Bob Browning

Moving on

2008-06-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

I have decided to move to tumblr So find my blog now at

http://www.bobbrowning.me.uk

Bob

The e-conveyancing juggernaut continues towards the cliff edge

2008-06-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

The story so far.

The land registry has decided to get into the 21st century. Which is a good thing, except they have gone the extra mile by replacing signed deeds with electronic documents containing a digital signature. In my belief this will not work - see my August 2003 newsletter for reasons why. The main one being that any punter can use a pen to sign their name but in future your Solicitor will be signing (electronically) on your behalf. So instead of simply pushing some paper around, your solicitor now becomes a signatory in very large transactions.

Final completion of the project has in the last year been put back by four years and the current completion date is 2014-15 a staggering 16-17 years into the project (it all started in 1998). Who knows how many millions will have been spent, and the absurd decision to go for digital signatures may well bring the whole project to its knees.

The most recent project was to introduce a system to create what is called a 'chain matrix'. This would provide buys and sellers with a web page that tracked the progress of the buying chain typical in house purchase transations. This has been quietly shelved after a £4.6m pilot showed little interest in it.

This summer the digital signature (Private Key Encryption or PKI) part will start to come on-stream. This means lawyers will be signing everything on behalf of their customers. A recent isssue of the Law Gazette quotes David Parton, a very senior conveyancing professional: "‘I also think lawyers will be reluctant to sign on behalf of their clients". Duh!

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Bob

Keyword Insertion - not as painful as it sounds.

2008-06-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

When you write an ad for Google adwords, it is important to include the keywords in the text of the ad. So if a user types in 'Motorola V8' you want to ad to say 'Motorola V8' not 'Mobile Phone'. This significantly improves your click-through rate.

Google will put the keywords in bold making them stand out
Having searched for 'Motorola V8' the user will scan the page for the phrase 'Motorola V8' and tend to ignore ads that do not have that phrase.
It makes you look like you are more focused on the users needs

So does this means that if you have 100 keywords you need 100 ads? Not any more. Using keyword insertion you can place the keywords right there in the ad. If the keywords are too large to fit, you can specify a default to be placed in the ad instead.

If your default is 'Mobile Phones', just use this format {KeyWord:Mobile Phones}. If someone searches for 'Motorola V8' that is what they will see. If their phrase is too long (e.g. 'I want a motorola V8 now now now!') then they will get the default (Mobile Phones)

Check out the help file for this for more details. You would be surprised how few Google advertisers use this really valuable feature.

Sales Force Automation and CRM - new approach needed

2008-05-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

I have had a pretty good look at the main serious Web-based hosted SFA and CRM solutions. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, SugarCRM, EBSuite CRM. They are all very similar and probably very appropriate in many situations.

However my opinion is that none of them are intuitive and in a sales situation none of them are fast enough. There are too many clicks for the bread and butter task which is

get the customer history on-screen
identify the contact - or record a new one
record the call,
send a mail
schedule the next call.

The user is buried in a sea of leads, opportunities, tasks, timetables, cases, quotes and projects. Each with its own list and its own update form. Of course most of this doesn't get used, but it does clutter up the screen something rotten.

In the end I wrote a system for my own use and have rolled it out to a couple of clients where we could integrate it with the web site functions so that transactional data is included on the customer screen.

The objective was to be as simple and intuitive as possible. You won't recognise it as the same animal as the market leaders I listed above, but for me at least and my telesales person it seems to work very well at the core task.

There is a demo at http://sales.textor.com

Obviously it needs development and probably money to take it any further. Here is my question. Is there an opportunity here? Should I think about taking it further?

Bob

An own-goal for IBM

2008-04-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before that once a concept becomes 'hot' everyone wants to get on the bandwagon and spin their products. So IBM has announced a new rack-mounted server "designed for heavy traffic web 2.0 social networking sites".

In marketing terms an own goal because the product almost certainly is good for any heavy-duty computer cluster application where fault tolerance for individual systems is not a huge issue (that is the trade-off). By marketing it in this way they are limiting their market to a very small number of specialised web sites. Admittedly these guys buy servers by the thousand, but the market must be much bigger.

Eye tracking - not counterintuitive at all

2008-04-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

I love eye tracking studies. This study tracked men and women separately on the Marks and Spencer home page.

http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/05/five_days_bonus_ms_revisited/

Quote "As you can see, these findings are somewhat counterintuitive. The women were extremely focused on the navigation menus and rarely looked at the main body of the page. However, while the men were also predominantly navigation-focused, they were a lot more willing to venture into the main body of the page - even though the majority of the feature located therein targeted women!"

People! Think!. The centre of the page is a picture of Twiggy with a big smile on her face and below her a couple of other very beautiful women. The men take a sneaky look at some attractive females? Big surprise!

The small print

2008-04-05T02:01:00.000-07:00

A designer who we had done work for just sent me a contract their client had sent them to sign. It was headed 'Assignment of Intellectual Property(IP) Rights'. It would assign all IP rights in the software to the client.

I had to check the date on the email but it was April 3rd not the 1st. We use the identical software on all our client's sites, so the whole idea of giving the IP rights to one of them is a total non-starter. We would be out of business.

We include on all our quotations a para that summarises our terms and conditions which includes a link to our standard licence on our web site. The licence is pretty standard, in fact rather less restrictive than an open source licence. The client has the right to use, copy and modify the software as they see fit. The only real restriction is that they can't go into business selling my software.

So why would they want the IP transferred?

I suspect some lawyer saw a chance to earn some fees. Or some manager somewhere, who didn't bother to ask some basic questions, had the idea that a really serious content management system had been written for them from scratch (in a month and a half - some chance!) and as they had paid for it they should own it. Now the Designer is going to have some difficult conversations with the client.

This could all have been avoided if designers who resell our CMS had terms and conditions which mirrored our own. All I have to is figure out how to persuade them to do it.

SP1 has arrived

2008-03-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have just downloaded Vista SP1. The wretched program warns you that it will take an hour. I watched it for a while and got bored, so I took the hint and went out for a cup of coffee. When I got back there was a 'click here to proceed' thing! It then took about an hour while I twiddled my thumbs.

Why????

In any event I would say it was worth the wait. The machine is noticably slicker. Listing directories and copying files in particular much faster. Or should I say much less slug-like.

Designers are not users are not designers.

2008-03-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

This month we have an outstanding useability column from Jakob Neilsen. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designer-user-differences.html

There are two important insights

Designers are not users
Users are not designers

Like a japanese haiku these two statements can be used for lengthy meditation and should be burned on the heart of every designer. Too many sites are built for the designer, not the user; an exotic, barely understood being. A person who doesn't know how to run a search on Google, let alone manipulate a strange scroll bar or fly-out menu.

Read

Learn.

One born every minute

2008-03-07T02:00:00.000-08:00

If you want a good laugh at other people's expense go take a look at http://www.telebid.com/. It looks like a very cool auction site with some real bargains. There is a 32" flat screen with 49 minutes to go for £197. What is the catch?

The catch is that it costs money to bid. They state very clearly that bidding starts at 10p and it costs 50p for each bid. And each bid ups the price by 7p. Do some math. £197 means that there must have been 2814 bids (197.00 / 0.07). At 50p per bid that means they have made around £1,400 in bidding fees plus the £197 someone will pay for the set.

In a bizarre twist, they are auctioning packs of 300 bids (worth £150). Bidding has already reached £122 so they have made an amazing £871 plus £122 = about a grand selling something that doesn't even costs them anything.

Are there really that many suckers around that they will pay 50p to make a 7p bid on an auction site?

WC Fields had it right. "Never give a sucker an even break."

Google

2008-03-06T06:34:00.001-08:00

This from the Google website

"Unfortunately, we're unable to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for you. If you have questions or you need legal advice on interpreting the terms, please don't hesitate to contact an attorney."

Uh!

What if they leave negative comments on my site/blog/forum?

2008-02-27T07:45:00.000-08:00

Jeremiah Owyang in his blog, asks the following question: "What if they leave negative comments on my site/blog/forum? ". The answer is that it has to be handled well, not covered up or removed.

I have always believe that a customer complaint can be a huge opportunity if handled well.

You routinely buy something from (say) a web site and next day it turns up regular as clockwork. Then something goes wrong. If handled badly you will never go back to that store. If handled really well you will not only go back, but you will tell your friends about it. Why? Because now you know that if something goes wrong in the future these guys will deal with it. It has actually made you happier because before you maybe always had a nagging doubt.

Of course repeated mistakes or mistakes on the first order cannot be recovered from. You just plain need to get your act together.

Firefox myths

2008-02-23T01:52:00.000-08:00

Firefox has been incredibly successful in digging into Microsoft's market share. But many believe every thing they hear that's bad about Microsoft and everything they hear thats good about Firefox. I know a few people who are like that about the USA. This site is devoted to expolding those Firefox myths.

Most common passwords

2008-02-22T01:17:00.000-08:00

Someone has figured out the ten most common passwords. How? I thought they were supposed to be secret. Maybe the ten most common among people who will tell you there password if you ask. Who knows.

Anyway - few surprises. After '123' and 'password' the third was 'liverpool'. Number 9 was 'arsenal'. So if you want to guess a password try some football teams.

Great idea or pyramid scheme?

2008-02-22T00:53:00.000-08:00

You may have got a mail from someone in 'the contactthem' network. It is nicely worded and invites you to make up to $4,800/month (c £2500)to place an ad on your web site.

It turns out that this is not pay per click but an affiliate marketing scheme. You get a commisssion on sales made by people who click on the ad. My experience of such schemes is that you rarely make that sort of money from them. Simple math.

The merchant is selling something for say £20 and you get 5% commission. Assuming a very generous 10% conversion rate and a very generous 10% click through rate and you can easily see that you need 250,000 visitors to generate that much money. So they only work for very high traffic sites.

So how can they make such claims? The answer is pyramid selling. Some of the ads are for the contactthem scheme and you get a percentage of any income from affiliates recruited via that link.

Will it work as advertised? You be the judge.

Useability

2008-02-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

Jabob Nielsen's regular useability column is always an interesting read. I like the analogy he gives for his number one rule - stick to standard checkboxes, radio buttons and so on.

"If you change the appearance or behavior of these units, it's like suddenly injecting foreign words into a natural-language communication. Det vil gøre læserne forvirrede (or, to revert to English: Doing so will confuse readers). "

I have noticed (like Neilsen) that the most common victim is the humble scrollbar. I have no idea why, but every designer seems to think that scrollbars are really ugly and need reworking. Neilsen observes that these "almost always cause users to overlook some of their options."

He continues:
"If Jakob's Law is "users spend most of their time on other websites," then Jakob's Second Law is even more critical: "Users have several thousand times more experience with standard GUI controls than with any individual new design." "

Another fake survey

2008-01-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

I have just received (second time this week) a 'survey' form from a charity. Both 'surveys' are similar. They start out like a regular market research survey. The last few questions are along the lines:

Do you think this is worthwhile work (Y/N)
Do you realise we are reliant on donations (Y/N)
Are you willing to donate (Y/N)

The moment I see one of these so-called surveys any sympathy I might have for the charity goes straight out of the window. These things are dishonest and sorry - I am not interested.

e-enablement, e-government and e-nonsense

2008-01-07T01:00:00.000-08:00

There is a planning document issued by the land registry aimed at solicitors preparing for e-conveyancing. Section 3 goes like this

Our preparatory research has identified that there are five possible stages in the development of IT systems in organisations.

You have PCs on desks which are not yet linked to each other
The PCs on your desks are networked to each other
Your business processes have been redesigned to benefit from
networked PCs
Your system plugs into a network external to your organisation
You have redesigned your business to reflect the interaction of networks

The "Realisation of potential benefits" is identified as going from low to high as you progress from 1 to 5.

This is not the first time I have seen nonsense like this coming out of government. It is misleading on so many levels. Primarily however the assumption that connecting your internal systems to an external network (i.e. the Internet) is a 'good thing'. Actually it is something to be done only if there are business benefits that over-ride the huge risks - which are not mentioned anywhere in this document. As this is aimed at conveyancers whose systems control millions of pounds of their customer's money this becomes a far from trivial issue.

The document comes from a web site where for example we see this phrase

The central service will provide for automatic exchange of contracts relating to all transactions in a property chain. For this and other purposes, conveyancers will need to have electronic signatures.

As we all know an electronic signature is something attached to a document and is unique to that document. What conveyancers will been is a certificate. In security terms this is a schoolboy howler that has been repeated in various documents since 2002. It indicates to me that the people over there have only the slimmest grasp of security theory. A truly frightening prospect when it seems that they are controlling the most valuable asset that any of us owns.

what is an electronic signature

2008-01-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

From the Land Registry web site

"The central service will provide for automatic exchange of contracts relating to all transactions in a property chain. For this and other purposes, conveyancers will need to have electronic signatures."

Repeat after me. Electronic signatures are things you attach to documents, one per document. conveyancers will need to have certificates.

For a simple explanation of all this see my piece on e-conveyancing.

The thing is that anyone with even the slimmest of understanding of the technology would not make such a schoolboy howler. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

e-enablement Uh!

2008-01-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I wrote a couple of semi-serious piece about the latest (at the time) government folly - e-conveyancing. The thing I objected to is the idea of storing legal documents electronically, digitally signed to guarantee authenticity. I decided to use this piece as an exercise in search engine optimisation and lo - it is number 2 now if you search in google for e-conveyancing!

From time to time I look at the land registry site to see if their grip on reality has improved. The latest is the e-conveyancing planning book.

Typical questions.

2.1 are your clients e-enabled

What in blue blazes is this supposed to mean? I looked it up in wikipedia and it aprently means:

"E-enablement is the transformation of a business system or process to make it streamlined and render it accessible via the Internet. "

Are your clients accessible via the internet? I guess if they have email they are. But see section 3 below this - there is some help.

2.2 Do you know how your clients will want to do business with you in the future (eg face to face, online, phone)?

How can you answer this question?

2.4 Are you ready to take full advantage of evolving e-systems to add value to your services?

What is an e-system when it is at home? Wikipedia is of no help here. I have no idea what it means and I have been in the IT industry for many decades. So how is the poor solicitor supposed to answer it.

3 E-enablement

Now I understand. E-enablement means you have your systems plugged into the Internet. Which you need to have "high realisation of potential benefits".

NO!

It means you have high risk of someone breaking in to your systems, which in a business dealing with millions of pounds of clients money is no small risk.

This stuff is complete rubbish.

How much !

2007-12-11T02:26:00.000-08:00

How much would a company like EDS charge to strip personal data from the database that was sent by CD and lost in the post.

The telegraph reveals that this would 'only' be £5,000.

HOW MUCH!!!

This would take most competent database administrators, say, a couple of hours - let's be generous. Five grand - that is daylight robbery. How much of our tax-payers money is being squandered on these people.

Lost CDs - not the whole story

2007-11-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

There seem to be a number of red herrings in the CDGate scandal. Firstly we are asked to believe that a 23 year old clerical officer was (a) able to and (b) did download the primary database onto a CD and send it to the audit office.

Has anyone asked how he did this. Is there a button on their system saying 'download to a CD'? I hardly think so.

Secondly it seems some senior staff were copied on emails.

Irrelevant.

It is common practice in large organisations to copy director level on everything for just this purpose - to protect someones backside. As a result senior staff get bucketloads of mail every day. If they read it all I would be asking why are they being so unproductive as 99.99% has no business in their in-tray. Sort of internal spam.

Better questions are:

1) Who asked this guy or gal to send the data on - pesumably his/her direct supervisor.
2) What exactly did they ask him/her to do
3) Who else was involved in creating this disk

I think we would be getting closer to finding out who should get fired.

VBV - cause for concern

2007-11-12T05:17:00.000-08:00

I got called out to a meeting with a client on Saturday evening, and it turned out at the bottom of it all was this: They had turned on Verified By Visa a few weeks ago, and on Saturday morning the MD of the company plus the designer tried to make a paid registration and just plain couldn't figure out how to get past the VBV screen.

If you have ever tried this you will understand this, as it is a text-book example of bad useability. Initial indications are that the level of registrations has halved since they switched it on.

I know that some firms are being pressurised by their banks to implement VBV but am very concerned about the effect this will have on business. A partner company in the US has told me that it has pretty much died over there.

Big brother is watching you

2007-11-06T04:16:00.000-08:00

Next time you tell people about your ski trip on your social networking site, don't be surpised if a ski supplier advertisement pops up. It is called hypertargeting and Myspace, facebook etc are all going in for it. They will use all sorts information about you, including messages and interests to target you with advertisements.

Good thing? I don't know, it seems sort of spooky but I guess we will get used to it. It is only a computer after all, it is not as if a human is eavesdropping on our every move.

Biba - a lesson for us all

2007-10-05T02:50:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to an evening hosted by those lovely people at Rackspace at the Kensington Roof Gardens. It all came back to me. This was BIBA.

You can tell how old you are when you are the only person in a group to remember BIBA. In the 60's it was the epitomy of cool. A department store like no other. High fashion sold in the exotic art deco surroundings of the old Derry and Tom's store. A massive place, set like a stage with mood lighting and notoriously snooty sloan ranger assistants. An at the top of it all the 30's roof garden where you could have a coffee and watch the beautiful people.

Why did it fail? A combination of things:

The mood lighting made it rather too easy for shoplifters and 'shinkage' was crippling.
It was a great tourist atraction and people came to look not to shop
Accountants took over and drove it down-market, looting this fabulous brand until it died.

A lesson for us all. No matter how great it is, it has to work.

email flurry - haven't seen one of those for years

2007-10-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

Someone (at http://www.ampsl.com/) sent out a spam email with the addresses of the recipeints in the mail. This meant that everyone saw who it was going to. One of many - so I deleted it as usual.

However it started to get replies. Someone decided to mail everyone with their offer. Then spam filters started relying to the list with bounce messages. Then we got angry 'please remove me' messages.

All of these got sent to everyone, and we seemed to reach some sort of critical mass where I must have got about 50 emails.

This used to be quite a regular occurance before people understood how to spam, but it has been years.

The last mail said this. I like it.

"After receiving numerous emails from Ampsl Intl ltd with kind offers to buy their products I felt their sales staff would not mind considering products we offer to sell so I sent our marketing info to sales@ampsl.com.

I am sure their sales team sales@ampsl.com would like to hear from all their email friends as to what we as "the ampsl email database" have to offer them "

So lets all send them something...

Another one down

2007-10-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

Another site released... things are getting busy around here..

What should an e-commerce site cost?

2007-10-02T05:31:00.000-07:00

Should an ecommerce site cost £1,000, £10,000 or £50,000? There is a big disconnect between our development costs for an ecommerce site and many prospect's expectations.

With a designer, we developed an ecommerce brand and web site (www.dotcomstore.co.uk) and used Pay Per Click (PPC) to get clients. I think it is a great site, and it seemed like a pretty good wheeze at the time. We spent a couple of grand on PPC before we gave up. Why? We got lots of leads but every one of them expected to spend £2,000 or less on their web site.
www.firstratedirectory.co.uk is a pretty smart lead generation web site. They publish requests for information (RFI) aimed at people in our businesss. I don't believe I have seen an ecommerce RFI on the site ever with a budget of more than £5k. Mostly budgets are in the low four figures. I recall someone who wanted an ecommerce site for an auto parts business with a full bill of materials breakdown and a budget of £2k.

There is no way we can produce a web site for this sort of number. A good design by a competent designer is in the £3-6k range and even a very vanilla site will take us a week to set up. So our starting budget is around £6k and we go up to £50k for the bigger more custom sites.

Are we doing something wrong? One of our clients decided for very good reasons to use a (very) serious hosted US-based service called Netsuite. Sadly there was some confusion about who was going to skin the various functions and we ended up doing it. My programmer was on this for about four days with the HTML already cut. This stuff can be complicated.

The only way these expectations can be met as far as I can see is:

Use a pre-existing template married to a vanilla ecommerce system. Literally plug and go.
Off-shore the work.

There is obviously a market for the first approach. I have had a few leads myself from people with low level operations and a vanilla requirement who I have pointed at a templated system. However the leads I am discussing above are for people who's business model justifies something better than this, indeed won't get anywhere without a substantial marketing budget.

The other issue is that project management time is often disproportionately high for low-budget projects, simply because small clients don't have the internal disciplines of larger companies. A £2k budget could easily be eaten up in client relations.

The £64,000 question is what happens to these guys? Do they get a serious site built in India for £2,000 and then go on to make their first million or do all these enterprises disappear?
Should I be developing a templated £2k solution or stick to my knitting? If I do, how do I control project management costs?

Its done - phew

2007-09-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Did you know that if you search for racing grannies on YouTube, there are over 200 clips. Very cool. At last the web site is live. Punters can now buy their Racing Grannies and Fighting Grandads from the source.

Is it time to resurrect SET

2007-09-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

About eight years ago the banks looked at the new world of e-commerce and were horrified at the possibilities for fraud. Visa and MasterCard came up with SET (Secure Electronic Transactions). The idea was that our banks would all issue us with certificates and we would digitally sign every credit card transaction that we made on-line. Huge amounts of money were poured into this and a whole industry created.

Certificates were going to be put on the chip on our bank card.
All computers would be made with built-in smart card readers.
All the e-commerce software was going to be enhanced to support SET.
Venture capitalists funded software companies by the dozen.
A web site was set up (it is gone now http://www.setco.org)
Bankers would tell me that it was 'definitely going to happen'.

At that time cards didn't have chips in them and PCs didn't have card readers. So it was all completely impractical of course. I said so at the time.

Have things changed?

I think they have. In the first place cards do have chips in them. And although PCs don't have card readers, they all have a USB port now. So why not include a wireless proximity gizmo in the credit card (like your Oyster card) and distribute a USB receiver to customers. The receiver would be pretty cheap to make an so the customer would just have to wave the card at the PC to transfer information to it.

Chip and Pin security for ecommerce transactions. It would save banks and merchants lost of dough.

Bob

Does the world need another sales force automation system

2007-09-07T01:57:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com pretty much has the market for Sales Force Automation services sewn up. (it used to be called 'Contact Management') They offer a hosted application accessibile via the web and it is a great product. They deserve their place at the top.

So why have we just release a new Sales Force Automation system?

I don't want to sound too patronising here, but most sales people I know have a relatively short attention span and zero interest in details. They want their tools to be simple, intuitive and fast. So the number of screens and menu options in salesforce.com tend to lead to confusion. I have designed a system based around just two screens.

A list of your accounts and a list of current actionss outstanding.
A screen about one customer or prospect that you can do anything with by revealing various forms.

The important thing is that neither screen shows all the options up front. But when you click on a link to (say) record a conversation, a form is revealed. Even this form is fairly simple, but as you click on options different bits of the form are revealed. For example if you want to send an email you select from a list of potted emails and a pre-filled email form is presented.

Because our system is integrated with our other software we can customise it. For a client who has an online directory, the sales person can switch directory options on and off and give temporary features from the customer page.

Take a look and let me know what you think. http://www.textor.com/sales-force-automation.html . There is a link to a demo.

Bob

Perl is alive

2007-08-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

Is Perl old hat. Shouldwe all be retraining in the latest shiny thing to pass by (Ruby on Rails I think)?

I have been programming for more years than I can mention and every few years a new language comes along that absolutely everyone has to get into because the old languages are dead.

The fact is that since PL/1, which was the first 3GL to combine the requirements of commercial and scientific users, the world has only needed at most one more language. Sadly not one that has been created: PL/2 the object-oriented version of PL/1.

I use Perl from day to day because it is there. It is no better or worse overall than all the others. I can deliver solutions with it, and frankly that is all I care about.

Bob

Why are mobile phones so hard

2007-07-05T09:13:00.001-07:00

I don't use my mobile much. What I need is a phone that also stores my calendar and frequently-used phone numbers. That is about it.

All phones synchronise with your PC don't they? That is what the nice man in Carphone Warehouse told me anyway.

Nonsense of course. All phones synchronise all the entries in your outlook address book. In my case around one thousand. Very few phones allow you to tag entries in your address book for synchronisation. My Moto does.

Very few phones sync your calendar. My Moto doesn't any more. Not since I installed Outlook 2007. The support forum for the software tells me that a new version is with Moto for testing and that this normally takes two months.

They only ship a few million phones, what is so hard about shipping software that works.

Vista issues

2007-05-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

So it seems that my Dell Optiplex 745 (a fairly recent model) comes equipped with a network card that does not support 'TCP Window Scaling' - whatever this is. The effect of this is that Outlook, Skype, and Windows live messenger all fail to work.

You have to type this at the prompt

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

which disables it until windows encounters a problem and decides to heal itself when the process starts over again.

Aaaaarrrrhhhh...!

Try Vista - maybe

2007-05-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

I have my brand new shining computer with Vista. Dell delivered it last week. It has been hell. Nothing works:

We have three printers networked.

One old HP for which there is not and never will be a driver for Vista.
One relatively new HP deskjet for which there is a local printer driver but it seems no network printer driver. I can just about get this working by pretending it is a local printer, but creating a port which point to a network address. Thanks to someone in a forum somewhere who provided this workaround after about half a day.
A Minolta colour laser that just works (do we see the beginning of a pattern here).

I also got Outlook 2007. The email didn't work at all. After another half a day we found that you needed to disable some TCP framing or something. It involved copying a horrendous instruction into the prompt as administrator. Not for the faint hearted but it worked.

Trying to get a dual monitor arrangement wasn't fun either - another whole day at least - and another story.

A community aimed at business - just what we need (or do we)

2007-04-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

With all these millions being made from 'communities' and 'user-generated income' obviously there is a bomb to be made out of a myspace aimed at the business community. Now BT have one http://www.bttradespace.com/. OK I have registered (http://textor.bttradespace.com/). What do I get out of it?

1. A fairly neat way of creating a web site about my company. Actually I already have one of those.
2. I can join a 'community' such as software developers or business services. However apart from being listed with other members I don't seem to be able to commune in any way
3. A forum. I don't believe it! I have to re-register to use the forum - presumably because they have used a third-part product and haven't figured out how to integrate it. Given how much money they spent on everything else I would have thought they could work this out.

What is this doing for me exactly?

We have discussed developing something similar ourselves in a particular niche. Investors are keen because 'community' and 'user generated content' are flavour of the month. However I coudn't see it then and I don't see it now. Unlike the average MySpace member who probably thinks it pretty neat to have their own web space (it is), a business looks for business benefits if this is going to take up my valuable time.

This obviously cost BT a lot of money but I don't see it going very far.

Got Joost - not got Joost

2007-04-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

I have a Joost account. The bad news. It won't run worth a damn on my three year old business computer.

It queried the video memory when I installed is (it was looking for 48meg I had 32), and I don't know if this is the problem. However a lot of home machines are not so new.

The user interface is nothing like any windows program so its hard to figure out how to operate it. The video quality is however excellent.

When I have my new computer (soon I hope) I will give it another shot.

Outlook 2007 - a downgrade?

2007-03-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

For some reason best known to themselves Microsoft have decided to use the HTML rendering engine from Word rather than IE7 to render HTML emails in Outlook 2007.

Amongst other things this means that if you put animated gifs in your emails then only the first frame is displayed. It also means that CSS takes a step back a few years. Basically emails that used to be fine with Outlook won't work going forward.

Why?

1. Outlook creates HTML emails using Word, so maybe they thought it would be a good idea to read them using Word as well. As long as all emails are created by Outlook it would be fine.
2. There is some security reason I havn't thought of. I still can't think of one.
3. There is some deep technical reason why they couldn't integrate IE7 and this is a last-minute kludge.
4. There is some legal reason to do with IE7 being part of the operating system (not a stong one this because Oulook must use all kinds of bits of the Operating System).
5. Microsoft hates us

Maybe this will get fixed in SP1. However the fix is likely to be a switch that allows you to use IE7 to render emails, switched off by default so none of your customers use it.

Is it just me, but what is this web 2.0 3.0 thing about?

2007-02-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

Software is released with version numbers that contain dots. Version 0.x normally beta, 1.0 the first release. Then the small number changes as small upgrades are made, 1.1, 1.2 etc. The big number changes when a really big step-change in function is made (and some marketeer decides he/she can stiff customers for some more money for an upgrade - thus the somewhat miniscule incremental changes in word for windows since version 1.2)
Since the web was invented in 1994, or whenever Netscape beta was released, there have been a number of really important developments:

Tables
Background images
Frames (maybe not) - but Iframes are handy
Secure Socket Layer
Javascript
Java
Sounds
Streaming media
Cascading style sheets
Web services
Different encoding methods
AJAX

etc etc.

Now someone tell me what step increase in functionality justifies a big-number change. Secure Socket Layer - allowing us to actually make payments over the web without losing our shirt? How about Javascript allowing client-site computing? Streaming media is pretty cool how about that? Cascading style sheets - definitely.

If we gave the web version numbers like we give software version numbers we would be on version 8.5 by now.

So what is this web 2.0 thing about? And how come we go straight to 3.0 without any intervening numbers? Who decides anyway.

Sorry chaps - its nonsense.

EU Internet sales on the way up

2007-02-19T01:56:00.000-08:00

The EU predicts a fivefold increase in wbe sales to 8.3 billion Euros by 2010. I think the point three is a nice touch giving a bogus impression of precision.

Why can't they be honest and say that they think that maybe Internet sales in 2010 will be between 7 and 9 billion - or whatever they think the forecasting error on this sort of thing is.

Internet TV and IPTV - any difference

2007-01-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

Internet TV is an exciting possibility which is in its infancy. The technical quality of TV available now is remarkable, but at this stage little of it is a scheduled program such as you might recognise on your domestic TV. Take a look at Narrowstep. Sometimes this is called IPTV (Internet Protocol TV).

However there is something else that uses the same (or similar) technology, is called IPTV and is big business now. This is essentially a muli-channel cable service offered by telephone companies using their existing telephone lines and broadband technology to deliver it.

You can't compare the two, but it is easy to get confused. The cable type service is delivered over the telephone company's private managed network, not the global internet. Therefore they can deliver HD TV, and they can use broadcast protocols which are much more efficient.

It is important to distinguish the two and a proposed convention is to use Internet TV for Internet TV and IPTV for the cable type of service.

Joost - is this really going to be the new force in IPTV

2007-01-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

The founders of Skype with all their $zillions are getting into IPTV (Internet TV). I don't blame them. We have been looking at this area with a client and it is potentialy huge.

As you would expect the Joost web site has some movies explaining what they will do.

a) not streamed, some are 10 meg
b) quicktime which most Internet users don't have

Jeezzzz or should I say Jooozzz...

Managing expectations for SEO

2006-08-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

On e-consultancy this week the following post - names changed to protect the possibly innocent:

We started to work with Xxxx and received no results. Our Googole Page-Rank is lower then before. (sic) We payed in advance and trying to get the money back. ...

My response:

I have never heard of them before, but according to their web site Xxxx will do things like:

Keyword analysis
Create a sitemap
Submit to search engines
Submit to directories
Optimise web pages (headlines, link structure etc)
Check for compliance with standards
Rename html files

This all sounds like standard SEO good practice. They don't suggest that they have some magic new technology. The problem is that even doing all this, Google can change its algorithms so that you drop in the rankings.

Question. Did they promise
(a) to do the above or
(b) to improve your rankings?

If (b) then your were mis-sold because nobody can guarantee to get you top ranking. The rankings are a moving target. You can justifiably ask for your money back on the basis of mis-selling.

However if they just promised (a) to optimise your site using SEO best practice and your rankings got worse, then you have a much harder job of work. Maybe you would have dropped even further down the rankings without their efforts. You have to prove they were not competent in what they did.

The IBM PC Myth

2006-08-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

The IBM PC was 25 years old yesterday.

Happy Birthday!

On the BBC the announcer introduced the story by telling us that IBM invented the PC 25 years ago and how Microsoft was so clever in inventing the PC operating system.

Not exactly as I remember it!

We had a Syrius PC in the office - and a great box it was. When it became obvious that the IBM PC was going to be big ,Syrius announced a 'downgrade card' that made the box PC compatable. We all nodded our heads - how true that was - and bought the card.

The Syrius, along with just about everything else in those days ran under the CP/M operating system from a company called Digital Research. That included the Apple II for which I think Apple could be justified in claiming to have invented the PC mass market. And Digital Research could have been said to have invented the Micro operating system.

You had run CP/M because Visicalc - the killer app of the time (they invented the spreadsheet) ran under CP/M. I went to the announcement of the IBM PC in New York and the presenter was downright sheepish about the PC DOS operating system they had provided. It is received wisdom that IBM provided the inferior PC DOS operating system because the authors of CP/M thought that they owned the market and could dictate terms to IBM. How little they knew about the marketing muscle of IBM in the 80s. Anyway we were assured that CP/M would be provided in a few months as an option, and PC DOS looked a bit lilke a stopgap.

Well respected comentators shook their heads and said that without CP/M the IBM PC would never fly. Then Lotus 123 was announced and suddenly CP/M didn't seem such a big deal.

Digital research went on to develop a multi-tasking operating system which would run multiple PC DOS sessions and a graphical user interface. All to no avail. Whatever happened to Digital Research - I think they went bust.

Help that doesn't

2006-07-13T01:14:00.000-07:00

Microsoft are promising a great tool in the adcenter labs web site.

One really useful functiuon is to find out what searches people did immediately before or after searching on a particular search key. When they have a decent database this is going to be very useful.

They have an option to change the search sequence. If you want to know what this means you hover over the text and get an explanation in a little yellow box for about 4 seconds before is closes itself.

As you cant possibly read this in 4 seconds here it is.

Original search sequence means the resulted search funnel is built using all original search queries in the search sessions; Consolidated search sequence means the resulted search funnel is build by consolidating all continuous and discontinuous search sequences in the search sessions. For example, the search sequence A->B->C will be consolidated into the search sequence A->C if A->B-C is far less fewer than A->C, and the resulted search funnel will be A->C. This way, we eliminate many hairy search sequences that only happen in a few search sessions.

Uh!

We need more standardisation.

2006-07-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

In a very interesting piece of research by Snow Valley they looked at a number of ecommerce sites. They found 79 different ways in which sites asked for your credit card type, number, your name and so on. This is a very simple form on every ecommerce site with (normally) about six fields on it!

They found 28 different terms used for the card security number (the three digits on the back of the card – technically the CVC number).
For me, this points to the need for serious standardisation, and design patterns are the way to make this happen. There is a need for an industry body to create standard design patterns for the most common operations. Starting with scrolling text and finishing with the registration form.

What does this do for creativity? I tell you what. I have just started designing a car, and I am really really really bored with the arrangement of pedals…. You get the idea?

People are not visiting web sites to admire your creativity (normally – certainly not on ecommerce sites). They want from an ecommerce site:

To be assured that the site is not run out of a garage with a site designed by someone’s brother in law who is awfully good with computers – so it needs to look good.
To find what they need quickly – and that flash splash screen you just spent the last week on gets right in the way of that. I have heard it referred to as the skip intro screen.
To be able to find out enough about the product to decide whether they want it or not. So that six point grey text on slightly darker grey background may look cool but is going to go down like a lead balloon to someone who just wants to see the specs of the product.
To be able to buy it quickly and easily without having to learn a whole new set of skills.

If you lose sight of these four objectives then you customer is going to lose money and go to another designer next time.

Bob

Design patterns

2006-07-12T00:30:00.000-07:00

The term ‘design patterns’ has been used in computer science to refer to computer techniques that can be re-used rather than having to be worked out from scratch every time. Now the term is being hijacked by the web design community to refer to design problems that can be solved once and then reused. If you design websites you need to know what this is about.

Yahoo are perhaps the most advanced uses of this technique. They have a design pattern library which you can access here. http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

Each pattern is specified with:

An image showing how the design is presented
A problem summary (e.g. The designer needs to call attention to where a data value or content has changed…)
Use when - A list of places where the solution would be used.
The solution. A specification of the solution e.g. Change the background color of the content area or data value to a light pastel color.
Rationale. The reason for adopting this approach
Accessibility. A discussion of the accessibility of this pattern.

This very formal presentation forces the designer to think through the part of the design and to make sure that every issue has been covered.

By doing this once and then pulling the pattern off the shelf when it is needed the design team:
Prevents continual reworking of ideas

Makes sure usability and accessibility issues are thoroughly thought through
Ensures a consistent user interface throughout the site. The customer only has to learn one way of doing things

Surgeon heal thyself

2006-07-01T03:48:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago I received a regular email newsletter from Business Link for London. This site is big on advice to small business in London, paid for by you and me.

It had a link to a white paper 'choosing a web designer' so I put it to one side to read later. Here we are 'later' so I resurrected the mail and clicked the link to go to the white paper. Here is what happened:

I was asked for email and password
I hadn't been back for some time so the site asked me to confirm my details and add a few items of information
The screen then said. And I quote:

Thank you, your Contact and company details have now been updated.
Please select which details you wish to review and update.
Contact and company details
Additional contact details

etc etc

Er Um... the white paper - remember???

Form someone dishing out advice, you would think they could do better than this.

And the white paper...

Long on platitudes short on practical advice. They refer to a couple of developer directories but no web links to make the easy to find - you have to Google them yourself.

If you couldn't work out things like the following for yourself you have no business in charge of a we site:

"Look for developers with a track record and capabilities that are appropriate to the type of project you wish to undertake. "

on costs ...

"In instances where work is billed on the basis of time and materials, the key factor is usually staff day rates ... " give me a break! How about telling people to insist on a fixed price.

Promising start for Microsoft adcenter labs

2006-06-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

Microsoft see advertising as a major revenuw stream for the future, and have set up the adcenter labs project to research advertising data. The results are still at the proof-of-concept stage but this is definitely something to track.

Here are some highlights:

Search funnel - having searched on a keyword, what keywords will the user try next to get to the results they need. This tool tells you. The keywords tracked are limited at present but it will be very interesting when the full database is built.
Seasonal trends - shows you how the usage of a particular keyword varies over the year.
Content categorisation - given a web site address the program gives you its best guess at the business areas it covers.
Demogaphics - given a web site address give you the age ranges of people visiting the site.

and much more...

Emily

2006-06-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

I got a call from Emily - a local Chiswick resident, who wanted to publicise her book - or at least get it published. As her knowledge of the web is zero and her budget about the same size we took it on pro bono - I think that is what lawyers call it.

Check it out all you publishers.

e-conveyancing - more madness

2006-06-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

The first e-conveyancing pilot is being launched in October 2007. I am sure it will be successful. Participation is voluntary and therefore will only be used by technology early adopters and evangelists in larger law firms, with client who are keen to be at the forefront of technology.

I predict that the results will be published showing unbounded enthusiasm by users and great business benefits.

Wait until the thing goes live. Average punters are going to be told that they won't be signing their conveyancing documents because the technology for electronic signature is so complex that the solicitor (who probably doesn't fully understand it) has to sign everything on their behalf. This is for transactions involving 6-7 figure sums of money.

The first e-conveyancing transaction that goes pear-shaped will hit the front pages in the first year and the project will spiral out of control as people try and rescue their careers from disaster.

Digital TV - more madness

2006-06-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

My trusty video recorder just packed in. I don't watch that much TV, but the few things I like tend to be on at inconvenient times so I like to record them. That is what VCRs were for.

They don't make them any more, and as far as I can make out the popular replacement item is a DVD recorder. However I have heard these are not that user friendly. Also as far as I can tell most of them don't have a digital tuner, so in the new world of digital television they will be about as useful as a housebrick for recording TV. I have a Freeview box but long ago gave up on trying to record from it. Switch it on, tune to the right channel, set the VCR to the right channel and hope that no-one comes along and switches channels in the meantime. It doesn't work.

But there is an answer. The PVR. These have a couple of digital tuners (so you can watch one channel while recording another) and record on a hard disk. Basically Sky+ but for free digital TV.

But Currys doesn't even have a PVR category on their web site. They stock about four models. Most other retailers are the same.

So here we are:

1. The digital conversion program completes in 2012 - just six years away
2. While some Televisions being sold now have a digital tuner almost no recording devices do.

Madness.

All Cretans are Liars

2006-05-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

This quote was attributed to Epimenides - himself a Cretan. Wait a minute: if his statement is correct than as a Cretan he must be lying - therefore his statement must be incorrect. But the statement can't be both correct and incorrect, it is a logical loop.

Some logic problems like this are quite hard. Here is another one, not so difficult.

"Growth will require the investment of more money in the company"

"We need growth therefore we should invest more money in the company"

They look the same, and a surprising number of business people think they are the same. However Investment without a clear plan can do the opposite - loading a company with Debt which can't be repaid.

Put a phone number on your ecommerce site

2006-05-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

I always recommend to clients that they put their phone number prominently on every page of their ecommerce sites. I believe it re-assures customers that if they have a problem, the customer can talk to someone.

I just proved to myself that it was the right advice for the wrong reason.

I purchased a print server from a very well-known electronics firm that we have used for years (who shall of course be nameless). It turned up and I could see from the picture on the outside of the box that it was the wrong sort of centronics plug. I didn't even remove the shrink-wrap. So I went into 'my account' => 'select order' => 'returns' => and the system told be that because I had waited more than 7 days it was too late to return it. This was on the same day it was delivered, the day after I ordered it. But the good news was that there was a form to contest this, which I filled out.

Nothing

A week passed, this wretched box still on my desk, I went back to the site so I could phone them. What do you know - no phone number. Which I hadn't noticed over many years of visiting the site.

I am sure some accountant thought it was a good idea to save money on support staff by not publishing their phone number, but it means that they have lost my custom for ever because of a £45 item. My experience over many years is that every cock-up is a sales opportunity. A failure handled well can bring you repeat business and recommendations. Handled badly and you have lost your customer.

How can you handle the problem well if your customer can't talk to you?

In any event I have learned my lesson - I will check for a phone number before I buy anything, no matter how well-known the firm.

Bob
http://www.textor.com

Google calendar - nice job pity I cant use it

2006-05-05T02:06:00.000-07:00

Google calendar is a great piece of work, smooth as silk, very functional. But sadly missing one item I neeed - synchronisation to Outlook. Without this its no use to me.

I will carry on using Plaxo - nice system and syncs beautifully - most of the time.

Another web - based replacement for Word - no cigar.

2006-04-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 and AJAX are the way of the future for sure, Microsoft is about to lose its word processing market as new web-based word processing applications such as Writely take over.

Or not.

I was too late to sign up for writely, but there is a new application at http://www.ajaxwrite.com/ which you can use for free. Sadly no cigar - it is full of bugs. But an interesting demonstration of what is possible.I think it exposes some limitations. I would be interested to know if people who have tried other products such as Writely see the same sort of thing.

To edit a file you have to upload it. As most broadband has a 256k upload speed this could take a while for large documents.
Can a server-based application ever have anough control over the printer to get things formatted just right?
How can the sever-based application save the file to the right path on my computer?
I like to edit pictures in my image editor and just copy and paste direct into my word document - will that ever be possible?

These are just a few things that occured to me, I am sure there are more. My feeling is that this is never really going to work 100% unless and until Micosoft decides to get into this market and adapt IE for the requirements of its web-based applications. Thereby opening up yet more security holes no doubt. And why would they do that anyway and open themselves up to real competition?I remain a sceptic.

The skills required to run a whelk stall

2006-03-06T02:46:00.000-08:00

A phrase often used to critisise a senior politician or corporate manager is "He couldn't run a whelk stall" - attributed I believe to Winston Churchill. However the skills to run a whelk stall are quite different from the skills to run a major corporate department, and I am not convinced that they are any simpler:

Total control of detail. You have to know everything that happens, if you run out of wooden forks you are the only person to blame.
Working always on the edge. If you do run out of whelks you are out of business - period. There is no corporate infrastructure to help out.
Don't delegate. You tell people what to do and then follow up to make sure they have done it. If you delegate whelk-ordering to your assistant Jimmy, it is absolutely no help to know that it was his fault you are out of business. Out of business is out of business and no-one else cares the way you do.
Results are the only important measure of success. A lot of corporate sales people spend most of their time explaining why they havn't made their numbers - and if only the product was changed such and such way they would be able to hit the target. In a small business - forget it. You make the numbers or someone else does. A small business can't afford sales people who are incapable of selling the product you have rather that the one they wish you had. A manager who plays the 'if-only' game is heading for the tubes.

I was told once that the most critical period for a growing business is when they pass an invisible barrier at about 20-30 people. At this point you start being an organisation and the management skills needed flip to those required to run an organisation. I have seen this happen and its true.

Cheap leads

2006-02-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

I had a call from a very nice lady who offered me a trial subscription to a lead-generation service called first rate directory. The price for a lead is low - less than a tenner.I checked it out and the site is a nice piece of work. Looks good, works well and lots of leads.However here is a typical lead:

Lead runs a garage repair business and would like to start selling car parts. He would require the user to search by Type of car then by the type of car part e.g. wiper blades, gear nobs etc then by manufacturer then by part no./type. Then through to the checkout to buy product. He would want to add products himself (but will need some instruction. Will also need hosting and a domain name. Is willing to work with anyone in the UK and has a budget of £1000.

I emphasise that this is typical. Two people have already purchased this lead and they have had 9 leads in the last two days in the category Web Site Development.

Is there some parallel universe out there where people are getting major e-commerce websites developed for £1,000? Is there a bug in their system and all the budgets are missing a decimal point?

The technology for marketing exhibition

2006-02-08T00:53:00.000-08:00

I went to the technology for marketing exhibition at Olympia yesterday. Reactions:

The subheading was technology for sales, and in fact we were looking for sales force automation tools. Couldn't find one - except goldmine. This is despite there being 30+ listed in the exhibition index. Tick-all-the-box-itis strikes again.
There were however a lot of CRM solutions, email marketing solutions and web analytics.
I don't quite understand what a web analytics tool costing ten grand a year does that the free Google analytics product doesn't. I asked several to explain but never really got to the bottom of it. Throw-aways like 'oh - the google product is just a lightweight system' doesn't cut the mustard - I want features and benefits and I didn't get em.
Great card trickster on one of the stands - but which company? I have no idea. He left me a playing card as a momento. What a chance missed that the company details were not printed on the back.
Some of the people on the stands were not really up to the job. Too many didn't understand their product or if they did were incapable of explaining what it did. We walked away from several stands bemused and wondering what the product did.
Overall marginally interesting. But I am still wanting to find out about web based sales force automation tools other than salesforce.com

bob

http://www.textor.com

Eye tracking

2006-02-04T02:42:00.000-08:00

Eye tracking is fascinating. They sit users down as a computer screen and measure the bits of the web page that they look at, and how long they look at it. The company who specialise in this is at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.eyetools.com and the company has a new blog at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fblog.eyetools.net%2f .

Before and after studies on web sites show the effect of different design styles. Every designer should get up to speed on this. A really good example is in the middle of other fascinating data in the teaser slides for the marketingsherpa benchmark study. http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.marketingsherpa.com%2ftele%2fEMBG1_24.pdf Spin down to page 12 and see how a change in design dramatically increases the impact of the copy.

Bob
http://www.textor.com

Using forums

2006-02-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

My direct experience is with setting up a closed forum for a large (3,000+) community. The communioty were building contractors and we envisaged the site being used to help them sort out subcontracts. find staff, and other business benefits as well as just discussing issues of the day.Result: nothing, nada, zilch. The forum wasn't used - at all - for two years until it was closed.

What was missing?

IMNSHO what was missing was a core of enthusiasts who drive the forum on a day to day basis, raising issues and resonding to posts. Nobody wants to be the first poster. We have been discussing a forum for a medical charity last week. Again multiple real benefits of such a tool. However my advice was not to think about it unless the client was willing to put in the time to raise awarenes and most of all - keep it busy.

bob
http://www.textor.com

Joint ventures - do they work?

2006-01-27T00:37:00.000-08:00

Over the years we have worked on a number of joint ventures and this morning I got to thinking about our experience and maybe sharing with others who do the same sort of thing.

We are a technology company and normally we work with designers on a fixed-price basis. But sometimes when an entrepreneur has a good idea but not much money we are prepared to share the risk with them for long-term revenues.

Our first and still going strong (we are on our third rewrite) sells management reports and subscriptions B to B. We take a percentage of revenue and although we are very google-dependant so the money goes up and down, over the year they basically pay our rent.
We then set up a site to sell foreign currency on-line to the US market. It limped along for a couple of years and then got hit by a major fraud. Goodby to that one. The arrangement was that we had a higher take until the site met a threshold cumulative income and then it dropped. The threshold was never reached.
We started a toy store with an entrepreneur. It took a couple of years to take off (this bas back in the late 90's) but when it did the guy figured he could get it re-wriitten by a small freelancer for not much money and not have give us our cut.
This slightly put us off, but more recently a designer we work with a lot decided to go into business for himself selling architectural hardware on-line. We did the site, he went the adwords route and instantly the site started making money. We get a nice income and we are working continuously on it. In this case we take a percentage of the net profit. This was higher in the early stages, and then dropped to a lower percentage when we reached a threshold.
Finally. A site I stated myself in 1996 or thereabouts and which we reformed as a separate company. (www.bobsguide.com). This is very successful and we make a regular income from it.

Lessons:

Because we have an ongoing interest in such a web site, we are moritvated to continuously improve it. Because we do this in time that would otherwise not be billed the opportunity cost is low and we can just get on with it.
We sacrifice instant cash flow for long-term income. We tend to go for this sort of project when orders are thin, so the opportunity cost is much less than you might think. Of course if we did nothing else our cash flow would kill us.
We need to satisfy oursleves that the project is going to be successful. I think we have a pretty good nose for this having worked on the internet for 10 years. Believe me I have had some pretty hairy propositions.
These work if the enterprise is genuinely a partnership. None of the successful projects has been run as a traditional client/supplier relationship. We talk, we agree, we do some work.
Most important of all is the trust between the partners.

For the right case this can be a good way for someone with a good idea but not much money to get a project off the ground cheaply. The entrepreneur is mortaging a certain amount of the value of the business of course, but this effect can be minimised if the partner takes a higher percentage of the take in the early stages and then it drops to more of a maintenance level once a cumulative threshold has been reached.

Selling $15 suits for $25

2005-12-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

I heard this story on the radio from an old-time comic.

Guy goes into a clothing store, he says 'how much is this suit".
Assistant: you will have to speak up sonny I am hard of hearing
Guy: HOW MUCH
Assistant: I will have to ask Lou. LOU HOW MUCH IS THIS SUIT
Lou (from the back): $35
Assistant: Its $25 - you want it.
Guy: Sure - hands over $25 and rushes out the door before he is found out.

This way they sold hundreds of $15 suits for $25.

We have been trying to set up the electronic equivalent. Our approach is to use offer codes which give a discount, but which look as if they are supposed to be hidden. Our theory is that secret offer codes are more likely to be spread virally than ones we advertise. For example:

Offer codes available in Javascript in the HTML - If you look for it
Offer codes distributed anonymously via blogs

and so on.

Wacky idea - don't know, we shall see.

What has happened to charlotte St

2005-12-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

I walked down Charlotte St yesterday. It used to be have the best greek restaurants in London. Now not one. The big brands like Zizzi's and Pizza express plus Japanese noodle bars and so on have replaced them.

The Venus Kebab House is a Cafe Nero.

Dreadful.

Persona Marketing

2005-11-30T03:18:00.000-08:00

Personal Marketing is lookng like the technique-du-jour for web marketers. It is a way of segmeting anf describing your target market. The idea is this. You create a fictional person (a persona) to represent each of your market segments. The persona includes name, age, even a picture as well as a bio. Then the marketing campaign is considered from that person’s point of view – “what would Vera think about that?”

I have written a very brief overview of the topic plus some useful links in my last newsletter.

They do what?

2005-10-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

Question of the day. What to these guys do.

"Moreover provides current awareness solutions to enterprise application developers, leading Web Portals and Internet search engines. The ability to display and analyze real-time news and business information adds significant value and competitive differentiation for your product."

Answers on an e-card.

A key finding of Whats Valued Online a recent survey by CMO Council was that the main peeve with web sites was "hype and puffery of offerings".

For a company that makes its money out of distributing the written word (OK OK they have a news feed that you can use to put news on your web site) they could do better.

Hunter S Thompson is God

2005-10-26T00:50:00.000-07:00

I am reading Hells Angels by Hunter S Thompson.

I wish I could write like that.

The stories about the Outlaws themselves are hilarious in a black sort of way, but there is at least a certain internal logic to their behaviour. The real lesson of the book for me is that the Idea of the Hells Angels (or if you will, the Brand) ended up more powerful than the Hells Angels themselves. Police over-reacted to events that had nothing to do with the Hells Angels on the other side of the continent simply because of rumours of their involvement.

Hunter S Thompson is a genius with deep insights into human psychology.

Fear and Lothing in Las Vegas next.

Wireless broadband - it works!

2005-10-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

Believing:

That whenever radio and wires compete radio always wins in the end
We should not swell BTs profits any more than we have to but encourage any sort of competition.

I have wireless broadband from NOW at home. Note this is broadband delivered by radio - not a wireless home network. In the home I just connect to the modem by a regulat network cable.

I have a couple of reasons other than the above:

I hope to use the modem as a backup for the office broadband if we get into problems.
I can think of all sorts of uses for a broadband connection which I can stuff in my rucksack with my laptop.

Both rely on the coverage area increasing of course, it is still pretty limited.

First experience is good. The box arrived, plugged it in and started up the dialer software. Lo we have lift-off. The station servicing my cell was down Saturday night and Sunday morning which is not so good. The wait on the support line was long and the music on hold terrible - thank goodness I have a hands free phone. The operator was very helpful however. They have just set up in our area to I can forgive some teething problems.

Price is OK - £14 for 512k. Easy to install and works fine.

Wireless broadband - where is it

2005-10-06T01:36:00.000-07:00

It is argued that where radio comes up agains wires, radio always wins in the end. So when Now extended their wireless broadband to our street I signed up. 256/512k for £14 per month (I hope this includes VAT) sounds a reasonable deal.

I also have an ulterior motive - in an emergency if our office broadband breaks I can take a taxi home and pick up the wireless box and use it as a backup. That is the theory anyway - we shall see.

So far I have only one complaint - well two actually.

the box hasn't arrived they are late delivering
their music on hold is truly dreadful.

More later...

The tv switch-offf - when?

2005-10-04T00:58:00.000-07:00

In 2008 people are going to start losing their analog TV and will have to switch to digital. Yes that is 2 years time!

I have Freeview - no big deal other than having to juggle with two remotes instead of one. However if you use a VCR to time-shift programs digital TV is close to unusable. So not only am I down for an extra set-top box for every other TV in the house I also have to replace my VCR - but with what? The answer is a PVR (Hard disk-based freeview decoder and recorder = sky+ for freeview) but try buying one. Last Saturday I checked John Lewis in Kingston - nothing. Even if they had one it would be obsolete - Freeview PVRs are in the rapid development stage where models are obsolete within months.

If we were serious about switching, every TV you buy would have an integrated decoder - but they don't.

In short the country does not look as if it is ready for digital. It will come that is obvious but before it happens people need time to switch technology and two years is just not enough. Here in London it won't be till 2012 - thank goodness.

Vonage progress

2005-09-28T00:43:00.000-07:00

I have been using Vonage for a few months now. Quality is not up to business standard but this is not their fault I believe.

Talking to a few experts it looks like the problem is that with ADSL the upload bandwidth (256k) is not enough. I can hear people on the phone OK but they don't hear me well all the time. To make this work you need:

A good upload bandwidth (i.e. SDSL which is not cheap)
A router that prioritises voice
Low contention.

We have business ADSL from BT where the contention is 20:1 which is OK although being business users I guess the other 19 are heavy users.

Vonage - the package arrives

2005-02-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

I have been using pipemedia for voip. They are cheap but I have had complaints about quality.

Vonage is now in the UK, so I ordered the service.

You get a Cisco router (included in the £16 setup charge). The whole thing has a very professional feel. The router worked first time, the voice quality looks clear.

I will report back on progress.

Sainsbury's checkouts - bad user interface

2005-02-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I needed one red pepper plus a bunch of bananas. The checkout lines were horrendous so I decided to take the self-checkout route.

Those machines are the worst user interface I can image.

They have a voice response system, but the voice is often telling you something different to what's on the screen. The screen is saying press enter, and the voice is saying 'unexpected item in the packing area'.
The screen design is bad. When you select an item manually, it asks you to type in the number of items and press enter. There are two clear red buttons for 'help' and 'abandon'. The 'enter button' is hidden away in the numeric keypad, the same colour as the numeric keys. I actually had a hard job finding it.
If you make a mistake and want to correct it, you can't remove an item without a supervisor coming up and releasing it. What user interface doesn't allow you to correct mistakes?
The note dispenser is in a totally different place to the coin dispenser which is in a totally different place to the receipt dispenser.

I needed the attendant twice for the purchase of two items. And I am the least techno-phobic person in the world. I can work most bits of gadgetary but this takes the cake.

Vonage opens up in the UK

2005-02-15T02:26:00.000-08:00

I have beeen using pipemedia for VOIP and they are chaep and the results are OK. However several people have complained about the quality at their end. So I have signed up with Vonage. The first bit of good news is that the VOIP box is free - others charge £60. There is a hefty signup fee however abd £10 per month.

Web servers siezed in London - what happened to freedom of speech?

2004-10-28T01:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently a group took photos of Swiss undercover police (who were taking photos of demonstrators) and posted them on their web site. The Swiss talked to the US who issued a soepena to the hosting company (Rackspace) in Texas. The next thing the servers have been physically removed from the server farm in Rackspace London.

Home Office spokeswoman Caroline Flint said, "I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agendas were involved in the matter referred to."

The servers are back now but some files are missing.

How in the name of our constitution (which in our case we do not have) can this happen. There is no mention of any UK court order in this story that i can find. Did Rackspace London really take down some servers on the basis of a US subpoena?

You couldn't make it up # 12 - Games deserve a place in class

2004-10-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

You just couldn't make it up could you. Some guys funded by the dept of trade and industry (ie us) have come up with the recommendation that computer games should be studied in schools. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3956241.stm

Well I guess now the playing fields have all been sold off... sigh...

How about teaching them to write english and do simple maths.

Despite the fact that half the population can apparently get multiple A levels at grade A . And despite the fact that the exams have not been dumbed down and the pupils have just go better, I am still confronted by a series of ill-educated illiterates who couldn't figure their way out of a paper bag whenever I have to interview graduates.

I know one person who's interviewing approach is to first ask the graduate which part of the course they excelled in. Then he would ask a few questions about that area. You guessed it, most couldn't answer them.

When I last interviewed marketing grads (who had all done statistics as a course) and asked them to explain the concept of standard deviation, very few could.

Our education system is a cruel joke played on the innocents who have to go through it.

I dispair.

sipgate - not what you think

2004-10-25T01:58:00.001-07:00

When I saw the news item announcing sipgate I deconstructed the title (in true postmodern style) before I read it

SIP - the protocol behind VOIP (Internet Phones)
Gate - a political scandal

So this must be a political scandal involving VOIP. Sounds unlikely and it was. It seems a German telephone company hasn't quite got to grips with cultural references in the anglo-saxon world.

In any event it is a new VOIP firm from Germany. The rates (once you mentally substitute civilised full stops for the strange commas in the numbers) are not bad. A bit more than PipeMedia who I am using at present but still reasonable at 1.2p per min to landlines and 14.9p to mobiles. US 1.5p. 17.7p to a german mobile seems steep however.

DAB - going the way of quadraphonic sound?

2004-10-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

DAB digital radio - going to replace FM by 2008 in most homesin the UK. Didn’t I read than somewhere?

If it was going anywhere the early adopters would be piling into it by now, which means that Hi Fi shops and web sites would be flogging units for people to add to their component setup. But check out any Hi Fi web site - component offerings still have FM radios in them. DAB is there, but not featured in the way that a new technology should be.

The big radio audience has got to be in cars. Is your local car showroom putting digital radios in the top of the range models? You can add a DAB radio to your Ford for £400 (you couldn’t make it up!) but I don’t see it as standard on any of the upmarket models.

At some point someone is going to claim digital radio is a success, but only because it comes with digital TV - and when did you last listen to radio on your TV?

Frankly I don’t think anyone is interested. Did anyone do any market research before they blew millions on this.
I don’t know enough about radio to make this potty idea number 18 but it is beginning to look like a disaster waiting to happen, not the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Incidentally who came up with this sliced bread thing? Sliced bread is tasteless pap, it should be the greatest disaster since sliced bread.