levels, which unlock special abilities like multiple bumps.
- As an artist you level up to unlock special abilities like uploading additional songs.
It seems to be a trend for websites to liken themselves to RPGs with jargon like leveling up and unlocking abilities even if reward systems have been around for much longer than games. But I’m more interested in how well they used AJAX.
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