Bob Browning's blog

We have been using our tracking system more and more to manage our work.  This uses an online form to request fixes/changes to the website, and as we work on it the ‘ticket’ is updated and finally closed by the client.

We just released a complex ecommerce site for user testing, and we gave the end user access to the tracking site.  This meant that changes went directly from the tester to the developer, bypassing the agency project manager.  It significantly reduced the load on the project manager, without losing control. In fact the development was much more under control than earlier projects.

We have another client who we do time and materials maintenance.  Every month they now get an invoice with a list of tickets closed (by them) that month, and timings to the nearest minute for each.  It makes it very hard for them to argue with the billing.  It also gives them control over their budget as they have access to a real-time cost analysis during the month.

Now, at the suggestion of a partner, we are using the system to control all quotes.  Each quote is a ticket with the brief and every version of our proposal attached.  It keeps a record which we all have access to.

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Answer.  It is a gadget that appears on your TV screen that allows you to show internet content on your TV.  You control it with your remote.

• Provided your TV is connected to the Internet
• Provided your TV supports them.

Which your TV will do both pretty soon.  More here: http://connectedtv.yahoo.com including a demo which makes it all much clearer.  Yahoo is the leader in this and it has deals with Samsung, Sony and LG. 

Is this the end of the rented DVD, when you can download and watch direct from the rental company?  Share photos from Flickr directly on your TV. 

However as Mary Lojkine points out in regard to the Sony Internet Video Link (which is a sort of preliminary version of this):

“So it’s the Internet, on your TV, with no need for a PC. Except it’s not the Internet, it’s just on-demand video from selected providers. And it’s not on your current TV, because it only works with the new models. And let’s be honest, you do have a computer, and it isn’t hard to connect a PC to a modern LCD or plasma, so you could quite easily have the actual Internet on your actual TV.”

I take her point, but Idon’t know about you but when I am in couch-potatoe mode it is as much as I can do to lift the remote, let alone start messing with my PC.  Personally I think the future is a set-top box that is a real computer, but which doubles as a Blu ray player, PVR and Internet access device.  It will have an advanced controller that includes a small qwerty keypad – the size and shape of a blackberry.  That way you can do all this from your sofa without having to find a place for the keyboard and mouse along with your six-pack.

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You may not have noticed, but the stores are starting to get shipments of webbooks.  These are notebook computers that are small, light, and above all cheap.  e.g. £170 each.  They run Unix or Windows XP but have built in wi-fi  and a web browser.  So you can whip one out in Starbucks and surf the net, get your emails and so on with a real computer with a real keyboard and screen – albeit a small one. You can’t run Vista on most of these, but Windows 7 will apparently run on one of these devices. 

What with cloud computing coming into its own, people are going to be using this sort of device to write documents, keep their diary and so on.  Clearly a GOOD IDEA.

They are such a good idea, that I can see them becoming pretty unbiquitous.  So ???

So – remember when you had to size your web pages for 600×480 screens.  Well these little blighters are not much better. Maybe 800×480.  These won’t count as mobile devices so a separate style sheet will not do the job.   Most web pages are sized for much higher resolutions that this. 

We have a  problem Houston.

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Question. What is my position on Google for some keyword? 
Response: Who are you and what have you been doing on the web lately

Check out the fascinating interview with Bruce Clay.  The future of search engine optimisation looks different – very different.  Google will change the results based on your history, your location, and even what other sites you have been visiting. So two people searching for the same keyword will get different results.  If that is the case what does search engine position mean? 

Bruce predicts this for Q1 next year. 

He also predicts a return to the google dance, which has been moribund for some time, as Google starts experimenting.  He thinks that will start including new factors in its search related to how interesting your site is, measured by things like video on the site, Flash and so on.  So some Flash may even help your positioning in the future – if there were some way of giving meaning to the word position.

Watch the interview – 10 minutes well spent.

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If you get David Pogue’s email newsletter you will have laughed out loud at his description of the Blackberry Storm.  Stephen Fry follows up with a storm warning of his own (no prizes for the most puns on Storm you can find).  A Blackberryphile client of mine bought one and sent it straight back. 

In other words it is a dud (allegedly).

The interesting question though is: what happened?  Vodaphone have been hyping this like mad, and in the process must be damaging both their own brand and the Blackberry brand as they dissapoint customers. 

Some engineer in Vodaphone must have told his boss not to touch this one.  Did he/she get ignored? Was there a groupthink process that intimidated the engineer?  Were they so desperate for an iphone competitor that they decided to over-rule our hero?  

We shall never know.

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Lexus marketing has taken off in a terrific new direction with a website containing a library of original  short films. This includes a series with Lisa Kudrow (Web Therapy) which is a hoot.   Check out Puppy Love when you have 7 minutes to spare, it is incredibly well made. If you are a Doors fan (some of us are that old) check out the piece with Ray Manzarek.

Everything about this site is high quality.  The scripts, the acting, the production and the flash player. 

The only thing is – does it sell cars?  There is not a car in sight.

Maybe it sells something.  One of the shorts is about the Lexus Hybrid – Hotel suite.  This is an enviroment-friendly hotel room sponsored by Lexus. It is in a luxury hotel in San Fancisco.  You couldn’t make it up. 

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The new version of IE8 will have three modes of operation.  Quirks, standard, and super-standard. These roughly correspond to compatibility with IE4/5/6; IE7 and W3C standards.  They are making super-standards the default.   

The good news (for some) is that you can add a meta-teg to tell IE8 to revert to IE7 standards.  So it is fairly simple to get by if you are having problems with IE8.  This gives you a let-out if you had to go non-standard to make your design work with IE7.

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Last Year some time, someone in the National Audit Office asked for some data about child benefit claimants from HMRC.   The HMRC person asked someone in the IT department who, instead of just running of an SQL statement, passed on the request to their outsource company.   The Any IT person will tell you that running an SQL statement on even a large database such as this would normally be hours of work, maybe a day if the database is complex.  However the HMRC person says she was given a quote of £15,000. 

HOW MUCH!! 

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Jakob Nielsen (Useability alert box June 30th) argues that we should ditch Unique Visitors as a metric.  In fact bouncers who visit only one page should be counted as a negative because the site failed to engage them even enough to entice a second pageview.

Unique visitors is considered the primary metric by marketeers who are concerned about eyeballs, and are not so worried about whether the visitor engages with the site, as much as they see their ad.  And the same person seeing the same ad over and over again is to them a negative. 

However someone who hits the back button as soon as they see the page is less likely to look at an ad, but how do you measure that?    

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We live just off kew bridge road, which turns into a long thin car park every morning and evening as commuters struggle to cross the Thames.  So a massive opportunity for billboard advertisers, and lo and behold they spent a good part of last year putting up a large, very permanent, billboard with one of those rotating thingys that changes the ad every  few seconds. This year they took all the rotating thingy stuff out and replaced it with a massive electronic billboard.  Now the adverts are in motion.

We see the same thing happening on the underground and in supermarkets.  The new digital signs look good and attract attention because they have motion.  They are also a lot cheaper to change ads.

But where is all this going?  The big news here is gesture control.  (more…)

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