Buffalo Foodie Panel

In just under one week's time, the Buffalo chapter of Social Media Club will be hosting a panel discussion featuring local food bloggers, restaurant reviewers, and food business owners who have found success using social media. Here's the scoop:

Wednesday, February 22, 2012
6:00pm — 8:30pm
Artisan Kitchen and Baths at 200 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14207
Go get your tickets now, before it's too late.

The panelists:

• Christa Seychew: Food editor at Buffalo Spree, producer of Nickel City Chef series, and overall expert on local Buffalo food scene, which you can verify on her own site.
• Donnie Burtless: Creator of BuffaloEats, one of the area's premier restaurant review websites.
• Beth Manos Brickey: Creator of Tasty-Yummies, a popular blog featuring mouth-watering recipes and beautiful food photography.
• Deborah Clark: Owner of Delish Cooking School and Pastry shop, and advocate for social media.

Two of our local food trucks, The Whole Hog and Roaming Buffalo, will be there to start serving tasty bits at 6pm and the panel discussion, moderated by yours truly, will start at 6:30pm. Get your tickets at BuffaloFoodies.EventBrite.com. You can also participate in the panel in advance by posing questions on Twitter using the hashtag #BUFfoodies.

You can get the full-sized flyer as a PDF and hang it around your office or on your fridge. Since the food photos are mine, I've already done that.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might recall my article from early January "Why All the Food Photos?" (also available at evolt.org) where I discuss how social media and food seem to have found a natural bond. This event will help bear out some of my assertions and give you a chance to hear it from the sources themselves.

For more details:

• Eventbrite page (to buy tickets);
• Facebook event page;
• Social Media Club Buffalo events page;
• Social Media Club Buffalo press release;
• Buffalo Rising article "Buffalo Foodie Panel: Food and The Web."
• "Buffalo web foodies" as covered by Buffalo.com.

If you just happen to be curious about those lovely food photos in the flyer, I can tell you that the first image is from a local restaurant, the second image is from my own kitchen, and the third image is from a recent visit to Florence, Italy.

Browser Makers Caving to Vendor Prefix Misuse

TL;DR: Help stop further erosion of an open web by removing our -webkit- only prefix reliance. Information on how to do this at the bottom.

Example of vendor prefixes in CSS for Webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari), Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera, and finally the standard from the CSS spec.

Vendor prefixes in CSS are those handy methods browser makers have of testing their implementations of new or modified CSS support out in the wild. A developer can play with how a browser handles rounded corners, for example, within a particular browser and that browser maker has a chance to hear back from that very developer. Ideally, this prefix is dropped once the browser maker chooses to claim full support for that feature of the specification.

In November I wrote Perplexing Prefixes, where I review some ongoing debates about the value and risk of vendor prefixes and where the trend is headed. There was discussion that prefixes are dangerous to the web in general and I didn't see just how true that was.

On Tuesday (February 7) the CSS Working Group (CSSWG) met to discuss vendor prefixes among other topics. This abstract from the CSSWG meeting notes lays it all bare:

Discussed problem of WebKit monopoly on mobile and the consequent pressure for other engines to implement -webkit- properties.

Reading further down into the section where they discuss vendor prefixes you can see that Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera are each considering supporting -webkit- prefixes in their browsers. Bruce Lawson explains the folks in the discussion for context: Search the minutes for "Vendor Prefixes". Florian is from Opera, Tantek represents Mozilla, Sylvaing is Microsoft's glamorous rep, and Tab is from Google. Glazou is Daniel Glazman and Plinss is Peter Linss, the two co-chairs of the Working Group.

tantek: At this point we're trying to figure out which and how many webkit prefix properties to actually implement support for in Mozilla
plinss: Zero.
tantek: Currently we have zero. Zero is no longer an option for us.
Florian, Sylvain: Zero is not an option for us anymore either.

Many years ago as Microsoft introduced new elements for its use (anyone remember marquee?), other browser makers had to consider building in support for that non-standard behavior. It is because so many web developers targeted IE that many of those sites from the past are so broken. It is because of this very focusing on one browser by developers that we see the constant call for the death of IE6, or constant comparisons to IE6 as a clear insult.

Today we have developers who are so enamored with iPhones, iPads, Google Chrome, and Android devices (all of which run the Webkit rendering engine) that they have started to repeat the mistake of designing for their favorite browser (a myopic view considering Opera is still tops worldwide). Now sites are filled with -webkit- vendor prefixes, ignoring the other three and ignoring the specification altogether. Other browser makers may already have support (or in many cases have had support for far longer) for many features that developers are putting into their code, but end users never see it.

It's no surprise that browser makers are considering supporting a proprietary prefix so that their browsers don't look broken. They are responding to the laziness of web developers who fail to include all the prefixes. Developers are learning from the laziness of all the evangelists making shiny HTML5 cruft that fails to include full lists of vendor prefixes. At this rate, browser makers may even implement support for marquee — apparently we just need to include it in enough demos, sites and Git repositories and we'll have it back.

Before you consider my opinion to be too far off base, consider the results of this question from the Quirks Mode reader poll: Do you hope that WebKit will become the only rendering engine, and that the others will gradually disappear? 32% of respondents said yes. I am going to suggest that if that number holds true to the entire web community, then fully a third of developers are either at risk of or are actively using only -webkit- prefixes in their work. As an aside, 22% of those respondents also intentionally make their sites fail in IE6 and IE7.

Help

If you think this is a bad idea and you want to participate in keeping it from happening, here are some options:

1. Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the W3C CSS Working Group, is shouting for your help in his post CALL FOR ACTION: THE OPEN WEB NEEDS YOU *NOW*.
2. Review your own web projects and either remove the -webkit- prefixes, or include those from the other browsers (-moz-, -ms-, -o-).
3. Go to your favorite demo or project GitHub and fix the prefixes, using the method from Christian Heilmann's Pre-fix the web!
4. Aaron Gustafson has set up a petition at Change.org: Microsoft, Mozilla & Opera: Don't make -webkit- prefixes a de facto standard. If you have an account with Change.org, didn't deactivate like I did for spamming me, and think this might actually do something, then head over and sign.

Further Reading

• On the vendor prefixes problem by Bruce Lawson.
• Vendor Prefixes - about to go south by Remy Sharp.
• Vendor Prefixing: Standing Up for Developers by Ian Lunn.
• Call for action on Vendor Prefixes from The Web Standards Project.
• This Must Not Happen! by Aaron Gustafson.
• Unfixed by Eric Meyer.
• CSS vendor prefixes threaten open web from .net Magazine.
• The vendor prefix mess by Peter-Paul Koch.
• Alternatives To Supporting -webkit Prefixes In Other Engines by Robert O'Callahan.

Update: February 20, 2012

More articles have appeared, some of them taking a different view of the right way to address the overall issue instead of just freaking out about the browsers.

• The Vendor Prefix Predicament: ALA's Eric Meyer Interviews Tantek Çelik at A List Apart.
• Every Time You Call a Proprietary Feature "CSS3," a Kitten Dies at A List Apart (leaving my HTML5 rant for later). Go read the comments.
• Why not version prefixes instead of browser prefixes for CSS? by Marc Drummond.
• Vendor extensions. Been There. Done That. by Karl Dubost.
• A comment thread at Hacker News by hoppipolla.

The W3C weighed in today, it's worth reading:

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the CSSWG -webkit- Discussions (AKA Minutes and Resolutions Paris F2F 2012 / Telecon 2012-02-15: Vendor Prefixes and -webkit-, Property Aliasing) from the W3C CSS Working Group blog.

If you use vendor prefixes, haven't seen this handy chart, bookmarked it, and also had it laminated to your wall already, then you're scaring me:

• Vendor-prefixed CSS Property Overview by Peter Beverloo.

Update: April 25, 2012

• Opera confirms WebKit prefix usage at .net Magazine.

Update: July 31, 2014

Microsoft argues that "The Mobile Web should just work for everyone" and now supports -webkit prefixes (IE for Windows Phone 8.1 only). Shoe, other foot, and all that.

There are other announcements in the blog post, but the -webkit support is most interesting to the scope of this post.

Bruce Lawson (from Opera, the first browser vendor to support -webkit prefixes prior to changing its rendering engine to Blink) has written his take on Microsoft's announcement today.

There was also a Twitter chat today for Microsoft's IEDevChat account using the #AskIE hashtag and a few tweeters asked for more context:

#askIE @ShaneHudson We're currently investigating this and will detail this if any are added to IE on the desktop at a later time. @dstorey

— IE Dev Chat (@IEDevChat) July 31, 2014

.@SaschaNaz there won't be any warnings in F12 (or elsewhere in IE) when webkit-only CSS properties are used by IE #askie

— IE Dev Chat (@IEDevChat) July 31, 2014

No DHTML, Please

The trend continues where I speak to clients, vendors, young developers fresh out of college, and even the teachers/professors who instruct them and they don't understand that HTML5 and CSS3 aren't the same specification. I have repeatedly shown an HTML 4.01 site with CSS3 to explain that they are each distinct specifications which can be applied in different combinations of different versions. This is further complicated when JavaScript is folded into the mix — some folks even think jQuery is part of the HTML5 specification.

I am repeating a request that when we who know better (developers, tech writers, robots named Frank) speak about discrete specifications, we refer to them as such.

When I talk to another developer about a feature, I want to know that when one of us says "HTML5" we are both talking about that particular specification. When we use terms like "WOFF" or "WebGL" I have comfort knowing the developer has a particular set of technical standards in mind, but when one of us says "HTML5" we each have to pause to consider what related specification the other might actually mean.

It seems fair to raise what sounds like a semantic point when we are discussing a specification that is all about encoding content in semantic and structural elements. I don't think I should let this go, otherwise it feels like I have failed the semantic goal of HTML right at the outset.

What Motivated the Mini-Rant

Another free and fantastical service was released to the web development community on Tuesday, HTML5 Please. The same folks who also brought us sites like HTML5 Boilerplate, Modernizr and CSS3 Please are the fine team behind this resource. And this is part of the reason why I am so frustrated. Each of them knows the difference between HTML, CSS, and unrelated specifications like WOFF, SVG, Geolocation, WebGL, and so on.

In a (Google-doc-brokered) conversation with Ian Devlin (author of HTML5 Multimedia: Develop and Design), Paul Irish (one of the folks behind HTML5 Please) agreed to add a disclaimer to the site for the chronically unlikely-to-read-any-specifications-or-bother-to-know-the-differences-among-them. Mr. Irish made short work of it, too:

On Wednesday I went back to the site and noticed that the disclaimer was gone. I tweeted about it and was ultimately directed to a bug/issue report that provided justification for its removal:

[…] However, HTML5 represents an umbrella term for all new technologies (as is inferred from platform.html5.org). Also, the specification itself is now a living standard known as HTML and not HTML5.

Of course I was motivated to leave a comment:

I feel the ship has sailed when trying to communicate this point to the general public, tech writers, bosses, clients, and small children up the street. However, since the site is aimed at developers I think it does a disservice to not remind them that HTML5 means a very particular specification, and that it makes it easier in the future to cite new specifications that will be supported on the site (as they come up), but are otherwise distinct. For those who do know better (me, a couple folks above), it just looks like the site got it wrong and doesn't understand the difference itself.

If we as technical professionals cede the meaning of HTML5 when speaking to other technical professionals, we are falling prey to marketing speak that has no place in discussions about specific technical matters.

That's it, that's the background. I've explained my thoughts on this before and am concerned that HTML5 has become a distilled marketing term that, unlike DHTML and Web 2.0, neither of which shared the exact same name as the version of a technical specification, only leads to confusion when developers are interacting with marketers, bosses, clients and vendors.

You may read previous variations on this rant here:

• More on HTML5 as DHTML
• Don't Let HTML5 Become the New DHTML

Update: January 27, 2012

The online version of .net Magazine covered this post with a news bit that has garnered some additional comments. Read it at Dev rallies against HTML5 confusion.

Update: February 3, 2012

Aaron Gustafson wrote a response piece on his blog titled HTML5 is the new DHTML. His is less ranty than mine, so already it's worth a read.

SOPA Blackout Protests Go Forward, So Does SOPA Sponsor

Some of the sites that "went dark" today to protest SOPA and PIPA.

Today is the day that a collection of popular web sites, some shown above, have "blacked out" in protest of both SOPA and PIPA. The general public knows very little of these bills, and with only minor media coverage over the last few days (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox appear on the list of SOPA supporters, as reported by Media Matters) many feel this is the only way the general public will be made aware.

But has this changed anything?

Contrary to the shouts of victory over SOPA across the web (and even some mainstream news outlets when it looked like it was a sure thing and they could report on it without upsetting owners), the bill's sponsor isn't giving up. I am absolutely one to say "I told you so," because I did on Monday.

Rep. Lamar Smith released a statement on his site yesterday to say that markup hearings would resume in February:

To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy.

Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February.

I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property.

In response to the scheduled outage of Wikipedia today to protest SOPA, Rep. Smith yesterday afternoon made it clear that he isn't impressed:

It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites. This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy.

You may recall my post from last week where I feel Rep. Smith is ignoring evidence, so I am suspect (understatement) of his assertion that today's web site blackouts are nothing more than misinformation and publicity stunts.

PIPA isn't left floundering, either. On January 24 the U.S. Senate votes on it.

Related

• List of websites blacking out today at SOPAStrike.com;
• How SOPA would affect you: FAQ from CNET;
• A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP at the Reddit blog;
• Information on H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act at OpenCongress.org;
• Information on S.968 – PROTECT IP Act OpenCongress.org;
• SOPAOpera.org keeps track of where your congressmembers stand;
• Read up on OPEN, a competing bill;
• Don't Think SOPA or PIPA Are Dead Yet at this blog;
• SOPA Sponsor Ignoring the Evidence also at this blog.

A Flash-embedded video from Media Matters, "MSNBC's Hayes Addresses Lack Of SOPA Coverage By Major News Networks:"

Updates

From the LA Times (January 18, 2012, 1:19 pm EST):

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Vice, which is typically a NSFW site, has a great piece showing how PIPA co-sponsor Roy Blunt, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, Florida congressman/SOPA co-sponsor Dennis Ross and Ohio senator and PIPA co-sponsor Sherrod Brown have (or had, since some of these have been scrubbed) content on their online presences that violate existing copyright laws. As the author notes, there will probably be more (remember that SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith was already caught violating copyright laws last week):

There's many many many more (from almost every single PIPA co-sponsor's site, in fact), but without actually getting written confirmation from the copyright owners in question, I'm unable to post anything here.

CNN reported another senator pulled his support:

"We can find a solution that will protect lawful content. But this bill is flawed & that's why I'm withdrawing my support. #SOPA #PIPA," Republican Sen. Roy Blunt wrote on his official Twitter page.

The NY Times says even more are opposed, though it doesn't indicate just how many of them flipped their position from supporting PIPA or SOPA:

Then trickle turned to flood — adding Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois and Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Representatives Lee Terry of Nebraska and Ben Quayle of Arizona. At least 10 senators and nearly twice that many House members announced their opposition.

Creative America, made of entertainment industry unions and studios, posted a video on Vimeo last month to argue that SOPA and PIPA protect American jobs and intellectual property. The comments on the Vimeo page suggest the web might be the wrong audience.

The Communications Director for Senator Harry Reid tweeted this morning (Friday, January 20) that the PIPA vote has been postponed:

Senator Reid, in statement this morning: "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act."

We should keep in mind that postponing is different than canceling it, and the very next tweet suggests it will be back soon:

Reid: "Amercns rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for their work. I'm optimistic that we can reach compromise on PIPA in coming wks"

This afternoon (still Friday, January 20) Rep. Smiths' office released a statement that I can only presume is about SOPA (since Smith is SOPA's sponsor) despite the confusing title referencing PIPA (Statement from Chairman Smith on Senate Delay of Vote on PROTECT IP Act):

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today issued the following statement in response to the Senate decision to postpone consideration of legislation to help combat online piracy.

[…]

The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution.

Again, the use of pronouns and indefinite articles confuses me, since the statement nowhere explicitly says that he is sitting on SOPA. Other media outlets are content to state that Smith has pulled SOPA.

Either way, both SOPA and PIPA are postponed. Which I take to mean it's only temporary and once the furor dies down you can expect to see these again, perhaps under different names.

HTML5 Will Play Nice with Translation

Back in late 2009 I wrote a little something talking about Google Translate and the risks associated with relying on machine translation for anything critical ("Facebook and Google Want to Translate Your Site"). I even offered some examples of things that are tough to translate.

One real-world example I did not list was when I used machine translation to process a page with someone's name. The first name we'll say was "Bill," but the last name was definitely "Belt." Somehow instead of "Bill Belt" being retained as his name throughout the article, he was renamed to "Bill of Leather Strap."

This particular example is one step closer to being a thing of the past. In the latest W3C Open Web Platform Weekly Summary, a new attribute has been announced for HTML5 that will allow authors to exclude specific content from being translated — for any service that will honor it. The announcement:

A global translate attribute will be added to HTML5. The values are yes or no with the same inheritance policy than the lang attribute. The goal is to specify if a piece of text should or not should not be translated automatically.

Of course, if I want to exclude Bill Belt from being translated, I'll probably have to wrap his name in a span in order to throw a translate="no" in there since I doubt I'll have an otherwise semantic or structural element in place already. This does, however, offer a far better solution than the previous suggestion of using a class to achieve the same effect.

To be fair, Google Translate already has its own support for excluding content from automatic translation, specifically using class="notranslate". Head over to the Google Translate Help page and expand the bottom-most option, "General information for webmasters" (nice to see they make it easy for a direct link).

If you are curious about the process this went through to become a change for HTML5, you can see the bug report that started it all back on April 4, 2011: Bug 12417 - HTML5 is missing attribute for specifying translatability of content.

I don't believe that machine translation is ever a good way to translate or localize content for anything more than casual use. For example, legal matters, healthcare, and things like that are poor candidates for machine translation (I have far more to say on this point in the post linked above). For organizations that do provide manual human translation, this attribute can be a boon to them as well, allowing them to understand pieces of content that do not need to be processed, saving time, effort and cost to everyone in the translation workflow.

As developers it's our responsibility to make sure it is used correctly, most likely by helping to train content authors.

Don't Think SOPA or PIPA Are Dead Yet

Image brazenly stolen from Virtual Shackles where it was posted with more commentary. I could be in violation of SOPA and PIPA by using this image. This image was also referenced in the petition against SOPA.

Last week I wrote a post titled "SOPA Sponsor Ignoring the Evidence." In it I attempt to dismantle the argument that the sponsor of the SOPA bill uses to ignore those who disagree with the bill. I suggest you read it for more background and context before I dive in below.

If you've been following the SOPA and PIPA trends on the web, then you probably saw the horribly mis-titled Mashable post, Victory for SOPA Opponents: DNS Blocking Struck From Bill, a couple days ago. Not victory by any means, but Rep. Lamar Smith revisiting the bill he sponsored was certainly a good sign.

PIPA had a similar falter a couple days before that, when Sen. Patrick Leahy suggested the bill needs more study before it is put to a vote. This news was covered in the more appropriately titled Author of Controversial Piracy Bill Now Says 'More Study' Needed from the Wall Street Journal.

On Saturday the White House weighed in on two petitions that have been circulating asking for the President to veto these two bills ("VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information" and "Stop the E-PARASITE Act"). I suggest you ignore the hype from the media and tech outlets and read the full response, "Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy."

The response was jointly penned by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff and uses some great-sounding language (emphasis theirs):

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.

[…]

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security.

But read on to see that the White House is not only not explicitly stating that these two proposed laws be dropped, but is still calling for legislation by the end of the year:

That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

The next statement suggests that instead of fighting SOPA and PIPA, the burden is on us as citizens to brainstorm better ways to address online piracy:

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right. Already, many members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue.

Offloading this to all U.S. citizens makes it easy for the administration to come back in a year (depending who is in office and his/her leaning) and claim that in the absence of any useful feedback from citizens, both PIPA and SOPA are on the table again as options. At the risk of becoming political, the current administration already signed a bill it had previously threatened to veto because of arguments that law violates the Bill of Rights. He agreed to sign the law simply because a provision was added giving his office the power to choose who is impacted.

Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. It is conceivable that a similar threat against SOPA and PIPA, or in this case a non-threat, will be pushed aside when the administration feels it can be pushed through with much less of a fight.

About the same time on Saturday word came down from House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, who was opposed to SOPA, that SOPA was being shelved for now due to lack of consensus. He could not make the same guarantee about PIPA but could at least weigh in on it:

While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House. Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.

Even if PIPA's sponsor backs away from the bill altogether and it is also shelved, the language is clear from both houses of Congress and from the White House that this isn't the last attempt at legislation we'll see applied to the internet. It behooves us as citizens to pay attention to the next iteration of these bills and challenge them.

Related

• DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents
• White House Says It Opposes Parts of Two Antipiracy Bills
• Putting SOPA on a shelf
• Say No to SOPA
• The Bill of Rights
• White House Responds to Anti-SOPA Petition
• Stop American Censorship
• Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA
• SOPA Threatens American Innovation
• Defend the Internet

Video

Algonquin Studios Gets Local Press

I'm taking an opportunity to brag a little about my company, Algonquin Studios, being featured today in the Business section of our local paper, The Buffalo News. Some of you who read my blog have asked about Algonquin Studios and what we do, and others (or at least the logs tell me so) even visited our web-o-tron site to look over our services. This article, however, does a nice job of talking about some of the other things we do, like our inner city youth soccer program (link added):

Beyond the business side, company officers emphasize the importance of giving back to the community and ensuring their employees have time for their families and their faith.

[…]

The biggest piece of the nonprofit is the Buffalo Soccer Club, which over the years has provided an athletic outlet for nearly 600 young people, most from Buffalo's East Side.

A little nugget of history, including a distilled version of how we got our name (and to think we nearly called ourselves Algonquin Interactive):

The company's three founders are Raines and David M. Thiemecke, who met at Orchard Park High School, and their friend, Adrian A. Roselli, who later attended the University at Buffalo with Raines.

The trio was working in the Internet division of SOFTBANK Services Group when they decided to form their own technology-services company.

The name, an inside joke from their school days, borrows from the Algonquin Round Table, the widely quoted group of writers and other wits who gathered at New York City's Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s.

"We went around, we tried to come up with a good name for what we were going to do, we couldn't come up with anything, so, Algonquin Studios," Raines said.

Sadly, there just wasn't room to go into our college-era weekly concert-series-slash-coffee-house called Algonquin Table, or our every-semester music fest called Algonquinpalooza. If it's not obvious, we've sort of had a theme for a while now.

You can read the full article at the Buffalo News web site (Growth continues for local high-tech sector company) or follow the link on the photo at the top to see the terrible Sunday morning camera phone photo of the article in the paper (or just follow that link).

From the Buffalo News web site…