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Top Tech Tidbits Publisher Updates For January 11, 2024
Released: 1/11/2024
Author: Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher, Top Tech Tidbits
Firstly, Happy New Year everyone!
If you thought 2023 was an exciting year, my instinct is telling me that we truly haven't seen anything yet.
So many exciting projects on the horizon, and not just in access technology, but in the kind of technology that will begin to aid even users that do not identify as having any type of special need. Something that I see as the first steps toward human augmentation.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about Top Tech Tidbits. Where we are, and what we have in store for 2024.
Here are all the details.
1.) Readership
2.) New Editorial Contributor
3.) Updates To Newsletter Link Presentation
4.) The Sharing is Caring Website Overhaul
5.) Just Say No
6.) We Bid Farewell To The Top Tech Tidbits Podcast
7.) Future Projects
1.) Readership: Top Tech Tidbits readership recently surpassed 12,000 weekly subscribers, along with Access Information News.
I am incredibly proud to report that both announcements were picked up by over 270 professional news wire services all over the world on January 1, 2024.
The actual Top Tech Tidbits subscriber count, as of this writing, is much higher, at 13,032.
So why did we just announce 12K?
Because a certain number of subscribers will always come and go.
Think changing jobs, changing email addresses, and the constantly changing security features of email clients.
So anytime we announce a new subscriber milestone, we always like to make sure it's a milestone that will stick. Much as it appears the 13K milestone will soon.
Just think about that. In just three and a half years Top Tech Tidbits is approaching nearly double its readership from 2020.
I say it all the time, and I'm happy to say it again. I'm incredibly proud to be a part of this publication and this community. What we've accomplished together during this time for the benefit of the global AT community is nothing short of amazing.
2.) New Editorial Contributor: On January 11, 2024 Top Tech Tidbits welcomed a new Editorial Contributor by the name of Vicki Walton.
Vicki serves the AT community out of Benton City, Washington as a Web Accessibility Specialist / IT Quality Assurance Tester for Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
Vicki was recently instrumental in providing feedback that helped us to decide the future presentation of links for both the Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information News publications. Feedback for which we are all sincerely grateful.
While working together we asked Vicki if they might like to contribute worthwhile articles to the publication on occasion and they agreed.
Look for Vicki's contributions in future issues of Top Tech Tidbits.
3.) Updates To Newsletter Link Presentation: Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information News recently announced an overhaul to the way that they will deliver links to readers going forward.
Feedback on these change has been overwhelmingly positive and I am so very happy that we were able to improve the reading experience for so many people through this initiative, while at the same time keeping our text-only email client readers fully engaged with the publication. Great work everyone.
4.) The Sharing is Caring Website Overhaul: The Top Tech Tidbits website has recently undergone a minor overhaul.
We review the code base for the site each year in January to make sure there is nothing new that needs to be slated for the year with regard to compliance, accessibility or usability.
In our considerations for usability we review our master list of reader requests (in order of priority) to see how many of them we might be able to implement within the publication's remaining budget.
And I am very happy to report that sharing, yes, sharing, has gotten a major upgrade across the Top Tech Tidbits website as of this communication.
And not just with regard to social media, but with regard to old and new media as well.
As of this writing, with the exception of the Top Tech Tidbits archives, which we are still working on, every single page of the Top Tech Tidbits website and every future article that we publish will now include 5 specialized sharing icons.
If you are not sighted, you can easily jump to this section of any page or article (including this one) by simply searching for the phrase "Share This."
These icons will be, in the order you will encounter them on each page or article: Share To Facebook, Share To X, Share To LinkedIn, Print and Share via Email.
These icons are wholly different from the dock of icons that float across the top of the website, allowing readers to easily visit each of the publication's social media properties.
These icons are specific to the content on each page on which they appear.
I believe the Facebook, X and LinkedIn shares are all self-explanatory enough, though I will mention that we made sure to pre-populate each shared item for you, by including the page or article title and link, so that all you have to do from now on is click twice to share any page or article on the Top Tech Tidbits website to any channel you choose.
Next, and perhaps most importantly of all, believe it or not, is print.
For the very longest time readers have written in asking us to clean up our pages and articles so that they would print effectively, if not attractively.
For attractive they were not.
Menus got in the way. There were no margins or padding to speak of. And images often overlapped within the print output in a way that made reading the underlying text impossible.
Well I am very happy to report that this is no longer the case.
As of this writing you can now print any page or future article from the Top Tech Tidbits website beautifully and cleanly with a single click.
How did we clean it all up? We used CSS media query rules to tell each page what should be printed, and what should not.
The only thing that we were unable to accomplish, that we really wanted to, was figuring out how to add a margin at each page break. But our research says that this not possible to do consistently, as print mediums vary so widely. If you know of a workaround that works consistently, please share it with us.
And finally, we come to the Share via email icon. For almost as long as readers have requested better print functionality they have also requested the ability to send any page or article on the Top Tech Tidbits website to anyone else, via email, in a single click.
Well I am very happy to report that this functionality now exists across the Top Tech Tidbits website. Just click the "Share This Page" or "Share This Article" via Email icon to open a new email with that page or article's title and link already populated within the email. All you have to do is address it to someone and hit send.
I sincerely hope that these new website features will help you to share more of the content that you love with even more people that will benefit from it. Look for these features to come to the Top Tech Tidbits newsletter shortly as well.
5.) Just Say No: We will continue to say no to placing advertisements anywhere on the Top Tech Tidbits website in 2024. While we could always use the extra funds to grow the publication, we are not willing to put funds above user experience unless we have no other choice. And right now, we have other choices, so ads will remain the sole purview of Sponsors and Sponsored Tidbits within the newsletter for the foreseeable future. Because let's face it, finding the information you're looking for is much easier to do when you don't have to deal with ads getting in the way. And it is very important to us that readers are able to find the information that they are looking for quickly and easily. Besides, when is the last time you visited a website that did not serve up a single ad? We're boutique now! Smiles. That said, I want to state here clearly and definitively that we believe very strongly in advertising here at Top Tech Tidbits. For it is advertising that makes this very publication possible. We simply believe that it must always be used properly, so as not to interfere with the user experience, but to enhance it. Something that I think both Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information News do well.
6.) We Bid Farewell To The Top Tech Tidbits Podcast: It wasn't really a podcast anyway, was it? I think it was more of an audio broadcast than a podcast. One that, 10 months ago, we thought might bring value to the community by delivering the week's top access technology news in 5 minutes or less. But let's be honest. The state of voice technology has evolved immensely over the last 10 months, and we are almost at the point where we can have anything we want read to us in any voice we want. And at any speed. Something I myself love to take advantage of. So we've made the decision to reallocate the resources used to create and distribute the podcast to a new, and I think, much more exciting endeavor that I will touch on briefly within the very last update.
7.) Future Projects: Top Tech Tidbits recently partnered with a media agency out of Washington, D.C. that has agreed to assist us in determining the best future direction for the Top Tech Tidbits publication with regard to promotion, expansion, and improving advertising service availability to the global access technology community at large. I am incredibly excited about some of the ideas that have come out of this partnership, but we are not currently in a position for me to discuss them. What I can tell you is that we are currently working on at least one of them, and I'm really excited to share updates with all of you about it sometime over the next couple months.
Until then, dearest friends, take of yourselves, and each other.
Cheers,
Aaron Di Blasi, PMP
Publisher (2020-Present)
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