John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

My young nephew made a brilliant website yesterday - the sequel: 29 January 2004: I asked around for answers to the issues raised in the nephew blog earlier. These are my favourite responses. "I speak French but that doesn't make me Joan Of Arc", apparently Maureen O'Hara, from Miracle On 34th Street (1947) (thanks to Liam Delahunty who also has a blog).; I like the idea that every area of human endeavour has its dilettantes and its professionals, except I had to look up the word dilettante, so I don't think that works for someone who doesn't understand the issue, never mind the vocabulary.; There's the difference between a home movie and a professionally produced film. Along similar lines, tools like Publisher, Word, Frontpage, even Dreamweaver are like a 35mm point-and-shoot camera, you can take pictures with them, but a professional photographer needs lighting, lenses, filters, his own darkroom, plus a whole load of talent and experience to do a good job. Most people, when it comes to something important (eg. a wedding), use a professional.; A number of people suggested that it wouldn't do any harm to help the nephew, even to mentor him.; It was suggested that it's worth explaining the difference between hand-coded HTML and that produced by WYSIWYG tools. The answer is education, helping the client to understand the difference, making them smarter and wiser.; There's the capability issue. Where I'm trained to develop functionality, and for design to follow functionality, rather like a Dyson or a sports car, an of the shelf WYSIWYG tool can't offer the same depth of capability. It might be good for a very simple online presence, but in the end, it's unusual capability that makes a successful website.; Someone else suggested that I only need to answer questions, nothing else. I'm not sure about this, the danger is that you end up with lots of errors of omission, and your client won't know about your range of capabilities unless you introduce them. However, that was the root of the successful Phones 4 u sale I blogged earlier, so it's powerful, in context.; There's the possibility of siding with the client by saying that I'm sure he's able to produce a nicer than average website (given the quality of those that are out there) ..; A great suggestion is to respond "that's nice", and then continue with the professionalism. I like that :-); More seriously, or maybe less smugly, the difference between something like Word's Save as Web Page function, and a professionally developed site comes down to these issues (and more):
A sigh of relief: 28 January 2004: A bit of good news, Cambridge University has cancelled its monkey lab the approval of which was another example of the government overriding public opinion. I can't say I don't have doubts though. I don't know enough to say that the experiments wouldn't be useful in treating human disease. And after watching the way the Thai's were treating their chickens in the bird flu outbreak (just bagging them live and piling them up), I'm not sure that moving the lab from Britain to somewhere else with more lax rules actually reduces animal suffering. But then, Cambridge University is unlikely to want a lab elsewhere (but the business interests will). Well, you can only influence what's in your power to influence, so managing to get the lab cancelled is a great thing.
Inspiration: 28 January 2004: Wow, I just got lost among all this great stuff.
Veggies in Spain: 28 January 2004: SPAIN: Just a quick note about being a non-meat eater in Tossa De Mar. Over the two weeks we really started to get bored with the food, despite eating fish. We began to long for ordinary vegetables and a decent salad. Somehow all the food choices seemed heavy and despite there being a huge number of restaurants to choose from, it all seemed to blur into one samey menu.; Then we were got by the surreptitious entry of ham into our vegetarian pizza. I'd read before that the Spanish don't think of ham as meat, and that you have to say a) I don't eat meat, and b) I don't eat ham either to get your point across. Probably I'd read vegetable pizza as vegetarian pizza.
Deckchair.com: 26 January 2004: I remember reading a Sunday supplement article about Bob Geldoff talking to a software developer friend (in the pub, I think) about his idea for a travel website, the essence of which seemed to be the same as many others ... to be able to select the cheapest from all the available flights. The next morning, the friend called and said "I've solved it". The idea worked, and they founded www.deckchair.com. That's how I remember the article anyway.; It stuck with me first of all because of how irritating it was. It somehow gave the impression that fantastic software could be developed overnight. What the software developer friend would have meant by "I've solved it" is that he'd solved, in his head, and proved by writing some database queries or similar, the core problem, the nugget right in the middle of the software that does the job required.; That's not working software, that's not really even a prototype, that's feasibility. It answers can this be done? The website was out of action for about a month as I remember it following this article, and we don't know how much time there was between the software chap having 'solved it', and the article appearing. It could have been months.; Having 'solved it' from a software point of view does not mean that the look and feel of the site, the navigation and information architecture, the page design, the database design, the usability testing, the design for accessibility, the writing of the pages, the sourcing and use of the images, the forms, the database queries, the site security, how the site was to be marketed, how to solve the search engine position question, were even solved in anyones head never mind implemented.; So that covers the first thing I wanted to say. The second is that the site just popped into my head and I thought I'd check it, several years on. I bought two tickets to Dublin from Ryan Air the other day for 52p each (plus taxes) which I thought was a pretty good deal :-) Unless we want the airlines to start paying us to fly, that's kinda that. I'm flying direct from Leeds Bradford Airport to Dublin. Putting those criteria into www.deckchair.com, the best price they come up with today was £305.10 flying from Leeds Bradford to Heathrow, and an hour and a half later (two hours twenty minutes on returning) from Heathrow to Dublin. A suitable alternative, should I prefer it, would be to fly via Amsterdam on KLM for £2,625.; Frankly, that's utter garbage.; The problem with all of the travel sites I've seen is that you might want to go to Dublin fairly cheaply, and not really care too much which airport you use, nor really what day. I could fly from Manchester, East Midlands, Hull, Leeds Bradford, Birmingham, even Liverpool if the slightly shorter flight was cheaper. I don't really care when I go so long as it's in February through to maybe April. No site I've seen allows for that, you have to spend hours working through all the combinations. Yet still the human knowledge that Ryan Air are a) successful, b) Irish, c) cheap helped me book my cheap flights straight away.
Belbin: 24 January 2004: According to Belbin's team roles I'm mostly a plant (21 points), which means I'm a serious minded and unorthodox innovator, highly creative, and very useful as an ideas person and problem solver. The downside is supposed to be communications and while yes I'm not the life and soul of the party, I'm sure I do communicate effectively .. after all, I ran my own marketing communications company for ten years. My next role is co-ordinator (11), calm, self confident and controlled with the motto "consultation with control". With 9 points each come both resource investigator (extroverted, enthusiastic, curious, communicative) and implementer (well organised, enjoy routine, have practical common sense and self discipline).; What I'm not good at, according to Belbin, are the roles team worker (7) (socially oriented, rather mild and sensitive), completer finisher (6) (painstaking, orderly, conscientious, anxious), shaper (4) (highly strung, outgoing, dynamic), and my worst score went to monitor evaluator (3) (sober, unemotional, prudent). I've used Belbin's team roles before to great effect so I'm quite a fan.
Creativity gone mad: 24 January 2004: The Kirkstone site's a good example of a creative company going completely mad with their navigation, and Flash is their tool of choice. I'll save them a rant about the Flash introduction because the navigation issue is much more serious. Navigation's a big issue, people need to know where they are, and how to work the website. I sat through the intro, and at the end, I got what looked like a blank page. I sat and waited for a bit, then moved the mouse to check, and "oh", surprise, the grey shaded bits are clickable. OK, so then it's a bit like that childs card game where you have to remember what's under each card and try to pick up matching pairs. I have to rollover each part before I know where I want to go. When I reach another page, all those navigation elements are now rearranged elsewhere on the page, still with no text, so there's now two arrangements of these pieces I have to remember, or every time I have to rollover to see what's what. Don't make me work! Bye :-)
A magical moment: 24 January 2004: My partner and I had a magical moment last night, which I'd like to share. We started with a wonderful Italian meal at Tuscany Too (Filey Road, Scarborough) and spent the evening celebrating the weeks events and discussing future plans.; The evening felt magical anyway, there was a frisson, because today is the day Chelsea come to play at Scarborough. The crowds out in the evening were excited and chanting. The talk through the restaurant was of who had got tickets, and who each supported. I love the assessment one friend gave, that we hope for wind and cold and rain to put off the pampered southerners, and that Scarborough's pitch is like a ploughed field. We're used to all that. Sometimes sporting humour is the very best. Were we, WOW, able to manage a draw, we'd play at Chelsea with all the riches that would bring.; Anyway, it had been raining hard, but when we left, the storm was over with just a few spots of rain. It was very dark, but not too cold, and we walked back via the esplanade which looks over the sea and south bay. Then .. we heard birdsong.; Now birdsong is something we miss, coming from living in the Derbyshire countryside. Mostly we have gulls here, which is nice enough, but when we get birdsong we notice it.; We walked silently and slowly forward, taking one of the trails down through the trees, and as we got closer we realised there was certainly more than one bird singing, that there was a whole conversation going on, and we spotted one, right on the very highest branch. We were surrounded by a moment of magic, with wet, dripping, glistening trees, birds singing their territorial claims, and in the distance, the neon necklace of Scarborough's bay through storm cleansed air. It was simply beautiful.; I think they might have been robins. I've seen them on that trail in the daytime, and when we saw one, it had the robin shape (although maybe a little leaner), and had a breast patch, but in the sodium lights we couldn't tell the colour. I think I know that robins are very territorial, so I'm guessing they were starting to make their stand ready for the mating season. Stunning.
Notorious: 23 January 2004: There's a 4-part program on UK television (BBC2) at the moment called Notorious, broadcast on a Thursday night. This week was Vance Miller, who's dodged his way to being the UK's fourth largest kitchen supplier.; It goes without saying that he's caused a lot of people a lot of heartache. But I couldn't help feeling that his press image of "the kitchen gangster", selling dodgy kitchens and ripping people off on purpose is nothing like the reality of his business now.; Miller is a no-nonsense type of chap. His management style is to bawl people out for their errors, and dock their pay .. eg. £2 for not answering their walkie-talkie. Yet his employees, lots of them, seemed respectful. At least one of them met Miller in prison and was given a job when he came out. And it felt very refreshing that, when faced with the reality of going to prison for ignoring 'stop now' orders, he got the management team to follow him round the factory to find the source of one of the problems. I think many employees have never met their directors. Here, those responsible feel the full force of Miller's wrath.; Miller did go to prison for five weeks, and was let out on agreement that he'd employ a management consultant to help manage his company. Pity the management consultant. Presenting his "Strategic Review of Systems and Processes for Maple Industries", Miller responded with something along the lines of "I don't need f****** graphs, I just tell them where they're going wrong".; It appeared to me though, that the business idea was actually sound. Miller spends time himself travelling the world sourcing kitchen materials. He buys granite worktops from China, and reckons he's been to places where "they've never seen a white man, never mind a kitchen buyer". This enables him to sell kitchens in the UK at low prices. That, is good.; From what I saw, Miller doesn't need a strategic review. He says himself he's not that clever. He needs to understand that it's possible for him to have the company, and not have the hassle. Then he just needs to know how to give clear direction, set clear goals and expectations, and then stick by them. He seemed to want to stop the quality control problems that were the source of all his, and his customers', woes. From what we saw, his staff would work hard to achieve them, and yes, he'd be clear about punishment for non achievement .. but that's refreshing to employees who've been previously managed with weasle words and doubletalk.; Interestingly, I don't remember seeing a single computer throughout his operation (I could be wrong about that, but there were certainly no management systems).; The Internet is a wonderful tool for researching things before you buy: Kitchen bosses are shackled by new court order, and usenet.; In case it's not obvious, I should say that the kitchen site I'm due to reveal soon has nothing to do with Miller or any of his businesses. The company I'm working with really does sell quality kitchens.
Phones 4u: 23 January 2004: I'm about to upgrade my mobile, something I've not done since, well, I've a Nokia with a sticker on the inside that says the warranty runs out in September 1997. I've dropped it a few times since then, and it's starting to become unreliable so the time is right.; True to form, I want to know everything there is to know about mobile phones before I make a decision. I found out there are a couple of mobile phone magazines, but I never saw them at my local W H Smith, I had to order one from the local newsagent. Wow. Almost nothing in there attracted me .. I couldn't care less about personalising my phone with ringtones and clip-on cases. I don't want to play games. I'm less than impressed with the quality of the pictures I've seen from phones (although those will clearly improve). What I would like is to play with mobile Internet, and Bluetooth. Also, I'd like a good looking phone, and perhaps if it showed the time I wouldn't have to carry a watch too. Silent ringing would be good, that's not available on my oldie.; I looked through the magazine and really didn't get very far. I got the impression that Siemens makes good looking, desirable phones. But that was no progress. I wanted to really understand, to cut through what seems to be what Scott Adams would call a confusopoly .. where companies work together to make the market impenetrably difficult to understand so that consumers will just buy anything. Another possible source of my learning was to go back through what I learned on my course.; I ventured into Phones 4u the other day, it was my first visit to a phone shop for about three years. I showed the cheeky chappie behind the desk my phone and said "here's how long it's been since I upgraded my phone. I'm not interested in video messaging or ringtones or games, but I'd like Internet access", he said "what operator are you with?", "O2", "are you pay as you go?", "yes", "well, all the O2 phones are here, why don't you try the Nokia 3100?" That was it. Wow. All this confusion down to a single option in two questions. I said "so, do I just put my sim card into that, and I get the Internet?", he said "yes". It was zen-like. Hypnotic even. Minimalist. Time stood still. There didn't seem to be any alternative to this phone, he didn't say "or ... ". He left it at that, and waited for my next question.; I think that might be the effect of brilliant sales training well implemented, but I'll try a few other shops and see what happens. I could very well have said "OK, I'll have it" just to relieve myself of the pain and suffering of understanding the market. Now I can see how people make their phone decisions. What's more, this is where the true value of retail lies .. in helping people make choices between products. We should be able to do this on the web too.; The fantastic thing, as I look at the Nokia 3100 online, is that it's obvious he really listened. That phone looks very straightforward. He looked at me, not having upgraded my phone since 1996, and gave me a similar phone to the one I've clearly been satisfied with for ages. He didn't talk to me about anything I didn't want. He just listened, and answered questions. The more I think about it, the more I love it. I'm really, truly impressed.; Maybe there's something else going on. I met the owner of a model aeroplane shop a few years back and he explained that although he had a large range on display, he only ever really sold a handful of models. They were the ones he recommended. If those were the only ones he displayed, people would be disappointed when they came in the shop, and would think he didn't sell much at all. So the other models were really just padding. I wonder if Phones 4u only ever sells the Nokia 3100, hence the simplicity of the pitch. Obviously not, but maybe there are only, say, ten or twenty phones they ever recommend. The optimist would say they recommend them because they are the best available, the pessimist would say because they offer the highest profit.
I like: 22 January 2004: I like the Heuga site. Besides the silly bouncing Heuga, it's simple, and right up front it asks customer requirements and selects a product for you. Fantastic.
You've gotta laugh or you'd cry: 21 January 2004: This is just so fantastically out of touch, it's funny. Personally I reckon only 5-10% of Roman Catholics are really Roman Catholics, the rest are .. well, you get the idea :-); And while we're at it, what's wrong with colourful suits?
I didn't realise the Information Commissioner had a sense of humour: 21 January 2004: Classic comedy from the Information Commissioner where they explain how to register for data protection. You can complete an online form. When you've done that, print it, and send it to us.; So, let's get this straight. We pay £35 a year so they can data enter things we've already entered. Fantastic. We need more of this electronic government mallarky, LOL.
The straw that breaks the camel's back: 20 January 2004: A very long time ago I used to work for a company, and one day, I'd had enough. I couldn't explain why I needed to leave, but there was no way I could stay. Everytime I tried to explain, the reasons I gave sounded trivial. I worked my notice, of course, but I handed in my notice the next day.; This was my "straw that broke the camel's back" moment. Sometimes, in a situation, you reach a point where you've tried all the answers you can think of, nothing's worked, and you're left with a choice .. put up with it, or leave. You know those lifeless souls you find, working away in companies but with no spirit? I have a feeling they put up somewhere along the line, and something inside them died.; I know someone who's going through this right now, and taking the right decisions, so I thought I'd mention it.
World Social Forum: 20 January 2004: I love the idea of the World Social Forum
Domain Registry of America: 20 January 2004: Quite a few of my clients have been contacted around domain renewal time by the Domain Registry of America. If you get anything from them, throw it away. You can see the kinds of problems people have been having here. My clients buy and maintain domain names through me at cost (£9.98 for two years for a .co.uk address, or £29.98 for a .com).
Habitat: 19 January 2004: The Habitat site's possibly one of the more successful Flash sites I've seen. I've not explored it in detail, but I've had someone show it to me as something really funky.; Except, with all that effort they put into making the graphics work, the contact form doesn't. It asks you to fill in all the boxes, which you do, and it still asks. So I never got to ask Habitat what I wanted to ask. It's simple and obvious stuff really.
Am I good or really really good?: 19 January 2004: At Fusion Glass there seems to be no concept of contact for anything other than sales. There's no space for any freestyle comment (which is kinda arrogant I think), and I noticed the "how do you rate our website" drop-down so before I completed the form I thought I'd have a look around. Very nice. Not perfect, but nice enough for sure. Then I thought I'd vote. The choices are satisfactory, good or excellent, LOL. So there's no chance that not being able to ask a question could possibly make the site unsatisfactory then? Oh, and no chance I could have heard about them from any other source than the ones they know about! OK.
A nice contact page: 19 January 2004: This is nice. I like to have the choice of people I'm contacting, and it's nice to see the pics, it makes it more personal. It's good to open up. Also, many more people nowadays are hiding their email addresses behind forms, and I guess with spam the way it is that's probably the way we're going to have to go. Although my email's plastered all over the place and I haven't got a big spam problem at all, nothing like the 50% of all emails figure that's going around now.
A minor software moan: 19 January 2004: I've just re-installed Flash player for my latest browser version, and I got the choice of US English, or French, German, etc. You might have seen me moaning before about Flash 'movies', and talking about wanting a proper English version. Well, no wonder, they make it quite plain on installation that there's just one English, and that's US English. Well, that doesn't make me warm to the company or the product.; Oh, and this is the site that forced me to use Flash. Bad bad bad :-) Why? Usually for usability reasons. For instance, I haven't an email client installed locally, so I need to right click an email address, copy it, and paste it into the 'to' field of my web-based email client. This Flash site doesn't let me do that. I right-click and get lots of Flash options instead. In other words, it's forced me to break my habit. If you want to sell to someone, you don't want minor niggles like that.; I was at one time a huge fan of the Chemical Brothers, and they had a new site that was Flash only. I got in touch with the developers to ask why, and they mumbled something about budget restrictions stopping them building another site in HTML. It's still the same. Frankly it's bloody awful, I knew it was even before I did my uni course. It doesn't work at all in Firebird. Completely unusable, and a real embarrassment. I have to say it made me question my devotion to the band too. If they were willing to sanction this, then do I really want to support them? So here's a site that would have been better if it had never been made, as all it did for me was degrade the band's brand value.
A minor site moan: 19 January 2004: A minor moan. Take a look at the Freudenberg Building Systems web site. I tried to contact the person responsible for the website today. When you press the 'contact' button, you get passed to a map of the world, divided by continent, and are asked to choose your country. Besides the pedantic point that my country isn't a continent and I get to choose my country on the next page, I have no idea which country runs the web site. But since it's an international company, and the address I'm looking at is called http://www.nora.de/country/world_us.cfm (giving us Germany, and the US as possible head offices), the head office is probably not in the UK. I just think it's an example of blinkered thinking, where all they're thinking people will use the website for is to contact the company to buy stuff.; The menu isn't particularly clear either. Which option should I pick? Any user scenario I can think of just seems to lead to menu confusion. This is the sort of thing that information architecture aims to sort out. To make sure that the information people want is available to them when they need it, in a way they understand.
Harold Shipman: 18 January 2004: This whole Shipman thing's got me thinking. He probably murdered over 200 people (possibly 400) over a near thirty year period. The controls weren't there to stop him doing it, nor to catch him after he'd done it. There was no system to correlate the numbers of deaths with individual doctors, for instance.; Yet, once the alarm was raised and the police and forensic people started work, the evidence was there. It's clear that people will want greater monitoring, more use of existing data, to stop such a thing happening again.; Does this have a parallel with the Internet? People can talk about what they like online, even download paedophilic images (apparently that's on the increase) with relative abandon. Nothing stops them. They gain the confidence that they can get away with illegal activity.; Then one day, something they may have done many times before, gets noticed. For instance, the Americans found that disc containing the thousands of people who had paid money for paedophilic images and passed it to the UK police as part of Operation Ore (there doesn't seem to be one website covering this, sorry). The police are said to be working through the 7,000 or so names on that list and will investigate everyone.; Currently, it's only at this point that all the data recorded about the person gets looked at: their credit card transactions, their mobile phone records (including geographical information), details of their surfing habits, and the contents of their hard disc drives.; Similarly, if I were burgled, not a lot would happen. My house would be fingerprinted, a few neighbours might be asked if they saw anything, thats it. But when the burgler is eventually caught by some CCTV footage or similar, all those past crimes will suddenly catch up with him.; Fine so far for us law abiding citizens. Hopefully we'll never face that trauma. But in the wake of Shipman calls have been made for some mechanism to stop doctors prescribing, for instance, to their own families. More monitoring will be set up. In another field, whereas we previously had to be 'caught' by a speed trap in our cars to get a ticket, nowadays we're fined automatically by speed cameras. Following this trend, at some point there will be some legislation to stop us, in real time, doing unlawful things on the Internet. It's a bit of a muffled point, but it's about increasing control over our lives, and how difficult it increasingly is to stay within the law.; Another example of how difficult that is, I've just put onto one of my sites that use of the site is governed by the laws of England and Wales. So when a Russian person visits my site, how are they expected to know the laws of England and Wales? How can they realistically comply? I struggle enough to know the laws of E&W, so if I visit a Saudi website, or a Chinese one, I have to abide by their laws then. That could be difficult, since I've no idea what they are.; Actually there's another point. An insightful book called "Disabling professions" talks about how the professions .. medical, legal and so on .. define for themselves a monopoly (you can't set up in practice to do medical operations without the qualifications and government licence). Then those professions seek to expand their influence over our lives. So the medical profession seeks to define new syndromes that define us as ill and in the end, we are all ill in some way, There are an increasing number of pre-conditions, for instance, right now there's a big ad campaign aimed at getting us to know our cholesterol number and to reduce it. We're not ill because we have a high blood cholesterol, we haven't become ill yet. Actually, I'm in favour of the National Health Service becoming a health service, not an illness service, but it is still an example of creep.; On another note, good grief, how bad is the web site for the National High Tech Crime Unit? (Karen, get it sorted).
World War II pictures: 18 January 2004: More than 5 million aerial reconnaisance pictures from World War II are going live on the Internet on Monday at www.evidenceincamera.co.uk. I guess it will be very busy in the first few days (remember when the UK census detailed went live?), but it's worth a bookmark. More details in this news story.
Panorama rant: 17 January 2004: There's an awful lot of bad software out there. What's most likely to get me in a lather is software that aims to give the user a nice, friendly interface to something that's difficult to understand or implement. Often, the underlying technology isn't that difficult to understand and the best way forward turns out to be to understand the engine, not the bodywork.; I asked around for tools to make panorama photographs a little while ago, and some colleagues came up with PanoTools which looks very interesting, particularly since it seems to be written in Java. A few people said it's quite technical, so I should try a GUI interface such as PTGui.; Well, there's so much wrong with PTGui I'm not sure where to start. Firstly, there doesn't seem to be any way to re-order your images once you've opened them, and no way to rotate individual images. So before you start, you have to sort your images in order and make sure they're rotated. There's no brightness/contrast balancing, which doesn't sound too bad until you realise that almost every outdoor panorama will include a sunny part, so the contrast/brightness will change dramatically as you go around the image.; One of the stages is to line up your images using three matching points .. you're saying this point on this photograph is equivalent to that point on that photograph. PTGui lost points after I'd selected them.; After a load of processing, the program came up with matching standards like these:; OK, maybe there's something I missed or didn't do correctly, but I'm intelligent and capable and I've been through this several times and I really did match to the best of my ability the three points. So, the software simply doesn't do what it's supposed to do, which is present an easy interface to PanoTools that people can use. What's irritating is that it takes you so long to find that out.; This is an example of a bigger issue. Because this is so common, it builds into a mistrust of software. In response, I'll resist upgrades until I'm forced, simply because I think I'm going to be forced into a hardware upgrade or the new software won't work with other software I've got, and I'll have to upgrade that too or spend time learning a new interface. My strategy is to get the PC set up, solve all the problems and leave it mostly alone for as long as you can get away with it. That way, the PC pays back, and you've got a familiar and reliable workhorse.
Top search terms 2: 16 January 2004: I was talking about people typing 'google' into a search engine to my partner and we realised that it's quicker to type google, return, click into whatever default search engine turns up when you boot up, than it is to type www.google.com, return into the address bar, particularly if the user isn't very fast on the keyboard. It also saves remembering whether it's a .com or a .co.uk. So maybe these people are wiser than I thought.; I still find it lazy though. I'm not one for the easy option usually. I noticed when in town with a friend that when exiting a shop, they'd make a special effort to go through the door that was already open, or automatic, even if it was busy with people, whereas I walk to the nearest door and push it open. I saw the former as lazy, tbh.; Anyway, to my mind something's either worth doing the difficult way for its exercise value .. walking usually, but I did resist buying a circular saw for a while thinking the exercise of manual sawing would do me good. Or it's worth doing the hard way for its intellectual benefits .. for instance, I've just bought a secondhand PC with Windows XP on it, and I want to set up a network between my two machines. Obviously, I could just buy a cable and plug them in, and for a client, that's probably what I'd do. What I plan to do though, is I have a 400 page book on TCP/IP, and I'm looking forward to working through that, and setting up the network using first principles. I'm thinking by the end of that, I'll be thoroughly knowledgeable on TCP/IP, so that's the benefit. I'll also know exactly what's going on with my network, so I can cut straight to the root of any problem. Also on that machine, I'm adding Linux, so I'll need to get that working on the network too. I know it's not for everyone, but that's the point .. it's an opportunity for me to learn something in depth, and I relish that. The more I do this, the more useful I'll be to my clients.
Top search terms: 15 January 2004: Well, at least now we know where we stand. The top search words for the last 24 hours were 1: sex, 2: porn, 3: paris hilton, 4: google, 5: pussy, 6: ebay, 7: yahoo, 8: health, 9: tits, 10: free porn and on until number 50, wait for it, 'ass'.; I thought the whole Internet sex/porn thing had died down a bit. No wonder the Internet's starting to get an image problem. Spam is starting to make some people talk of the Internet's demise. That's nonsense of course, but it is a huge marketing problem.; Paris Hilton? I'm thinking, someone here must have a sense of style and want to whisk their lover off on a romantic weekend break. No such luck .. see?; The other thing it shows, something a friend (hi Dawn) was talking about some months ago, is how many people type 'google' into a search engine. That reminds me of Scott Adam's dig at people who use a calculator to enter figures into their spreadsheet. It highlights the huge problem of usability, that many people really, really don't know what they're doing on the Internet. What's the quote about no-one ever went bust underestimating people's intelligence?
Still laughing: 15 January 2004: I'm still laughing at the idea of doing an apiculture night class that was so badly organised the participants had to bring their own bees. Thanks to the enormously funny Johnny Vegas.
Scarborough Football Club's triumph: 15 January 2004: As I say, I'm not a huge sport fan, but this story about near-bankrupt Scarborough Football Club winning against Southend yesterday means Chelsea .. yes that Chelsea, the one billionaire Roman Abramovich spent £261million on .. will play at Scarborough's McCain Stadium (if stadium's the right word) next Saturday. I'll bet Chelsea has more supporters than we have population. And that road's jammed up already with road works at the Falsgrave lights. This will be an event.
My young nephew made a brilliant website yesterday: 15 January 2004: This happens quite a lot, and it happened to me yesterday. That comment. "My young nephew made a brilliant website yesterday, have you heard of Microsoft Publisher?" It's usually accompanied by a look of pure pity, as if what I do is somehow comparable and I'm destined to a life of receiving 12-year-old's wages.; The problem is, I'm not quick with my responses. I think that's because I consider things before I speak .. so one of my faults is that I sometimes take that to an extreme and a) not say anything at the time an issue is raised, and then b) pop up three weeks later with "do you remember saying x, well, I've been thinking about it and y". At least I know my faults and I do what I can to counter them. Anyway, this time I still didn't have a quick response, I mumbled something about the site he produced probably not working across all browsers.; The answer is maybe to say that I didn't spend 3 years of study and get my first for nothing. Maybe it's to say that since I left university in June, I've spent 20% of my time continuing to learn new things. Perhaps it's also important to say that out of 22 modules on my Internet Computing degree, only 1 was about developing web pages. So what else did I learn?; I developed an understanding of how the Internet works in the background, how networks and the Internet functions and how messages are passed between machines .. so I know what's possible, and I understand essential technologies such as cookies and session management (so your website can recognise you as you traverse the site) and form processing. I know about programming in various languages (Java, PHP and JavaScript are my main ones), using object oriented techniques which scale well and allow me to re-use software from previous projects to give you a cost effective solution.; I'm well versed in soft skills and professional practices, from software project management to ethics, from teamworking to managing the whole project lifecycle from specification to client acceptance and on to maintenance, and from Internet law to UML to aid systems analysis and design.; I also know about technologies that are yet to hit their prime such as web services, mobile Internet, the semantic web, 3d graphics (VRML), presentations (SMIL), and XML. I have a specialist interest in artificial intelligence which I can invest in your business. Then there's the whole world of interface (web page) design, usability, and accessibility. There's databases, SQL and normalisation or database design. I haven't even mentioned e-business and J2EE (the alternative to Microsoft's .Net) yet.; That's before I start with my ten years of experience running my own technology marketing business which I spent partly being a manager and businessman (so I know how to manage teams and I understand the daily pressures of business), partly being a marketing consultant setting up marketing systems for technology companies, and partly developing our own software, systems and network and supporting and training up to seventeen staff. I was exposed to many of my client's technologies too, from smart cards to geographic information systems. Here's where I developed my creativity and my celebration of difference as a marketing tool, along with my drive and determination to see projects through, and my persuasive writing skills (not that you can see much evidence of that here).; Now I remember being twelve years old. I used to know a huge amount about .. wait for it .. insects. Particularly butterflies. I could tell you everything you wanted to know and then lots you didn't about the Purple Emperor, the Brimstone, or the Silver Washed Fritillary. I have lots of respect for kids of that age, absolutely hungry for knowledge. So I love the fact the kid's getting excited about the Internet, and I'm happy to help and give pointers and so on, no problem. The question is, how to deliver an understanding of what I and other professional web developers can do, to a client who almost by definition doesn't understand (if they did, they wouldn't be a client, they'd be able to do it themselves). What I'm struggling with is how to get all that difference across in one punchy line. Maybe it's something like "well, if he'd spent some time learning Easy CAD, would you let him select a plot, then design and build your next house?" Any ideas? I'll ask around and come back to this one.; And that's before we even get on to the issue of Microsoft Publisher.
Spanish morning TV: 14 January 2004: SPAIN: I know you've missed my Spanish revelations, well they've not gone, they've just been sleeping. Spanish morning TV is a much more serious affair than British morning TV. Where in Britain we get Lorraine (I wrote 'Kilroy' in my notes, but not any more, ha ha), at 9am one morning in Spain we got a detailed, hard-core interview about Basque terrorism. We found fairly serious stuff all the way through until about 7:30pm when we found something akin to Jerry Springer.; I understand India is similar, with most people taking an interest in politics. On another occasion I felt embarrassed for an Italian friend who tried to generate political debate among our group of friends. We simply don't feel right expressing our views. I remember as a child I was told it was rude to ask who you voted for, and I do believe my mum kept how she voted from my dad. It felt really strange when the Americans were doing their hanging chad thing at the last election, when it appeared every official in the process was either a republican or democrat. Do we know that about our officials? Maybe we do, I've never been involved in local politics. Maybe it's just that we don't see our officials labelled by their political affiliations (or maybe I just don't notice it).; Anyway, it appears the Brits don't like discussing politics. Perhaps it raises some passion, and maybe we prefer our stiff upper lip. It's a big issue here, how to generate interest and raise the percentage of people who vote. Maybe, though, it's not just a problem for us Brits, as reading Howard Dean's campaign strategy it appears he's trying to get those people who don't normally vote to come out.; I think it's all Lorraine's fault. But then awwww, she's so lovely :-)
Breaking breadmaker news: 13 January 2004: Absolute yum :-)
Further breadmaker shenanigans: 13 January 2004: I walked into town, went to Comet, and said "I'll buy this breadmaker if you have a bag big enough for me to carry it in, or you tie it with string so I can carry it". This is a shop with no parking, so everyone has to carry whatever they buy out of the shop. He hadn't either a big bag or string. This kind of thing happens every day but I still find it shocking :-) I bought my breadmaker (I can smell it's working now) from somewhere else, because when I'm in my car, it's more convenient to go somewhere else.
Breadmaker: 13 January 2004: I've finally gotten sick of having to go out every couple of days to buy bread. I want decent organic bread, and our nearest shop, Marks and Spencer, sells a really weird light and airy pack of about 8 slices of organic brown bread which feels like it would float to the ceiling if you let go. Tesco is a further walk and can't be relied on to have the bread available. I've resisted the breadmaker thing because neither of us want more appliances cluttering up our lives, but this seems to fill a gap. Of course, I could bake bread properly, and I can (I can remember my grandma showing me how .. she used to cook bread every day (maybe), prove it in front of the open coal fire, and cook it in the aga (and that was in a terraced house in Ilkeston)), but it's a faff I can do without.; Anyway, I went to the library to get the latest Which report, which said the Panasonic SD251 (now 253) was the best, so I looked that up online to find the dimensions (because I want to know I can hide the thing away when we're not using it, so I need to know whether it will fit in the cupboard). Most sites didn't give it, including Panasonic's own site. Can you believe that? It fell to John Lewis to provide them. So, even online, a store with a quality approach still shines through. Its such a simple and obvious thing.
Logo example: 12 January 2004: I can't think of a better logo example than Vivienne Westwood's (the site doesn't seem to work in my Mozilla, but does in IE). I went to the Leeds shop over the weekend and got all inspired again .. she's a complete thrill. If you look at the front page for the jewellery part, you'll see the logo works wonderfully in all kinds of places .. here as jewellery. Look at the perfume bottles, and most of the bags. It's a beautiful logo, and it says so much about her work .. part royal, part fifties sci-fi, part religious. Different yet familiar, recognisable in shape, so applicable almost anywhere, and not intrusive like when the designer emblazons their name on your clothes (I refuse that), it's like a secret code.; Most logos are pretty boring in comparison. Maybe most logos don't need to be an inspiration. Maybe that's the point. If Vivienne Westwood is a leading, inspirational designer, the logo had to be different. Can we, can I, take that inspiration and apply it to our work? If Vivienne Westwood has distilled the essence of her work and turned it into an iconic logo, what is the essence of my work or your work? We might regularly, perhaps unconsciously, apply that essence to our regular work, as Vivienne does in her clothes, but here she applied it a little sideways. How can we do the same?; Incidentally, there are quite a few parts of this site that are broken. The history part gives the photographs but no text, yet flashes text at you so you know it's there. Some of the navigation is broken too. I wouldn't have said it was necessary to do it in Flash either. Still, it mostly works :-)
Listening: 10 January 2004: I've met two people this week that haven't listened. In both cases it was the same problem, I was being told things I knew and wasn't able to interrupt to introduce a short cut. In fact, there was no opportunity to discuss anything, and in the end I was just tired of being given so much irrelevant information.; I put the first one down to a nationality difference. I know from Deborah Tannen's work that, for instance, if I were talking to an American I'd have to jump in faster and take hold of conversation space, and that would be fine .. the American would think I was slow or boring if I didn't, and wouldn't notice what I'd feel were brash interruptions. I thought that was the problem the first time.; But the second was pure non-listening.; I spend most of my time with clients listening. I can't do my job if I don't listen. I don't just need to know what the client I'm meeting wants, but also what anyone else wants who might be impacted by the system I'm developing. Of course, the initial stages are interactive .. a mix of my opinions, ideas, knowledge and experience combined with the deep knowledge of their business and requirements that a client has. But overall, I'm there to develop the system the client wants. I have to understand that before I can build it, and I have to listen, probe, and ask the right questions, before I can understand it. Surely that's the only way to develop something that works for everyone.
Women's snooker: 7 January 2004: I wonder what the state of feminist thinking is now on sport? I don't think it was ever really a goal for women to be 'equal to' men, just to have the same opportunities. So maybe it's always been accepted on all sides that men can run faster than women and so on, so in terms of human achievement, male sport dominates. Personally, I'm not convinced, but I imagine that would be most people's view. And anyway, who says that running really fast is important?; But what of sports that don't require physical power or endurance? Darts, snooker, and chess to start with. Snooker was always an issue with me. Why is men's snooker so popular, while women's snooker so completely invisible? What got me back to thinking about this was Evan Harris' perfectly Liberal Democrat query in the House of Commons. I don't think this one can be about a difference in ability, it feels like pure prejudice.; I guess I'm toying with something I don't understand (I don't watch much sport) but it does sound like fun to make a rule to force television to show as much women's sport as mens.; It would take a lot for me to notice a sporting achievement, as I say, I don't watch much, and I use the sport's pages to line the cat litter tray, but if I think about recent ones, the ones that come to mind are obviously the England rugby team, then the amazing Paula Radcliffe, and the wonderful surprised and proud feeling when the British (Scottish really) curling team won at the Winter Olympics. Oh, nearly forgot the awesome Williams sisters. You can't say that women's sport isn't inspirational.
Mars pics: 6 January 2004: Wow at the Mars pics.
Tinshop Alert (again): 6 January 2004: Tinshop's alert system's just gone live. Users can register to recieve emails when matching items are logged into the Tin Shop database, change their own keywords, and de-register themselves. The Tin Shop receive an email for each change so they can keep an eye on things, and there will be, next time I get to it, a 'dashboard' on the Tin Shop's maintenance screen which tells them how many registrants they've got registered. It's a fairly rough first pass, I've got quite a few improvements to make, but it's basically functional. I've agreed with the client that we'll run through some major functionality items and then go back through them later to tidy up any loose ends.
I'm an Ox: 5 January 2004: I've been playing with this Chinese Astrology site. Apparently, I'm an Ox. What can I say?
A little bit of politics: 5 January 2004: Your Party sounds interesting, although the website's pretty awful. It's a political party where the politicians have to vote according to the people. Should be very interesting :-); A few months ago Channel 4 News ran a piece on how Howard Dean was the front running Democrat candidate. In the story, his success was attributed to getting in touch with people by speaking with them as much as possible, and to a great Internet campaign. I mention this because it would be interesting to watch the campaign site develop, if it's so good. And at first glance, it looks truly excellent from a campaigning and motivational point of view, just browsing it is exciting, some of the ideas are just great. Further, the messages he delivered in that news item were really a breath of fresh air and inspiring. This could be good, I hope he does well.
Dali: 5 January 2004: SPAIN: I wasn't a great fan of Dali before visiting Spain and the Dali museums, I think because posters of his paintings were compulsory wallhangings for some students of my generation. Having seen the breadth of his work, I'm thrilled. Daft little things have stuck with me, such as the taps in Gala's bathroom, and the way the curtains were draped, both in, I think, Púbol.; Also, in each Púbol room were different scents. I asked the guides whether they were later additions or something Dali enjoyed but they didn't know. I bought a book some time ago called 'Sensual Home' (Crawford & Thompson) which talks about a similar idea and gives some ideas for suitable essential oils for each room. I resolved to get that working but I'm waiting for the next bit of planing I have to do so I can keep the shavings and make my own pot pourri.
How do these people stay in business?: 1 January 2004: I just tried to book a cinema ticket at the City Screen in York through their website. Firstly the online booking page didn't work, then the phone line played music at me for six minutes, then the email form gave me an error message. Now that's just unforgivable isn't it? Doing my best to be irritating, I've emailed head office, let's see what comes back :-) (5 Jan 2004: Guess what? Nothing came back, and the cinema was fully booked.)
World Idol: 1 January 2004: We just watched the final few minutes of World Idol (as usual, the site is down due to demand), and the winner, wow he blew us away! He doesn't look like anything special, then he sings. It's fantastic when someone kicks into what they do. You can be talking to someone in the pub about this and that and then you hit on their specialty and wow they suddenly kick in and their whole soul is meant for that moment. It's a wonderful thing. It's wonderful that people you hold as, well, as idols are ordinary people in the rest of their lives, and it's wonderful that people that seem ordinary usually have wonderful talents waiting to be discovered.
Organic food: 1 January 2004: I was asked at a gathering what 'organic food' really meant, particularly, how far back does the chain go? Can organic chickens be fed non-organic food, for instance. I had a feeling that they were right, that perhaps the term 'organic' meant different things to different people, and that perhaps there are multiple 'organic' certifiers applying different rules. So I mumbled something about things being free range, and now, here I am trying to work out the answer.; It appears to be much more complex than you might at first imagine. 'Organic' is an easy handle, but it does mean different things depending who you talk to. Having looked for the briefest of moments, my first impression is that the Soil Association maybe is the most trustworthy standard. Understanding just their standards looks like it could take a while.; If you're interested it appears DEFRA have published a guide to the different UK labels, available for download at http://www.pitching-green.gov.uk/shoppersGuide.htm. From here, you can look at each website to work it all out. Wow. No wonder I got asked the question.; For me though, the most important thing is to send the signal to the shops. So yes, I'm buying organic for health and taste reasons, but most importantly, I want to be loud and clear in my desire for healthy, non-sprayed, well manured (well fed, nutritious) food, preferably from local suppliers, and with no GM, so that the shops and suppliers hear the need and consider, over time, fulfilling it. That's the main reason I'll walk into a local shop and ask "have you any organic ...", it's the signal I want to send into the market, rather than anything else.; This reminds me of a time when I first met a good friend, we were fairly young and somewhat like batman and robin, running around getting stuff done. Anyway, we were heavily into good business, thought we could change the world and all that. We ran into a shop, asked for something, and the shopkeeper said "We don't stock it, there's no demand". We found that so wrong, and so funny, that we still refer to it today .. twenty years on. Anyway, I had the same response from our local health food shop the other day .. Victoria Health Foods. I like to be led by my customers. I like to provide the service they want. So when a customer asks for something, I tend to do my utmost to fulfil their needs. Surely that's the whole point isn't it? So my response would be not "there's no demand", but "well, since you ask I'll get some in, if we sell enough of it I'll keep it in stock, if not, I won't replenish it".