November 2008 Archives
November 30, 2008
The iTunes deauthorisation conundrum
I wrote the yesterday about using a Linux live CD to recover data from the hard-drive of my spyware-riddled Windows laptop. One thing I couldn't do via Linux was deauthorise the machine for my iTunes account. Apple's iTunes has a limit of five machines on which you can play your DRM infected protected music. Now, of course, I'd already burnt to CD any purchases from the Apple store I'd made using that laptop, and re-imported them to remove the DRM,...
November 29, 2008
Running Windows? Why you should always have a Linux live CD to hand
Earlier this year, through a bizarre chain of events and some admittedly gross stupidity, I allowed my Dell laptop running Windows XP to get absolutely riddled with nasty malware. After many hours wasted trying to fix it, it eventually prompted me to make the switch to using a Mac. After that, the Dell sat unwanted and unloved in the corner of our spare room. Until it was time to move, and I had to finally try to wrestle the precious...
November 28, 2008
Top 75 British newspaper RSS feeds in Google Reader
Hooray - some good figures for the newspaper industry for a change! This time last year I made a list of the 100 most popular British newspaper feeds in Google Reader, and I thought it was worth updating the figures. The headline is that the number of RSS subscribers to the popular newspaper content has pretty much doubled. Last year, the top 75 feeds added up to represent 249,269 subscriptions. This time around the top 75 accounts for 488,828 subscriptions....
November 27, 2008
Hard to have 'no comment' about this BT email survey
I had so much hassle with Greek state telecoms monopoly OTE, that I figured that dealing with BT in the UK could only be a breath of fresh air. Ho! Ho! Ho! Anyway, tomorrow morning I'll be waiting in for the engineer who will maybe finally give me a glimpse of broadband in the UK. But not before I had to deal with the BT customer contact satisfaction survey. Actually, the contact I've had with them so far has been...
November 26, 2008
Mumbai terrorist attacks show that search engines still can't get breaking news right
We are used to hearing that search engines are one of the primary routes that people find news on the net, but I've just been having a scout around the three major search engines as news of the terrorist attack in Mumbai unfolds, and I have to say that they are not performing very well. Google does have some news results inserted into the one word search for 'mumbai', but they are not in the top slot. Searching for 'india'...
Unpacking the TARDIS
When moving countries, like I've just done, one of the most worrying things is packing up all your 'precious things', plonking them in the back of a van, and hoping that after a couple of ferries and a few thousand miles they end up intact at the other side. Amongst the things I moved, one I was anxious about was my Holdcourt Ltd TARDIS telephone box. I bought it second-hand in St. Ives in the late 1990s, but according to...
November 25, 2008
FUMSI at Online Information 2008
This time next week I shall be at Online Information at the Olympia Grand Hall. On Tuesday and Wednesday at 2:30pm I shall be with my fellow contributing FUMSI editors to give a short presentation on skills from each of our areas that will help see you through an economic downturn. We'll also, over the course of the conference, be announcing the winner of the FUMSI 'Most Useful Article' citation. As well as that, on the FreePint stand at 11:30am...
"Desirable Future?" at the Dana Centre
I mentioned last week that I was at an event at the Dana Centre to mark the launch of Jack Challoner's book "Desirable Future?: Consumer Electronics in Tomorrow's World". Despite having a couple of friends who have worked at the Science Museum, I've never been to one of the Dana Centre events before, and I was impressed. The format was a five minute presentation from each of the panel, and then the audience broke into groups. I was rather hoping...
November 24, 2008
Local online news video - where do we go from here?
With the announcement of the BBC Trust decision not to allow the BBC to go into English ultra-local news journalism, a huge amount of attention has fallen on the existing regional press. On balance, I think it was probably just about right not to allow the BBC to make more video content available in this area at this time, but, claims that this would have lead to a stifling of commercial content and innovation look pretty hollow if you are...
November 23, 2008
'Kind regards, your Scottish Power robot!'
Having just moved back to the country, I've been, ahem, "enjoying" the British customer service experience as we try and get all of our taxes and utility bills set up for our new home. As frustrating as this has been at times, it still seems a damned site easier than doing it in a foreign language. I could, though, probably write a book about the user experience and service design nightmares we've encountered. Here is just a minor case that...
November 22, 2008
The Economist shows you how to shake up your offline marketing tracking
At the recent Chinwag Live session I attended the focus was very much on ROI - something the web marketing channel is increasingly going to have prove in leaner economic times. It will become more and more important to track the success of marketing spend, which is why I still find it strange that not more marketing campaigns that involve a web component try and do this. Take, for example, this campaign by For Goodness Shakes. There is considerable expense...
November 21, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 12
Yesterday I began to wrap up my series of posts about getting site search right with the start of a step-by-step guide to transforming the style of Google results that users are familiar with, into something with a richer user experience. Add structured data Google understands a lot about the structure of the web. It understands how all the pages that it has crawled on your site are linked together, and uses this to understand what the key pages...
The Financial Times and "the worst online redesign I have ever seen"
Site redesigns are seldom initially popular - you only need to ask BBC News about that - but the new Financial Times homepage seems to have come in for some especially harsh criticism. On The Guardian site yesterday, Andrew Brown launched a withering attack on the redesign, calling it "the worst online redesign I have ever seen". "It is ugly, uninformative and actively confusing. Instead of presenting a lot of information quickly and quietly, it presents very little, slowly, and...
November 20, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 11
Transforming your results During the course of this series of articles, I've looked at various elements of interface design which have been employed, for better or for worse, across a wide range of European newspaper websites. Today I'm going to wrap up the series by laying out a step-by-step transformation of Google's search results listing into something that presents users who opt for 'site search' with a richer UI experience. Google's layout In part 2 of this series, I...
Another threat to local newspapers - daily BBC horoscopes by email!
I love a good spam email title - and I was amused by a sudden rash of spam that appeared last week promising 'Your horoscope every day from BBC'. It was only for a second that I considered it might be genuine, and yet more evidence that the BBC was carefully marching towards occupying every niche market currently served by the UK's beleaguered local newspaper businesses ;-)...
November 19, 2008
FIFA 2010 World Cup qualifying website review - Scotland
During the course of this year's World Cup Qualifiers, I've been looking at the FA websites of the countries that England have been playing. With it being an international friendly night, inspired by a comment from 'Uncle Wilco', I thought I'd look at the website of one of the other 'Home Nations'. Earlier in the year, when the Scottish FA were consulting with their fans over whether the expense of bringing Argentina to play in Glasgow was worth it,...
Tom Dunmore of Stuff says print magazines have a future..."for the moment"
I was at an event at the Dana Centre last night to mark the launch of Jack Challoner's book "Desirable Future?: Consumer Electronics in Tomorrow's World". One of the panel was Tom Dunmore, editor of the UK edition of Stuff magazine. Part of the format of the evening involved breaking into small discussion groups, and I had a chance to ask Tom, how, as a publication talking about new technology, he saw their position in an industry seemingly staring into...
November 18, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 10
Over the last couple of weeks I've been publishing a series of posts about getting site search right, based on my presentation at the 2008 Amsterdam Euro IA Summit. Today I wanted to look at some examples of poor search user experience design which you should seek to avoid. Don't use confusing gimmicks Lots of search technologies come with plenty of features in them for displaying relevancy to the user - almost all of them useless. Giving results a...
November 17, 2008
Protecting the identity of Baby P's killers: The courts vs the people vs the Internet
Update 11th August 2009: The court order preventing publication of the identities of Tracey Connelly and Steven Barker has now been lifted. Update 1st May 2009: This story, that one of Baby P's killers was facing additional charges of abuse against a second child, explains why the names had to be kept out of the public domain back in November 2008. Original article from 17th November 2008:The last few days have shown how very difficult it is to keep information...
'Hornsey Past' with Steven Denford at Hornsey Library
Last Tuesday I went to Hornsey Library in Crouch End to attend a talk by author Steven Denford about his book 'Hornsey Past'. As I've just moved into the area, it seemed like a good opportunity to get a grounding in some of my new basic local history. Denford himself, in his introduction to the topic, admitted that the old villages were never 'caught up in national events', and unfortunately, the subject matter turned out to be a rather dry...
November 16, 2008
Day #2 at Guardian Hack Day
I spent a couple of days this week at The Guardian's first ever Hack Day - open to internal staff and some invited guests. It was great fun, and, I think, a real success. There were a few hacks which I guess people wanted to deploy into production straight away. Nik Silver produced a script that would allow any of the tabular data published on guardian.co.uk to be downloaded as CSV or JSON files. Another hack was to render The...
November 15, 2008
Day #1 at Guardian Hack Day
This week The Guardian held their first internal 'Hack Day', run by Matt McAllister, and based on the original Yahoo! model. Part of the format of a Hack Day is a series of 'lightning presentations', aimed to get the day kick-started. I gave one on Search APIs, and overall they were a rapid-fire whizz around some external resources that would-be hackers could use, plus some explanations of some of the idiosyncrasies of The Guardian's web platform. Guardian technology strategist Stephen...
November 14, 2008
8 Search APIs for Hack Days
I spent most of yesterday at The Guardian's first ever internal Hack Day. I gave one of the short five minute 'lightning' talks that got the event kicked off. I wanted to outline a few of the search related APIs out there that might prove useful as people put their hacks together. Here's the written down version... Google AJAX Search API I'll start with the big one - the Google AJAX Search API. This lets you put Google Search in...
November 13, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 9
I've been writing a series of posts about getting site search right based on my presentation at the Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam this year In the last part I started looking at some examples where search user experience goes wrong. In order to entice the masses away from Google, a site search needs to be on the top of its game, and avoid things like intrusive adverts, opening unnecessary new windows, and providing an inconsistent experience. Another sure...
November 12, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 8
A couple of weeks back I began a series of articles on currybetdotnet based upon my recent talk at the Euro IA Summit. As well as looking at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnails and information Google can't obtain, 'advanced' search, and following some positive European examples, I've been looking at areas of the user experience where designers need to show caution. Today I want to start looking at some examples of...
November 11, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 7
Over the last couple of weeks I've been publishing a series of posts based on an expanded version of the presentation I gave at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam at the end of September. There, I was talking about "Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google", and getting site search right for news. I've looked at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnail images, information Google can't obtain, providing usable 'advanced' search,...
November 10, 2008
The evil of searching for 'Gary Glitter'
Personally I remain unconvinced of the power of 70's music to reach out through time and corrupt the youth of today via the medium of guidance notes for exams, but that hasn't stopped the Gary Glitter GCSE 'scandal' being one of the main media storms of the day. For me perhaps the most unintentionally funny bit of it is the quote from the anonymous headmaster in The Sun about his fears when teenagers go online: "He's a convicted paedophile jailed...
The business of "Rip, Mix and Burn" at NESTA
On Thursday I went to the HQ of innovation supporting NESTA for an evening event with the title "Rip, Mix & Burn: Is Creative Commons a Viable Business Model?". A panel of 4 were addressing the issue of where Creative Commons Licensed content fitted into the media ecosystem. James Boyle Opening the session was James Boyle - one of the legal eagles behind the framework of Creative Commons Licenses. He was at great pains to state that he was not...
November 9, 2008
I wouldn't be voting for this as my interaction of the year
If you are going to produce a celebratory issue with lots of charts and lists of the 'the best of they year', then now is the time to get the punters voting for what to put in the list. Last week I was prompted to vote in Q's poll on the best album of the year. [1] I'm always astonished at the things that seem to go live on the web without having had any serious QA or testing on...
November 8, 2008
He might be the Web 2.0 President, but Barack Obama's change.gov site doesn't get SEO
There has been a lot of discussion in the mainstream media about the role the Internet played in electing Barack Obama as the next President of the USA, but I haven't seen very much of it being focussed on the search engine visibility of the candidates and their campaigns. By Thursday, Obama had launched the change.gov transition portal, and transatlantic search engine guru Danny Sullivan was extremely critical of the search engine friendliness of the site in both an article...
November 7, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 6
Last week I started a series of articles on currybetdotnet based upon my recent talk at the Euro IA Summit. I've been looking at ways that site search can be made distinctive from Google by including thumbnail images and information Google can't obtain, providing usable 'advanced' search, and following some positive examples from newspaper sites across the continent. Today I want to look at two areas where designs need to exercise caution - 'scoped' search and the use of...
November 6, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 5
Since last week I've been posting a series of articles based upon an expanded version of my Amsterdam Euro IA Summit talk. Having looked at ideas like handling advanced search and adding thumbnail images to search results pages, today I want to concentrate on some positive examples of search user interface design from amongst Europe's newspaper website. Hide complicated features Sometimes it is better to hide complicated features. Sweden's Svenska Dagbladet has several options on their homepage search, some...
November 5, 2008
Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 4
I've been presenting a series of articles based on my talk at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam about 'getting site search right for news'. Last week I looked at utilising information that Google can't obtain to make your UI distinctive, and adding thumbnail images into the search results page to improve relevancy recognition for users. Today I want to look at a perpetually tricky area - advanced search. In recent years, even offering advanced search has sometimes...
November 4, 2008
Chinwag Live at the eCommerce Expo: "Social Media ROI"
Last week I went to the eCommerce Expo held at Olympia in Kensington. Yesterday I wrote about a couple of the free 'seminar' sessions that I attended there. One of the main reasons for attending was to see the session being run by Chinwag - "Chinwag Live - Social Media ROI". With my recent series on measuring social media success for newspapers and television channels, it is obviously a topic I am very interested in. Chairman of the session Philip...
November 3, 2008
eCommerce Expo at Kensington Olympia
Last week I went to the eCommerce Expo at Olympia in Kensington. The big draws Google were clearly the big draw of the day. Their AdWords stall was slickly presented - and the credit crunch hadn't stopped them populating it with high-end Macs to do their sales pitch and sign-ups. They were also running AdWords 'universities', which were absolutely packed. Paypal also had a big presence, sponsoring a networking lounge in the middle of the hall. I felt a little...
November 2, 2008
The BBC News linking policy is simply clumsy, not 'greedy'
In a post over at Blogstorm, Patrick Altoft has rather dramatically accused the BBC News website of an 'outrageous act of selfishness and greed' with the way that they link externally. Essentially, he's noticed that now BBC News links pass through what used to be known internally at the BBC as the 'Go tracking system'. When a user clicks on an external link, the request first goes to a BBC URL starting www.bbc.co.uk/go/ and then onto the destination site. Blogstorm...
The Hexenturm Files...coming to Radio 4
You might recall that 18 months ago I was living in Salzburg, Austria, whilst working with Sony. At the time the joint blog that my wife and I write about our travels was called 'Some Edelweiss Of Our Own' rather than 'A lemon tree of our own'. Whilst in Salzburg, my better half wrote a series of articles which she called 'The Hexenturm Files'. She had noticed a picture of a spooky old building in the laundry she used on...
November 1, 2008
A young person's guide to science fiction by Cliff Richard
"I'm into sci-fi (sci-fi, sci-fi) I'm into sci-fi, U.F.O I think that I-Spy, (I-Spy), (I-Spy) And where I go, the Force will go" It would have been around this time of the year, 29 years ago, that I first heard Cliff Richard's "Rock'n'Roll Juvenile" album. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Cliff Richard's albums used to always come out in late September or early October. I'm fairly certain that EMI had their eye on the Christmas present market,...