Before I talk about why I went with this theme, you need to understand that I’m not a designer, but I am a creative person. Ok, so that’s a little ambiguous so let me quantify that statement. I’m the kind of person that falls into the techie-creative genre where I can take something good, and either improve it myself, or work with a designer to really make it great – obviously making sure that the vision is actually able to be built.

Cue The Unstandard 1.2.1 theme by Derek Punsalan. I looked at his older 0.1 version a long time ago, but it was lacking a certain something. Maybe it was the mood I was in at the time? I don’t know. But that classic mix of Orange and black really got me going. And yet somehow, back when I originally looked at it, it just wasn’t right.

So what makes it right now? Well, to be honest, I think I’m a little more mature and experienced now – some would say grown up (thanks for that btw). But when I look at it, it somehow has a wonderfully modern-retro look to it. It really catches your eye and draws you into the site. I also think the use of images for each of the blogs gives more attention to each, I just need to keep the images relevant and fresh – something my passion for photography should support well.

But, as with everything, it’s not quite perfect for me. Derek is continually updating the theme, so any changes I think are of value to his wider audience I’ll be sharing with him. For starters, the use of images to lead into the blogs hinders the SEO for the site, so I’ve added in a div with the excerpt from each blog in it, and then made it hidden from your average user, but glowing like a Christmas tree for Google and the like to crawl.

As for the style, I like most of it, but the orange background for the Sherbert colour scheme? It was too much, so I went back to the original version’s white with orange highlights. I’ve also changed some of the padding in a few places – it wouldn’t be my site if I didn’t make changes would it?

What’s next? Well, the headings needs to be styled a little differently – again, maybe back to the original’s bolder feeling schemes. Some more tightening up of spacing – I used to do type setting, so I’m a little strange on that. And, well, if I’m feeling bold, and I’m honest, I’d maybe like to move it a little more towards the feel of some of the more popular schemes like Magazeen in some areas. Don’t ask me why, but if I can pull it off, I think there’ll be a new style added to the built in list.

And I’ll be continuing to work on my Gallery Plugin for WordPress to make sure it fits in tightly with this theme, but will also work for the wider audience longer term.

In the meantime, if you’ve got any suggestions for the theme or the site, let me know. I always listen and will make sure it happens if I think it’s a good one.

So there you

But of late, I’ve been struggling to get the inspiration and I’m not sure why. To defend myself on how slack I’ve been, I love writing, as you can probably tell by the way I’m waffling now. I always have enjoyed writing, and I also love helping people review things they’ve written to help them target their audience better. Be it for a client, internal procedures, technical explanations or even personal documents like CVs.

That’s just the way I am, and I enjoy it. So what happened?

I’m using Twitter a lot, and talking to people getting links, re-tweeting and sharing dialogues with people. Maybe that’s the problem. I also still have my large number of feeds attaches to my Newsgator account – I check that on my work machine, home machine and my iPhone. Maybe I have too many feeds and am overloading myself and can’t focus on things.

At Amnesia Razorfish, I’m a project manager, but have involved myself in a lot of other projects. This has seen me moving away from my technical role, where I was quite a pioneer in researching and documenting things for the various companines I work for.

In my personal life, I’ve not been travelling much of late, and I like to keep my more personal adventures to my close friends on Facebook - I’m sure a lot of people understand where I’m coming from with that.

So what’s happened? What’s gone wrong? Maybe I just don’t have time anymore. My trip to work is now a walk, so I’m missing out on that hour of travelling a day that used to let me watch numerous podcasts.

I just don’t know, and I feel like a part of me has gone.

But then on re-reading this blog, maybe I just need to start writing again… Just sit down with a computer, see what happened on the day and write. Maybe that’s what a good personal blog is all about.

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!

It was first reported in the Amnesia Razorfish offices in Sydney, but word has it that it has started to migrate through channels such as Twitter and Google.

We will be do further studies into this mythical beast, and hope to be able to obtain sketches of it’s appearance over the Christmas period when heavy bouts of laughter are expected to draw it into the limelight.

Update: One has been seen in the wild, thanks to Iain Mcdonald for capturing this historic moment. Here it is: Velociroflcoptersaurus

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!

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.

The meme is basically defined with the following rules:

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Let me begin…

8 Little things about Gregory Brine

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:

• Nomad Pete
• Jatin Valabjee
• Thomas Ritter
• Sushiv Mathur
• Benjamin Christie
• Laura Tjitrafjaja
• James Cox

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.

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

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!