Categories
Enterprise 2.0 Theory

Migration – done (fingers crossed)

The Garden Shed has migrated to this site and now has a more lugubrious name. This new WordPress blog is now on a hosted server so I can configure the layout and functionality to my liking. The plugin options are interesting and I’ve started to configure the All in in One SEO Pack plugin. There’s still a good deal to be done with the layout and typography, plus the images used in the header, which should display randomly. Not many raspberries in my garden this cold December though. Oh and the video links don’t work, I’ll have a look at fixing them.

Apologies if anyone had my page bookmarked. I think the redirects should sort things out and as far as I know only Bill Ives has added me to their Blogroll so far. Onwards and upwards…

Categories
Enterprise 2.0

NY Times Widget

How lucky are the Americans, as Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove explains that the NY Times now features a DIY widget for pulling their RSS feeds into Netvibes, iGoogle, or blogs such as this. A tad cool methinks so I wandered over to The Thunderer’s site and did a quick Google on what they have to offer in that line. Not a lot is the answer.

I guess I’ll have to see if the NY Times can show the weather for west London for me…

Categories
Analysts Communications Enterprise 2.0

Forrester: UK TV & UK Supermarket sites

Analyst group Forrester are half-way through their analysis of key UK consumer websites covering 4 sectors, Wireless Providers (Vodafone, BT & O2); Newspapers (The Guardian, Times and Telegraph); Supermarkets (Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco) and finally TV Broadcasters (BBC, Channel 4 and ITV).

Beans

So far we have the TV report and the Retailers report (both by Craig Menzies et al) in in detail. The results do not make a pretty read for either, with both sets falling way behind the website comparisons from service providers and newspapers.

To undertake the survey, Forrester asked a representative sample (the size seemed very small but maybe I missed something), to go forth and surf for some specific information/aims. For the TV sites it was info, video and programmes on global warming and for the supermarkets they had to buy 6 bottles of decent plonk, some soft drinks and try to get delivery before Saturday morning with change from £80.

These are hardly onerous tasks to do and I know which household I’d prefer to get a dinner invite from. The supermarkets are filled to the gunnels with cheap (and decent quality) wine, so much so that both publicans and doctors see that as a problem. Meanwhile, the broadcasters, especially the BBC, are not exactly short of Green content. So what went wrong?

For the supermarkets, Forrester’s description should be familiar to anyone who has tried to order their grocery online – navigation was confusing, the web designers over-egged some parts while leaving some links obscure. Thus, Sainsbury’s had seeming clicky-bits that weren’t clickable and vice versa and interactive elements that ‘behaved inconsistently’. Ho hum, we’ve all see them. Tesco had a flaw I’ve seen online and off – navigation is a nightmare and it was only too hard to find some items. But at least offline I’ve never had the contents of my trolley disappear and I don’t need to register to enter the store. For Asda the issue was ‘presentation and trust’ – text was unclear, as was whether one had added an item to the cart…a basic I would have thought.

The TV sites fared similarly. The BBC sent users off on an “IKEA shopping trip” forcing their visitors on certain routes, often toward their iPlayer. For C4 and ITV, the designers had been let out unsupervised for too long and so interaction was over-complicated and once again there were issues with the clicky-bits and vice versa.

The findings were not all of on the blink sites and long virtual queues however. On the TV sites the BBC search worked well with good contextual help, C4 had great content clearly categorised and ITV provided excellent feedback on areas such as load times. Similar findings were seen at the shop sites with Sainsbury’s search working well, Tesco actually delivered (literally one hopes) and Asda provided clear direction to users.

The experience here still leaves unasked the big question as to whether these major players actually test their sites with real people and look at their aims and objectives. Forrester are clear here and urge that the site owners really test the usability, present the business case for doing this and look at the real online experience.

For all of them, Forrester argue it come down to Experience-Based Differentiation (EBD). Here’s what they say this means for the online experience:

1) Obsess about customer needs, not product features; 2) reinforce brands with every interaction, not just communications; and 3) treat customer experience as a competence, not a function.

Happy viewing, happy shopping…

Categories
Communications Enterprise 2.0

MySpaceID: Google 1, Microsoft 0

A great post from Rick Turoczy on readwriteweb on the ongoing format login scrap between Facebook and MySpace. Rick comes down firmly in favour of MySpace arguing that their way is more Open and favours interoperability. What’s more he says, MySpaceID:

fires a very real shot across Facebook’s bow. And continues to set the stage for the tag-team match between the more proprietary Facebook-Microsoft and the more open MySpace-Google. (source)
 

Over at cnet, Caroline McCarthy explains that MySpace are building on the open standards of ‘OpenSocial’ and ‘OpenID’ and says that MySpace are partnering with the giant European SP Vodafone and souped-up bespoke RSS factory Netvibes. I use both of these and like the service and reckon that this alliance might well be interesting.

Why so? Well Rick likens the MySpaceID move to the days of 1.0 when more adventurous ISPs opened the cracks in the walled gardens of AoL and Compuserve. This he says, led to the more open web we enjoy today. Thus the development from MySpace-Google also opens the way for a more open (and user-friendly) 2.0 web, which has to be a positive development. Add that to Vodafone’s reach and Netvibes’ personalised functional-funkiness and we’re also looking at some nicely synched up apps in future.

Update:

An intriguing quote from Charlene Li on the FT Tech Blog on this topic:

It’s not about one standard winning over the other, it’s not about Betamax versus VHS…At some point everything will connect, because the user will absolutely demand it.

We all will, but if one is closed and proprietary, hasn’t the battle been lost by then? As an alternative Richard Waters wonders if the primary sign-in app (i.e the winner) will define who/what we are online. And if Facebook is the winner, are we looking at 3.0 being a closed garden? I hope not…

Categories
Enterprise 2.0

Benefits of Open Source

Whilst I’m by no means a techie, I do enjoy delving a little deeper than maybe most and so I’ve spent a good part of yesterday setting up some new server space with JustHost.com. This has meant registering a new .com (more of which later, perhaps) and setting up the server space. I’ve a hosted copy of WordPress (2.6.5) installed and also image libraries from Gallery and Coppermine. There’s also Joomla running too. Not bad work for a tyro like me. 

Next hurdle is getting the server space to point to WordPress as the homepage. I’ve looked at the Manuel on.htaccess  and it doesn’t seem to match what I’m seeing in my directories, plus I’ve no idea how to provide write permissions. A bit more work needed to get this going, or nip round to tech support a friend round the corner, with the issues.

Overall I’m more than pleased with the progress so far and feel very grateful for all the hard work that the Open Source guys have done to provide so much freely available software. A big thanks from me there. There’s a lot more flexibility and options available to me now. Onwards and upwards…

Categories
Enterprise 2.0

What is ‘International’? rww Top 10

Whilst laudable for thinking beyond the USofA, or even Silicon Valley, readwriteweb’s list of ‘international’ Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008 raises questions about the American geopsyche that are probably best not raise here? Why? Well it’s a good list and my MoT needs doing this morning…Also, I’m parochial and even I’m using 2 of the apps so it must be getting beyond at least one border.

 

Check it out by doing the click thang…

Categories
Enterprise 2.0

Facebook Republican Army Surrenders

After a concerted tabloid frenzy the supposed leader of the Facebook Republican Army Steve O’Brien has told The Times it’s a big hoax after all.

Well only after Sky News (who also happen to own The Times), had syndicated it to FoxNews. Who it turns out are in turn owned by the company that owns them all too, the News Corporation. All too confusing for a bear of this little brains, but it might explain why they weren’t the MySpace Republican Army, as of course the NewsCorp owns them too.

Makes one wonder though, why the journos didn’t just go onto Facebook and ask a few questions. But I suspect lurid tales of ne’re do wells up to mischief on the family washing machine pays the bills…

Categories
Enterprise 2.0

Paper, Stone, Scissors, erm hold on…

Following on from my piece on Google’s Open Social – as I was sorting out read and unreads on my RSS feeds I noticed another posting today on Open Social and the rest at by Richard MacManus at Readwriteweb.com – The Distributed Social Networking Puzzle: Putting The Pieces Together.

Richard’s article looks at the nitty gritty of what’s going on with DiSo / Noserub,and the “BigCo’s” Open Social from Google and Facebook’s Connect. He explains why it’s not quite hold your breath time:

There is confusion right now because all the commercial vendors are positioning themselves as open – yet they don’t necessarily connect to each other! […] So the fact that all of the main pieces of the distributed social networking puzzle are still in beta, goes some way to explaining why ordinary people can’t connect many of their profiles just yet.

Of note, the posting is getting a lot of replies and the question of ‘interoperabilty’ vs ‘open’ is coming up time and time again, not to mention the commercial interests at play.

Categories
Communications Enterprise 2.0 Film

Forrester: Instant Messaging and Virtual Worlds

A recent report from Forrester on Virtual Worlds asks  “Will Unified Communications Make Virtual Worlds Relevant To Business?” and provides a hedged answer of ‘Yes, But It Won’t Be Overnight‘. The backdrop to the report is a joint venture between IBM and Forterra Systems called Babel Bridge. Babel Bridge joins IBM’s unified communications in the form of their instant messager SameTime with Forterra’s 3D immersive world, OLIVE. Here’s how Forterra describe it:

The integrated solution from IBM and Forterra takes group collaboration productivity to a new level, incorporating not only voice, video, and media, but it adds the important element of a sense of presence and digital identity. (source)

Forrester examine this new solution by comparing it to the current status of 3D worlds and point to 3 key headaches for wider adoption:

  • There are few use cases that appeal to business.
  • The experience lacks key elements to make it immersive.
  • The technology is new and prone to failure.

They then argue that only with a ‘collision’ between the Virtual World and Unified Communications will these be overcome. 3DUC will offer:

  • A collaboration hub for the enterprise.
  • An environment for spontaneous collaboration.
  • A stable platform that conforms to IT department guidelines.
  • A “personal touch” to meetings between disparate groups.

For Forterra this delivers the holy grail of internal comms:

This integration builds stronger relationships, creates more engaging, memorable experiences, and enables faster problem solving and decision making, all while eliminating the need to travel.

Wow! But on whether it will do this though,  I’m not convinced. My reasons are this, why do it in 3D? I can see a fun element of the virtual world and creating a 3D workspace, but what is really gained here, what are the real and demonstrable business benefits beyond the novelty factor of pushing an avatar round a 3D world? The only area I’ve seen it work in well is virtual worlds surrounding conference and exhibitions where it achieves for the short while the event runs quite a satisfying level of customer engagement.

In a past life I watched a lot of European Union money ploughed into virtual world working environments (I even recall 3D tractor factories in the late 1990’s), but I could never see the point. It always struck me, and this was my actual experience too, that is was much harder work to traverse an avatar across a virtual than to click for a file or folder in good old 2D. And more to the point, all of Forrester’s points above can be achieved in ‘flat’ worlds such as Cisco WebEx Connect or Microsoft’s SharePoint. If one is having to do this everyday, then quick and easy, point and click, will always beat the extra work of moving an avatar about.

No doubt the technology will move forward, but while Forrester are excited by the possibility of full UC integration with 3D, they do urge caution and point out it’s not quite there yet. A key factor appears to be ‘immersion’, which makes me further wonder what full immersion might be like. Images of Total Recall come to mind and the P K Dick short story the film was taken from, We Can Remember it for you Wholesale. If it gets that immersive then one might ask, how will we know if we’re in the environment or not?

Categories
Communications Enterprise 2.0

Lapland ‘Shopped

An amusing seasonal debacle re the UK’s theme park Lapland. What originated as a minor trading standards story erupted into one of the Sun newspaper’s worst headlines in a long time – Lapland Was Bad For Our Elf

Yikes!

The Daily Mail was in an unusually self-righteous mood, dubbing the park ‘Blunderland

What entertained me most was the aspect that Adobe PhotoShop or similar might play in the fiasco. The photographs promoting the park are shall we say optimistic. Here’s what Lapland’s owner, Victor Mears says about them on his website:

All of the photographs were taken with an inexpensive digital camera – handheld/without a tripod – and the photographer who submitted them apologises for the poor sharpness, exposure and contrast quality whilst granting permission for any viewer of this web page to display the photographs without alteration under any circumstance on any public blog associated with the Lapland New Forest event or Lapland New Forest Ltd only.

Here’s some of the pics from their site:

Not that The Sun or their comrades would ever ‘Shop an image as B3ta.com’s regular contributor The Great Architect wryly observes in a sly poke at the Sun’s rival The Daily Mail:

I guess the question that remains is, who shopped whom?