Yesterday morning I heard a short news item on KQED radio about a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) on Californians and Technology. Before you click away thinking this is going to be a boring, wonky post - bear with me and read on!

While this new study is interesting in how it presents data on how Californians are using technology; it led me to a paper from July 2007, which relates to last week's post about broadband.

That study, entitled Broadband for All? Gaps in California's Broadband Adoption and Availability, shed additional light on the challenges we face in serving clients who do not have access to broadband service.

According to the PPIC study, "the share of California households with high-speed Internet ranges from under 30 percent in the rural Sierras (21%) and northern part of the state (29%) to just over 50 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area (51%) and the greater Los Angeles area (52%). After controlling for individual characteristics such as income and education, the analysis finds that more than half the regional differences remain, indicating that availability — or the lack of it — is the cause" of a lack of wider adoption of broadband services.

What I found sadly amusing was the explanation of the way in which the FCC reports broadband availability - which is the primary source of data for policy makers. The survey author explains that the FCC tends to overstate broadband adoption levels because they of how they collect and report the data. If there is one broadband subscriber in a zip code, the zip code is deemed to have broadband service.

You can see that this can paint an inaccurate picture in rural areas where zip codes can be large and service may be available in one part of the zip code but not throughout. According to the FCC 99.8% of Americans live in a zip code where broadband is available, and 90% living in the least populated areas have broadband.

The study clearly states that wider adoption of broadband is a supply issue, not a demand issue. Until service providers are given an incentive, they're not likely to expand service in less densely populated areas because it is economically less advantageous.

And good luck trying to figure out what part of the geographic area you serve has broadband. This apparently is closely held data.

You can watch streaming video of the presentation of this study at the Public Policy Institute's web site, and you can also download a free copy of the paper.

Thanks for bearing with me - I promise to get back to basics next week. On deck: color!

According to the USDA's 2007 Farm Computer Usage and Ownership Report, 61% of California farms had computer access but only 54% owned their own computers; and just 42% were using computers for farm business.

Of the 61% of California farmers who had computer access, 36% were using dial-up service.

While California fares slightly better than the national average, the challenge of using bandwidth intensive content and features in Web sites used by clients using dial-up services remains very real.

So how do you integrate bandwidth intensive elements into your site and still have a site that is dial-up friendly?

I posed this question to ace Communication Services web designer Alex Zangeneh-Azam. Alex suggests putting video links on an interior page, two or three pages into your site, rather than embedding them into your home page or on a program header page. He also suggests setting the link to open in a new window, the way this page out of the RREA site functions:

The Land Stewards

The new window that opens also contains text that loads quickly, so that visitors with slower connection speeds have something that engages them while the video loads.

By having the video open in a new window, visitors can immediately decide if they want to wait for the content to load or close the window. And you haven't lost them, because your originating site is still open.

Another tip, depending on the design of the site, is to let visitors know the size of the video, and an estimate on how long it will take to load and buffer. This is a corollary to the "large PDF file warnings" that I suggested a few postings ago.

Keep in mind that service availability changes - and penetration of high speed services in new areas is expanding faster than the USDA can conduct a survey. But if you're living and working in a remote area without high speed service at home - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that your clients are in a similar situation.

Last Friday I attended a fascinating workshop with Jane Ellen Stevens that focused on Web communications, emerging technologies, and how we might use them to enhance our Web communications.

I have to say, at the end of the day my head hurt - it's hard to wrap your mind around everything that is happening. That, and Jane told me that my once a week blog posting is really not enough. Sigh.

Jane is a former newspaper reporter who has turned her attention to Web communications, and storytelling in particular. You can see her work at the RREA Stewards of the Land and Water Stewards Web sites created with Kim Rodrigues, and the Tagging of Pacific Predators and Great Turtle Race Web sites. Recently she has turned her talents to helping NPR re-think their Web strategies.

Jane pointed out five characteristics that describe the basic nature of the Web:

• Contextual or immersive
• Immediate and continuous
• Solution-oriented (not problem-oriented like traditional news)
• Participatory
• Web-centric storytelling

One of our own Web sites that Jane thought was well executed is the Center for Fire Research and Outreach at UC Berkeley. One of the workshop participants, Faith Kearns, has developed this site that includes Google news feed, a blog, and Google maps. This site also separates content for different audiences - information for homeowners, researchers, and community leaders all have distinct links and content.

Faith also told us how they use Twitter during fire situations to communicate broadly and frequently with new information. Twitter is a "Social networking and microblogging service utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface." To me, this was another lesson in participatory Web technology that seems to have no relevance on the surface, yet turns out to have application in special situations.

Jane played the Did You Know 2.0 Shift Happens video for us - a powerful demonstration of how the world is changing.

Are we ready?

After a slight delay, the Customer Carewords research results are ready for their big reveal! The results will be distributed to the Regional and County Directors next week, but as faithful blog readers - you get a sneak peak!

If you're not familiar with the project, Customer Carewords are words our clients care about; words that our clients are looking for when they come to our Web sites, or use in searches. If we want to create customer-focused content that resonates with our key audiences and stakeholders, we should be armed not only with our keyboards - but with these words and phrases as well.

Some Web communications experts believe that we have as little as 10 seconds to connect with a Web site visitor.

First, a caveat.

I cannot emphasize this enough. This was a survey of clients who use county-based UCCE websites as an entry point. This survey did not measure content-specific sites such as the Sudden Oak Death Mortality Task Force site, workgroup sites, or statewide program sites such as IPM.

The findings are a guide to how UCCE offices can better use the limited space on their Web site home pages.

The survey results do not imply programmatic priority.

Many of our clientele use UCCE county Web sites as the entry point to information provided by the Division. By surveying these clients through the Customer Careword Survey, we gained insight into their needs and preferences as well as valuable feedback about navigation and content issues.

So what did we learn?

Through survey results, we learned that our clients come to us for information on pest management more than any other topic. Home gardening topics also ranked high; and home gardening topics had high crossover interest with nutrition topics. Interest in the 4-H program ranks high but is a distinct interest area, with little overlap into other areas.

Another notable finding is the confidence our clients place in the accuracy of our information. They express high satisfaction with search returns, but ease of navigation is mixed.

Bob Johnson's full presentation of the results data is available, as is a snap-shot report of the findings.

And if you love data send me an e-mail and I'll send you the raw data to chew on.