Content Fairy – Guy Redwood's Blog

Here we go again. I need to set up another wiki for huge project we’re involved in. So off we go on the voyage of discovery looking at all the latest wiki tools – working out which one will be best for this particular project team. In the past we’ve used zwiki and twiki. Recently, we’ve even used smf bulletin board where we thought wiki syntax was too complicated for the users. Before I get deluged with hosted web 2 offerings, I want it on our servers – cos I’m old fashioned like that!
I know Tom can easily be stirred onto a wiki rant.

Wiki – a fabulous concept, an arkward reality.

see you on the other side.

Had a meeting with Tom Smith about the concept of getting people from York in the new media industry together. A month later it’s happening… Tom’s put together a blog and 30th August is the date of it’s inaugural meeting. Let’s make sure it’s a success!

http://wearethemonkeys.com/

Guy

One of our candidates, participating in the usability testing that we’re conducting for a regional tourist board, has just just mentioned that it would have been nice to read a blog for the restaurants in the region. It was a brief comment in the midst of a task that involved choosing a place to eat in the region you are about to take a holiday in.

This is the first time we’ve ever had a candidate request this.

We test websites with a lot of people. It’s what we do at SimpleUsability, day in, day out.

This is pretty huge, he used the word blog like he would use the word coffee.

Joe Public is now asking for blogs, in situations where blogs would be of value to them.

Businesses out there, need to take note.

An open source streaming flash server. I’m a huge fan of playing movies in a flash player. Big movies need to be streamed…. With Red5, it looks like we may be able stream flash movies without having to pay huge fees for macromedia server software.

http://www.osflash.org/red5

An open source streaming flash server. I’m a huge fan of playing movies in a flash player. Big movies need to be streamed…. With Red5, it looks like we may be able stream flash movies without having to pay huge fees for macromedia server software.

http://www.osflash.org/red5

Thought I’d make a note of these fixes for the flash problem in Internet explorer.

http://therippa.blogspot.com/2006/03/activateactivex.html

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

S’pose I better get my head around this. Surely Microsoft will issue a fix around this… or macromedia just give eola a brown envelope with some cash in it. flash websites are pretty annoying at the moment because of this.

I love York. It’s a city of great people, high employment, high levels of commerce nestled around the fabulous backdrop of a walled city center set in the North Yorkshire countryside. There’s very little in the way of grants and funding in this region because it’s doing so well. Everything in York seems to be self financed because people love it here, including me.

But there’s a problem with all this.

Back in 1995 (or was it earlier?), I was one of the original pioneers of the web industry in Leeds, the home and hub of many succesful internet businesses, including Freeserve. This industry created a scene filled with peers, observers and wannabees. It was great – Friday evenings in Leeds was a great place to talk web and swap ideas and knowledge over coffee and beer. There was a way of contacting anybody within the industry through a friend of a friend – and that was of huge benefit.

York, however, seems to have very little in this way. Sure we have seemingly dead Creation Network and creative wing of York Science City. But these are/were quango-esque in their existance and operate for a too broader group of industries. I was unaware of the seemingly bouyant industry of museum display design & manufacture – until I started attending functions within the city.

So – York needs a web industry group. No quango – just a vehicle for encouraging socials, networking and a voice. Not a group for lobbying – just a group that will give the industry some scale within York. An informal vehicle for people to share experiences and mentor.

Anybody up for working on this with me?

Apparently, Microsoft lost the court case with Eola over a patent issue, which means that they can no longer embed active-x content directly in  Internet Explorer.

An update to Windows is now filtering out from Microsoft, and these changes take effect immediately after the update is installed.

What does this mean? Well, anyone using Internet Explorer will have to click on flash movies/devices at least once to make it work. From there on in, the end user will notice nothing different, after clicking once on each piece of embedded content. So those sites that have lots of little flash and activex buttons – will be teaching users to double click on everything – cos that’s how to make it work.

I guess what goes around, comes  around. You either want software patents or you don’t?

I understand there are ways around this with javascript – so I need to start reading up!

A real company working on a lift/elevator to the moon. With discussions on their bulletin board about pushing rope, info about trials so far… I’m almost speechless.

http://www.liftport.com/

This is my third brief attempt to understand this. I get that my attention is valuable – but what is this site/service about? It could be huge – but what exactly are they doing?
AttentionTrust.org

WebTrends has much work to do to win me over. As one of the pioneering users in the very early days who knew a thing or two about analytics beyond the pretty graphs – we got our fingers burnt and never looked at webtrends again.

But they are now opening up their analytics data to queries through ODBC. This is huge. This should allow website managers to create specific dashboards on their intranet for internal customers (customer service managers, regional marketing managers etc).

Thanks to Mike for bringing this to our attention  

whilst planning the last part of european eyetracking carpet tour… I came across this gem of ‘only on the internet’ culture.

A guide to sleeping in airports, with a list of favourites and reviews

http://www.sleepinginairports.net/

I was searching for antwerp airport info – but got sidelined. 

at what point in the project do you discover that you need to create a page that tells people they need to have javascript running to buy something from you? well…

Almost every E-Commerce website on the internet uses a programming language called JavaScript

and here’s how to switch it back on and some words about that surface cleaner

http://www.joebrowns.co.uk/publish.asp?what=browser_help&page=1

Javascript should be there to improve the user experience – not a prerequisite.

A few weeks ago, Tom launched his new wiki for collecting best practice info surrounding ecommerce.

http://tomsmith.textdriven.com/Wikka/HomePage

It’s a good project with huge potential. Tom’s stuff is generally pretty good – so it’s no suprise that the resource is already worthy of a read by anybody that runs a transactional website.

What I found interesting about this new venture, was my reaction to it. (I do spend much time analysing my own behaviour). My scary thought process went someting like this:

1. Cool, this will help alot of people.
2. oh, no, Tom’s really bright, he’s going to tell everybody how to make ecommerce work and do us all out of a living.
3. Get a grip, there’s always too much for people to take in and it’s how you implement knowledge from experience that matters, not just the fact that you know something, so maybe our jobs are safe for now.
4. This is cool, I’ve got plenty to add, lets get started.
5. Oh… where should I place my first nugget of knowledge for all to share? None of the categories really suit my first gem.

And there it was, in a nut shell, something I’ve never considered. Whilst I’m a huge advocate of wikis I was stumped at the thought of adding content into a wiki I didn’t own/rule/dictate.

I’ve always used my own wikis. I’ve always had to evangelise about wiki use, teach people to post, grow the structure, etc. This was the first time I’ve had to take something from my head and then think about where it would go in somebody else’s wiki. Wiki content is more than a comment against a blog, this is new content in somebody elses property. Will the owner agree with where I’ve placed it?

This is something very important for all wiki owners to consider.

At some point in the not too distant future I’ll contribute. It’s my duty as a citizen in Tomland. I just need to work out the bits I’m allowed to share, without upsetting the customers, and then roll my sleeves up and contribute.

We received our bottle of Stormhoek Sauvignon Blanc 2005 a few weeks ago – and whilst it only lasted a few hours in the home office before being opened, I’ve been too busy setting up our nice new offices in the York Innovation Centre to report on this fascinating experience.

The quality of the wine was overshaddowed by it’s remarkable delivery. I received an email from DHL, which I initially thought was spam – why would dhl email me? Must be some virus thing.

But no, it was the local DHL depot stating that they had a parcel for me and needed some further details before they delivered it. I couldn’t believe it – here was an industry that last year wouldn’t even let their drivers have mobile phones for various crazy reasons – now using email as a way of contacting recipients for delivery info. Not sure how they got the email address – but I was totally impressed with the service. I emailed the requested info and the wine turned up the next day.

So what about the wine?

This Sauvignon Blanc 2005 has a tough personal benchmark to be compared against. It’s a variety of wine we drink lots of, ever since discovering the legendary SB from Montana many years ago. The Montana is dependable – it’s my wooly jumper of summer drinking – never disappointing.

The Stormhoek was not as bold, definitely more delicate – definitely a great wine – and I’ve got no idea of price. We didn’t really do the tasting justice – it didn’t last long – we were thristy and it went well with the food – what more can you ask of a wine? I’m keen to try another bottle and spend a little more time considering it – but a quick search on Sainsburys reveals it’s not available on online. Maybe it’s available in store?

I will hunt you out, Stormhoek, for another, more intimate sitting.

The personalised bottle sits on my desk at work – a story waiting to be told to all that enquire.

I do wonder if they do anything good with my other vice…. big bold Shiraz?

Just a shame I can’t find a product catalogue/listing on their website :-(

Just checking our logs and saw that somebody had found us from a google search in arabic. It’s the first time I’ve seen Google in right to left mode.

go check it out – google in right to left

Yesterday, I had an idea for a video promo. Needs some work, but may be fun to shoot and possibly encourage a few people to challenge the quo.

Analytics Hostage Takedown
When approaching the technical team for improved ROI tracking or visitor data on your website, it can feel like some sort of hostage release negotiation. All you want is some data, or a number crunching application to tell you if the website is working – just some info for the benefit of the company.

What do mean, you’re not happy with hits and referral data? You want more?

That would mean re-coding the website, the site structure will not let that sort of information be collected…

Cue police squad cars arriving outside the building, black helicopters circling overhead, snipers in positions… etc…

At this point I have to decide, in the promo, whether we storm the building and rescue the website (install an onsite analytics solution) or difuse the situation with peaceful mediation (install offsite page tagging analytics).

Yeah, it needs some work – but there really is no excuse for no business analytics from your website.

Whilst kicking a few ideas around the office, ranting about a few bad technical decisions a customer had made about their wesbite, I came up with a great analogy that will hopefully explain the pain and pleasure of having us onboard, within your business.

In the UK, we have a popular chef called Gordon Ramsay who’s a very astute business man. He’s about to start his 3rd season of a TV series called Ramsays’s Kitchen Nightmares – in essence he’s a trouble shooter for restaurants in trouble. There’s an interesting dilema involved for the businesses that take part. Do they accept that their business needs help in a popular TV program in exchange for some clear, hands-on advice from Gordon – or do they lie low and hope they can work it out for themselves?

Gordon’s advice invariably covers the whole business – it’s not just the stuff that goes on in the kitchen. It’s everything from restaurant promotion, team work, hiring/firing team members, workplace environment, ingredients, interior decoration, booking patterns, customer expectations/needs, menu revamps, profit, etc…

He usually bruises a few egos, sometimes looses a few people in the process of turning the failing restaurants around.

This is very much what we do in our style of ‘usability testing’ at SimpleUsability. We consider the whole business – not just where the online activities dovetail into the owner’s main ambitions. Without turning this blog entry into the web industry ‘Kitchen Confidential’ book everybody wants me to write, you have to realise that the website you own, that’s probably not working as well as it could do, has been created by a team of people. Did they set out to make something that’s below par? Most people think they need to defend the reasoning behind why they did, what they did – but we believe life’s too short and our day rate for counciling is the same as our day rate for advice.

Where the analogy of why I think the stuff I do is pretty similar to the stuff that Gordon does really makes sense is that we both regularly roll our sleeves up and do any aspect of the business we’re involved in.

This is the bit that usually leaves the biggest bruise on the biggest egos – showing the incumbent what to do – and sometimes that’s not pretty. That’s what makes the TV show entertaining/embarassing to watch.

Anybody want to improve their online business? Better warn you that it may upset the incumbent in the process… if you really want it to work… that is.

how to run osx on a pc

We’ve only got panther and the first osx, boxed in the office – but I think it’s pretty cool that you can install and use osx Tiger on a pc – before Apple switches to intel hardware. I’m not going to do it – I rely too much on windows apps to do my job efficiently and there’s plenty of other useful things to complete on the todo list.

If you ever have to create some tracking urls for your google adword campaigns for a site hosted on a Lotus Domino setup – then you need add the command ‘open’ to your url vars before the url will work. It had a few of us scratching our heads, because webservers normally ignore this stuff – whereas Domino returns a 404 page not found error.

So normally this would work:
http://www.mysite.com/mickysite/?trackid=googleuk

but for domino you need to do the following:
http://www.mysite.com/mickysite/?open&trackid=googleuk

I tidied this up because I think this structure could break some stats packages. Hence I settled for:
http://www.mysite.com/mickysite/?open=1&trackid=googleuk

If this helps you, please let me know!