Most recent edit on 2007-02-23 17:28:29 by TomSmith
Additions:
Deletions:
Tom Smith's: theOTHERblog
- The Information Age’s Third Phase
The “Information Age” began with people simply having access. It started with the printing press and later went bonkers with the web.
The second phase of the Information Age is the ability to produce. It took the web a surprisingly long time (about 5 year) to have commenting, easy content creation, annotation etc as “standard”.
After playing [...]
- Discover “What a Group Are Saying” with Yahoo Pipes and GoogleDocs
Thanks to the inspiration and help from Tony Hirst I managed to create a mini intelligence engine using python, GoogleDocs and Yahoo Pipes.
The Scenario
A friend and colleague was interested in setting up a meeting at BETT next week at an event called TeachMeet. I checked out the web page and discovered it was a wiki [...]
- Inspiration for 2009
I don’t know about you but to kick off the new year, the last thing I need is attention, I need lots and lots of inspiration. The piece below from “It’s Nice That” isn’t called Don’t Feed the Chairs. Check out the kinetic wind sculpture video.
It’s Nice That | Sculpture
- The New Work Ethic
How true does this bell ring for you?
The new work ethic is just paying attention.
It’s might be worth pointing out that whilst writing this post I watched an excellent video about the ebb and flow of countries as we know them (via) and then wondered why on earth you’d ever want a Wireframe stencil. I [...]
- Saturday, March 7th 2009: SEO Conference, Leeds
I’m really looking forward to this event when I’ll get to demo the Engagement Engine (EE). I hope it will be OK, because with the EE I’ve tried to create a tool set that deliberately avoids the tempting areas of AI etc and simply find ways of doing things that you can’t do with Google. [...]
- Transport Dept plan ‘incompetent’
Another spectacularly bungled IT project, this time at the Transport Dept.
The shared services centre in Swansea was originally forecast to cost £55m and lead to £112m of savings - a benefit of £57m.
But the department now estimates the programme will cost £121m and save £40m, meaning taxpayers will have to make up the £81m [...]
- Match Report
I don’t know about you but when it comes to football punditry on the telly I find Mark Lawrenson so unbearably smug, that I find him completely unwatchable. Even the way he sits irks me and back in the day, I’m sure he grew that moustache simply to get under my skin.
Maybe you should only [...]
- Google Reader Bug Upon Usability Bug
I started using Google Reader partly because everything else sucked. I used to use a Mac client called Net News Wire but it increasingly simply couldn’t cope with the number of my subscriptions.
Google Reader has two big bugs.
1. At the moment, they’ve jazzed up the interface and my subscriptions (at the bottom left) aren’t showing. [...]
- YouTube - NOW IT CAN BE TOLD….THE SECRET IS OUT
One of the things I believe in is empowerment. It’s a wanky word I know, most often used to mean the opposite, as in you are empowered to leave if that’s what you want.
Here, my favourite YouTuber Geriatric-whatever-he-is witters on about how …. oh fuck it… empowerment is all well and good but I’m jealous. [...]
- Usability? Catastrophe!
After a catastrophe in the kitchen I thought I’d see if I could watch Catastrophe on Channel 4 to see if they’ve managed to sort out their collection of DRM excuses yet. They haven’t.
But far worse a catastrophe was the interface design… A drop-down. Pathetic. I couldn’t actually remember the name of the programme my [...]
Edited on 2007-02-23 17:26:32 by TomSmith
Additions:
Tom Smith's: theOTHERblog
- The Information Age’s Third Phase
The “Information Age” began with people simply having access. It started with the printing press and later went bonkers with the web.
The second phase of the Information Age is the ability to produce. It took the web a surprisingly long time (about 5 year) to have commenting, easy content creation, annotation etc as “standard”.
After playing [...]
- Discover “What a Group Are Saying” with Yahoo Pipes and GoogleDocs
Thanks to the inspiration and help from Tony Hirst I managed to create a mini intelligence engine using python, GoogleDocs and Yahoo Pipes.
The Scenario
A friend and colleague was interested in setting up a meeting at BETT next week at an event called TeachMeet. I checked out the web page and discovered it was a wiki [...]
- Inspiration for 2009
I don’t know about you but to kick off the new year, the last thing I need is attention, I need lots and lots of inspiration. The piece below from “It’s Nice That” isn’t called Don’t Feed the Chairs. Check out the kinetic wind sculpture video.
It’s Nice That | Sculpture
- The New Work Ethic
How true does this bell ring for you?
The new work ethic is just paying attention.
It’s might be worth pointing out that whilst writing this post I watched an excellent video about the ebb and flow of countries as we know them (via) and then wondered why on earth you’d ever want a Wireframe stencil. I [...]
- Saturday, March 7th 2009: SEO Conference, Leeds
I’m really looking forward to this event when I’ll get to demo the Engagement Engine (EE). I hope it will be OK, because with the EE I’ve tried to create a tool set that deliberately avoids the tempting areas of AI etc and simply find ways of doing things that you can’t do with Google. [...]
- Transport Dept plan ‘incompetent’
Another spectacularly bungled IT project, this time at the Transport Dept.
The shared services centre in Swansea was originally forecast to cost £55m and lead to £112m of savings - a benefit of £57m.
But the department now estimates the programme will cost £121m and save £40m, meaning taxpayers will have to make up the £81m [...]
- Match Report
I don’t know about you but when it comes to football punditry on the telly I find Mark Lawrenson so unbearably smug, that I find him completely unwatchable. Even the way he sits irks me and back in the day, I’m sure he grew that moustache simply to get under my skin.
Maybe you should only [...]
- Google Reader Bug Upon Usability Bug
I started using Google Reader partly because everything else sucked. I used to use a Mac client called Net News Wire but it increasingly simply couldn’t cope with the number of my subscriptions.
Google Reader has two big bugs.
1. At the moment, they’ve jazzed up the interface and my subscriptions (at the bottom left) aren’t showing. [...]
- YouTube - NOW IT CAN BE TOLD….THE SECRET IS OUT
One of the things I believe in is empowerment. It’s a wanky word I know, most often used to mean the opposite, as in you are empowered to leave if that’s what you want.
Here, my favourite YouTuber Geriatric-whatever-he-is witters on about how …. oh fuck it… empowerment is all well and good but I’m jealous. [...]
- Usability? Catastrophe!
After a catastrophe in the kitchen I thought I’d see if I could watch Catastrophe on Channel 4 to see if they’ve managed to sort out their collection of DRM excuses yet. They haven’t.
But far worse a catastrophe was the interface design… A drop-down. Pathetic. I couldn’t actually remember the name of the programme my [...]
Edited on 2007-02-23 16:18:23 by TomSmith
Additions:
You are what you measure.
Edited on 2007-02-23 16:17:23 by TomSmith
Additions:
When designing a web site, many companies forget the most important bit. It is important to decide before your site is launched how you will know if your site is a success? What exactly are you going to measure?
For example, if you hope that a web site will bring you more business, will sales people on the phone ever be told to ask, "Can I ask where you found us?", and that data kept somewhere. Without deciding on these things first you can be left asking someone on sales, "So, has it been busy lately?"
There are lots of things you can monitor about any web site but most stats packages don't integrate with your business, they tell you how many visitors you had last month but not how many new customers. Google analytics can tell you which pages were most popular but not which pages converted somebody into a customer.
At times, "Setting Your Metrics" can sound like common sense but many sites can be transformed by choosing with some skill what you want to measure and then displaying that information in a way that has some positive impact on your business rather than being lost in a log report somewhere.
Deletions:
When designing a web site, many companies forget the most important bit. To decide before it is launched how to decide whether or not the site was a success? What are you going to measure?
For example, if you hope that a web site will bring you more business, will sales people on the phone ever be told to ask, "Can I ask where you found us?", and that data kept somewhere. Without deciding on these things first you can be left asking someone on sales, "So, has it been busy lately?".
If you want more customers, how will you know which bits of your site brought them in? If you want to simply get more exposure or end up with a better brand identity, how are you going to measure that in ways that helps you make further improvements.
See: IterativeDesign
Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2005-10-12 15:10:50 by TomSmith []
Page view:
When designing a web site, many companies forget the most important bit. To decide before it is launched how to decide whether or not the site was a success? What are you going to measure?
For example, if you hope that a web site will bring you more business, will sales people on the phone ever be told to ask, "Can I ask where you found us?", and that data kept somewhere. Without deciding on these things first you can be left asking someone on sales, "So, has it been busy lately?".
If you want more customers, how will you know which bits of your site brought them in? If you want to simply get more exposure or end up with a better brand identity, how are you going to measure that in ways that helps you make further improvements.
See:
IterativeDesign
![](images/ecp.png")
