This afternoon, as I did the customary, bi-monthly task of sorting through the giant pile of mail that resides on a table near our front door, I decided enough was enough. I’m done with paper-wasting. Done with the environmental consequences of having useless information — information I have not solicited — delivered to me at the expense of living organisms. Done with the volume of paper that I neither read nor feel the need to pass on to others going straight into the recycle bin without so much as a second glance.

So, I hit up my friend, The Internet, for some ideas on how to reduce my paper mail footprint. The Internet, as always, came through. Here are a few ideas for reducing your paper mail (and thus your carbon) footprint.

Direct Marketing

The Direct Marketing Association has a website, dmachoice.org where you can opt-out of their mailing lists. Since their mailing lists account for most unsolicited catalogs and other mailed advertisements, this action alone can reduce your volume of unsolicited mail significantly. The process is pretty simple: you create an account and opt-out. Done. You can change your preferences at any time, so if you ever want to go back to proxy-slaughtering trees, you can ;-).

One aspect of this process I found amusing was the DMA’s reasoning that you should not opt-out of their mailings because you’ll be harming the environment. On the confirmation page, they warn that, if you don’t receive paper catalog mailers, you’ll just get in your car and drive to the mall. As opposed to not receiving a paper catalog, not getting in my car, and just shopping online and getting better prices? You lost me.

If you’re hooked on some of the catalogs you get already but want to opt-out of the mailings you haven’t asked for, you can try catalogchoice.org. Catalog Choice gives you more granular control over what you get and don’t get, allowing you to unsubscribe to individual catalogs.

Credit Card Offers

In my search to remove myself from the paper nightmare of direct marketing, I discovered that you can also opt-out of pre-screened credit card offers. AWESOME! optoutprescreen.com is a website setup by the Consumer Credit Reporting Industry to allow you to remove yourself from pre-screened credit card offers. Again, the process is simple although it requires more sensitive information: your Social Security number and a valid credit card. This is information they already have and they use it to verify your identity. I wasn’t quite comfortable giving that information out, so I did some poking around and found an article from AARP Magazine recommending optoutprescreen.com. I thought that was a trustworthy endorsement, so I signed up. You can opt-out of pre-screened credit card offers for 5-years or for life. In order to opt-out for life, you have to sign a form and mail it in. I will sacrifice a little paper now to save reams of paper later.

I’m hoping that these two actions alone will reduce my paper mail footprint by more than 90%. In addition, I have all of my bills sent to me via email now and only receive paper bills from a couple of companies. Please pass on any other ideas to reduce your paper mail footprint. I’d love to hear more.

So far, with this website as a great example, we have managed to create a image of a city that could be aptly described by Gertrude Stein, when she said about another city, “there’s no there, there”.

In all honesty, when I first took a look at the site, I didn’t think it was that bad. It is simple, not cluttered and gives access to important information about Palo Alto. I agree with many who worry it doesn’t properly portray the vitality and beauty of the city, but all in all I think they came up with a good, functional design that can be built upon. I’d start by replacing the images used for text (interior page navigation) with real text so those of us who don’t enjoy reading 10pt fonts can resize the text as needed. A government website should definitely avoid image-based text because it must accommodate visitors of all ages and vision quality. There are accessibility guidelines for stuff like this.

As a web developer though, I can’t stop at the visual design. I am compelled to see what’s under the hood. So after a few minutes of clicking around, I decided the view the HTML source in my browser. That is where this website, IMHO, is a failure.

Too Much Javascript

The source code, up and down the page, is full of Javascript. All of it could have been enclosed in external documents linked from the head. Instead, it’s sprinkled throughout the HTML like M&Ms in a root beer float. Not pretty and not functional. Debugging a Javascript error on that page would be like sitting in on a foreign policy meeting with the president.

Given the haphazard location of the Javascript, it’s no surprise that it is also used for image rollovers. Tell Marty to fire up the De Lorean! We’re headed back to 1998! Meanwhile, in 2007, the same thing can be done with simple, unobtrusive text links, CSS background images and NO Javascript. It is simply poor code and poor form to use Javascript for rollovers.

Table-based Layout

There is no reason to use HTML tables for layout. Semantic HTML and CSS work in all major browsers and, if properly coded, can degrade gracefully in older browsers. The layout for the site is not complex enough to make an argument for the use of antiquated layout techniques. On top of that, the HTML source of the front page is all on a single line, which made it quite difficult to find in that sea of Javascript.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Validation

The DOCTYPE being used on the site is HTML 4.0 Transitional. This is about as forgiving a DOCTYPE as you can use without just leaving a DOCTYPE declaration off altogether. Yet, as I write this, the front page has 5 validation errors. These are simple errors that should have been fixed before the site launches. I will freely admit that W3C validation is not always on your mind as you’re coming down to launch day. But it is something you should always do before a site launches, just so you don’t leave any embarrassing bugs for the world to see/experience.

But wait, there’s more:

• HTML alt attributes are missing on some images
• blank.gif, an empty image file, is used throughout the layout where text links could have been used.
• Some HTML tags are in uppercase
• Some pages fail to render properly in modern browsers (Firefox 2.0.0.6, as of this writing) (28 validation errors)

All of this points to one thing that particularly frustrates me. The city of Palo Alto spent a lot of money on an antiquated Content Management System (CMS) that spits out dreadfully bad code. After $240,000, I’d expect more and I’m not surprised that the residents of Palo Alto are upset.

Meanwhile, I think the current site still has a lot of life in it, and I’ve recently added some goodness under the hood that I’m particularly happy about. Mainly, a “flexible” layout. Go ahead, increase the font-size…go on! I’ve tried to make the default font-sizes readable to most, but just in case you have the uncorrected vision of a mole, you can bump my shit up and still enjoy a happy reading experience. I’ve tried to make a 3x bump in font-size work without breaking the layout. Why, you ask, did I do this? I’ll leave that for another post (a riveting look at web accessibility – you know you can’t wait!).

In the meantime, enjoy 1/4 inch letter size, and tell your grandma to stop by for a visit.

Update: I just realized, when you bump up my shit, the handy dandy comment tag in the upper right (the one that usually says “0″), looks pretty fugly with a big giant number on it. I will have to get on that. Thanks for pretending not to notice for a bit. -rk

According to the post on Digg, this is a Swiss town after an ice storm. Although living there day to day would probably be a huge hassle, I do think it would be awesome to be there and experience something like this.

I’d probably do all kinds of experiments on the frozen cars with hot water and a chisel. I bet some cool artwork can come from this. Beside the cool artwork nature already created.

Check it out. Globalne ocieplenie zaatakowało

Update: The linked page here was apparently on a site with limited bandwidth that has now gone down. Luckily Digg mirrors popular sites. So you can see the images after all.

We have all dealt with poor customer service at least a few times in our lives. And most of the time I attribute the poor experience to my frustration combined with a less than knowledgeable customer service representative.

Vincent Ferrari, however, had a whole other experience. Let me preface this by saying that AOL has an absolutely horrible record of customer service when you call in to cancel your service. For awhile, they were rewarding customer service representatives who convinced customers to stay.

AOL’s reputation is what prompted Ferrari to record his call with AOL. What he recorded was a perfect example of what everyone had been complaining about. I have nothing to add, just check it out.

You can also listen to the entire 5 minute call, which features Vincent losing his patience.

rob

“Hehe. Take that mosquito. That was a trick I learned from The Karate Kid. Except I didn’t have any o’them chopstick thingys. Just used my fingers like this here. Yup, he was dead though. Like lightning. Hehe.”

There is some good stuff being written. I encourage you to check it out.

rob