West Coast Bloggers

Write or Die!

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:00 GMT

In my never-ending quest for productivity-enhancing tools, I came across an application called Write or Die. The very title very much appeals to my no-nonsense approach to getting things done (both the capitalised and non-capitalised versions, for the fans of David Allen's productivity system of the same name).

The concept is simple: give Write or Die a target number of words and a time limit, and it will, depending on how severe you have the options set, "yell" at you if you're falling behind the target number of words per minute. You can set it to simply change the colour of the background to an increasingly angry red (surprisingly effective), or set it to pop up and nag you if you're getting behind (I find this a bit annoying, and not in an effective way either). Or, you can let it get nasty: disabling save until your goal is reached; disabling backspace; forcing full screen or always-on-top; or, if you're a serial procrastinator who believes in tough love, you can set it to start deleting words (the so-called “kamikaze” mode).

I generally find the progress bars at the top of the writing space (one bar shows the number of words, while the other shows the elapsed time) with the reddening background is enough to keep me typing and not allowing myself to check email/Twitter/feeds/Facebook/the real world until I've reached my milestone. But I can easily see that some other people would really need the more hardcore options.

There's a free online version, but it seemed like so much fun I quite happily shelled out $10 in PayPal for the full version, which is an AIR app. It keeps stats – the number of words written, the amount of time, average words per minute and per session, etc. There's even a game built in as well, where you can pit yourself against other Write or Die users.

I drafted this blog post in the application (I set myself for 400 words in 15 minutes, although I stopped the session and pasted it into Live Writer to finish off before I’d got to the end. One feature that would really make it great for me would be spell-check – just the red-wriggly-underline type checking like in Word and Firefox. But then again removing all distractions to you just hammering out words – especially ones that appeal to the obsessive-compulsive – is the whole point of the tool.

If you're a geek like me and making things into games helps to motivate you, Write or Die is highly recommended.

Posted from kay lives here

Write or Die!

Capturing Creativity

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:27 GMT

Creativity is a strange beast. Often creativity is blocking us, running away. We often talk about it, discuss it at length and even say it can be learned. Sometimes it's even hard to find that creative spark. However what is creativity. In reality creativity is a hard thing to define as a specific reproducible item.

Doesn't help that creativity is different things to different people.

You see creativity can be related to the newer western principle of making products, building things for a purpose, the expression of scientific or technological innovation. Where as in older cultures, there has always been an undertone for creativity being more for personal fulfilment, private goal setting, the taking of an inner journey.

Sure there are definitions of creativity all over the place. This still doesn't help, as the biochemical, physiological and psychological process of creativity is still something of a mystery to which we only have fragments.

What is Creativity

What we do know is that the moment of creativity is often accompanied with a heightened state of consciousness.

Things appear to be more vibrant, more alive, colours are vivid, sounds more pure, it's like a sensory overload. Others have described this inspirational moment as a peroid of loss of control, a trance like, muse controlled, dreamlike state.

Interestingly Carl Jung (that psychologist guy) segmented these two states into:

“a state of emotional high tension” and;
“a state of dream-like contemplation”.

His idea is that creativity is the release of emotional tension. Especially the tension, built up over time, coming from the hard work of the creative process. Well I know we can all relate to that idea.

Later on Damasio (a neurologist) leveraged off Jung's work in looking at emotions, creativity and consciousness. Damasio theorised self-awareness was a very important component of the creative process. The ability for your mind to make it's own patterns, designs without reference to previous experience or knowledge. This will be of a particular interest later.

Creative excitement of the artist at her easel or the scientist in the lab comes as close to the ideal of fulfilment that we all hope to, and so rarely do, achieve – Mihaly Csikszentmihalhyi

More recently research has indicated that the two different states of consciousness, correspond to two different brain states:

Enhanced consciousness is associated with increased beta waves.
Dreamlike state is associated with alpha waves.

This supports the relevant experiences of clarity and dream-states that have been reported. Nothing new really, just a documented physiological response.

It's also been suggested that creativity is similar to a spiritual experience, a type of receptive non-egoist cognition. The type of experience where you just trust in a state higher than you to provide the final solution. Something like a complete trust in a greater god-like power.

Personal and Group Creative Processes

Still creativity is not just about the creative individual either.

Yes, true, you do get the creative star. The person that is going to produce that single creative masterpiece. However creativity can also be a group process, requiring the dynamic of the group to foster the creative process.

The inclination to work in one process or the other really just comes down to a personal choice, the processes, the environment, social dynamics and the expected outcomes.

You tend to find that teams that don't allow for any creativity, that focus on the total needs of the team at the costs above everything else with not have strong creative outcomes. This can mainly be seen as a stifling of the creative spark. The removal of the lack of self may be a very large contributing factor here.

Still you can have creative people in the team, and yes they will create, if you let them. Even though they have become faceless in the team itself. It's matter of fostering the belief in self.

It's their individual presence and creative ability in the team that produces the creative outcome. It's their being able to express their sense of self that seems to promote the creative process.

Something to think about in UX teams. Even in a team it's still about the person, and promoting personal creativity.

Original Creative Process

Something we tend to forget is that the creativity is about being original, creating the new. The magic of producing something from nothing. Or maybe even reshaping an old idea into something new from a different angle.

Newness and Uniqueness

The aspect of what is original is really relative to the individual. You may consider an idea new to yourself, but your peers may consider it to be old and an estabilished concept. Interestingly this relative creativity even has a series of terms associated with it.

Margaret Boden, categorised relative original creative ideas as:

P-creativity (psychological creativity) - new or novel ideas only from the mind of the individual concerned.
H-creativity (historical creativity) – known to be new or novel to the whole of human history.

So if you produce an idea that is new to you, you are being p-creative. However if the idea is new to society then it is h-creative or historically creative.

This does bring us to a question of what is unique and what is new. Something can be new to generation, new to an individual, but its not an absolute. Historically it is not new. Where as something being unique is the first of it's kind, without parallel or comparison to anything else ever.

So maybe true creativity maybe expressed in uniqueness.

The issue is that in today's world it is hard to be truly unique in ones creativity. We are often unconsciously referencing to our memories, experiences and influences all the time. With the information age – the amount of information that we are exposed to is without doubt a magnitude larger than our predecessors even 20 years ago.

We no long have the benefit of living in the world of our predecessors; left to just receive a trickle from the rest of the world of the changes, new information and influences around them. In the past they had the luxury that they could create with a distinct reduction from the taint of the world around them.

Produce or Create

Following on from this is the question can something artificial, like a computer, be creative. What is it that makes anything creative. Does some that is going to be creative need a state of consciousness to capture the unique ideas.

This could be debated here till the cows come home. So let's not, eh.

Maybe its just the lack of consciousness that is stopping the creative process with machines, provide consciousness and you have creativity.

Then again if we are borrowing from our previous experience and knowledge are we being really creative. Maybe we are just being machine-like and producing a design, instead of creating a design. Something to think on when you do your next UX project.

It could just be the use of the logical process verse the gut instinct to produce the creative process. Semantics, yes, but still very important.

Meaningful Creative Process

Now creativity without a cause, without meaning, is often seen as pointless, soulless.

The meaning can be a personal thing, for the creator, or even a commercial motivation. Still at the end of the process there has to be a reason, a goal, a meaning behind it all.

It is this meaning that allows us to have a sense of achievement when we complete a creative process.

In a way, one only becomes creative if there is understanding and meaning of the creative product. If the product has no understanding or meaning, then the creativity can't be seen and understood by others. It follows then to others it's not creative, it's just product of a process.

UX and Creativity

With all this talk on creativity and what it is - are we really being all that creative in the User Experience process? Or are we just applying the outcome of the design (user) research, web strategy and general design principles to the user interface design. Or are we stepping beyond this and making something new, unique and innovative?

Sometimes I question if we are being as creative as we could be, has business and commercial constraints weakened our grasp on creativity?

Remember:

To be creative an idea must be usable and actionable – Teresa Amabile

Still what is creativity to you? Do you think it can be learned, studied and mastered; or is it something more innate?

You Need a Break!

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:42 GMT

The time between Christmas and New Year's Day is an ideal opportunity to take a break and close the office down for a few days; this gives both you and your staff some time to relax and enjoy the fruits of all the hard effort you've put in throughout the year.

This sounds easier than it might be in reality, however there are a few tricks to help pass that message on to your clients:

Give plenty of notice. Email clients with active projects now, letting them know that you'll be closed over Christmas. Encourage them to provide everything they need, in order to wrap up the job, or alternatively, ensure you have enough leeway in that project's plan to allow a week's delay.
Reassure them about emergencies. A client's first thought will often be “what happens if my web site goes down?” In the same notice above, confirm that while closed, someone will be keeping an eye on the web servers, just in case. That's assuming, of course, you've delegated that to one of your team.
Encourage your clients to also take the time off. People burn out — it's a fact. We all need a break once in a while to perform at our best. Not only will your clients be refreshed, they can't criticize you for doing the same!
Point out that this is the only office closure each year — assuming that's the case, of course. Most offices, you'll find, only ever close down during the Christmas period. Easter consists of public holidays, yet those eight or so days over Christmas and New Year's Day are a fantastic chance to really unwind.
Remind your clients closer to the date again. People forget, things change, and although six weeks out is a great forewarning, you need to follow this up again. I suggest about a week before closing, send out an email to say Merry Christmas, and let them know your official closing and opening hours.
Provide any emergency numbers they may need as well, however I'm a big believer in just diverting the office number, if you can manage it.

This year, for example, Christmas falls on a Thursday. My business is closing shop entirely from that day through to January 4th, making a total of eleven days off from work! This equates to only four actual business days, taking out weekends, and public holidays in Australia. Our clients won't even notice, but my staff and their families sure will!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 422 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Interview with Dave Greiner of Freshview

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:45 GMT

Dave Greiner co-founded Freshview in 2004 with his long-time mate, Ben Richardson. Dave is the design half of the founding partnership, and is responsible for the UI of their products. When not obsessing about form layouts, he's known to obsess about over-hit backhand slices in table tennis.

Hi Dave, the story of Ben and yourself creating an email campaign solution is inspiring. Can you give us the 30 second history lesson here?

Back in 2004, we were running our own small web design shop. Business was going well, and lots of our clients started approaching us to send email newsletters for them. The search began for the right email marketing software to handle this side of the business — but all the tools we tried were either missing key features or were bloated and impossible to use.

Quite quickly we realized there was a genuine opportunity here to build an email marketing tool just for the web design industry. By late 2004, the first version of Campaign Monitor was launched. Fast forward to today and we've got 15 staff and tens of thousands of designers in more than 100 countries using our software, running email campaigns for themselves and their clients. It's been a wild ride.

So, given you previously charged for services (time), and now are making money based on product, you would have a great insight into both spheres. What are the pros and cons for going to product-based sales, versus the grind of hourly billing?

I think it ultimately comes down to the type of person you are and the things you enjoy. Some people love the idea of working on a new project every week for a different client. I've been working on the same project for four years and still love what I do.

Personal preference aside though, the most obvious and important difference between product and time-based work is scale. I'd much rather be surfing than working; so, when I'm working, I want it to be as productive as possible.

When you're charging by the hour, it's much harder to grow your bottom line without growing your head count. By selling a product, especially a self-service product over the Web, you can double your business without having to work harder or hire more people. That's a fairly significant pro, in my opinion.

You managed to gain great traction in the early days, with little spent on advertising. What do you attribute that success to?

I think the biggest factor behind our early success was that we built for a specific niche instead of trying to please everybody. By creating a tool just for web designers, we could build unique features perfect for the industry that nobody else was offering.

Just before launching, we approached some well-known designers for their feedback on the software. A number of them were kind enough to write glowing reviews on their blog, and it all started from there.

Another area we focused on, and still focus on, is the idea of promotion through education. We gave away as much knowledge as we could through articles and other free resources; this helped establish us as experts in the email design field and gained us a lot of free attention in the industry we were targeting.

If there was a simple tip you could suggest for anyone considering starting a product rather than relying on service income, what would it be?

Don't be afraid to do both for a while. We built Campaign Monitor on the side a couple of days a week while we spent the rest of our time working for clients. It might take a little longer, but it also means you're mitigating most of the risk involved in a new venture.

If I can sneak a second tip in, it would be to make things easy on yourself by charging for your software. If it adds value, people will be willing to pay for it.

Who doesn't want to work at Freshview? Ping pong, free lunches, surfboards — you have a great philosophy there. What lessons have you learned along the way? (Oh, and when can I start?)

Our work philosophy wasn't really a big strategic decision for us. It actually came down to our own expectations. This is where we spend the majority of our days, it's our time away from the things we really enjoy doing. It better be fun.

To keep the balance right, we have a work environment where you can choose how distracted you want to be. All our developers have big offices so they can really dig in and get things done when they need to. But we also have break-out areas where you can play some ping pong , grab a free snack, and generally hang out.

We also try to get out of the office for things totally unrelated to work, like surfing lessons, lawn bowls, and go-carting. We always find we get the best out of our team if they're spending some office time away from a monitor.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 424 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Ada Lovelace Day 2010: coming up soon

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:29 GMT

Last year I participated in the first Ada Lovelace Day by writing a blog post about a woman in science or technology that I admired. In my case, I wrote about more than one; in fact I wrote about 5 Australian women in IT that I see kicking arse and taking names on an almost daily basis.

The day was a huge success with something like 3500 people participating. This year it’s happening again on March 24 – less than a month away.

I’d encourage anyone who blogs – even if it’s not regularly – to consider putting their name down and writing something up – it’s all about highlighting the often-overlooked contribution made by women in science and technology fields. You don’t have to be a woman to participate either – blokes are more than welcome!

Now of course, i have to decide who to write about – as last year, it’s going to be a question of whether I choose one individual to concentrate on, or showcase a number of women. There’s just so many to choose from!

Posted from kay lives here

Ada Lovelace Day 2010: coming up soon

Online vs Offline Marketing

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:10 GMT

Friend, colleague, and dude-who-never-comes-to-my-birthday-party-cos-hes-always-doing-something-for-his-own-birthday-on-the-same-day Myles Eftos of Madpilot Productions is running a little competition with his co-working-office-mate Alex Pooley of Brown Beagle Software. Essentially Myles is only doing offline marketing (word of mouth, print ads, telephone, real world networking etc) while Alex is only doing online marketing (social media, web, email etc) for the next month. They’ve each got $250 to spend and the one with the most jobs at the end of the month wins.

It’s interesting, because while I do both online and offline marketing in a kind of passive way, it’s word of mouth that gets us almost all of our work. If I wanted to keep expanding Clever Starfish, taking on new jobs and generally becoming a big wig, I would probably spend time and money on marketing of both kinds. But world domination is not in our current plans, we are turning away jobs at the moment and let’s be honest, it all sounds a bit like like hard work, doesn’t it?

The boys have a site to track their progress and I notice that at the moment, Alex is in the lead with two jobs to Myles’ one. The prediction on the Port80 forums was that Myles (offline) would win in the short-term but that Alex (online) would do better long term.

It’s an interesting idea. Who would you back? Maybe I should set up a betting pool…

Posted from kay lives here

Online vs Offline Marketing

Categorising the Web Industry

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:17 GMT

Where does the the web industry fit in the world. You would think that after 15 plus years that we would have worked that out by now and found out place. But alas this isn't the case, I still ponder what category should we sit under in a corporate or business structure, let alone what role we should all be.

Something that really frustrates me is when you go to fill in a survey and they list off the industry types. I'm always very confused where do I put myself, my business. Which one of the categories do I choose.

You know the ones. You end up looking at the choices like, Information Technology, Communications, Marketing, Business Services or something completely different. Still you look and think. Often I have just given up and skipped the survey entirely due to this question.

Anyone that has discussed the web industry with me knows I'm passionate about it. They also know that I'm extremely vocal on discussing where it sits in the business world.

We are Not Information Technology

It's an issue, some of us have come out of the design industry, some from and IT background. I know in the early days the web was often controlled by a single enthusiastic individual who came from one of these areas, if they were lucky they came from both or maybe none.

I know that there is a very strong argument to say that it's all IT based due to the programming skills required for the developmental side of the work. I disagree.

It's not a cut and dry issue, but I'm of the belief that we have moved on from the text editor, programming centric days of web site development. Yes granted that web development is still a large segment of the process. Still we have moved on from the IT Department. Just because we use computers to construct and document the planning for a web site, doesn't mean it has anything to do with IT.

For example, I would be putting a industrial designer or an architect into IT, they both use computers and some even do a little scripting too

Besides in some organisations there are more programmers in the engineering section than the IT section. Maybe it should be in Engineering then?

If Not IT, then Where?

Let's have a look at the processes used to develop a web site and the type of branches in a typical organisation that could supply skills to complete the process:

User Research: Marketing and Public Relations
Business Analysis: Engineering or IT
Information Architecture: Information or Records Management
Site Interface Design: Interface Design from Engineering
Graphical Design: Design team from Marketing or Public Relations
Branding Experience: Marketing
Usability Testing: Marketing and Public Relations
Development: Engineering or IT
User Acceptance Testing : Engineering or IT
Copy writing: Marketing and Public Relations

With all that IT and Marketing input this reminded me of the old Designers verses Developers debate.

Now I know that this does run into the age old adage – “It depends”. Yes, true it does depend on the project. The smaller projects will use more of the Marketing branch resources and the larger ones will use more developmental (Engineering or IT) focused resources.

Still if you look at all the processes and techniques that we use and where we have borrowed them from, you can see than the web industry is maturing, moving away from IT and seeking input outside it's usual sphere of influences.

Here is a list of the areas that have influence web site production from tools, techniques to processes and procedures:

Records Management
Library Science
Animation
Industrial design
Cinematography
Engineering
Information Technology
Graphic Design
Public Relations
Brand Marketing
Marketing Research
Environmental Planning
Interior Design
Software Engineering
Psychology
Film Direction
Cartooning
Architecture

Sure, the list is a little biased toward influences of User Experience design techniques. Hey it's what I do. Still if we consider these fields that have a shared skill, maybe the Web Industry just needs to go in a new category called the Interactive Industry, and walk proud as a new communications industry.

What do you think, time to walk away from the old IT industry label.

Failing at Design

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 06:15 GMT

I was talking to the local UPA Perth chapter (in formation) about aspects of UX visualisation. It was an interesting topic that brought up a good number of discussion points.

One point was on the design process. The way we design. The way that we just don't allow ourselves time to fail at the design. Or if we do, it is hidden in the back room so we can appear to be “magical design wizards” that produce the perfect product, interface design, IA or the like.

Great! Nice idea if you want to really keep this air of the designer being someone “mysterious and magical”. Someone that can just disappear for a few hours and suddenly they have the final product.

Stop the Myth

We really have to stop this process.

You know how no-one understands design. They don't value design. They just don't get how long it takes to design something. They just don't get the process. They just don't understand the principles of the design.

Well we are to blame! We are the problem. We have build the wall between ourselves and our clients. We have build the prissy pedestal that we are standing on.

For to long we have been taking the design process and putting it behind closed doors where only a few audience members, team members and select client liaisons get to see behind the “Wizard of Oz” curtain from time to time.

We should go beyond just explaining the design process to the client, and flashing around a few final concepts when we need signoff. We should involve them. Even if it's just in a small way. If we did this some of the issues we have would start to disappear.

Education is Important

It's all about education. Educating the client's decision makers, and even your team.

It's about taking down the wall and showing your process. Discussing and explaining with your client the design process as you step through it. Not just showing the final stages of each process either, the steps along the way, warts and all.

Yes, that's right, show them the rough sketches, the wireframes that have failed, the concept storyboards and mockup concepts that you have rejected. It's simple, explain why these designs have failed and been rejected. Involve the client in the process.

Become human, not a design mage or a mindless web design monkey.

You may say, “but the client doesn't want to see all the design process” .

Are you really sure. Most people, I find, are even just a little bit envious of us. They would love to help out in the design process. They want to be us.

Key is to just be patient with them, your clients are a design newbie, be understanding but firm, after all they are paying your because you are “the designer”. It's a balancing act, don't pester them with details all the time. Still in your progress meetings, show the design output. Show the progression towards the final concept.

Stop Perfection, Make Mistakes

If you are looking at me strangely by now, then I can tell that you tend not to really design in the traditional way, with multiple iterations of a design leading to the final outcome.

Whether it be sketching with pencil and paper, in a wireframing application or just using Photoshop, you should be cycling through a series of design concepts before you decide on the final product.

Yes you could say that there is all this user research that we have and it's all you need to build the design. Well I agree, but I also disagree.

Granted you do have an outline a specification framework, restrictions on the design from the user research. Still there will often be hundreds of ways you can approach the issues and develop the design.

Even with applying the standard design principles on top of the user research findings, you should still have a good deal of approaches you can take.

If can only see one approach, maybe you need to take a fresh look at the problem, from a different view point.

Protosketch it

Like a good product design, there will be failures in a UX design.

However these failures are important. They give us ideas, they allow us to get frustrated, to look beyond the everyday and find that special design the client is really looking for.

Failure in designing allows you to iterate the design. They allow us to discount designs and to get inspired with new alternatives from the failures. Gradually over time, you will get less and less new concepts and start to discount more and more. Resulting in the final concept.

It's a simple process. Just sketch out a concept, get others feedback, throw around some ideas. It's like you are prototyping the base concept sketch. Iterate it, adding and removing concepts.

Maybe we should call it protosketching.

Involve the client, involve your peers, friends, team colleagues or maybe do a peer review.

Just work down that process of refinement to the final design. Now I'm not talking an agile process here, I'm talking about something that happens the first moment you put pencil to paper in the sketching process be it analogue or digital.

Remember design is not a robotic process, it's a creative process.

I often find my best designs are the ones I don't think about, the ones I mull over for days looking for inspiration from things all around me. Doing a little sketching, drawing, letting my mind wander. In case you ask, I only work with clients that know they will get a good result if they don't push the process, sure this helps as well.

Fail or Don't Design

Now in my mind if you are not failing at your design, well you are not designing. You are just processing an analysis, and producing one possible outcome. Maybe you should stop and think. Are you doing the right thing by your client. Does your client really just want a second rate concept.

If you like producing second rate designs, do us all a favour, stop. Just stop designing, the world has enough crap designs.

If you are failing. Well that's great, design and fail away. God speed to you.

So social media is not the end of the world, after all…

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:10 GMT

I do get a bit tired of defending my use of Twitter and Facebook. But now, some studies are showing that the mental stimulation provided by social networks can stimulate the brain and help in problem solving.

How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive

I’ve always felt that connecting with people you like (or dislike), even fleetingly as is the case with Twitter, makes our lives richer and more interesting, and that can never be a bad thing. But like with everything, you need to be in control of your time and your impulses. Now there’s a theory to back it up.

Ha, take that. It’s not time-wasting after all.

Posted from kay lives here

So social media is not the end of the world, after all…

Rails Training is starting a week later

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:17 GMT

Due to a scheduling clash with us and the State government (There was a public holiday we forgot about), the start of Rails Training 1 has been pushed back a week. It now starts on Monday 8th and Thursday 11th respectively.

There are still spots left! Go and register. I'll wait.

Social media for artists

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:23 GMT

Tonight I had the great opportunity to speak at the City of Stirling's ‘Mind Your Arts' workshop series.

It's always great to impart some knowledge, and although I seriously dislike the term 'social media expert', it was fun speaking about how artists can use social media to promote their work and network with other creative minds.

The slides are below. Although they aren't as useful without the verbal cues, I hope that you find something useful in them. Thanks to the team at City of Stirling for inviting me, and for those who attended; thanks for making me feel welcome and for all the great questions!

The websites I mention in the talk were

Flickr
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Blogging (such as Wordpress)

If you attended the workshop, I hope to see you trying out social media soon!

Soooo… Which one is better? Online or offline marketing?

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:50 GMT

Both Alex and I are web nerds. Throw us a technical problem and will be champing at the bit to solve it. This, like many other coders who start their own business, is what we spend all day doing. Unfortunately for us, being totally awesome at what we do is only a small part of running a successful business. Alex’s business, Brown Beagle Software has just taken on it’s first employee, and I’m ready to start selling the living daylights out of my CMS so we need to move beyond adhoc, word-of-mouth “marketing” and get a bit more serious. Of course, neither of us know a great deal about that…

Alex and I are both residents of the collaborative work space twotwenty and over coffee we were discussing some joint marketing stuff that would help the whole group get some work, and the topic of mail drops and social networking came up — and we noticed a pattern: I was speaking in terms of offline networking, whilst Alex kept going back to
online networking. Being the contrary type that I am, I laid down the challenge: We should see which type of sales and marketing works best: offline or online!

Rules

The rules of our little game are pretty simple:

Alex can use any marketing method he chooses, but it must occur
online.This would include Twitter, Facebook, Google Adwords, SEO. He can't count leads from people that originated in real life.
Myles can’t use the inter-tron with his quest: He can only use traditional channels, such as face-to-face, networking meetups, traditional media and offline advertising
A lead is counted as a genuine enquiry for work. For the sake of this experiment, we can sell any of our services, but we need to be able to do the work. A completion is counted when a job is accepted.
Once a prospect has been engaged, communication can continue into the other medium (e.g. Myles can use email, Alex can use a phone).
Myles and Alex can spend up to $250 each on their campaigns.
Both need to track how much time they have spent on marketing.
At the end of the month, whoever has the best ratio of leads vs. time spent marketing will be deemed the twotwenty marketeer of the month™, and will gain kudos until the end of time (or until April).

Head over to http://www.offlinevsonline.com to watch the craziness unfurl.

Tra Vinh Special Vermicelli Soup

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:50 GMT

Franki Nguyen recommended Tra Vinh to me last year and I made the long trek up William Street passed my current favourite Vietnamese Noodle House, Phong Vinh to Brisbane Streer to Tra Vinh.

I had made the trek twice before, once to be scared off by the queue outside and the second time with a couple of work colleagues and we where lucky to get the last table. This time it was busy, but there where a few tables available.

The menu was very similar to Phong Vinh I was almost tempted to order the Spicy Beef and Pork Vermicelli Soup, that I had the day before for a direction comparison. Instead I ordered the Tra Vinh Special Vermicelli Soup. I am really enjoying noodle soups at the moment and this one did not disappoint. Great robust flavour.

So what made it the Tra Vinh Special, well it contained pork, beef, chicken, duck, fishball, prawn, squid and liver. For somebody who has just started eating meat on a regular basis after 10 years of avoiding it. It was a little overpowering, particularly the liver. Still I finished the bowl and enjoyed it.

So what do you get for $10, a large bowl of noodle soup, packed with 8 different meats and complimentary chinese tea.

Will I be back again, yes, will I order the Tra Vinh Special Vermicelli Soup again, probably not it was a meatlover’s delight with just too many flavours for me. There are many more interesting items on the menu for me to try.

User Surveys – Do it Right or Not at All.

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:52 GMT

I have been involved with many user surveys over the years. Some have gone well. Some have been a complete waste of time and effort. The main distinction between them is the surveys that were professionally developed and pretested would succeed. The ones that had been knocked together by a well meaning manager were often destined to failure.

It comes down to this – unless you have experience designing surveys, then it's best to either hire someone who has had experience and training, or find another way to collect the same information.

Proceeding with a flawed survey will just produce results that are tainted with bias and other data warping horrors. Not something you want in your user research, eh.

Survey Design Tips

Now I know some of you are going to be forced into running surveys despite my advice. That's okay, business is like that, sometimes you have to compromise.

Better that you at least know the pitfalls and can correct them as need be. So here is a list of tips for online survey design that you may find invaluable:

Survey Objective

This may sound really silly, but you have to know what the survey is for and what it needs to achieve before you start. Otherwise you will get side tracked asking meaningless questions. For example you may want to find out about the user demographics, their preferences, and the users needs and wants.
Keep it Short

There is nothing worse than an online survey that seems to go on forever. Asking page after page of questions. When you are putting together questions. Stop and think. Can I get that information elsewhere. If you can scrap the question. Similarly if the question is not directly related to the goal of the survey.

The point is to design a short sharp survey someone can complete in under 5 minutes. I don't know how many online surveys I just abandoned after about 5 minutes, it must be in the hundreds.
Tell Me How Many Pages

Your respondent's time is valuable, they are doing you a huge favour filling in your survey. Respect that. Just like you minimise the number of questions in the survey, it is also a good idea to let people know how many pages they have to complete. The best way to do this is to display an indicator of their progress. This will have a negative impact if your survey is too long. However it will have positive one if the survey is short.
Let's go Back

Again this is a simple issue, let respondents naviagte forward and backward (not via the back button) in the survey and review their answers, if they so desire. Remember the respondent is doing you a favour, don't make it hard for them.
Its About the Design

At the end of the day all the information you're gathering about the users will be applied to the design of the web site. Be that on a visual, informational or interactive functionality level. It follows that when you include a question you should ask yourself – “Is the data collected going to influence the design of the site.” If the answer is – No; then remove the question. Now it's not a hard and fast rule, but still one you should consider.
Say No to Checkboxes

I know you might love then, but a checkbox is just a bipolar field, yes or no, on or off. You will get a higher response rate if you present a checkbox as a series of radio buttons with a yes or no response. It's instantly clear to the user what response is required. Also you have the advantage of taking up more visual space and hence avoiding the question being missed.
Say No to Select Lists

This is interesting, as I have discussed earlier, certain demographics have an issue with realising that they can scroll down the list and pick the unseen items on a single line select list. A good way to avoid this issue is to use radio buttons with a multiple choice layout.
Add Some Other

When you put an alternative list of multiple choice items in a survey, how can you really be sure you have all the possible choices. I have always found it's a good idea to allow for an “Other” field and have space for the respondent to fill in their alternative. You usually discover you have missed a few alternatives I find.
No Response

It's a simple thing, but it's a good idea to have the default setting for any multiple choice items to be “no response” that is when all the fields are not selected. I would also consider adding a “not applicable” or the like, response as well. Mainly because there can be cases when the respondent has no experience with what you are asking.
Getting Likert Scales Right

Likert Scales are those multiple choice responses that go “Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 Agree” . Now these are very good at gathering information where there is going to be a distinct difference of option. However the result of a Likert scale question is not a series of interval measurements. But in fact it is just a scalar representation of extremes from agreement to disagreement (in this case). When using a Likert scale it's a good idea to have a mid point (odd number of values) to allow the measurement of the common mid point.

ALso if you are measuring a very subjective issue. It's a good idea to label all the scale with the equivalent labels to help remove any bias or misinterpretation.
Pretest the Questions

Writing survey question is something you have to do carefully. Respondents will attempt to interpret your questions. And subsequently provide you with the information they think you are expecting to get. Also they will try and determine how you are going to use their answer and respond appropriately. This leads to bias in the results.

The way to avoid this is to pretest your questions. A pretest will tell you the questions that are always going to be skipped, give similar answers, and questions that are just confusing or misleading. Just like we user test, so we also need to user test the survey as well. Ironic really.
Stop Question Skipping

It's simple your respondents will skip a question if they don't understand it, are confused or just plain bored with a your too long questionnaire. The solution is keep it short and on topic and ensure the questions are not confusing.
Multiple Choice Order

Ordering the multiple choice responses is very important. However if you put the responses in their natural order (high to low) or just listing them as you think of them is dangerous. This presents bias to the respondent. Who will select that response that looks like it is the one you want.

What you need to do is scramble the responses. Still, expect some respondents to lean towards selecting the first or last items as they see these as the important ones.
Duplicate Answers

The arrangement of your questions can have a great influence on the responses. If you put too many questions that have a similar response or layout together (especially multiple choice). You will get a leaning toward the same response for all the questions. You have to vary the responses and keep the respondent on their toes. However you don't want to confuse them. So mix it up a little.
Leading Questions

This is something you would think wouldn't be happening in surveys, but it still does. The use of leading question is still an issue. Ensure the words you use don't imply any unwanted response. and that they don't point the respondent to any sort after response. I have always found that open ended questions like those in an interview are the only way to go here.
Ambiguous Questions

Supplied responses to questions need to have no ambiguity in them at all. Remember what you interpret as meaning one thing, someone else will see if as completely different. It's recommend that you ensure that all supplied responses are 100% rock solid in what you want them to mean. Use the contemporary language and terms of your audience, also avoid verbs that have a double meaning.
Negative Questions

The use of negative terms in a question is not a the best solution. In a lot of cases people will mis-read the question as an implied positive. Which will give you a completely skewed dataset. The simple solution is just to present all the questions as a positive outcome.

If you really have to use a negative, a way around this is to highlight a simple negative like for example – NOT. Just bold and capitalise it.
Getting Ranges Right

When you ask about a range or the like, don't imply a level of use for a response. As the respondent will just assume you are looking for answer within this level of the range.

For example. “How many times do you visit our site a week:” this is bad, it implies you must visit at least once a week. Where as “How often to you visit our site:” is a better alternative as it leaves the value ranges to the supplied responses.

Pre-testing on the supplied responses will also give you a realistic response range as well.

Now this list is by no means complete, what additional pointers would you include as UX professionals?

Learn Ruby on Rails

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:21 GMT

Alex Pooley (from Brown Beagle Software, and fellow 220er and Rails guy) are running some Ruby on Rails training sessions in March.

It will be an intensive primer designed to get web developers who work in PHP, or .Net up-to-speed in Rails in about four classes. We will cover Ruby, Rails and unit testing as well as deployment.

The classes cost $220, with one stream running on Monday 1st-22nd March 2010 and the other Thursday 4th-25th March 2010. So if you have been meaning to look at Rails, but haven't had the time, then this could be perfect for you!

Head over to http://railstraining.in and sign up!

Interview with Stephen Collins

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:31 GMT

Stephen Collins is recognised as one of Australia's leading proponents of participatory culture, advising businesses and government on Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and social networking. He has extensive consulting experience for a diverse client base across the public and private sectors.

Stephen took time out from his hectic schedule to speak to us about Web 2.0 and social media.

Hi Stephen. You recently co-presented a Web 2.0 university workshop in Australia. What is it about Web 2.0 that makes it special enough to gain the attention it's been receiving?

Some people, especially those with old-school mindsets, think the whole revolution around Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 — and it is a revolution — is about all the great tools we can use. My view is that the tools themselves are the least important part of the package. What the 2.0 change is all about is people and culture, which is the message communicated by The Cluetrain Manifesto ten years ago.

If you had one piece of advice for someone outside the web industry looking to embrace the ideas of Web 2.0, what would it be?

Open up and go public. Empower people. Be human. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Be respectful.

So, as a web freelancer or web company, what can we do to start embracing Web 2.0 ideas within our own businesses?

Start off by reading or rereading The Cluetrain Manifesto and start practising what it preaches. Then, just embrace the 2.0 way of doing business. Do business this way. It can and does work. Maybe even sign and use something like the Company-Customer Pact.

There are a bunch of other great books worth reading that any business looking to “go 2.0″ (my goodness, that's a dorky phrase) should be putting on every employees' desk. In no particular order (just looking at my bookcase):

Cubicle Commando by Lisa Messenger and Zern Liew
Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Wiliams
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Fish! by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Much attention with Web 2.0 is given to social media. This is a dual-edged sword for companies though, isn't it? One minute, a company could be the flavor of the “social sphere” and the next, they could be on the outer. What can they do to avoid being on the wrong end?

I think the notion of social media as a risk is false. It's only a risk if you go in underdone. You wouldn't make other business decisions without consideration, would you? Choose the right people to be the evangelists and mentors for your brand online. Empower them to engage in the conversation and make it a part of their everyday job — not an additional task. Progressively give everyone in the business that wants to take part the skills they need and then let them fly!

Brands that do this well have great success using social media. You'd be hard put to find a bad word from the community about Zappos, for example. And the mood around brands like Comcast and Dell is moving in a very positive direction since they've implemented good, well-planned social media approaches. Well-planned doesn't need to mean slow or corporate; it's about choosing the right channels and the right people, and letting them get on with it.

I help many clients with a social media strategy. It shouldn't be done lightly and it does take some thinking. But you can't take your time with this — your competitors have probably already spoken to me, or one of the other smart people who do work similar to mine.

The Web is certainly changing. Do you believe those of us building web sites need to adapt our services, or will there still be clients looking for standard web sites in another five or ten years?

The brochure web site will probably still be around in five years, but maybe not ten. At least, not in the developed world. Clients more and more are looking for full-service approaches: brand strategy, marketing, social media, communications, and the rest. The big agencies already do this, but I think that their product is not always as good as those delivered by smaller, boutique businesses.

I think those of us operating small businesses in the web industry — whether it's design, development, or strategy — need to start teaming up in an informal way to compete with the big agencies. Better still if the agencies recognize that some of the boutique and specialist companies should be on their go-to list for expert advice.

There's more than enough work for everyone, even in these odd economic times, but we should all be playing together more often and not trying to shut each other out. That's very 2.0 of me, isn't it?

Thanks for your time Stephen.

My pleasure Miles!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 420 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Quiet time here should be over soon

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:30 GMT

It has been very quiet around here, for a number of reasons. I did expect my three week enforced rest to be spent learning and experimenting with the likes of CSS3 and HTML5 and then blogging about it. Instead I spent most of the time in the shed playing bicycle mechanic.

Once back at work, my usual blogging time on the train trip to and from work disappeared, as my MacBook Pro died and I started riding to work more often.

I need to start blogging on a more regular basis, I looked at what I do on a regular basis and are passionate about. Food, cycling and web development and decided that I should try and blog more about what you can get for lunch under $10AUD. For those that don’t know me that well, I work in Northbridge, Perth’s Chinatown with probably 100 restaurants within 3 blocks, I enjoy lunch it is my big meal of the day and while I am watching what I eat, I have managed to lose 9kg in 11 weeks. Mainly through consuming 2500 calories on active days that I burn over 3500 calories. The big surprise for those who do know me is that after 15 years, I have started eating meat again.

So hopefully you should start seeing more regularly posts about things I am passionate about, food, cycling and web development.

Spread that Christmas Cheer!

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:27 GMT

Christmas is just around the corner, and whether you celebrate it or not, the event happens to coincide nicely with the end of the calendar year — a great time to thank those who have supported your business over the last twelve months.

Not only that, but a well-timed Christmas message may end up reviving a waning business relationship. Given we're halfway through November, we'd need to work fast to meet printing and postal deadlines, or alternatively, build an electronic Christmas message, if that's preferred.

Let's look at options. The traditional Christmas card is still well received. There are a few rules with these, though:

Try to opt for your own professionally-designed company Christmas card, so that it's unique to your business (and there's no risk of a competitor sending the same image!)
For the personal touch, hand-sign rather than print signatures in the card.
It's better to send earlier rather than later. Leaving it until December 20th isn't a wise move. Ideally, the card should arrive in the first week of December.
Cards should fly solo, rather than share the envelope with extra marketing material that makes the card less genuine.
It's fine to include a logo, but keep it small or put it on the back so that it's not the main focus.
If you must resort to off-the-shelf cards, buy them through a charity who uses the profits to help others.
Consider a different concept, such as the products MOO offer, with varying shapes and an individual touch.

Electronic cards are great as well, and are considerably better for the environment. They do, however, suffer from low open rates, and may get read by people other than those it was actually intended for. Indeed, it's possible less people will see it, compared to the paper versions which tend to sit in office reception areas, being read by all in the weeks leading up to the break.

If you do send an ecard, consider using email campaign software; it can provide a text version if required and track email open rates. There are plenty of options available on the market.

When designing that email card, consider your audience wisely, as well as the technical limitations of email. To see which email clients support what CSS, have a gander at the Email Standards Project web site.

Prefer to send something more substantial? There's always the usual bottle of wine or gift hamper. Perhaps consider trying some branded promotional gear, such as USB flash drives with your logo, or similar.

Make sure though, that you either buy quality products or forget it. There's nothing worse than spending all year building a reputation for quality, only to damage it by sending some cheap pen that never works, or has your logo printed badly on the side.

It's unfortunate, but clients will remember it — more often than the times you worked all night to get a web site live for them.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 422 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Presenting Phone Numbers

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:36 GMT

The other day I was chatting away with a potential client, I asked for their phone number, as you do. They replied with 1800 GETT AWEB (no that's not real) . I asked what that was a real number, there was silence for a moment, then “I have no idea,” was the honest reply.

It's not that phone names are anything new, but it did get me thinking.

The use of the phrase (name) as a number was all well and good if I wanted to remember the number. It's well know that people remember words and phrases better in general than they do strings or numbers. Clearly why phone number names are so popular.

However in this situation I just wanted the contact details so I could transcribe them into my client contact record. So a string of numbers would have been fine.

Phrase verses Numbers

Instead, getting the phone number as a phrase meant I had to translate this back into the real number. Which involved finding a phone with an alpha-numeric keypad. Not a really hard call in our geeky household. Then you have to stare at the phone and letter by letter translate the name. Laborious at best.

Sure I could leave the number as is and just do the translation each time I dialed it. Again it's really just a pain when all I want to do is plug in the phone number and ring the person.

I have done a little biased unscientific research on twitter on this topic, to reveal that most people feel the same.

A phone name is great to remember when you are at a set of traffic lights, reading the side of a bus, billboard or if you are just trying to recall the phone number.

However it's a real frustration if you have to dial the number off the phone name alone.

Presenting the Contact Details

It just comes down to the presentation of contact phone number or phone name.

Sure presenting a call to action phone number as a phone name will help the users remember the number. But this will fail if they are visiting the web site in order to ring you. Remember people are often just looking up websites now for contact details as well now.

The solution is simple, present both formats, together. Most savvy web sites do this, but a lot don't.

Having the real number on another page or somewhere else on the page – that is not near the phone name, is also a bad idea. It is just as likely to result in the user going elsewhere, if they can't find the real number quickly enough. Yes, as a user, we are all lazy, we don't want to have to translate your phone name.

It's a simple thing, just remember a user experience is a contextual thing; mainly relating to the environment and context in which the experience is presented. And that people are lazy.

New Bam Creative website

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:09 GMT

We've finally published our latest version of the Bam Creative website. It's been a few years, and we're normally in the habit of updating it every 18 months or so, however we've been crazily busy in the last year or two.

With our recent announcement that we've become an employee owned business, we couldn't help but celebrate by creating a new site. Check it out – and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

The Last Road Block for Your Customers – Web Forms

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:26 GMT

You have built the perfect web site, the colours invoke the right emotional response, the visual imagery leads customers to the relevant information while allowing the audience to personally relate to the site. The content is ideal for the web, not to much but enough to convince people of the service. The major call to actions are in the right locations, and easy to find. Everything is set, the web site is ready to take on the world!

Still no matter how perfect your site is, if the last step, when they encounter the web form, isn't streamlined and usable, the rest is a waste of time.

The other day I ran across a web form that was failing, it was suffering from a series of issues that would basically make most users stop in their tracks.

With any identifying markers removed, I would like to share with you some of the issues of this form, and a few simple steps to fix them.

The Form in Question.

The form was being used for membership of a professional organisation, it is broken down into three sections (fieldsets in this case) The Personal Details, the Payment Options and the Acceptance of Conditions, these are presented here, for clarity I have separated them, but normally they appear on one long form.

There are a good number of issues with this form, I'm not going to cover all of them, but here are a few of the common issues:

Number of Fields - Only What You Require

I have a major beef with forms that are just way too long. You know the ones with an endless list of fields. Clearly this one falls into that category – when you first encounter it you are filled with dread at having to fill it out.

You should consider every field that you put in a form to be a major stumbling block for anyone completing it. Research has indicated that people naturally hate forms and the like, as they slow them down to getting to their goal on the web. When you designing a form this long (with 38 fields) you are not really respecting your users time.

Consideration needs to be given to what is the bare minimum to identify the person joining. Everything else should be removed. If you really want the extra informaiton there are ways of encourging people to complete their online profiles later on.

Trying to capture all the information for a person at sign up in the worst possible time. People are hesitant, and still deciding on the your website. A long form is just going to convince them you are a little bureaucratic .
The Need Print out of the Form

I do know that in some cases long forms like this are developed so people can complete them, print them off and fax, not ideal, but people do it. What needs to be provided is a fax back PDF form or the like. This should be presented on the same page as the online form – preferably at the top of the page.
Fieldsets and Grouping

Yes the form is broken down into three sections. Sections 2 and 3 are reasonable, it's just the first one that is a little long. This can be improved if it had been segmented into personal details, work details and joining information.
Help

With this example there is very little inline contextual help. In today's interactive web, people are starting to expect to see contextual help boxes appear when they tab or focus on a field. These can be alternatively just be accessed by clicking on an appropriate help icon (a question mark maybe). Semantically of course you place this information between the fields and the associated label.
Encouragement Along the Way

Currently there is no inline encouragement on the form at all.

This is a simple thing to put in place; for example every time a user completes a field or an information block (like the BSB / Account Number pair) they get an acknowledgment for their actions that appears inline on the screen. This could be a small tick, thumbs up or the like – appearing near the relevant field.

Using this type of positive feedback adds a degree of trust that the organisation cares about the information it is collecting, as well as a sense of achievement and sense of completion for the user.

Use of this technique can also be extended to inline validation of the form, hence providing instant feedback for any error as well.
Create Steps

Even if we removed all the redundant fields we still have a form that is visually way to long. In this case we are better of presenting the fields in distinct groups of related information, one at a time.

You would present it as two step process – step one personal details and step two the payments, with the terms and conditions confirmation tacked onto the final section. Of course you would have an indicator showing the users progress through the various steps.

As the user processes the form the indicator would show where they were up to in the process. This step wise process allows one to segment a long process into several short chunks that users are more likely to undertake as they are progressing towards their final goal in manageable steps.
Date of Birth

There are different ways to ask for the date of birth, different layouts was work for differently user audiences. It has been shown that it can be easier for some users to select a date of birth from three drop down lists than type it in the format you require.
Clear Labels

The labels on a form have to convey instant meaning for the user, and yet still remain personal so they can relate to them. The order and grouping of the fields should also follow a logical sequence (as recommend above). Labels such as “Optional” mean nothing to a user. With a field like this, people may not even complete it, after all it's optional.
Add White Space

From a design view point all the yellow fields do wash into one large yellow mass, they would be a lot clearer and easier to read if there was a some white space between the fields. It's a simple thing, but cramming all the fields up together doesn't help, if anything it makes the appearance of the form even more intimidating. Remember white space is your friend.
Avoid Multiple Columns

This is one that has been debated quite a bit – should you use multiple column layouts on forms.

Research has indicated that users really like to just run down the page filling out blocks of information as fast as they can. The don't like shooting across a page to complete a postcode, like in this case. However having blocks of fields like the BSB and Account Number field close together is acceptable as these are taken visually as one block of input.
Terms and Conditions

Use of a check box to confirm agreement is really redundant if you think about it. Often these checkboxes are put in place to keep legal teams happy, teams that usually don't want the form on the web in the first place. The checkbox sometimes is also seen as a substitute for a signature. Still there are improved ways to approach this requirement. If the agreement is required what can the user do, join and not agree. No. The user has no choice – they have to agree or leave not completing the form.

Sure the statement can remain, however a better approach would be to have the join button saying “Agree and Join”. That way if you don't agree it is very clear that you can't join.

Using a required checkbox field just forces the issue, frustrates the user, and makes them feel a little like they are being railroaded into agreement.

Also what if my browser produces a cross not a tick in the checkbox, labels like “Tick to accept terms” should be more generic.
Final Submit Button

The final submit button, should be easy to find visually and be in line vertically with the input fields. This allows for an easier path to completion.

However on this form it is like it has been tuck in the corner, with a little reminder that seems like an apology. It's almost like the form is saying – “Sorry to pester you, but if you just click you can join”.

This doesn't really fill you with confidence that your membership application is going to be taken seriously. The submit button should be a big bold statement. After all you want people to join.
Processing the Form

When I tested this form it was something of a shock.

I just wanted to see what the validation and error handing was like on the form, so I submitted a blank form, expecting to get a screen filled with error messages. That's not what happened. I was returned with a list of processed fields, which is fine if you have completed to form, which I clearly hadn't.

It is really important to validate the required fields at least, check for bad email addresses and the like, and return an error message, preferably near the relevant field. Ideally you should validate inline as the form is being completed and recheck server side when the submit button is pressed.

Accessibility issues

A quick review of the accessibility on the form indicates that it's no that bad, fieldsets and labels are correctly used, tab order seems fine. However a few sticky points are present:

Requirement Indicator. The indicator for the field requirement is presented after the field, this will be an issue for some people as they will not be aware of the requirement of the field till after they have moved past it. This should have been placed semantically between the label and the input field. Presentation wise it could remain after the field.
Data Formatting – The use of data types formatting and hints in the input fields themselves can be an issue, especially if the JavaScript does not clear them.

After all the user may not have JavaScript turned on.

It is better practice to present these hints semantically before the input field but after the relevant label.

Also consider from a usability view, when a user has moved into a field the context of the requirement is lost and can't be referenced. This information should be presented anywhere on the form as long as it's in close association with the relevant field, and not in the field itself.
Field Labels – All fields should have labels, even if you don't want to display the label. There are ways to hide them, but from an accessibility view point they are very important.

Something to consider

Now I have no idea if this has been done with this form or not, still I recommend with a form like this that you:

Produce Prototypes

Using Prototypes would have allowed a development team to work with an interaction designer to produce a form that was within budget and still easy to use. Any prototypes could have been tested and fine tuned with the respective audience to determine the best completion and conversion rate for a relatively low cost.
Some User Testing

Finally user test on a iterative developmental proccess with the final form to produce the best outcome could have been conducted on all of the above points.

Remember

A badly designed web form is like putting a roadblock in the way of your users - this is something you really want to avoid.

I know there can be internal issues from legal departments, IT, reduced budgets and the like. Still consider if the form isn't that usable, less people are going to complete it. Sometimes having a bad form design can be worse than no form at all.

The more friendly and easier to use a form is the greater conversion and completion you going to get. Simple really.

Just think about these points next time you're designing a form.

Not a proud Aussie

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:45 GMT

Today is Australia Day. A day that’s really only been celebrated consistently in the last 15 years or so although it was around for most of last century (thanks to Anonymum for passing along this link on the history of Australia Day, an interesting read).

Today I’ve seen a lot of people expressing their Australian pride in various ways, both in the real world and online. Normally I’d be up there among them: I am an Australian in every sense of the word (I was born here, and both of my parents are naturalised Australians, having emigrated from European countries as children).

But today, I am not waving any flags or professing pride in my country. Hell, I’m not even having a barbecue. Today is the first Australia Day where I can honestly say I am not proud of being Australian.

Let me explain why – but first, unlike some other people, I’m not even talking about the rise of this weird “yobbo” pride in the last few years, the goddamn awful Southern Cross tattoos or the “fuck off we’re full” idiots. While the attitudes that these people have is a cause for concern, I don’t think they are the problem.

No, the real problem is the current Australian government and its policies.

Censorship is not the answer

First and most heinous, it was announced late last year that the Rudd government were pushing ahead with their plans for mandatory ISP-level internet filtering, despite less than brilliant results in the official trials and a lot of outcry. A cynical person might point out that the announcement came in the pre-Christmas rush and at a time when news channels were dominated by talks of the Copenhagen climate change talks. Far be it from me to suggest that the government was trying to pull a fast one past the Australian public.

I could talk all day about each of the things that they’re doing and why it’s the stupidest idea ever, but this is not really the place for that. So I’ll quickly summarise for now:

mandatory filtering is a massive waste of taxpayers money
the filter is technically flawed and will not protect children from accessing refused classification material (the primary stated reason for the policy)
the filter is technically flawed and will result in important information being denied to people who might need it, in some cases seriously so – think information about abortion, euthanasia, anorexia, sexually transmitted diseases and drug use to name a few
the filter will slow our already ridiculously inadequate network speeds by as much as 40% in some cases
the government’s blacklist is secret and it and the complaints system which will be put in place is open to abuse by those organisations and individuals whose agendas involve blocking access to information
Senator Conroy has repeatedly stated that only “refused classification” materials will be blocked, and that those things include child pornography, bestiality and sexual violence. But in actual fact, by the very nature of the Australian classification system, anything that hasn’t been presented for classification is classified “RC” – so theoretically, all manner of innocuous and legal items could be blocked under the “RC” banner at the whim of the censors and most Australians will never know about it.

So what can we do about it? The bill has yet to be passed through parliament to make it law (it has yet to be introduced) so if the Coalition and the independents oppose it, it will not become law. So Australians all need to get onto their local Liberals and demand to know what’s what (as far as I am aware, the Liberal party has no official policy as yet on internet filtering).

Electronic Frontiers Australia has a list of ten things that you can do to help. One of EFA’s suggestions is to participate in the Australian Internet Blackout, which this site has done this week as well as my personal blog and our business web site. That’s the black informational overlay that you might see if you visit the actual site (rather than reading this through RSS or Facebook). If you’d like to join in it’s not too late – you just place a small piece of JavaScript on your web site and it takes care of everything. Details on the Internet Blackout site.

The thing is, that most non-geeks don’t really understand what’s going on and as a result they aren’t as concerned as they should be. So the best thing that we can do is educate our non-geek families and friends. That’s why I’m involved with a small group that will be launching a mass-media-friendly campaign shortly.

Apparently, gaming is only for children

Anyone over the age of 18 had better hand in their consoles and PC gaming rigs because according to the Australian government, games are only for children. That’s why they refuse to support an “R” rating for games, instead banning outright anything that doesn’t fit into MA15+ range.

The South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, is blocking all attempts to introduce an R18+ rating for games (and due to the quirks of our judicial system, all state attorney-generals must agree in order for the rating to be changed), despite the average of a a gamer being above 30. What’s worse, he’s actually brazenly called adult gamers “criminals”.

That’s not all

There are other issues – for example in South Australia, a law has passed requiring special packaging and other rules for R-rated DVDs displayed for sale or rent. The covers must be black and show only the title – not other text – in small white writing. All R-rated materials must be shelved together. So classic 80’s action flicks are being treated the same way as soft porn and there are so many problems with this that my head is exploding just thinking of it. The bill was introduced by the Family First party and we can bet they’ll be trying similar tactics in other states soon.

All of these issues just show that the Australian government is out of touch with technology and trying to legislate the digital realm the same was as non-digital media.

If we don’t do something about this, we’d better find ourselves a new national anthem because the current one will not be accurate anymore.

“Australians all, let us rejoice
For we are young and free.”

Young, sure. Free, not so much.

Posted from kay lives here

Not a proud Aussie

Web Industry – Lack of Ethics and Morals

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:52 GMT

Ethics and morals should be a big thing in our industry, and yet I'm beginning to think that some people have forgotten all about them recently.

I'll tell you a story.

We have been working with a development company, who support a various range of their own products. Products that one of our clients use. Straight forward, when we have issues with their product we email their support line. The other day we discover that the client's site was down, we trace the issue back to badly written script injection hack. Easy to fix.

This doesn't normally happen often, but it does occur from time to time. Usually it's a attack on the hosts server.

So immediately I began the process of isolating the cleaning the site. No major issue. Having daily backups of all our clients sites does help.

When the site was operational and all passwords have been changed I began the process of determine how this all happened. Seems a vendor support password had been activated once a few hours before and a file uploaded then deleted. Same time the site failed.

I contact the said support vendor. Only when presented with evidence of the compromised systems (via the FTP and PHP log) did they admit to the issue. No assurance of the issue not happening again, no statement that they have changed their security procedures. At least they said sorry, cold comfort really.

Now as a support company surely they have an obligation, if only from an ethical view point to inform their clients that their passwords have been compromised as soon as they are aware of the issue. This would at least allow their client to vigilant and reset any system passwords or the like.

It appears in this case, that the client (my client) was on their own, we have to discover the issue and work it out for ourselves. Despite the fact that the issue is clearly their fault. I know there are legal issues here, but putting those aside, there is the moral issue as well.

Trust and Obligation

If you consider that we have an extreme sense of trust with our clients. After all we have a guardianship to look after their web. We can control their information resources, the presentation and branding for their organisation online. There is a distinct duty of care that we have with each client.

Besides the various legislative requirements of the privacy and client information, do we have an ethical obligation to look after a clients data? Should we tell them when things go wrong that are under our control? Should we be 100% honest with our clients and work with them all the time. Or should we just deliver our service and leave it at that. Should we just play the deny everything game, until we are presented with evidence in an effort avoid any legal implications.

It may seem like a clear issue.

However, if you don't tell your client, this gives your client the impression that you are just in it for the money and aren't interested in them in the longer term. On the flip side if you do tell your client of the issue they may perceive you as incompetent, in that you let it happen in the first place. In a way your are damned both ways.

Still personally I have found that being 100% and up front is the way to go. Clients will respect you for this.

Other Issues of Ethics.

Our industry is just full of moral choices. Not just this duty of care and information guardianship.

As a User Experience Designer I know that I can use my skills to leverage the psychology of design and in fact I can influence customers, leading or tempting them to buy goods that they don't really need. Now just because I can do this, does that mean I should. I can make a lot more money doing this, should I?

This also extends to what industries you will work with. From my view I don't work with the gambling industry, religious groups and businesses that use high pressure sales tactics at any cost.

It could be said that we just have to provide our services and that's it. All this duty of care and information guardianship is just a load of rubbish. It's not like it's in the contract or written anywhere.

This is true, to a degree. Maybe an industry code of conduct wouldn't go a miss for our industry. Mind you I have yet to see any of the fledgling web industry associations move in that direction.

Still till that happens, we all have to make our own personal choices on these issues.

The burning question is what would have you done in the case above, not told your clients? Also where do you draw the line, what type of work would you not take on?

Bad customer support = Unhappy campers

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:45 GMT

I do a lot of front end development, and as a result, I use Adobe Photoshop a lot. I also use Acrobat Professional frequently and Flash and Illustrator enough to warrant purchasing the full Design Premium package. Said Design Premium Package is pretty expensive, so to spread my costs, I'm using the subscription edition. Recently, I had to change my subscription plan, so I cancelled it, and re-subscribed, and so begins my trip down the rabbit hole that is Adobe Support.

Because I had paid for my subscription online, and opted for the downloadable version, I should have received a serial number in my email. I didn't. Thankfully CS4 goes in to trial mode, so I could still use it whilst I sorted out the serial problem. Time to call Adobe…

Firstly, it was neigh on impossible to find the Australian support number on their website - when ever you try to access support, it defaults to you the US - I assume because the subscription edition doesn't have an Australian number. Thankfully, one of my friends had general support number in her rolodex.I call the number, and after 45 minutes on hold listening to horrific elevator muzak, I get through to the product activations. The operator was polite enough - but they have to be - the script they are reading would demand it. I give them my email address (and say yes to allowing them to contact me on it), and then give them my phone number in case I get disconnected. After the operator goes through the rest of their script, she realises that actually I need a different department, and asks if she can transfer me. Whilst I would have though that to be an obvious solution, I play along. Phone goes dead.

I can see why they ask for your number. I left it 10 minutes to see if they would call back. Nadda. So I call them back, another 30 minutes on hold, plus 5 minutes going through the tier-1 product activation script, and the next customer server representative transfers me through. Finally I get to the right department - Subscriptions.Unfortunately, the tier-1 subscriptions customer service representative can't help with missing serial codes, so they take down for phone number and email address (for the 3rd time) and setup an open case in their support console, in preparation for a tier-2 support officer.Now, I play the waiting game. By this stage Christmas has come and I'm away and forget about CS4 for the moment. Due to inactivity (on their part, mind you) it would seem that they closed the job off. Result: No serial number.

I get back from Christmas, and call up again - by this stage I only have a week left on my trial, so I need to get this sorted quick smart. I go through the exact same steps as above (including the phone disconnection), and once again, a ticket gets opened. After 48 hours, I leave a message following up, as I still have no reply. After 5 more working days (By this stage my trial has finished), I ring back. They ask for my case number, which I give them, which returns a completely different customer case. After giving them my email AGAIN, they find it, and transfer me through to subscriptions. Magically, the service agent finds me a serial number and give it to me. Unfortunately, the downloaded version of the subscription trial requires a serial number with only numbers. The one she gives me has letters. Her reasoning behind this is because I didn't install it off the DVD.

So, I've just uninstalled CS4, and I'm waiting for it to reinstall, which has taken (so far) about an hour. I tell you what, the serial number better be right, or shit will hit the fan.To be continued…

UPDATE: It's the wrong serial number.

UPDATE 2: I'm once again waiting for tier-2 or tier to email me back.

Round (parts of) the world in 42 days

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:23 GMT

In what's been a rather shit week both work wise and personally (the later probably leading to the former), some good has come - the final payment has been made on my round the world ticket.

At this stage, the trip looks a little something like this:

I'm hoping to lineup tours of Apple and Google while I'm over there - my mate Luke who works at Mountain View however is getting shipped back to work as part of the Maps team, so it's all very much up in the air at the moment!

All the bog standard tourist attractions will be sighted however including:

Golden Gate bridge
Alcatraz
Washington Monument
The outside of The White House (as I can't get inside without a local member of congress' assistance)
The Capitol
The International Spy Museum
Times Square
Central Park
London Eye
Big Ben
Legoland Windsor

Just to name a few...I'm leaving some time in each city as I hope to catchup with some of the Ruby peeps that live there.

I'm also attending a conference (or maybe more - depends on what gets announced) while I'm gone, there hasn't been an official announcement yet, so I won't spill the beans on which one.

While getting excited about the trip I'm also a little nervous - it'll be my first international trip alone, but hey, it has to happen at some point! I'll be catching up with the family in Canterbury as Bec's over at that time playing hockey on a school tour and mum and dad are using it as an excuse to go back to the UK.

Duty free liquor and electronics here we come!

p.s. If you live in one of these cities - ping me some locations you think might be worth visiting - mattman @ gmail.com

A Review – Fancy Form Design

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:55 GMT

Rating:: 4.5

As I'm designing forms I don't usually have an issue making then usable or accessible within the limits of the clients budget.

However taking the form to the next level technically can sometimes be an issue. This is exactly what Fancy Form Design by Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone is all about, designing and building those great forms on the web.

When I first purchased this book (yes I do purchase my books, they aren't usually review freebies) I was a little skeptical as to whether this book would have any content in it that would be relevant to me. This is an issue that I'm running into more and more these days.

I was surprised. I was expecting a dry developer focused book on form design. It is not. This is a good book, well worth the 4-5 hour read. I found that it wasn't just one of those books you read once either, it's also a great reference book.

This book is focused on the front end developer or back end developer that wants to enhance their forms. Even a UX designer like me with hands on skills will get something from this book.

While I was reading this book I was constantly thinking, well that's great, but what about this accessibility or usability issue – yeah I can't help it. But you know not a one or two paragraphs later I was presented with the solution or consideration for those issues. It's great to see a practical book that is on same page as I am.

The Content

Interestingly the book layout parallels the way in which you design and develop an online form. The book itself walks you through a centralised case study for the development of a series of forms. Fancy Form Design is a book very heavy in code and visual examples as well, which makes it a very useful future reference tool.

The first section of the book deals with the planning phase of development, looking at the types of form elements, and the ways they are presently being enhanced on the web. It also looks at the usual competitive analysis process. Moving on to my favourite part the interaction design of the form, now it doesn't spend a lot of time in this area as there are some good books on the market already that handle this area in detail. There is a bit of a discussion on task flows, paper prototyping and wireframing (which I personally think we can do without).

The form design section of the book walks through the usual suspects, of the grid, typography, the use of colour and micro imagery to enhance a form's presentation. This section is about the graphical design only. It's the next section that walks you through the building of the form.

You then get to the bones of the matter, the development of the form structure. There are a good series of examples here on how to build a form correctly to overcome most of the common accessibility and usability issues. Basic issues such as the correct practice for use of labels, error messages, required fields and help text are reviewed and discussed with clarity here. This is an area you might think you know backwards, however it's always worth a review on these matters.

Now we have the structure of the forms it's time to use some CSS to style the final forms. Fancy Form Design walks you through the issues of using various resets and the various ways form elements render in different browsers (I'm looking at you IE) and ways to overcome them. I didn't expect to find anything new in this section, and I didn't, still your mileage may vary on this one.

The final chapter is on enhancing your forms beyond the stylised CSS/HTML layout with the help of jQuery.

This is the section I enjoyed the most in this book. It looked in detail at select menu, radio and checkbox styling as well as conditional question displays, date selectors, password strength indicators and a basic auto-complete. All this is presented in an easy to follow manner, which makes implementing these enhancements progressively on your forms, with jQuery, really easy. There is even a reminder about input validation, doing it on the client and server sides.

Only the downside, I personally think the last section of the form enhancement was a bit to short. I could have done with another 10-20 pages of additional enhancements to the case study in question. A little more detail on the jQuery level would have been good too (small birdie tells me watch for a Sitepoint jQuery Book very soon).

Finally – the last word

Overall it's good book, entertaining, well written, not overly long, full of immediately practical examples that anyone familiar with form design and development can use. It's good to see more of these micro topic books being written than the large 500 page tomes of yesterday.

Side note: why have I been reviewing lots of Sitepoint books of late, well maybe it's something to do with their range of books.

How-to tunnel the VMware Intrastructure Web Access control panel

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:30 GMT

If you have some sort of *nix (Linux, OSX, cygwin), then simply run the following in a shell:

ssh -L 8222:localhost:8222 -L 902:localhost:902 -L 8333:localhost:8333 your.vmserver.com

replacing your.vmserver.com with your ACTUAL VMware server.

Then point your browser at http://localhost:8222 (This is the unencrypted URL - which isn't a problem, because you are tunneling over SSH)

Note, that this trick really only works if you have an SSH server running on your VMware host.

Improving Your Listening Skills

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:16 GMT

Listening is one of those skills that no one really talks about, and yet listening is critical to User Research and general business as well.

You have to understand, and in some cases even become emotive, with the users you are listening to. Yes we can all listen to some degree, but the reality is this will not be that thorough, there will be gaps, major things that you will miss or just did not understand completely.

It follows in the field of user experience listening is critical. Without it you just aren't going to a able to understand the issues your users are telling you, or worse you will miss important information.

Hearing on the other hand is something we do all the time, it's something that we frankly can't turn off. However listening is very different. Listening is hearing with the processing of the information added in, this takes a reasonably conscious intent.

This is demonstrated by the moment, we have all had, when we are not really paying attention and stop listening to a conversation and are subsequently are lost as we try and tune back in again.

It's Hard to Listen

Years ago I learnt the basic rules of listening, techniques that can help you improve and assist you with becoming aware of your environment when listening to people. It's amazing skills learn 25 years ago are still relevant today.

One thing stands out however - listening is really hard work. It doesn't come naturally. You have to train yourself to really listen and observe. Like any skill it also needs to be practiced or you will loose it.

Unfortunately we are not programmed to be good listeners.

This is because our mind will wander off onto another topic, after it has processed about a 7 to 17 second sound bite of information. During this processing period, your mind is already lining up all the mental, and sensory stimulus or distractions around you, just so it can tempt you with something more interesting. On a side note you also process and will form an option on what you are listening to in this 7-17 second time period as well.

Improving Your Listening Skill

What you need to do is train yourself to listen. To overcome this 17 second sound bite limitation. That's where these tips can help:

Focus.

Give the user 100% attention – remind yourself what you are there to do, to focused on the user.
Remove Distraction.

Remove all distractions, this includes phones, emails, background noise, make the user the focus of your attention. Put a do not disturb sign on the door, and ensure your mobile is on silent mode.
Take notes.

You will be doing this anyway, or should be. Taking notes is a great reminder, it gets you to automatically focus on the person, and distill what they are saying into key thematic elements. Note taking is also great for sequential information collection and reinforcement as it forces you into a routine, that breaks the 17 second processing loop as you are filling it with the over lapping note taking processing.
Shut Up.

You are listening, so you shouldn't be talking that much. No interruptions, the user is telling the story not you. Your only conversation should be with questions to clarify or investigate. No options, no stories and definitely no soapbox rants.
Questioning is Good.

We all know that it's important to ask the right type of questions during an interview. In fact you could have an entire post just on interview questions and strategy. When questioning you don't want to lead the person at all. You need to ask investigative (open ended questions) or confirmation questions that paraphrase what the user has just said. It's a good idea not to use your own words (and avoid the buzz words) – use theirs. Don't evaluate by giving any option with a question. Also watch your body language giving off the wrong non verbal cues. Thinking up questions on the fly is initially not easy, but after a while you will discover that you have lots of time, and the right question instantly, more on this later.
Body Language.

Yes there are going to be non verbal cues, and you have to be observant and pick them up. They could be a change in facial expression, voice tone, a postural shift or just hand actions. These are all important and can indicate an emotion shift. Watch for this, don't be afraid to ask about it gently.
Silence is Good.

It's okay for the user to be silent and think about the subject at hand. This gives you time to watch for those non verbal cues and the like. Be passive, don't interrupt the silent time, especially if they look like they are thinking. Patience is the key.
Give No Advice.

Again it's not about you, it's about the user, let them find the solution, let them see the alternatives. Yes you may need to repeat their own alternatives back to them and ask how the feel about them and such. But this is not the same as giving your person option. The reason giving an option is bad is by doing so it will re focus the listening process on you and will give the impression that you are not listening at all as you have not helped them find the solution at all.
Remove Bias.

Reset you mind for each interview or conversation, don't go into one with any preconceived ideas, bias, prejudices or the like. Remember that each person is different and you can learn lots if you just listen to them. Ensure you start without a preconceived option from maybe age, gender, race, ethnic group, culture or previous contact. You can't assume you know what they are going to say, want or even tell you, they are not you.
Learn to Say No.

If you are really tired, can't focus, don't even try and continue with an interview. You are just going to ruin the results you get as they will be half hearted at best. Better to reschedule for when you can give your full attention. I find the best solution is not to overload the day with interviews, testing subjects or the like.
Practice.

I find it best to really practice listening very intently about 2-3 times a week at first, then after a while you will get better. Ensure that after a listening session you take the time to review what you have done and note down the mistakes you made and what caused them. Also it's a good idea to seek out colleagues to give you honest reviews on your listening skills.

More Bonuses

I have found after a while you become very aware when you are listening. You notice lots of small details, and you will also end up with a large amount of dead time to think. It's almost as if by removing your conversation you have slowed down time, giving you these large slabs of free time in which to process the conversation and respond. Use them wisely.

Another aspect of being a good listener is that you will show people that you care about them and will connect with them. Remember once you find the topic people love to talk about, you often can't stop them, especially when its a topics they are passionate about. Yes this does apply to even ultra shy introverts as well.

Taking the time to listen to someone, will also make them feel good, wanted, understood, this will gain you a lot of allies in the long term.

Interestingly these tips can also be applied to general day to day life as well, so what you have learnt for user research has a number of carry overs.

Can you think of any more techniques you have used to improve your listening skills? If you can please add them below.

Effective Freelance Networking – The Opening Pitch

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 06:13 GMT

I don't know about you, but I have been to face to face networking events where it's basically been like pulling teeth to get the people in the room to talk and discuss what they do and the benifits it has for me. There is nothing wrong with the event itself, it's just some of the attendees don't know how to network.

Networking doesn't come easy, you can't just expect to turn up to an event and it happens, you have to work at it. You have to build the trust and connections with people. You have to get people interested in you and vice-versa.

We are all Lazy

When you are talking to someone you have not met before you have about 10-20 seconds to make a good first impression, that will hopefully spark their interest. It's the first visual and verbal impression that counts. This is why the elevator pitch is so important.

To often people in the web industry do this so wrong, I too have been guilty of this as well. To be really honest you need to kill any techo-babble.

Often people not in your industry just aren't going to understand the jargon or the like. No it doesn't make you look smart. No one wants to have to translate what you have said into something they can understand. We are all basically lazy and would rather just turn off and stop listening to you.

Specialist job titles are as a no no too. They are just going to be meaningless to the average joe. Basically they are show stoppers that can and often do stop the conversation dead in the water.

The only exception is when you are networking within your own industry. You can then use your special industry job title, like say “user experience designer”, but then you have to add on what makes you different from everyone else. What is your speciality, the unique selling point, more on this later.

Giving People What They Want

What you have to so is ensuring the people you are talking to are interested in you, and want to continue the conversation about you and how you can help them. Sadly you maybe the most knowledgable talented person in the room, but unless you can maintain that interest you aren't going to get anywhere networking.

The key to doing this is to give people what they want.

We are self centered. Sorry but it's true. All I really want to hear is what you can do for me. I just don't care what you have done or can do unless it pertains to me. Don't assme that what you want to say to people is what they want to hear, because in reality it isn't!

Therefore it follows you need to make the opening statement count. It needs to focus on the benefits for the person you are talking with, and in a language they going to understand and relate to.

Saying, “Hi I'm Joe, I design web sites”, isn't going to get you anywhere, compared to the approach of “Hi I'm Joe, I design web sites that double the sales and productivity of the business, by providing their customers what really want”.

Now it may sound a little bit wanky, but you have instantly told them what you do and how you do it. It's now that the magical response occurs, “So how do you do that?” Getting to this point is what you want.

As opposed to , “Oh, my 11 year old nephew makes websites.” Instantly, you have been placed in the bottom draw, forgotten.

Building Your Profile Pitch

Now we all know how we should be doing it. That's the easy bit. The hard bit is working out what people want.

There are a number of techniques you can use here to help you determine what people want to hear. My favourite is a little visualisation exercise – first imagine you are in a crowded room, and you can over hearing all the various conversations around you. Now imagine that you cane here the perfect comments that would make you think, “humm that's a perfect client, I could help them out”.

Once you have this, you have the basis of an your pitch. You just have to turn around the context and apply your own information.

Now you just need a good opening statement for the profile pitch, a statement to sell you. You need to build something succinct that is all about you and what you do. Ideally this should be only a small paragraph, a few sentences. I find this is best said in your own words as it will flow into the conversation better that way.

Ideally a pitch should be made up of the following elements :

Introduce yourself.
Overview of your services – a really simple top level overview.
Who uses your services – your target market, this would be your ideal client.
Demonstrate the way you overcome critical issues – from their business view point.
Key business benefits of your services – what are the benefits to their business.
Unique selling point – why pick you over your competitors.

I always find writing a pitch hard. Generally I just starting and brain dumping ideas into a word processor, this I find helps. Then I rework it over and over , refining as I go. Don't expect the pitch to come easily first time around. The first few drafts will just be way to long, and possibility way to technical. Just simplify, condense, calarify and above all present it from the potential clients view, you will get there. This is a bit like writing for a web site.

The final pitch should be such that anyone, yes anyone, even the general public can understand it. Also when you have one, practice it, practice over and over, but ensure you deliver it in a casual tone.

The Gotacha

Now the issue is you are going to have to develop several layers of pitch.

One for general business, one for semi-business social events, and one for your own industry. The pitch will vary in techinical detail and presentation dependant on the audience, but the core will still remain the same – it's not about you but it's about them.

That's my take, what's your tips for developing a networking pitch?

Redesigning Midnite

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:54 GMT

Over the years, I have had the great pleasure of working with the Midnite Youth Theatre Company on a number of their Perth based productions. Naturally, I decided they had to have a website!

It started out in a Plone/Zope setup - it was a nightmare - documentation on theming was thin on the ground and getting people to maintain it was even harder as the backend UI wasn't that friendly for those not as technically savvy as the authors of the system.

The site died for a while - motivation was low after the initial failure - then about a year and a half later, we found a home in the Wordpress blogging platform. It was easy enough to tweak for more of a CMS feel, the backend UI made sense - things were on the up.

Thankfully, there's not a "but" at the end of that sentence! The site's had 9 or 10 redesigns since (we went through a phase of having a new theme each time a production was being performed - a management nightmare!) and visits to the site are slowly, but surely, on the increase.

We're slowly outgrowing Wordpress though - it's primary purpose is to be a blogging platform, not a full blown content management system that can incorporate a database of all Midnite's productions (with venue details, 8 different tiers of pricing to display etc), sell tickets (one day, one day....) etc, so it was time to move on.

What we're going to end up with (the bugs are still being ironed out) once the new site is live will be something more flexible and hopefully something that better caters for the needs of Midnite.

I couldn't help writing this post however to talk about the HTML and CSS we're using to build the thing - HTML5 and CSS3 are getting a workout on this project and it excites me (but, as you'll hear, also brought me to tears at points)

The thing I like most about working on the Midnite site pro-bono is that I get a lot of creative liberties - as I mentioned, this design iteration makes use of the new HTML5 and CSS3 specifications that are in development at the moment.

Let's step through some of the new parts of the spec I'm using on the site with the HTML and CSS to match:

Rounded corners

The CSS used to generate this looks a little like this:

-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 5px;
border-top-left-radius: 5px;

Yeah, the browser specific declarations are a little annoying, but hey, not having to do it with javascript or thousands of CSS lines dedicated to images for each corner has got to be a bonus!

@font-face (or Font Embedding)

Guess what - it even works in IE 6 - sure, you have to use a strange format that only Microsoft care about, but it works!

@font-face {
  font-family: 'LeagueGothicRegular';
  src: url('../fonts/League_Gothic.eot');
  src: local('League Gothic Regular'), local('LeagueGothic'), url('../fonts/League_Gothic.otf') format('opentype'), url('../fonts/League_Gothic.svg#LeagueGothic') format('svg'); }

You have to use the .eot format for IE6 and have it on it's own line so it can be picked up and used, but there's a handy tool for generating all the right font files and the CSS markup to match that can be found over at Font Squirrel.

Using the font you've just declared isn't hard either:

font-family: "LeagueGothicRegular", Gill Sans, Verdana, sans-serif;

Sprites

Image sprites aren't new news by any stretch of the imagination - there's talk they will make an appearance in the final CSS3 spec, at the moment however, there's just a placeholder with a lot of discussion about whether sprites belong in the spec and if so, what the syntax should be.

The new Midnite site makes use of them in their current state though, as depicted below:

Once again, here's the CSS:

.season {
  // Unimportant bits left out
  background-image: url("../images/season2010.png");
  background-position: 0 0;
  height: 176px;
  width: 450px; }

And for the hover effect:

.season:hover {
  background-position: 0 -176px; }

Now, I mentioned earlier that there were tears - you've already had the rant about EOT files for @font-face declarations, but there's one for CSS sprites as well!

IE6 and below don't support the :hover selector on elements other that anchor tags, which makes my CSS above somewhat useless in a browser that is only starting now to lose its stranglehold on the market.

Easy fix though - (1) get this file; (2) put the following CSS in your pipe and make IE6 smoke it:

body {
  behavior:url("/styles/csshover3.htc"); }

Hat-tip: make sure that path is absolute (i.e. falls off the root '/') as the URL is relative to the page, not the CSS file location.

Once you have that tiny hack in place, your sprites work in IE6+, FF and Webkit.

RGBA

We're using RGBA for our navigation link hovers (so you can see the stars faintly behind even when you hover)

RGBA is the new kid on the block for declaring colours with their alpha, or transparency set. I'd talk about it here, but Drew McLellan explains it far better over at his 2009 24 ways article.

HTML5

So I've really only spoken about the CSS stuff we're doing to this point and frankly, the HTML5 stuff is more structure than eye candy, but the new

and

tags are getting a workout and I enjoy the semantics of the markup - it feels cleaner to me than having div's all over the place with ID's like #header and #footer.

I'd encourage you to read such good websites as Dive into HTML5 and HTML5 Doctor for more on getting started using HTML5 today - Smashing Magazine also have a couple of good articles, as do 24 ways

November trip to Ubud, Bali

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:36 GMT

Recently, Meredith and I spent a few beautiful days in Bali, Indonesia. I did have all intention to write a mini travelogue and publish it here, but in the weeks we've been back, it's been crazily busy at work and in life.

We arrived late Monday evening, sans children (who had Meredith's mother staying with them). My brother Charlie happened to be in town, so along with his friend, Rani, they were kind enough to pick us up from Ngurah Rai Airport, and in the middle of the night, we made our way to Nyuh Kuning, a small and quiet village just south of Ubud town center.

Our chosen hotel, Saren Indah, is tucked away on the southern end of the Monkey Forest, near the top end of Jalan Nyuh Bulan.

Replete with beautiful gardens, an inviting swimming pool, outdoor Bale style restaurant (open 7.30am – 10.30pm), and two story buildings housing the sixteen rooms, the place was fantastic. Either side of the property were rice fields, and although we stayed in one of the Garden rooms (lower floor), we're assuming the views from upstairs would be great.

We ate and shopped, practised our Bahasa, and rode our two hired motorbikes, for the next four days, before sadly heading back to the airport early Saturday morning for the trip home. If you are considering a few days of downtime, you couldn't go wrong with booking one of the many cheap flights to Bali, and relaxing in Ubud for a few days.

I've uploaded two videos that I took from the handlebars of the bike, using a loaned GoPro camera, designed for the purpose. This video shows a quick ride around Nyuh Kuning, and this video shows our ride from Jalan Hanoman in Ubud, over to Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave).

Terima kasih (thank you) for reading this post; I trust you'll enjoy the videos!

Image: Photo of the reception Bale at Saren Indah Hotel, Ubud.

Scaling a Rails application - Part 1

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:32 GMT

I'm by no means a "scaling expert", but I've recently been doing a lot of research into scaling web applications and the best ways to go about it.

What you see below is a rough guide based on what I've learnt - it's not scaling gospel or even an accurate or thorough discussion of all different techniques or schools of thought that can be applied to scaling.

So, what does this series of posts cover?

What scaling is;
When/who you should think about scaling;
The web server (two parts: the box and the software);
The static assets;
The database;
The Rails code; and
Caching

What scaling is

In telecommunications and software engineering, scalability is a desirable property of a system, a network, or a process, which indicates its ability to either handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner or to be readily enlarged. For example, it can refer to the capability of a system to increase total throughput under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added. An analogous meaning is implied when the word is used in a commercial context, where scalability of a company implies that the underlying business model offers the potential for economic growth within the company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaling

When to scale

Generally, the consensus seems to be that if your a start-up, fresh out of the oven, scaling is a waste of your time. Get some users first and build your product!

Scaling is generally something you consider when your current server setup is getting hammered and the growth of your applications warrants taking things to the next level.

The web server

The box

If you're going to be doing high traffic sites, you'd be stupid (in my opinion) not to get your own hardware - the cost of entry for some relatively good gear isn't that high and in the long run, the flexibility and power that comes with having your own hardware outweighs the hassle.

I'm running a Dell PowerEdge 1850 which is housed in a datacentre here in Perth (which makes sense for what I'm hosting on it) - it's not new, but it doesn't need to be - the only reason it was being disposed of by the company I bought it off was because the three year warranty had run out - during the three years however, it hadn't failed once and had been the primary domain controller for the organisation in question.

Something to consider carefully is location and if your site is targeted at an international audience, then you'll certainly want to pick a location to keep that new server of yours in a DC where there's good international pipes available (Perth isn't really blessed in this particular area).

When picking a datacentre, look for something with n+1 redundancy, diverse entry points for both data carriers and power (preferably off completely different feeds) and good security - taking a look at what carriers provide feeds into the facility is also a must.

The software

For the operating system, I'm a fan of Ubuntu server edition - I'll admit, I've not tried much else (FreeBSD and Debian) and I always come back to Ubuntu - I think that's mainly because my first experiences with Linux were on an Ubuntu box. I keep the install down to the bear minimums - build_essential, iptables, fail2ban, denyhosts, mysql, nginx and a local postfix instance are all that are running (there's probably some other things, but you get the idea - no need for fruit)

Personally, I use the nginx (/engine-x/) web server - it's fast at serving static assets and it knows when to get out of the way if I want to pass things off to my Rails app. High profile websites including Wordpress.com and Github are using nginx with great success when it comes to high traffic scenarios.

Another part of my setup is Unicorn. Unicorn is written to make use of a number of existing system elements (threads, balancing, etc) which makes it stupidly efficient. For more, see this article by Ryan Tomayko called "I like Unicorn because it's Unix".

Here's my config file:

upstream unicorn {
  server unix:/var/www/example/current/tmp/sockets/unicorn.sock;
}
server {
  listen 80;
  server_name  example.org www.example.org;
  access_log  /var/log/nginx/example.access.log;
  location / {
    root /var/www/example/current/public/;
    if (-f $request_filename) {
      expires 60h;
      break;        # Static asset
    } if (-f $document_root/system/maintenance.html) {
      return 503;   # Temporarily unavailable
    } if (!-f $document_root/system/maintenance.html) {
     # error_page 500 501 502 503 504 /500.html;
      proxy_pass              http://unicorn;
    }
    proxy_set_header        Host $host;       
    proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    client_max_body_size    10m;
    client_body_buffer_size 128k;
    proxy_connect_timeout   90;
    proxy_send_timeout      90;
    proxy_read_timeout      90;
    proxy_buffer_size       16k;
    proxy_buffers           32 16k;
    proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
  }
  # output compression saves bandwidth
  gzip              on;
  gzip_http_version 1.0;
  gzip_comp_level   2;
  gzip_proxied      any;
  gzip_types        text/plain text/html text/javascript text/css text/xml application/x-javascript application/atom+xml;
}

I also use Passenger from the gang over at Phusion - it's fantastic for getting things going straight away and doesn't require too much hassle - it's what I use on my development box and for smaller sites where I don't need to fiddle with things in the same way.

That's a long enough post, hopefully I'll get the next section on static assets and the database up soon.

It's important to remember that this is just my opinion, based on my experiences to date (which are somewhat limited given my age) - take everything with a grain of salt and always do your research before diving into something this big.

Time for a change

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:16 GMT

So you may have noticed that all the old content on this site is gone and it looks, once again, different.

After some mulling, I decided it was time to move on - the content the previously resided here was out of date or pointless.

I'm starting fresh, the results of which will be seen shortly with my post on scaling with rails (from a novice's perspective) - I'm hoping that over Christmas and into the new year I can generate some new and relevant content on Ruby, Rails, servers and also life.

If you've reached here looking for something you consider to be of national importance, get in touch and I'll take a look at restoring it or overhauling it to be current.

My chest filled to explode

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:40 GMT

Apologies to David McComb. For those who do not follow my twitter feed, I will tell you what happened over the past few days.

I was riding to work on Friday morning, when I started having a pain in the chest. Mild pain which I have been getting recently when I push myself on the bike, but because it is accompanied by a bout of nausea, I always put it down as stomach related. Instead it was angina and last Friday morning it did not go away in a couple of minutes after easing the pace.

So I stopped at the nearest train station intending to catch the next train to work. However, the pain did not go away while waiting for the next train and the nausea got worse. So instead I caught the next train home. About 10 minutes into the trip, I realised I was having a heart attack, my chest pains where much stronger, it felt like my lungs where being crushed. I was having trouble breathing and I was losing sensation in my left arm.

I rolled my bike out of the station and got home quickly, dropped the bike off, announced to Angie I was probably having a heart attack and walked across the road to the ambulance depot to get help.

I was then rushed to Fremantle hospital, while being told I should of called the ambulance from the train and they would of come and met me and saved 10 minutes, which could of made a big difference.

The reason I was being rushed to Fremantle hospital instead of Rockingham hospital which was closer, was Fremantle has a specialist coronary care unit, which I got to see at close hand. I was in the Fremantle emergency department for a little over 10 minutes, as the prepared me for surgery. Then I was in surgery, getting a blockage in an artery which supplies blood to the heart cleared and making sure it stayed open by inserting in a steel tube.

Because the operation was only done under local anaesthetic and a big dose of morphine, once I was in post op and I located my phone, I was tweeting about it a little over two hours after I realised I was having an heart attack.

48 hours after the operation, I was out of hospital, with no permanent damage to my heart. My lifestyle is about to change, I need to take drugs to reduce the thickness of my blood, my blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol every day for the rest of my life (even though only my cholesterol was above average). Lose a few kilos and eat less bad cholesterol ( reduce my intake of cheese, eggs, chocolate and fried noodles, because I eat little dairy or milk).

So a big thank you to everybody at the Kwinana ambulance depot, the Fremantle Hospital Emergency Department and Coronary Care Unit, without you I probably would not be alive right now.

You too can be a Successful Freelancer

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:27 GMT

I was honoured to speak on day one of Edge of the Web 2009. My presentation, You Too Can be a Successful Freelancer, contained both personal stories of my freelancing years, as well as some of the material from my book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing.

I had a great time preparing it, and then delivering it to a enthusiastic audience (a huge thanks to you if you were there!), and have uploaded the slides to my SlideShare account. You can see them embedded below. The slides were featured on the SlideShare front page the day after I uploaded them – thanks SlideShare!

You can see a number of the presentations given at Edge of the Web 2009 on SlideShare here.

Image: Photo by Richard Giles. Original photo here.

RGBa backgrounds in IE

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:54 GMT

RGBa is the new black, with support in most modern Safari 3, Firefox 3 and Opera 10, you can have semi transparent elements. Only there is no support currently in IE for RGBa.

However, you can easily fake it for backgrounds of block elements in IE with
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(GradientType=1, StartColorStr='#aaRRBBGG', EndColorStr='#aaRRBBGG);
The filter gradient places a alpha channel colour gradient over the background. So as long the background is transparent, the start and end colours the same and the alpha (aa) channel a value greater than 0 (fully transparent) and FF (fully opaque), you get a block element in IE with a RGBa background. You can see an example of RGBa in action in IE

The simplest way is including in your CSS
background: transparent ; background: rgba(255,0,0,0.5) ; filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(GradientType=1, StartColorStr='#88ff0000', EndColorStr='#88ff0000');

Which is clean and simple, even it does deliver you invalid CSS. There are two problems, if a browser does not support RGBa and is not IE, (eg FF2) the block element background will be transparent. I do not think that is a major issue right now. There are a handful of browsers outside IE in use that do not support RGBa. My main concern is future proofing, the next major version of IE (the beta is due within a year) will support RGBa (as well as HTML5 and some CSS3 according to sources) and as usual will maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions of IE. So you will get a semi transparent background colour overlaid with a semi transparent gradient.

The solution, is to provide a stylesheet to all browsers and an extra stylesheet to IE8 and below with conditional comments. So your CSS will have:
background: fallback color RGB or hex ; /* background colour for browsers that are not IE that do not understand RGBa */ background: rgba(R,G,B,a) ;
Your HTML will include (note don’t try and cut and paste from here as grab the text file instead):

And ieonly.css file include:
background: transparent ; /* needed to clear the background colour */ filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(GradientType=1, StartColorStr='#88ff0000', EndColorStr='#88ff0000');

If you don’t believe me and do not have IE6, here is the screenshot. And I was not the first one to suggest this method for implementing RGBa in IE, Hedger Wang did some time ago, and even suggested using canvas to provide the transparent background to FF2. I only found his example while finalising this post.

Why use CSS Zen Garden for CSS3 demo

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:18 GMT

For those who have not seen my Edge of the Web CSS3 demonstration I used the CSS Zen Garden HTML. Why, because I wanted to use somebody else’s HTML, mainly because I wanted to show it works with any HTML and that most people would be familiar with the site.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

There are no hacks in the CSS just lots of browsers specific declarations like:

-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.66);

And even worse Microsoft specific declarations, which break the W3C rules for CSS

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=5, OffY=5, Color='#AA666666', Positive='true');

As I said in my presentation, the important thing to know about validation, is why your code does not validate, if you know that, then validation is irrelevant.

CSS3 presentations at EOTW09 and WebJam11

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:57 GMT

I really enjoyed developing my presentation for Edge of the Web. The research and experimentation was a lot of fun. Explore the demo using CSS Zen Garden HTML and seriously try it in IE6, the WebJam presentation with some even more outrageous transitions needs Safari4 ~~or FF3.7~~ and a little exploring with a mouse.

Progressive enhancement with CSS3

View more documents from Nick Cowie.

What I learnt is enough from probably a dozen blog posts, so hopefully I will be writing lot in the next few weeks.

Edge of the Tweet

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:31 GMT

There is less than two weeks until Perth's second ever web conference; Edge of the Web 2009 gets underway, and the excitement is building!

One large element of the social aspects of web conferences is the ‘twitter back channel', you know; the thoughts and musings of people who are attending the conference posted on Twitter.

With this in mind, I thought it worthwhile to go through the impressive speakers list, and link those who are on Twitter so you can also watch what the speakers are saying, before, during and after the crazy week we have planned.

Derek Powazek @fraying
Anil Dash @anildash
Alex Payne @al3x
Dmitry Baranovskiy @DmitryBaranovsk
Gary Barber @Tuna
Ruth Ellison @RuthEllison
Lachlan Hardy @lachlanhardy
Simon Pascal Klein @klepas
Kevin Yank @sentience
Miles Burke @milesb
Ash Donaldson @ashdonaldson
Matt Balara @MattBalara
Matt Didcoe @mattman
Scott Gledhill @gleddy
Nick Cowie @nickobec
Myles Eftos @madpilot
James McCutcheon @jamesmcc
Justin Mclean @JustinMclean
Darcy Laycock @Sutto

Remember, if you are attending Edge of the Web 2009, you should use #eotw09 as the hashtag. It'd probably be a good idea to also follow the @eotw Twitter account too!

Ideas 6: The Edge of the Web Edition

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:26 GMT

Perth has had it's day in the sun, by holding the last five Ideas events, but now it is Brisvegas' go. The theme: Edge of the Web, because we have two speakers giving you exclusive previews of their Edge of the Web presentations: Ash Donaldson presenting Designing to persuade: Shaping the User Experience and yours truly blabbing on about Stuff They Never Taught You at Website School.

We will be at the Plough Inn, Southbank on October 21st 2009. So if you are in Brisbane, and have been meaning to get to an AWIA event, now is your chance!

Members are $45, non members are $55. Bargin.

See you all then!

WebWiz Sydney 2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:24 GMT

Australian Web Week is just a couple of weeks away, and the team at the Australian Web Industry Association have created quite a unique event for the occassion.

Instead of the usual pre- Web Directions South Port80 drinks and pizza affair, which we've held for the last few years, we're introducing a new event to your calendar: WebWiz.

The concept is great; there will be a panel for four web experts, plus an additional two contestants hand-picked from the audience to compete for ‘millions of dollars worth of awesome web kudos'.

Guaranteed to be a great way to spend a Tuesday evening in Sydney!

All the gory details are:

Tuesday 6th of October 2009
from 7:00pm
Top floor
Pyrmont Bridge Hotel
96 Union Street
Pyrmont NSW 2009
(Google Map)

Entry is absolutely FREE – however there are only limited places available, so I suggest you head straight over and RSVP now.

During the evening (which will include free nibbles and a cash bar), we'll also be announcing some of the finalists for the Australian Web Awards, just to make it even more exciting!

I hope that you can make it!

The League of Moveable Type

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:04 GMT

I just admire The League of Moveable Type. While a lot of font foundries are still working on licensing issues with embedding fonts in PDFs. here a couple of font designers discovered @font-face and went lets make the world a better place. By creating The League of Moveable Type, convincing a few fellow font designers to join them in releasing fonts with an open source licence suitable for embedding with @font-face.

I am on the Edge of the Web

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:58 GMT

Well I am speaking at the Edge of the Web Conference in Perth in November. The title Progressive Enhancement with CSS: Or how I stopped worrying about IE6 and starting loving CSS3.

The aim is to show how you can use CSS2 and CSS3 to improve the experience of visitors using modern browsers, while not blocking access to those people still using older browsers like IE6. I want to convince the audience, that you can build sites that do not have to look the same in all browsers.

I will be looking at what CSS2 and CSS3 you can safely implement now. The main provision it must not break IE6. It does not have to work in IE6, just have a safe fallback position.

The presentation is not aimed at people who read Surfin Safari, CSS3.info or similar sites and then go off an experiment with what they have been shown. That is what I do

I know I will be covering those I covered indepth before like opacity/transparency and @font-face. Are there any other CSS2 or CSS3 properties you would like to see me cover? Otherwise I might go all shock and awe with transitions ;-)

Cleaning up Word HTML

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:27 GMT

If you are like me, on occasions you have people want to paste directly from Word into CMS or Wordpress. I was bemoaning the fact, that you either end up with Word HTML or lose all the formatting, when a colleague of mine, Steven Miles suggest I use JavaScript to clean up the HTML and provide the some code.

So this is what I created to clean up Word HTML, you paste the HTML is to the editable div, hit the button and if you are using Internet Explorer the converted HTML is copied to your clipboard. So you can paste the clean HTML (note it is HTML code) straight into the CMS editor in HTML mode or WordPress.

Note, while you can use JavaScript to add to the clipboard with Internet Explorer, you need to use Flash to copy the contents to the clipboard for other browsers. I have not do that yet. Mainly because Internet Explorer is the corporate browser and this was created for work.

So have a look under the hood, see how it works, take the code and modify it for your own use. It appears to be working for what I need, but maybe needed to be modified for your situation.

* does not currently work in IE8, I need to investigate further *

John Siracusa on Snow Leopard

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:59 GMT

John Siracusa on OS X Snow Leopard:

Got all that? A nearly two-year development cycle, but no new features. Major new frameworks for developers, but few new bugs. Significant changes to the core OS, but more reliability. And a franchise rejuvenation with few user-visible changes.

It's enough to turn a leopard white.

…and we still don’t have day-light saving

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:25 GMT

It is 2009 and some people still do not get accessibility

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:45 GMT

At the Gov2.0 taskforce roadshow I ended up in conversation with a representative of one Department bemoaning the fact the Government will not give them extra money to make their websites WCAG 1.0 level 2 compliant.

I said it does not cost more to build a WCAG 1.0 level 2 compliant website if your developer knows what they where doing. The two developers sitting either side of us ( one state government and one private enterprise) agreed, yet this person kept saying it costs more money.

The private enterprise developer then asked why don’t you include the requirement for WCAG 1.0 level 2 compliance in their website tender. The response it is too expensive. Asked if they ever tried, no it is too expensive was the response.

It is not 2000, when Maguire vs SOCOG decision was new and fresh and understanding of website accessibility amongst developers was limited. For the past 10 years, Australians website developers and Government Agencies have known the Disability Discrimination Act applies to websites. If you can not build a WCAG 1.0 level 2 compliant website in 2009, you do not need extra money to fix it, you need to look at website business practices and bring them into the 21st century.

Moving a virtual machine from VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:44 GMT

I am running VMWare Fusion 2.0.x at home, and VMWare Server 2.0.x on my Ubuntu workstation at work. I wanted to move a virtual machine created on VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server.

Some gotchas that I've come across:

64-bit and VT mode

64-bit virtual machines are only supported on CPUs that have VT mode.

Fusion-only feature not handled gracefully by Server

If your .vmx file has the following line, remove it.

serial0.fileType = "thinprint"

VMWare Server does not support this feature, and crashes when you try to import the virtual machine.

Networking

After importing the virtual machine, when you power it on for the first time, VMWare will ask you whether you moved it or copied it. Tell VMWare that you moved it. Otherwise, you will have to manually update the ethernet adapter settings to get networking back up.

Yep, Software Engineering is dead

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:06 GMT

You know that feeling you get when something you've been taught to believe in gets discredited and because your belief was tenuous at best, the walls come tumbling down around you and then you have a huge weight lifted off you shoulders?

Pascal just posted this on the 220 mailing list. Amen. It's something that I'm pretty sure I've been articulating for a long time. Whenever someone has asked me why software is hard, I always use this analogy:

If you ask a Civil Engineer to build you a bridge, it is easy to spec out. You know how far the bridge has to span, what sort of foundations you need, and as a result you can make a recommendation about what sort of bridge you need. The Engineer can build you a little model - you can look at the model and say “Yes! That is a bridge. That will do nicely”. They can mathematically model the bridge to make sure this doesn't happen. They build the bridge and if it allows things to cross from one bank to the other, you have a success.

Unless you are building “Hello World”, a Software Engineer's life isn't so simple. You have different platforms, users, stakeholders, contexts - it gets exponentially harder with every feature that gets added. I once did a unit at Uni called Formal Methods which tried to mathematically model software. It was stupid. The code we modelled was like, nine lines long, and required a 32 page proof (I didn't even get close). Stupid.

Of course, academics have been trying to shoehorn software into engineering for ever. In first year, they taught us UML which I guess is similar to architectural drawings or flow diagrams or something. I'm sure UML works really well when working with the waterfall model of software design, which has strong ties to old school, proper engineering. I couldn't imagine having to go and update hundreds of UML documents every time a minor change was required. We are also taught in first year, that the waterfall model is pants in the real world, which by association makes UML nothing more than a nice thought experiment. (I'm still bemused by the number of Software firms that put it as a requirement for graduate Software Engineers - basically because coming up with job descriptions for inexperienced programmers is really hard).

Sure you can argue that testing is a software technique that we (should) use, but this is the exception to the rule. I guess the conclusion we need to come to is that Software isn't an engineering problem - it's a people problem. (Some may say, it's a creative problem - that's also true, but buy me a beer and I'll explain that traditional engineering is too, so the argument doesn't further my point). This in itself is a problem, as (gross generalisation ahead) boffins who like coding, tend not to deal with real people very well.

Further discussion on our internal list suggested that creating software products is the way to go. I think I want to agree with this - there are many examples of off-the-shelf products that are extremely popular: Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop etc. In these situations, the customer works with in the workflow of the software, and that seems to work. So do we as developers need to convince our clients that the feature they want may not be needed? Do our clients actually know what they need? Of course this view is not with out it's flaws either - users will generally be working against the software, rather than with it. Is working with a sub-optimal solution better than battling with requirements and budget overruns?

I can't help to think that there is something we are missing. It would seem there is a disconnect between what our clients want and what we can provide. If you look at the classic project triangle, your client wants to minimise price and time, and maximise good (I hope my English teacher isn't reading this), where as we want to maximise all three. So the crucial “pick two” part flies out the window. Either we start sacrificing the good, re-negotiate the price, or try to stretch out the project to restore the balance - none of which makes for happy clients.

Well how about adding fat to the quote? In theory, this is fine - if a client sees value in an “inflated” (but more likey a realistic) price then everyone is happy right? Well, not really - software development is much like homework assignments: You start out with plenty of time, and the best intentions, and then end up pulling an all-nighter to get it finished - and you still only get a C at best. I suspect this is because it's impossible to lock down requirements of an abstract problem. This isn't only because of the difficulty in describing what we don't understand, but because we don't even know what half of the problems are going to be.

And this is our quandry - how can we estimate unknowns? Not just “we haven't seen this before but it looks like X” unknowns, but “What the hell? How is that even possible?!” unknowns. Other areas of Engineering encounter these problems occasionally - we get them all the time. So, the solution (he says as if there is one) is to minimise the risks and/or consequences of these unknowns. Jobs that deal with people do this all the time. If you work in marketing, you can postulate all you like - you can't be sure how a campaign will work until it does. Marketing is reactive.

When you make a change you can't be sure what will happen. Sure, you can put an ad in the Yellow Pages year after year, because it has brought in on average Y leads per year - but there is no guarantee this year will be the same. It seems that the humanity-based sciences are happy with this, but quantitative-loving geeks don't like that. Hell, binary is black and white, not Gray.

So, perhaps the key is to treat software as a living breathing thing. Agile programming and iterative development can help, but they are means to an end - they don't work with out communication and understanding between people. We need to break down the barriers between provider and client - the question is: Is that even possible?

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.8

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:50 GMT

I've upgraded to Wordpress 2.8 (from 2.5). I promise never to be so lazy again. Please let me know if you experience any problems with the site.

Thank you.

I promise, there are real posts coming soon.

West Coast Bloggers

Write or Die!

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What is Creativity

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