and

WATCH! Guru Randhawa's Dating Tips

'I haven't tried Tinder yet because itne saare swipe right ko main kaise handle karoonga?'




and

SEE: Parineeti-Raghav's Grand Welcome

The wedding festivities will be spread over September 23 and 24.




and

WATCH: Stars At Lin-Randeep's Reception

Randeep Hooda and Lin Laisharm hosted a wedding reception in Mumbai, and invited their friends from the film industry.




and

'Veer Savarkar is anti-propaganda film'

"I owe it to Veer Savarkar, to his spirit, to his legacy and to his untold story so that I tell it well and it reaches people, and people absorb it and feel what he went through and all the sacrifices that he made, which have been brushed under the carpet."




and

Medicine wheels of the Plains and Rocky Mountains / an update[d] compendium (Reeves and Kennedy) and edited collection of works by John Brumley, Ted Birmie, Rebecca Kallevig, Barry Dau, Trevor Peck, and Dean Wetzel ; overall editors, Brian O. K. Reeves, M

xxv, 359 pages : illustrations, maps ; 28 cm. + 1 folded map




and

Waterlogged [electronic resource] : examples and Procedures for Northwest Coast archaeologists / edited by Kathryn Bernick.

1 online resource (x, 246 Seiten) : Illustrationen, Karten




and

Tracks and traces: archaeology and paleontology at Wally's Beach, Alberta / edited by Brian Kooyman and Tatyanna Ewald

xxii, 322 pages : illustrations (some color), maps, plans ; 28 cm




and

Why and how I ditched icon fonts in favor of inline SVG

Webfonts are the new hotness, and icon fonts even more so. There’s plenty to choose from, and Google just released an icon font that’s based on the new Android L. Icon nirvana reached? Not really. Icon fonts have a few nasty problems that icon font makers rarely make you aware of. Here’s a few of […]




and

Get retinafied and support kids in need!

Up to and including Monday December 1, 100% of sales of my Retina Web ebook will go to Donors Choose projects in Ferguson, MO. These kids need our help! Thank you! Get your copy now!




and

13 more test positive for swine flu in Jammu and Kashmir




and

Increase taxes on tobacco products to curb demand: WHO




and

Residents in Chennai hope for clear waterways and relief from mosquito menace




and

Antimicrobial resistance: clear and present danger

India awoke late to risks of antibiotic overuse and is scrambling to contain the surge in drug resistance.



  • Policy & Issues

and

Personal and public choices eroding health

The surge in NCDs in India stems as much from today’s hectic lifestyle as from unplanned urban development.




and

I write to rage, and rescue ourselves from collective amnesia, says Harsh Mander, speaking on India’s Covid experience

Harsh Mander’s new book demands accountability from the state for its handling of the pandemic’s impact




and

Molecular recognition of peptides and proteins by cucurbit[n]urils: systems and applications

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00569D, Review Article
Open Access
Lilyanna Armstrong, Sarah L. Chang, Nia Clements, Zoheb Hirani, Lauren B. Kimberly, Keturah Odoi-Adams, Paolo Suating, Hailey F. Taylor, Sara A. Trauth, Adam R. Urbach
The molecular recognition of peptides and proteins by cucurbit[n]uril synthetic receptors in aqueous solution occurs with high affinity and with selectivity that is predictive from the sequence of amino acids and has enabled many applications.
To cite this article before page numbers are assigned, use the DOI form of citation above.
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and

Harnessing luciferase chemistry in regulated cell death modalities and autophagy: overview and perspectives

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00743J, Review Article
Saman Hosseinkhani, Mojdeh Amandadi, Parisa Ghanavatian, Fateme Zarein, Farangis Ataei, Maryam Nikkhah, Peter Vandenabeele
This review provides a comprehensive overview of the use of bioluminescence assays in advancing our understanding and studying cell death modalities and autophagy.
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Progress and challenges in structural, in situ and operando characterization of single-atom catalysts by X-ray based synchrotron radiation techniques

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00967J, Review Article
Yuhang Liu, Xiaozhi Su, Jie Ding, Jing Zhou, Zhen Liu, Xiangjun Wei, Hong Bin Yang, Bin Liu
Single-atom catalysts (SACs) represent the ultimate size limit of nanoscale catalysts, combining the advantages of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts.
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Ultrasound mechanisms and their effect on solid synthesis and processing: a review

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00148F, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Cedric Devos, Ariana Bampouli, Elena Brozzi, Georgios D. Stefanidis, Michiel Dusselier, Tom Van Gerven, Simon Kuhn
Ultrasound intensifies a wide range of processes involving solids, enhancing control over their formation and post-treatment. This review summarizes key ultrasonic mechanisms and effects in solids' synthesis and processing.
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and

Understanding deNOx mechanisms in transition metal exchanged zeolites

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00468F, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Jamal Abdul Nasir, Andrew M. Beale, C. Richard A. Catlow
Transition metal-containing zeolites have received considerable attention, owing to their application in the selective catalytic reduction of NOx. To understand their chemistry, both structural and mechanistic aspects at the atomic level are needed.
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and

Nanoplasmonic biosensors for environmental sustainability and human health

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10491-10522
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00941F, Review Article
Wenpeng Liu, Kyungwha Chung, Subin Yu, Luke P. Lee
This review examines recent developments in nanoplasmonic biosensors to identify analytes from the environment and human physiological parameters for monitoring sustainable global healthcare for humans, the environment, and the earth.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

PEDOT-based stretchable optoelectronic materials and devices for bioelectronic interfaces

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10575-10603
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00541D, Review Article
Weizhen Li, Yiming Li, Ziyu Song, Yi-Xuan Wang, Wenping Hu
This review summarized the strategies and mechanisms for improving the conductivity, mechanical properties and stability of PEDOT:PSS, as well as the reliable micropatterning technologies and optoelectronic devices applied at bio-interfaces.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Design and regulation of defective electrocatalysts

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10620-10659
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00217B, Review Article
Yiqiong Zhang, Jingjing Liu, Yangfan Xu, Chao Xie, Shuangyin Wang, Xiangdong Yao
This review focuses on the synthesis and characterization of defective electrocatalysts, the internal correlation between defects and catalytic activity, and the development and application of defective electrocatalysts in various catalytic fields.
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and

Black titanium oxide: synthesis, modification, characterization, physiochemical properties, and emerging applications for energy conversion and storage, and environmental sustainability

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10660-10708
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00420E, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Xuelan Hou, Yiyang Li, Hang Zhang, Peter D. Lund, James Kwan, Shik Chi Edman Tsang
The current synthesis methods, modifications, and characterizations of black titanium oxide (B-TiOx) as well as a nuanced understanding of its physicochemical properties and applications in green energy and environment are reviewed.
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and

Current development, optimisation strategies and future perspectives for lead-free dielectric ceramics in high field and high energy density capacitors

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10761-10790
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00536H, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Hareem Zubairi, Zhilun Lu, Yubo Zhu, Ian M. Reaney, Ge Wang
This review highlights the remarkable advancements and future trends in bulk ceramics, MLCCs and ceramic thin films for lead-free high field and high energy density capacitors.
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and

Supramolecular and molecular capsules, cages and containers

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10380-10408
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00761A, Tutorial Review
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Cameron J. T. Cox, Jessica Hale, Paulina Molinska, James E. M. Lewis
Supramolecular and molecular capsules are a diverse class of host systems exhibiting a range of properties and characteristics with applications in sensing, separations, storage, transport, reactivity modulation and biomedicine.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Metal–support interactions in metal oxide-supported atomic, cluster, and nanoparticle catalysis

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10450-10490
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00527A, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Denis Leybo, Ubong J. Etim, Matteo Monai, Simon R. Bare, Ziyi Zhong, Charlotte Vogt
Metal–support interactions (MSI) impact catalyst activity, stability, and selectivity. This review critically evaluates recent findings, theoretical advances, and MSI tuning strategies, offering new perspectives for future research in the field.
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and

From cyclotrons to chromatography and beyond: a guide to the production and purification of theranostic radiometals

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10409-10449
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00802B, Tutorial Review
Brooke L. McNeil, Caterina F. Ramogida
This tutorial review explores the fundamentals and applications behind the production and purification of radiometals in the burgeoning field of radio-theranostics.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Harnessing DNA computing and nanopore decoding for practical applications: from informatics to microRNA-targeting diagnostics

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00396E, Tutorial Review
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Sotaro Takiguchi, Nanami Takeuchi, Vasily Shenshin, Guillaume Gines, Anthony J. Genot, Jeff Nivala, Yannick Rondelez, Ryuji Kawano
This tutorial review provides fundamentals on DNA computing and nanopore-based decoding, highlighting recent advances towards microRNA-targeting diagnostic applications.
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The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

A comprehensive review of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and their derivatives in environmental pollution control

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00521J, Tutorial Review
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Shengbo Ge, Kexin Wei, Wanxi Peng, Runzhou Huang, Esther Akinlabi, Hongyan Xia, Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Xuehua Zhang, Ben Bin Xu, Jianchun Jiang
Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have gained considerable attention due to their design possibilities as the molecular organic building blocks that can stack in an atomically precise spatial arrangement.
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and

A new era of cancer phototherapy: mechanisms and applications

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00708E, Review Article
Yuanwei Wang, Ke Ma, Miaomiao Kang, Dingyuan Yan, Niu Niu, Saisai Yan, Panpan Sun, Luzhi Zhang, Lijie Sun, Dong Wang, Hui Tan, Ben Zhong Tang
The past decades have witnessed great strides in phototherapy as an experimental option or regulation-approved treatment in numerous cancer indications.
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and

Liquid–liquid and gas–liquid dispersions in electrochemistry: concepts, applications and perspectives

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00535F, Tutorial Review
Open Access
Kang Wang, Yucheng Wang, Marc Pera-Titus
This tutorial review provides a taxonomy of liquid–liquid and gas–liquid dispersions for applications in electrochemistry, with emphasis on their assets and challenges in industrially relevant reactions for fine chemistry and depollution.
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and

Recent synthetic strategies for the functionalization of fused bicyclic heteroaromatics using organo-Li, -Mg and -Zn reagents

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,11045-11099
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00369A, Review Article
Open Access
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
Vasudevan Dhayalan, Vishal S. Dodke, Marappan Pradeep Kumar, Hatice Seher Korkmaz, Anja Hoffmann-Röder, Pitchamuthu Amaladass, Rambabu Dandela, Ragupathy Dhanusuraman, Paul Knochel
This review presents various new strategies for the functionalization of 5 and 6-membered fused heteroaromatics. These synthetic strategies enable rapid access to complex heterocyclic compounds.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Carbon encapsulated nanoparticles: materials science and energy applications

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,11100-11164
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS01122D, Review Article
Kun Guo, Lipiao Bao, Zhixin Yu, Xing Lu
This systematic and comprehensive review summarizes the synthetic strategies, structural/compositional features, physicochemical properties, and energy applications of carbon encapsulated nanoparticles as efficient electrocatalysts and electrodes.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Light/X-ray/ultrasound activated delayed photon emission of organic molecular probes for optical imaging: mechanisms, design strategies, and biomedical applications

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10970-11003
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00599F, Review Article
Rui Qu, Xiqun Jiang, Xu Zhen
Versatile energy inputs, including light, X-ray and ultrasound, activate organic molecular probes to undergo different delay mechanisms, including charge separation, triplet exciton stabilization and chemical trap, for delayed photon emission.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Dynamic evolution processes in electrocatalysis: structure evolution, characterization and regulation

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10852-10877
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00756A, Tutorial Review
Chao Xie, Wei Chen, Yanyong Wang, Yahui Yang, Shuangyin Wang
Dynamic evolution processes in electrocatalysis, including structure evolution of electrocatalysts, characterization methods and regulation strategies for dynamic evolution in electrocatalysis.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Mechanism and stereoselectivity in metal and enzyme catalyzed carbene insertion into X–H and C(sp2)–H bonds

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,11004-11044
DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00742E, Review Article
Reena Balhara, Ritwika Chatterjee, Garima Jindal
This review provides a mechanistic overview of asymmetric Fe, Cu, Pd, Rh, Au and heme-based enzymes catalyzed carbene insertion reactions to construct  C–X (X = O, N, S, etc.) and C–C bonds, focusing on the stereochemical models.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

A comprehensive review on hydrogen production, storage, and applications

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53,10900-10969
DOI: 10.1039/D3CS00731F, Review Article
Chamila Gunathilake, Ibrahim Soliman, Dhruba Panthi, Peter Tandler, Omar Fatani, Noman Alias Ghulamullah, Dinesh Marasinghe, Mohamed Farhath, Terrence Madhujith, Kirt Conrad, Yanhai Du, Mietek Jaroniec
There is a need for zero or low-carbon fuels that can produce electricity, power vehicles, and support industry. This review presents production, storage, and applications of hydrogen with emphasis on decarbonization and transportation.
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry




and

Of balls and tampering




and

Décor commandments to live by

Teja Lele Desai lists 15 expert-backed design rules




and

Realty: pandemic brings new opportunities




and

The remarkable surge of interest in plotted developments is an outcome of the pandemic

High- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals are increasingly investing in weekend homes or private villas, built in the peripheries of cities



  • Homes and gardens

and

NDA candidate Krishnakumar slams UDF, LDF for ignoring development in Palakkad




and

Wayanad bypoll: 595 polling booths for over 6 lakh voters in Nilambur, Wandoor, Eranad




and

On Xi Jinping [electronic resource] : how Xi's Marxist nationalism is shaping China and the world / Kevin Rudd.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]




and

The political thought of Xi Jinping [electronic resource] / Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press , 2024.




and

Voice Content and Usability

We’ve been having conversations for thousands of years. Whether to convey information, conduct transactions, or simply to check in on one another, people have yammered away, chattering and gesticulating, through spoken conversation for countless generations. Only in the last few millennia have we begun to commit our conversations to writing, and only in the last few decades have we begun to outsource them to the computer, a machine that shows much more affinity for written correspondence than for the slangy vagaries of spoken language.

Computers have trouble because between spoken and written language, speech is more primordial. To have successful conversations with us, machines must grapple with the messiness of human speech: the disfluencies and pauses, the gestures and body language, and the variations in word choice and spoken dialect that can stymie even the most carefully crafted human-computer interaction. In the human-to-human scenario, spoken language also has the privilege of face-to-face contact, where we can readily interpret nonverbal social cues.

In contrast, written language immediately concretizes as we commit it to record and retains usages long after they become obsolete in spoken communication (the salutation “To whom it may concern,” for example), generating its own fossil record of outdated terms and phrases. Because it tends to be more consistent, polished, and formal, written text is fundamentally much easier for machines to parse and understand.

Spoken language has no such luxury. Besides the nonverbal cues that decorate conversations with emphasis and emotional context, there are also verbal cues and vocal behaviors that modulate conversation in nuanced ways: how something is said, not what. Whether rapid-fire, low-pitched, or high-decibel, whether sarcastic, stilted, or sighing, our spoken language conveys much more than the written word could ever muster. So when it comes to voice interfaces—the machines we conduct spoken conversations with—we face exciting challenges as designers and content strategists.

Voice Interactions

We interact with voice interfaces for a variety of reasons, but according to Michael McTear, Zoraida Callejas, and David Griol in The Conversational Interface, those motivations by and large mirror the reasons we initiate conversations with other people, too (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-01). Generally, we start up a conversation because:

  • we need something done (such as a transaction),
  • we want to know something (information of some sort), or
  • we are social beings and want someone to talk to (conversation for conversation’s sake).

These three categories—which I call transactional, informational, and prosocial—also characterize essentially every voice interaction: a single conversation from beginning to end that realizes some outcome for the user, starting with the voice interface’s first greeting and ending with the user exiting the interface. Note here that a conversation in our human sense—a chat between people that leads to some result and lasts an arbitrary length of time—could encompass multiple transactional, informational, and prosocial voice interactions in succession. In other words, a voice interaction is a conversation, but a conversation is not necessarily a single voice interaction.

Purely prosocial conversations are more gimmicky than captivating in most voice interfaces, because machines don’t yet have the capacity to really want to know how we’re doing and to do the sort of glad-handing humans crave. There’s also ongoing debate as to whether users actually prefer the sort of organic human conversation that begins with a prosocial voice interaction and shifts seamlessly into other types. In fact, in Voice User Interface Design, Michael Cohen, James Giangola, and Jennifer Balogh recommend sticking to users’ expectations by mimicking how they interact with other voice interfaces rather than trying too hard to be human—potentially alienating them in the process (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-01).

That leaves two genres of conversations we can have with one another that a voice interface can easily have with us, too: a transactional voice interaction realizing some outcome (“buy iced tea”) and an informational voice interaction teaching us something new (“discuss a musical”).

Transactional voice interactions

Unless you’re tapping buttons on a food delivery app, you’re generally having a conversation—and therefore a voice interaction—when you order a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple. Even when we walk up to the counter and place an order, the conversation quickly pivots from an initial smattering of neighborly small talk to the real mission at hand: ordering a pizza (generously topped with pineapple, as it should be).

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?

Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?

Alison: Can I get a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple?

Burhan: Sure, what size?

Alison: Large.

Burhan: Anything else?

Alison: No thanks, that’s it.

Burhan: Something to drink?

Alison: I’ll have a bottle of Coke.

Burhan: You got it. That’ll be $13.55 and about fifteen minutes.

Each progressive disclosure in this transactional conversation reveals more and more of the desired outcome of the transaction: a service rendered or a product delivered. Transactional conversations have certain key traits: they’re direct, to the point, and economical. They quickly dispense with pleasantries.

Informational voice interactions

Meanwhile, some conversations are primarily about obtaining information. Though Alison might visit Crust Deluxe with the sole purpose of placing an order, she might not actually want to walk out with a pizza at all. She might be just as interested in whether they serve halal or kosher dishes, gluten-free options, or something else. Here, though we again have a prosocial mini-conversation at the beginning to establish politeness, we’re after much more.

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?

Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?

Alison: Can I ask a few questions?

Burhan: Of course! Go right ahead.

Alison: Do you have any halal options on the menu?

Burhan: Absolutely! We can make any pie halal by request. We also have lots of vegetarian, ovo-lacto, and vegan options. Are you thinking about any other dietary restrictions?

Alison: What about gluten-free pizzas?

Burhan: We can definitely do a gluten-free crust for you, no problem, for both our deep-dish and thin-crust pizzas. Anything else I can answer for you?

Alison: That’s it for now. Good to know. Thanks!

Burhan: Anytime, come back soon!

This is a very different dialogue. Here, the goal is to get a certain set of facts. Informational conversations are investigative quests for the truth—research expeditions to gather data, news, or facts. Voice interactions that are informational might be more long-winded than transactional conversations by necessity. Responses tend to be lengthier, more informative, and carefully communicated so the customer understands the key takeaways.

Voice Interfaces

At their core, voice interfaces employ speech to support users in reaching their goals. But simply because an interface has a voice component doesn’t mean that every user interaction with it is mediated through voice. Because multimodal voice interfaces can lean on visual components like screens as crutches, we’re most concerned in this book with pure voice interfaces, which depend entirely on spoken conversation, lack any visual component whatsoever, and are therefore much more nuanced and challenging to tackle.

Though voice interfaces have long been integral to the imagined future of humanity in science fiction, only recently have those lofty visions become fully realized in genuine voice interfaces.

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Though written conversational interfaces have been fixtures of computing for many decades, voice interfaces first emerged in the early 1990s with text-to-speech (TTS) dictation programs that recited written text aloud, as well as speech-enabled in-car systems that gave directions to a user-provided address. With the advent of interactive voice response (IVR) systems, intended as an alternative to overburdened customer service representatives, we became acquainted with the first true voice interfaces that engaged in authentic conversation.

IVR systems allowed organizations to reduce their reliance on call centers but soon became notorious for their clunkiness. Commonplace in the corporate world, these systems were primarily designed as metaphorical switchboards to guide customers to a real phone agent (“Say Reservations to book a flight or check an itinerary”); chances are you will enter a conversation with one when you call an airline or hotel conglomerate. Despite their functional issues and users’ frustration with their inability to speak to an actual human right away, IVR systems proliferated in the early 1990s across a variety of industries (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-02, PDF).

While IVR systems are great for highly repetitive, monotonous conversations that generally don’t veer from a single format, they have a reputation for less scintillating conversation than we’re used to in real life (or even in science fiction).

Screen readers

Parallel to the evolution of IVR systems was the invention of the screen reader, a tool that transcribes visual content into synthesized speech. For Blind or visually impaired website users, it’s the predominant method of interacting with text, multimedia, or form elements. Screen readers represent perhaps the closest equivalent we have today to an out-of-the-box implementation of content delivered through voice.

Among the first screen readers known by that moniker was the Screen Reader for the BBC Micro and NEEC Portable developed by the Research Centre for the Education of the Visually Handicapped (RCEVH) at the University of Birmingham in 1986 (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-03). That same year, Jim Thatcher created the first IBM Screen Reader for text-based computers, later recreated for computers with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-04).

With the rapid growth of the web in the 1990s, the demand for accessible tools for websites exploded. Thanks to the introduction of semantic HTML and especially ARIA roles beginning in 2008, screen readers started facilitating speedy interactions with web pages that ostensibly allow disabled users to traverse the page as an aural and temporal space rather than a visual and physical one. In other words, screen readers for the web “provide mechanisms that translate visual design constructs—proximity, proportion, etc.—into useful information,” writes Aaron Gustafson in A List Apart. “At least they do when documents are authored thoughtfully” (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-05).

Though deeply instructive for voice interface designers, there’s one significant problem with screen readers: they’re difficult to use and unremittingly verbose. The visual structures of websites and web navigation don’t translate well to screen readers, sometimes resulting in unwieldy pronouncements that name every manipulable HTML element and announce every formatting change. For many screen reader users, working with web-based interfaces exacts a cognitive toll.

In Wired, accessibility advocate and voice engineer Chris Maury considers why the screen reader experience is ill-suited to users relying on voice:

From the beginning, I hated the way that Screen Readers work. Why are they designed the way they are? It makes no sense to present information visually and then, and only then, translate that into audio. All of the time and energy that goes into creating the perfect user experience for an app is wasted, or even worse, adversely impacting the experience for blind users. (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-06)

In many cases, well-designed voice interfaces can speed users to their destination better than long-winded screen reader monologues. After all, visual interface users have the benefit of darting around the viewport freely to find information, ignoring areas irrelevant to them. Blind users, meanwhile, are obligated to listen to every utterance synthesized into speech and therefore prize brevity and efficiency. Disabled users who have long had no choice but to employ clunky screen readers may find that voice interfaces, particularly more modern voice assistants, offer a more streamlined experience.

Voice assistants

When we think of voice assistants (the subset of voice interfaces now commonplace in living rooms, smart homes, and offices), many of us immediately picture HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey or hear Majel Barrett’s voice as the omniscient computer in Star Trek. Voice assistants are akin to personal concierges that can answer questions, schedule appointments, conduct searches, and perform other common day-to-day tasks. And they’re rapidly gaining more attention from accessibility advocates for their assistive potential.

Before the earliest IVR systems found success in the enterprise, Apple published a demonstration video in 1987 depicting the Knowledge Navigator, a voice assistant that could transcribe spoken words and recognize human speech to a great degree of accuracy. Then, in 2001, Tim Berners-Lee and others formulated their vision for a Semantic Web “agent” that would perform typical errands like “checking calendars, making appointments, and finding locations” (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-07, behind paywall). It wasn’t until 2011 that Apple’s Siri finally entered the picture, making voice assistants a tangible reality for consumers.

Thanks to the plethora of voice assistants available today, there is considerable variation in how programmable and customizable certain voice assistants are over others (Fig 1.1). At one extreme, everything except vendor-provided features is locked down; for example, at the time of their release, the core functionality of Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana couldn’t be extended beyond their existing capabilities. Even today, it isn’t possible to program Siri to perform arbitrary functions, because there’s no means by which developers can interact with Siri at a low level, apart from predefined categories of tasks like sending messages, hailing rideshares, making restaurant reservations, and certain others.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home offer a core foundation on which developers can build custom voice interfaces. For this reason, programmable voice assistants that lend themselves to customization and extensibility are becoming increasingly popular for developers who feel stifled by the limitations of Siri and Cortana. Amazon offers the Alexa Skills Kit, a developer framework for building custom voice interfaces for Amazon Alexa, while Google Home offers the ability to program arbitrary Google Assistant skills. Today, users can choose from among thousands of custom-built skills within both the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ecosystems.

Fig 1.1: Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home tend to be more programmable, and thus more flexible, than their counterpart Apple Siri.

As corporations like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google continue to stake their territory, they’re also selling and open-sourcing an unprecedented array of tools and frameworks for designers and developers that aim to make building voice interfaces as easy as possible, even without code.

Often by necessity, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa tend to be monochannel—they’re tightly coupled to a device and can’t be accessed on a computer or smartphone instead. By contrast, many development platforms like Google’s Dialogflow have introduced omnichannel capabilities so users can build a single conversational interface that then manifests as a voice interface, textual chatbot, and IVR system upon deployment. I don’t prescribe any specific implementation approaches in this design-focused book, but in Chapter 4 we’ll get into some of the implications these variables might have on the way you build out your design artifacts.

Voice Content

Simply put, voice content is content delivered through voice. To preserve what makes human conversation so compelling in the first place, voice content needs to be free-flowing and organic, contextless and concise—everything written content isn’t.

Our world is replete with voice content in various forms: screen readers reciting website content, voice assistants rattling off a weather forecast, and automated phone hotline responses governed by IVR systems. In this book, we’re most concerned with content delivered auditorily—not as an option, but as a necessity.

For many of us, our first foray into informational voice interfaces will be to deliver content to users. There’s only one problem: any content we already have isn’t in any way ready for this new habitat. So how do we make the content trapped on our websites more conversational? And how do we write new copy that lends itself to voice interactions?

Lately, we’ve begun slicing and dicing our content in unprecedented ways. Websites are, in many respects, colossal vaults of what I call macrocontent: lengthy prose that can extend for infinitely scrollable miles in a browser window, like microfilm viewers of newspaper archives. Back in 2002, well before the present-day ubiquity of voice assistants, technologist Anil Dash defined microcontent as permalinked pieces of content that stay legible regardless of environment, such as email or text messages:

A day’s weather forcast [sic], the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent. (http://bkaprt.com/vcu36/01-08)

I’d update Dash’s definition of microcontent to include all examples of bite-sized content that go well beyond written communiqués. After all, today we encounter microcontent in interfaces where a small snippet of copy is displayed alone, unmoored from the browser, like a textbot confirmation of a restaurant reservation. Microcontent offers the best opportunity to gauge how your content can be stretched to the very edges of its capabilities, informing delivery channels both established and novel.

As microcontent, voice content is unique because it’s an example of how content is experienced in time rather than in space. We can glance at a digital sign underground for an instant and know when the next train is arriving, but voice interfaces hold our attention captive for periods of time that we can’t easily escape or skip, something screen reader users are all too familiar with.

Because microcontent is fundamentally made up of isolated blobs with no relation to the channels where they’ll eventually end up, we need to ensure that our microcontent truly performs well as voice content—and that means focusing on the two most important traits of robust voice content: voice content legibility and voice content discoverability.

Fundamentally, the legibility and discoverability of our voice content both have to do with how voice content manifests in perceived time and space.




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The Wax and the Wane of the Web

I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.

The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.

How we got here

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

The birth of web standards

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and .NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems (particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress). In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. But we still relied on tons of hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes (such as rounded or angled corners) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks). Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning (or both). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. And JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.

The web as software platform

The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, and that led to the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages (which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools came others, including collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, and they gave us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and consume. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that that entails.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? Jeremy Keith wrote “Of Time and the Web.” Or check out the “Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Neal Agarwal also has a fun tour through “Internet Artifacts.”

Where we are now

In the last couple of years, it’s felt like we’ve begun to reach another major inflection point. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to make a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all flavors. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools of the IndieWeb can help with this, but they’re still relatively underimplemented and hard to use for the less nerdy. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has accelerated, especially through efforts like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I often learn about a new feature and check its browser support only to find that its coverage is already above 80 percent. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

Today, with a few commands and a couple of lines of code, we can prototype almost any idea. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. But the upfront cost that these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes due as upgrading and maintaining them becomes a part of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks—which used to let us adopt new techniques sooner—have now become hindrances instead. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail (whether through poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors), there’s often no alternative, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Today’s hacks help to shape tomorrow’s standards. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks—for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we’re unwilling to admit that they’re hacks or we hesitate to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. Weigh the costs of those developer-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What’s the cost to users? To future developers? To standards adoption? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve grown accustomed to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

Start from standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. The same isn’t always true of third-party frameworks. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the ’90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of sites built with frameworks even after just a couple years.

Design with care. Whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes, consider the impacts of each decision. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Rather than rushing headlong to “move fast and break things,” use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with deliberation.

Always be learning. If you’re always learning, you’re also growing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. You might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year, even if you were to focus solely on learning standards. (Remember XHTML?) But constant learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the hacks that you learn one day may help to inform different experiments another day.

Play, experiment, and be weird! This web that we’ve built is the ultimate experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be courageous and try new things. Build a playground for ideas. Make goofy experiments in your own mad science lab. Start your own small business. There has never been a more empowering place to be creative, take risks, and explore what we’re capable of.

Share and amplify. As you experiment, play, and learn, share what’s worked for you. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

Go forth and make

As designers and developers for the web (and beyond), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s imbue our values into the things that we create, and let’s make the web a better place for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, make it better, make it again, or make something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Every time you think that you’ve mastered the web, everything will change.




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Aqueous-mediated synthesis [electronic resource] : bioactive heterocycles / edited by Asit K. Chakraborti and Bubun Banerjee.

Berlin : Boston : Walter de Gruyter GmbH , 2024.