Category — Blog

So it’s not quite perfect yet. I still need to finish updating a few bits of it - like the left nav and the archive.

But this blog is to give a big shout to the guys at NCL Hosting! Transfering my site across, and moving the domain proved a little problematic due to my domain being near to expiry, and some communication trouble with the old hosts.

Their patience was exemplary, and now my site’s up and running faster than ever. If you’re looking for a new host, I recommend NCL Hosting!

There’s just so much I want to write, and but sometimes I just can’t get the inspiration. does anyone else find that? You spend so long work, with your friends, and reading everyone else’s Blog that it’s hard to find the time to indulge in life’s little pleasure of writing for fun for yourself.

I’m a project manager at the moment, and that sees my day filled up with organising people, writing technical documents and ensuring that projects make money.

Tech writing is fun and challenging, coming up with solutions and describing them in a way everyone else on the project will both understand and find useful, whilst still solving the problem. But, it’s for work, and good as it is to get positive feedback, it’s just not yours…

I mean it is yours as far as you researched it, you decided what it should do and you wrote it. But, most of the time, it didn’t come from something you read or did that inspired you. If it did, that’s a good feeling, but a lot of the time it doesn’t given the satisfaction of just writing because you want to.

Now Blogs are a different story. They’re usually based on something that really pipped your interest. Perhaps something you read, or an encounter that got you thinking. Perhaps something on telly or in the news. You know it when it hits you, and you know you have to write it.

Next question. When do you do it? That’s the real trick. My best time seems to be sitting in front of the telly in the evening. That sounds odd, but it gives me the time to just drift dreamily in and out of what I write.

It’s strange, but the background noise and distraction seems to help me focus. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the comfort and familiarity of the surroundings. Maybe the telly gives off some kind of weird aura. I don’t know.

But I know I enjoy it when and I do it, and I really need to do it more. Both at home and at work. With the internet as my inspiration, I don’t really have an excuse not to, do I!

I’ll start by saying that I’m not an expert in this area (yet), so everything you read hear is a combination of my broad range of experience and knowledge, combined with my enthusiasm for online success. I’m currently filtering these ideas into my work, and evolving my skills to help better myself, my company and most importantly, my customers.

There’s more to driving your site to succeed online than just adding a blog and content syndication to your site. You need to market it, and in turn your brand (often yourself). With the birth of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, it has become common practice to think that a site will succeed purely by bolting on a blog, and sticking up some photos and regularly updating the content.

At to that the social phenomenon, people started adding send to a friend links and social network tags, such as Digg and Facebook. Those are great tools, as long as your users click on them and share your message. You could do it yourself, or ask your friends to do it, but it starts to look a little bit obvious and also reduces your rating on those sites if you continually push your own content in. You need to come up with ways to connect with them and make them want to do it. If you’re really good, and connect well, you don’t even need these tools - look at how well Apple does if you need proof.

This is where the advertising industry has one up on web development companies, and where they should learn from each other. Part of their mission is to connect with the customer - in this case, your site’s user - and make them feel you know them and that they’re special. Rather than relying on you to try and work out what to do and write, they aim to deliver elements that appeal to a broad audience, and bring them in by going a few steps further.

1. Know the brand’s customers. OK, for a new brand, this is where the brand and marketing guys come in, and it’s a little more tricky to get right first time, but what I’m going to say in this blog covers that (think competitors). But what does knowing the customer mean? It means start by looking at who your loyal customers are. The ones that have been with you a while, and will stay with you. I’ll say for example to be generic, that might be the 30-50 age group who grew up with your brand and stayed with it. Then look at the ones around that. How can you market to them without alienating the ones you already do so well with? Read what they read. Watch what they watch. It’s tricky, and something that takes a lot to get just right - I’m about to start doing this for one of my clients and I’m can’t wait to start!

2. Get to know the brand’s rivals. This is a bit of a no-brainer if you think about it. We all know it makes perfect sense, but we also know it’s an easy thing to forget or skim over. What are they doing? When are they doing? And most importantly, what do we do better than them that could boost our market share? Then ask if there’s anything they do better that we need to steer clear of - that’s not to that if they really do do it better, you can’t use it, but make sure it won’t come back to have a detrimental effect on what you’re trying to achieve.

3. Know the brand’s products. Does this sound like an extension of the last points in a way? It shouldn’t! If you don’t know everything about the products you’re trying to sell, how can you do a better job of selling them to people who know nothing about it? Know the strengths. Know the weaknesses (but don’t tell the client). Live and breath their products if you can - or find someone that does.

4. Stay in touch with your users. In the day and age of database this, and database that, it’s easy to slap a ‘Stay in touch’ box on a website. But ask yourself what that actually means? Does it mean a monthly, or bi-annual newsletter perhaps? Perhaps it never gets used. I don’t know. All I know is that when I see that box, and I see it not used to it’s best effect, I get upset. That box means that someone has looked at your site, and thinks that you have something that others don’t, and they want to make sure you tell them what you’re doing. If you don’t talk to them, you’re missing a real opportunity and at the same time letting them down! But then, why not go one step further if the product permits. Why not encourage your users to turn that email address into a user account on your site? One that lets them enter competitions periodically? One that actively encourages them to come back, and also gives you the chance to make their experience that little bit more personal? Make them realise that you really connect with them, and want to ensure they get even more from you than they already have.

5. Get to know them better. When users register for a site, you general collect the basic information. Collecting more than that is difficult, but why not ask them anyway? If you can find out that a large chunk of your sites users actually fall into a category that you want to target in point 1, then you know you’re on the right track or have succeeded. Why not ask them how old they are, what they do, how they found you, would they recommend you, and what they think of you. That’s all information you can potentially use later on to do an email or other promotion to them to help make them feel special and that the brand connects with them. OK, so some of those questions are a little sensitive, and they don’t need to be mandatory, but you could give them an incentive to tell you - and that might encourage them to tell their friends too… Suddenly for that one person, you might have 10-20 more customers just for asking more questions to sell to them.

6. Now work out how to deliver. This is a huge topic, and something that I couldn’t possibly cover here. What sites to advertise on. What sites to contribute to. What will appeal to the online community? Should you be thinking about a viral campaign or a competition? Would a Facebook application or Facebook group work well for you? Perhaps a blog would be enough… Ultimately, it boils down to your client’s budget, but you also need to make them aware of what can be done to give them the best return on their investment.

So that’s 6 points. There’s a lot more than that I could write, but that’s a brief take on what I see as a basic strategy to beginning to succeed online. There’s more to come that feeds off that, like viral marketing, banners, offline to online. The list goes on, but you can see where my head is. I’m in the position of moving from being the Technical Director in charge of delivering sites, to being someone more strategic who comes up with the ideas.

I see the web as a world of opportunity. And damn I’m excited by the direction I’m moving in! Please let me know if I’ve said anything you disagree or perhaps really like. And if you want to give me some words of encouragement that I’m going in exactly the right direction, I always welcome and encourage any feedback.

I was tagged by 1. I’ll get this out in the open for those that haven’t yet read all of my site… I’m an Essex Boy. For those that know, please don’t navigate away. For those that don’t, I’ll leave you to search Google for Essex Boy. Actually, I’m quite proud of where I’m from. So it has some quite entertaining stereotypes, but it’s a beautiful, diverse place - it’s not many places where there’s a car at every set of lights with a deafening sound system and a desire to race down the street whilst earings and fake Ralph Lauren tops dazzle you in your mirror (a lot of them drive slow cars).

2. I’m a Mac Addict too - this isn’t off to a good start is it? 2 confessions in such a short period of time. This is a good one though. I have my dad to thank for this addiction. At the age of 11 he bought me my first Apple Mac LC and I’ve never looked back - thanks dad! From that age, I was working in his advertising agency, getting full marks for presentation at school (content very slightly less). I now own a mac laptop and am the proud owner of an iPhone (and a few other Apple gadgets). And I watch all the mac rumour sites.

3. Golf comes into that love it and hate it part of my life. Some days, it’s the best thing - like this weekend when I beat Chris. Other weekends, the game drags on and on… But it’s like life. It’s a challenge to overcome and when you do, man it feels good! Moment of reflection…. that was deep! But it is a great way to spend an afternoon. Good company, outdoors, you get a tan in summer, and for some people in Australia, it’s yet another excuse to spend a few hours drinking (incidentally, being a golfer from the age of 7, and a club member, that breaks just about every tradition of the game!).

4. Walking… Walking… Walking… I walk everywhere! Really. Some of my friends find it a little annoying at times, but thank me after. I just won’t get cabs unless I’m feeling really lazy! Walking’s great! I’m sorry, but it is. I even walk to and from work some days (that takes about an hour each way!). And when you’re somewhere new, the best way to see it is often on foot. Next time you’re away, try it. You might like, and I know you’ll be surprised how much more of a place you’ll suddenly see!

5. You can nearly always find a camera on me. I love taking pictures (slipped a bit lately, I’ll admit, but that’s more due to time than anything). On my travels I will often come back with so many photos it takes me weeks to sort them all out - and a little longer to re-touch my favourites (when I get time). I’m hoping to do a photography course at the Australian Centre for Photography soon, just need to decide which course now - any suggestions, please let me know.

6. OK… Another confession for those that don’t know me… I’m a geek! Those that do, already know that and are now wondering why I’ve said that. For those that don’t most people don’t guess straight away. But, alas, I do play games, I do like gadgets, certain jokes do amuse me, and I do own some stupid t-shirts (never understand why that’s such a geek thing, but it is). Part of that is that I do love technology, and in particular the web (and Apple stuff). I read about what’s new on the web everyday. I’m always looking for new ideas and approaches. Working out new ways to market and sell sites. I do love the web, and I’m lucky enough to work in that space too.

7. Entertaining my friends and family and how important they are to me. For those that know me, they know how much my friends mean to me and what I will do for them! Among my circle of friends, I’m know as one of the most loyal people, and often become that big brother person that everyone comes to as I usually have a very level head, and will always listen and help if I can. But… I love having friends round for drinks or dinner so I can show off my culinary skills in the kitchen.

8. I love cats! I really love cats! I know some people think they’re evil - I’ll admit they can sometimes be a little self centred - but they’re the best companions! They always make you feel good, want to play and love your attention. We have 3 at my parent’s house and I miss them dearly. I occasionally look after a friend’s over here (landlady won’t let me have one sadly), and it’s so good having her around. A sign that will always stay in my mind and I think is so true is “A house without a cat is not a home”. Never a truer word said.

And there you have it. A little incite into me. There’s a lot more to say, but the challenge was 8. I’ll do another one in a while.

Next, I need to tag some of my friends to take up the challenge:

• Jatin Valabjee
• Laura Tjitrafjaja
• James Cox

Following on from my recent post, My concerns about Web Developer’s skill sets since asp.NET came to be, I thought I would justify why I think developers need to know more than just how to code a part of a website.

Lets start with coding itself. A lot of back end (ASP.NET for example) developers don’t care about front-end (presentation layer) code because they believe it is below them for some reason. Unfortunately, what they fail to understand is that knowing the basic principals of how to code the presentation layer can actually be influenced how you do certain things on the back end. It’s OK to rely on the built in controls, they work, that’s why Microsoft put them in, but they also put a lot in to give you that choice and flexibility!

Think about that for a second. Is there a chance that they are too generic and slightly bulky? Is there a chance that one may be quicker to implement, but another will actually give you far more control over the aesthetics of the site (the presentation layer). If you can control that, it will allow the designer to express themselves better, and the client to be more impressed.

The same goes for front-end code. Would making an element a user control or list speed things up, or frustrate the developer that’s got to plug-in the code that will integrate the presentation code with the CMS back end?

But, why stop there? Why not think about how those objects will then affect the performance of the site in terms of speed, longevity and marketing (SEO, SEM, analytics, campaigns, viral, RSS, etc.). If you construct a page in a certain way, you can maximise how Bots for example, index the site. If you build forms and databases in a certain way, you can collect data in a way that makes utilising it for profiling and targeting emails.

OK, so the data collection bit comes under a different area of the process, but it’s a very useful skill to know! If you look at a site, and see a missed opportunity, how good will that make you look? That idea to collect an additional piece of data, or make the user profiling module that bit more flexible suddenly opens the site up to a whole new world of selling back into the client, and in turn, maximising their return, and future spend! You’ve made you company money with an idea, that will hopefully ultimately see you rewarded!

Then there’s SEO and analytics. 2 very broad topics that I will only touch on, but 2 very important ones! If you have some down time, go and have a look at the stats, and see if you can spot anything unusual or useful. Perhaps a page isn’t appearing that you’re sure should be there. Has something happened that could be making that page less favourable to the search engines? Is there a page or particular area of a page that’s performing better than expected? Is there an opportunity to leverage that to drive more people to key information?

And one that amazes me, is how many people in the web industry still don’t know what a blog is, and how an RSS feed should actually work including ‘pinging’. For anyone that wants to work for me, there’s a very good hint as to one of my favourite interview questions!

You can see that there’s more to just coding a website for it to work. It is an area the web is still learning, and it’s only those web site developers that go to the effort of learning above and beyond one area of code, that will ever be a true legend on the web and let them make a name for themselves.

I love reading about what’s happening and as a result, have subscribed to a lot of RSS Feeds. Be it about Web Development, or around the World News. Some are focused on SEO, some on marketing. There’s ones that are fun such as Dilbert. Several about one of my passions, cars and photography.

But, I have far too many. I’ve recently swapped over to NewsGator’s tools for both mac and PC, and one of them has a curious feature, and one I’ve found myself using far too much. A “Panic Button“. What does it do? Well, when you have too many unread articles, it offers to go through and mark anything that is more than 48hrs old, and unread as read.

It sounds like a trivial thing, but it made me realise that I’d accumulated so many feeds over the years that I rally needed to do some house cleaning. I think in doing that, I’ve probably removed about half the sites I was subscribed to.

Am I sad about doing that? Not really. I think in the long run, the feeds I have left are much more focused, and given time, I’ll probably thin them out a little more.

If, like me, you find you have too many to read, do this little exercise and I think you’ll feel much better about yourself - and be able to find much more time to read them.

In a future blog I’ll be outlining some of my 10 favourite RSS Feeds and why I think they are som

I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s been weighing heavily on me. I was one of those people lucky enough to have been at the original Macworld show in London when Apple unveiled the original 5gb iPod, and I was instantly hooked. There was something about the way it looked, the way it sounded, and how easy it was to use. I just couldn’t resist buying an iPhone. I’m just surprised it was so low-ley event.

But anyway, the iPhone. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Nothing really. Everyone’s talked about how easy to use they are. How intuitive the interface is. What a joy it is to use, and it’s problems. Well, I hate to sound boring, but I’ve come to the same conclusion.

It does have some problems. Like I can no longer type a text message while I walk - nothing major, just takes me 30 seconds of standing still. There’s the fact that the headphone socket is recessed so you can only use Apple headphones - got an adaptor for that. The polished good looks that you’re worried will get scratched - got a case. The GPRS was slow, did a bit of reading and found that Vodafone have 2 networks - one’s fast! And I did manage to get it to crash once - hold down 2 buttons and it restarts just fine. But that’s it really. Nothing else really lets it down.

So, the good stuff… Well, the most obvious thing is the interface. There’s just not enough you can say about it. Everything just flows. The way if you flick your finger list keep going, but if you slide it, the list stays with your finger. Each touch somehow does what you expect. A flick side-to-side takes you through the applications. Browse a web page, use two fingers, spread them and the page zooms in. Feels like that seen in Minority Report.

Then you start using the applications - all through touch. They all have that brilliant Apple simplicity. Your SMS’ keep track of each other - well near enough - like a conversation in iChat. The keyboard is very good, and even with my fat fingers, it manages to correct most mistyped words, but does miss some. Just slide your finger back over the text and a magnifying glass appears showing you which point in the text you’re over. Easy.

Emails, calls, you name it, all easy. OK, so I did like the feature on my Nokia where I could start typing a name and it would move to that point in the list, but I’m getting better at the flick and the jump to feature. Call reception is excellent, and I can now make calls anywhere in the flat now.

Wifi works well - although I did have to reconfigure my Wireless network to get it to work at home. Now it’s setup, it works perfectly at home. And now I have a network sniffer on it, I can pretty much get fast access anywhere. But now, after a little reading, I now have faster GPRS too - fast enough for Google maps. On that note, it shouldn’t but does work most of the time, and can tell you where you are - although sometimes only to within 100m, but better than nothing!

Oh, and it has the iPod functionality. That works as well as iPods always have. Only this time I get full screen video. Videos off the web play perfectly - not looked into playing other formats yet. And as everyone knows, when you turn the iPhone on it’s side, you get the video full screen - same with the web browser.

iTunes integration is as ever seamless, and my contacts are now much better organised through the use of Apple’s Contact application groups - not tried Exchange synchronisation. My calender is back on there courtesy of iCal - something that didn’t worked so well with my Nokia 6500 Classic. Podcasts, music, et al go on very easily.

With the iPhone Apple’s not really made anything new, all they’ve done is take some good things and made them great! And I love it! I just wish I’d got one sooner - and no, I’m not bothered by the 3G iPhone rumours as my Tariff won’t expire for a while yet, and I still think it’ll be 6 months till the new ones are out.

What I am really looking forward to is the iPhone version 2 software that makes your phone into a bit more of a mobile office through support for Cisco VPN and Microsoft Exchange. Having those on your iPhone will be interesting. Lets see what happens. I think Apple’s only just begun waking up the mobile industry from it’s sleep!

Ok, so I made the switch to having my site running completely on Wordpress. Originally it ran just my blogs, and I ran a custom front-end to pull that information out. But, since that site was built, Wordpress has matured a lot, and it’s now able to do a lot of what I wanted my site to do. There’s still a few bits missing, but that can be ironed out.

I’m going to write more on this, but it’s late, and this way I have more to write tomorrow. But so far, I’ve installed several plugins ranging from SEO to a gallery - only pain is having to bring all my images back into the new site.

Blogs were easy as they were already in Wordpress. But it amazes me how easy it was to set-up and install extras. The plugin framework is phenomenally flexible and really impressed me. It is more like a CMS now, managing pages in the same way it manages blogs - a sensible move and one I really wanted to incorporate into my new site.

Then there was the upgrade process. I had version 2.3 installed, and running happily, but then wordpress released version 2.5. Usually I will let a piece of software settle down before taking the plunge, but everything I’d read about this new version made me keen to dive in and try it. It was as easy as dragging files into your site. The next time you go to the admin section, it asks to run the upgrade script - makes some small changes to the database indexes - and that’s it. You’re up and running!

I looked around at several themes, but the Cutline 3-Column Split 1.1 theme from Chris Pearson over at personified.com was exactly what I was after. It’s a nice, clean, 3-column layout that only required a few small tweaks. The header images have been changed with some of my own, and the top navigation was amended.

I will be building my own theme over the coming weeks, but for now, I think you’ll agree, it looks pretty good.

I’ve been a big fan of feedreader on Windows, but I’ve yet to find something comparable on the mac. Obviously there’s the on-line tools, and there’s been a few shareware ones around which were OK.

But, feedreader has a beautiful simplicity. It’s on of those programs that does exactly what you need, and could want and doesn’t try to do anything else. The mac ones I’ve seen either did too little, or fell into that trap of trying to be everything. The elegance and simplicity that using Mac OS X is known for just wasn’t there.

Thankfully, whilst hunting around, I came first across Vienna. A project on Sourceforge that does almost exactly the same thing as feedreader with it’s simple 3 pane layout. You can create groups of feeds, when you click on a feed or group, you get a list of all the blogs in that group in the top right pane. Click on a blog, and you get the summary of that blog in the pane below. Double click on the blog’s title and it opens the full URL in you browser. Everything’s nice a quick, and always accessible. You can change the layout to be horizontal if you prefer. Whenever feeds update, you get a message on your desktop - which you can turn off if you like (amazing how many programs forget to give you that option!).

Then, as if a blessing, along comes another program. Newsgator has just released their NetNewsWire program for free. Working much the same way as Vienna, it has 2 other tricks up it’s sleeve. First off, when you double click the feed, it open a new ‘tab’ in the application showing the full page - you’d be amazed how much difference this little trick makes. And, and this is the kicker, you can connect it to your Newsgator account, synchronising the feeds you add here with those on line, and vice versa. This means all your feeds are available anywhere, any time.

Vienna, great, but NetNewsWire is one step better… Give them a try, you won’t regret it!

This came from having one of those random, geeky office conversations you tend to have for no particular reason. You know the sort… What would happen if you swap the ‘n’ and ‘m’ key round on the new person’s keyboard. Do you remember Dungeon Master on the Atari ST? What would life be like if it were more like a video game? Would the internet of come about quicker if macs were the dominant computer? More to the point, would the world be a better place if macs ruled the PC market?

I digress. This blog is aimed at the humble fax. Our friend. Our enemy. The source of endless cheap printer cartridge refills - which incidentally you need as all the cartridge offers use up the ink! The butt of many jokes (think that classic scene if Office Space).

But a lot’s happened in the world. We now have that amazing thing called the internet. You can send anything - well, anything that can be converted to 0 and 1 - to anyone, anywhere. Add to that, the way that most photocopiers are now attached to the office network, so now you don’t even need your computer to send that file. Just stick the paper in the copier, enter the email address, and hey-presto, the other person gets it - and in probably less time than the fax.

So, with all this technology, why is the fax still going strong? Well everyone, I’ve great news for you! I think I’ve cracked it!

I’ll start with the problem with emails. In the original days of email, it was a special event when you got one. Nowadays, you get so many emails, that, to be honest, you don’t read all of them, often missing vital things. It’s not malicious, but to get your job done, you often have to skim read the title and ignore some of them. About now, some people are saying no I don’t do that. But think about it… Really think about it. I bet you do!

Now, with faxes, you see a lone piece of paper on the fax machine, someone will inevitably pick it up and read it. Even if they don’t finish it, they’ll still pick it up and read it to point. You have to! Faxes don’t have titles do they, so you’ve got to find out what’s on there somehow.

You also have the advantage now that they’ve passed of the spammers radar, so the faxes you generally get are actually useful. Think about that for a second. The one tool we used to curse for the amount of rubbish you got on it is suddenly really, really useful again!

Now, put the fax machine next to the secretary in the office, and suddenly anything really important has an almost guaranteed way to get to you. That’s why we use it for sign-off documents. That’s why anything you have to sign has to use the fax. It is useful and is a prime example of how you shouldn’t dismiss technologies too soon. Email’s still a child in a grown-ups world.