Steve Jobs has a reputation of having it out for Flash. That’s because he won’t put it on the iPhone. As I see it, though, he has some pretty good reasons.

Even though I’m nuts about my iPhone, and love Flash, it simply hasn’t been that big a deal for me, and I sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about. I suspect it’s contextual.

I just did some Flash for my church today. It’s pure fluff and indisputably tacky — but that’s exactly what my church wants. (Have I mentioned I love my church too?) The last three or four years I’ve done some dubious Flash for the annual pledge drive, and people love it. What better reason could there be?

Ultimately you don’t have to have Flash to use the church’s site. It’s easy enough to get to the online pledge form by using the menu or other links. That’s what I mean by contextual. If the site depended on Flash, it would be another matter.

But then again, with very few exceptions (Flash video being one), this web diva eschews sites that depend on Flash. 90% or more are usability nightmares — typically vanity sites at their worst. The iPhone and his Steveness merely prove that point.

Oh my stars has this been a week for little ole’ Nashville. A week ago Google announced that we are now included in their Street View, and today The Tennessean said that Trader Joe’s is coming.

To celebrate this august confluence of events, here are a few street views near-and-dear to my heart.

• My church
• My work (Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center)
• Where Trader Joe’s will be

I remember the first time Jason Shelton introduced himself at our church, ten or so years ago. He looked an interesting and intelligent young man with a promising future. But of course none of us dreamed what was to come.

Sunday he became our new Associate Minister for Music — and made UU history. Not only was the vote an overwhelming majority (96%), but the turnout of members was remarkable by our standards (around 140) and the lack of discussion (just one brief comment) even more remarkable, again by our standards. All in all, it was a huge success.

So why are my antennae going wild? Why am I in a twit? Two reasons. First, I suspect to much of the outside world it looks like a foregone conclusion — and nothing could be further from the truth. Second, how do you convey all of the hard work and dedication that went into this happy outcome? Certainly the press release didn’t. (I helped write it, so I can say this.)

When the process first began, many of us (including me) thought it would be at least straightforward — maybe even easy. We knew Jason was enormously talented, hard-working and in demand at other churches. We were well aware that we were very lucky he liked us enough to want to stay.

What we didn’t realize is that the road of “internal searches” for Unitarian Universalist ministers is a perilous one. Apparently it’s one of those things that’s well known in certain inner circles. However, we only became aware of it a couple of months into the process, when things seemed anything but obvious. I’m not sure what the chemistry is that makes this so, but in retrospect it makes sense. While familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt, it does take the superficial polish off.

As we got further into the process, it became ever more clear to the Transition Committee running the process that there both a large number of the unreservedly enthusiastic and a smaller number who had their doubts. The latter feared that the dominant support of Jason left no place for them. They could easily have been dismissed as troublemakers or misfits — and they knew it. Herein lie the makings of dysfunction.

While I suspect many UU congregations would have done just that, fortunately ours didn’t. The committee, Jason and our senior minister, Gail Seavey, were deeply committed to not just being respectful of this feedback, but also to using it as an opportunity to improve ministry. They went to great lengths to have plenty of meetings where people could safely express their questions and concerns. It was far from easy.

200 plus emails, five open meetings, countless committee and board meetings later, we emerged victorious. I would say in the end what made this such a success was hard work, a deep commitment to truth and respect, and, having a fabulous candidate who loves the congregation, warts and all.

This one is for Daisy, who wants a local newsfeed without all the sports. What happened is she added the RSS feed of a local paper she likes to her Google Reader, was inundated with articles that didn’t interest her, and got disgusted.

Step 1. Go to Google News.

Step 2. Scroll down a little and on the right you should see a box something like this:

Step 3. Enter the city, state or zip code of you preferred geographic location

Step 4. The local news will now appear in this section of the main Google News page. Click on its header, which should be a link along the lines of “Nashville, TN, USA.” At this point you could just click on the RSS link in the left margin and subscribe, but take a minute to fine tune.

Step 5. Scan the stories to see types you aren’t interested in. Me? I’m not too interested in NASCAR.

Step 6. At the top of the page, just to the right of the main search box, is small text reading, “Advanced news search.” Click on that.

Step 7. Note that the result retains your city, state or zip. Go to the “without the words” field and enter the terms you’re not interested in: NASCAR, murder, basketball, whatever…. Press enter, and voila, news without the bits you want to avoid.

Step 8. Now click on the RSS link in the left margin and subscribe to the results in Google Reader. You now have a NASCAR-free news feed.

I’m hopelessly hooked on Photoshop, but people often ask me what they should use for photo editing and I’m loath to recommend anything so expensive. I tried The Gimp, and while it’s as close as you get to free Photoshop, it’s a pain to install and not particularly easy to learn.

Enter Picnik. It’s not only free, it works in a browser, so it doesn’t matter if you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux. It’s also much more user-friendly than either Photoshop or The Gimp. The one down side is it’s slow. But if you only edit photos every so often, it’s the perfect answer.

Me? I’m sticking with Photoshop. But I’m delighted to have another free tool to commend to others.

Holy Batphone. According to the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project, cell phones matter more to U.S. adults than the internet, TV and email.

“When asked how hard it would be to give up a specific technology, respondents are now most likely to say the cell phone would be most difficult to do without, followed by the internet, TV, and landline telephone. This represents a sharp reversal in how people viewed these technologies in 2002.”

Add to that the central role web browsing plays for iPhone users, not to mention Google Android, and I wonder — how can any self-respecting web diva not be riveted by cell phones? Right after the iPhone was released, I figured my interest would morph from a hobby to a critical professional skill, but now I’m wondering just how soon that will be. Six months? One year? I can’t imagine it will be as long as two years.

So many people my age and older (over 50, that is) are intimidated by the web. With a hang-dog look, they’ll say such things as, “I don’t understand computers.” This seems to be particularly true of women.

I wish I could take them and breathe web confidence into the core of their beings. Almost all of these people adore books. And just as you don’t have to master book authoring and publishing to be a literary aficionado, neither do you have to be a brash young programmer or a web diva to enjoy the web.

Chances are if you are reading this, it’s not a big issue for you. But chances are even better that you know plenty of the people I’m talking about.

What’s the answer? I think it’s simple — play — wherever they want, as long as it’s the web. You’re never to old to play and it’s never too late to love the web.

I’m a big fan of the Web Standards Project (WaSP), but my inner librarian groans over their latest tactic. In a recent post they warn: ”How many outdated web design and development books are lurking in your local library, school or college, waiting to corrupt an innocent mind?” True enough. Library shelves do indeed suffer from outdated materials of all kinds, and librarians have their hands full keeping up.

Where I take issue is their proposed tactic. They want fans like me to go around putting warning bookmarks in the offending tomes. How much better a use of energy it would be if WaSP fans contacted collection development librarians with lists of books to pull and prioritized lists of suggested books to add. That’s what I used to be (a collection development librarian, that is) and I would have welcomed an assist like this.

I know it lacks the flamboyance of littering the shelves with cute little bookmarks, but it’s so much faster and more effective, not to mention better library manners. Think — you could even donate some of the good books and put WaSP placards in the front — or maybe even include some WaSP Good Book bookmarks for readers to pluck and enjoy.

Last week Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta (IE8). I’ve been swearing (under my breath) at IE for the last five years, but it may be time for me to find another fall guy. Microsoft has not only been listening, they’ve been soliciting feedback from their most outspoken critics — web developers who care about standards.

If you’re a web standards fan, I’m sure this isn’t news. But if you are like most of the rest of the world, you’re probably saying, “So what?”

Good question. Standards are the bedrock of the web, and while it would be erroneous to say Microsoft played fast and loose with them, they were notoriously sluggish about improving IE and bringing it into compliance. They had almost total market domination with IE6 for five years. During that time IE’s lack of standards compliance slipped from being a minor headache for web developers to a major crisis.

The crisis peaked when Microsoft finally released a new version — IE7 — and jillions of websites broke. At Vanderbilt, IE7 didn’t just cause cosmetic problems; it broke some mission-critical hospital applications. Because of this many IT departments around campus have blocked deployment of IE7. I expect we’re far from alone. The irony is that the problem was IE7 being more standards compliant than IE8. But it still wasn’t as compliant as any of the other major web browsers.

It’s been an enormous e-pickle. To their credit, Microsoft took ownership of the problem, scrambling to come up with something better. The result is IE8.

Should you rush right out and download IE8? I’d advise holding off, because it will overwrite whatever version of IE is currently on your PC. However, if you’re responsible for websites, you should get it soon. The good news is it should be able to toggle into IE7 mode. As soon as it’s a bit more stable I’ll be updating the PC I run IE7 on, testing IE8 and reporting back.

“The entire qualification one must have for understanding art is responsiveness.” - Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: A theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key

This quote undergirds what may be the best sermon I’ve ever heard. In Beauty Is Truth, the Rev. Gail Seavey dove into two topics not usually discussed in UU circles: art and beauty. With her background in art (a degree from Rhode Island School of Design and many years work as a sculptor) she is uniquely qualified to examine these subjects.

Doing web design, my thoughts often hover on the edge of art and beauty. When I create a really good design, surprisingly perhaps, I don’t mind that inevitably it will be gone within a few years, morphing into something else, or evolving into a new aesthetic that keeps pace with both new technologies and new tastes.  It reminds me a bit of Tibetan sand paintings.

At times I have wondered if web designs might be art. Until I heard this sermon I’d always thought no - it’s more akin to craft. The answer still may be no. I don’t know. But there’s unquestionably much beauty in the web that I respond to from deep within myself. I think of the simplicity of the Copyblogger design that this site uses, the famous minimalism and whimsy of Google’s home page, the elegant Flash of Hobart Design, the evocative colors use by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and so on.

Paralleling what Rev. Seavey said about white European males “inventing” an art, you mostly hear about male web designers. I’m hard-pressed to think of the names of any women web designers other than those I know personally. No matter that they are every bit as good as the big names in web design. In fact, I tend to minimize my role as a designer because if (as is often done) you divide web work into the more feminine design (look and feel, CSS, etc., etc.) and masculine development (programming, PHP, MySQL, etc., etc.), developers get more respect — and money.

In the end, though, what really matters, as Rev. Seavey puts it is: “When we become part of the creative god-process - making our own true feelings – our beauty - visible to the world and seeing the beauty made visible by others - we enter into a profound communion that helps us transcend our limits a little, mutually expanding our visions of beauty, truth and right.”