Welcome to Opera Bits
It is summer at Opera's headquarters in Oslo. After months of rain, wind, sleet and snow the season gods have finally decided to give us a much needed summer. Rather than flee for the nearest rocky beach, many Opera employees have locked themselves in darkened offices to bring the community a little Opera News. We have managed to track down the globe trotting man of mystery, Charles McCathieNevile, and send one of our server monkeys to the States to hash it out with the hosts from Damn Tech Show, Period. You want more?...well we can give you more...
WCAG 2 - moving forward
by Charles McCathieNevile, Opera's Chief Standards Officer
First, Some History
(Sorry folks, but they asked a medieval historian to write about technology. What do you expect?:)
A long time ago, in a (not-so-very) far away galaxy, a group of people gathered around W3C and started to make a specification. This wasn't the kind of specification W3C had done before - instead of being a simple technical description of an encoding for information, it was about how to write content.
The idea was pretty simple. The Web is supposed to be a world-wide, universal system for communicating information. But there was a lot of content that people could not use, because it didn't take account of the design requirements needed so people with disabilities could use it.
continued...
Interview: Drew Olanoff, Paul Fleming, and Adam Plante
Intro: They are the Geek's answer to the Three Stooges. We sent one of our Server Monkeys to infiltrate Drew, Paul and Adam's podcast studio from Damn Tech Show, Period.
Server Monkey: It is awesome to finally get to meet you guys... How did Best Damn Tech Show, Period. start?
The Guys: While at our day jobs, (We all worked for the same company) we would sit at a round table discussing technology. There were 5 of us. We would battle back and forth about technology, Flemo and Ulmer are mac fans, I'm a windows/pc guy, Plante is more linux and open source. I listened to "This Week in Tech" and thought "Hey, we're funnier than these guys and we definitely know as much about technology", so I pitched it to the guys and the show was born. The name is a play on the Best Damn Sports Show, Period. on FOX, which has a similar "in your face" style.
How do you handle the fame/groupies? I myself find it hard to hold off all the hot chimps at Opera...
It's tough. We get emails and messages daily from people saying thank you for "making geek seem hot". Honestly though, our loyal listeners and viewers are awesome. They really fuel us to make the show better, do new things, try something that might not be the "norm". We probably get 15-20 emails a day asking us regular tech questions, asking us if we're single, or asking Flemo if he will father their child. I think it has something to do with the accent. We want to bring out the geek in everyone, and so far so good.
Backstage at the opera
Taking a short break from their duties in the Opera headquarters in Oslo, the Opera marcom team headed off to Sjua, Norway for a bit of white-water rafting, rappelling, pendulum jumping and having an all around good time. Although it looked like a nice retreat, they were all scared stiff. A little known fact is that every Opera employee must don a wet suit at least once a year.
The Ultimate Blog
If you have a favorite blog that you couldn't live without reading, within or outside the community, then write in and let us know about it. Each month we will select two entries to be published in Opera Bits with winners receiving an Opera t-shirt.
Blog name: Tatepa
Blog name: Lee_in_FL
Opera goodies
Competition
Congratulations to Drew Marley, winner of last issue's competition.
Email us your contribution for this issue's image and be in the running to have your caption posted in the next Bits edition. The lucky winner will receive an Opera t-shirt.
Want a job at Opera?
Pimp my Blog - Revisited
After getting such a huge response from the original "Pimp my Blog" series, Ivan (aka SerbianFighter) teamed up with another My Opera celebrity - Joni Mueller to bring you even more blog pimping goodness. They've already put together an excellent set of easy to follow instructions with included CSS and images to get you customizing in seconds. If you're looking for some help in pimpin' out your My Opera blog, this is the place. We're all excited to see what kinds of new tweaks and changes they add next! Check out the revamped Pimp My Blog
Resource site of the month
Come one, come all. This month's site is for everone - from the Javascript-a-phobic to even the most advanced developers. With Opera Widgetize! you can quickly, easily and (most importantly) painlessly create your very own widget it seconds. Find a blog you like? A few clicks and you've got the RSS feed right on your desktop! Right now you can choose between the sleek My Opera themed skins or grab one of the Classic readers and easily customize it yourself.
