Web — Page 26

To continue with

November 23, 2000 by Michael Boyle

the Montreal theme of today’s entries, it turns out that The Old Brewery Mission has a website.

For more than 110 years, the Old Brewery Mission has cared for those suffering the greatest need in the City of Montreal. In times of economic decline and in times of relative prosperity, the Old Brewery Mission has provided safe shelter, nourishing meals and personal contact for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to care for themselves and have nowhere else to go.

If you live in Montreal and are looking for a worthy cause to support, take a look at the Old Brewery.

The Florida Courts have an excellent site, and according to one report they often publish material on the web before it is publicly available in paper form. All of the documents pertaining to yesterday’s Supreme Court of Florida case are online – again, an example of how governments are using the web to distribute primary source material. Years ago I researched a story about an Ontario Court case, and it literally took me weeks to get the primary documents.

I think many of us “in the business” forget about this part of the web from time to time. Nothwithstanding all of the current issues – how to make money, questions of the appropriate use design and technology, usability, etc. – it’s good to remember that the web has made these important (though arcane) documents available to just about anyone who is interested. There’s a great deal of power in that, even if the web were to stay as-is from this day forward.

With the big mess

November 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

down in Florida going on now and our election coming up, I’ve had occasion to check out the Elections Canada website. Elections Canada is the commission that runs all federal elections here, and I was surprised to see that their website is quite lovely and very well organized. It features excellent use of rollovers in the main menu structure, and generally a really clean layout. No sample ballot that I could find though.

There’s a new website

November 5, 2000 by Michael Boyle

that will document the creation of a new book: Design for Community by Derek M. Powazek. He’s making use of community tools in the site, which makes sense. The site itself could become a great example to use in the book later on. Pretty cool. Recombinant.

And now it’s 2:15

November 2, 2000 by Michael Boyle

and it’s all weird. I wasn’t at home to change my clocks, so they’re all an hour slow, and anyhow I’m 3 hrs behind due to this wonderful Canadian invention, the Time Zone. I did find it interesting to note down which websites I visited first – this being my first look at any weblogs in a few days. I looked at mostly serious issues-oriented sites first – PeterMe, Zeldman (to whom I’ve neglected to send my condolences), CamWorld, and Evhead. Next were Montrealers – Ed’s nicely redesigned Calebos.org, Aaron’s site, and David’s. Last were honourary/former Montrealer Heather’s Harrumph and Derek Powazek‘s site. And now to bed. Because I have a very big meeting tomorrow with a man who might win a Nobel Prize for medicine soon – a huge figure we’re doing some work with. Nope, not intimidated at all.