Sarah Samplonius

Moved. Call me The Builder!

2011-09-22T15:10:59Z

I've decided to move my blogs due to a campaign / work persona I decided to start up. I am now The Builder of Tomorrow! And can be found at builderoftomorrow.com and @buildrof2morrow on the Twitter. Follow me there!

Form Conversion at Off-Shore Rates

2011-07-15T14:53:10Z

It's been a busy couple of weeks at 4Point with the launch of a new offshoot company, FormDriven. We decided to launch FormDriven to handle the quality conversion of forms for our customers at a really competitive rate.

Off-shore form conversion has often won the day with the customers, with reason. Many of our customers can have thousands of forms to convert and the process is daunting enough without adding the cost of conversion into the mix. Paying our expert consultants to convert forms doesn't make sense.

Not to mention that our experts are form experts. We need them to be working on complex forms, dynamic and interactive, that require scripting and back-end integration. Not on basic form conversion.

But our experience (and by extension our customer's experience) with off-shore conversion has not been smooth. Time lags and language barriers are only part of the problem. The other problem is that when converting forms you can run into "line crossing" moments. Where a form may or may not cross the line into complex. Experience and best practices matter at those moments.

As well, forms have to be built with the big picture in mind. What are they being used for? Are they going to be passed over the wall for further integration to a company like 4Point that will be posting them online or adding additional functionality? In those cases a form needs to be built with a big picture vision. Again, something that experience and best practices can give.

To address these issues and ensure the smooth conversion and long-term functionality of our customer's forms we've introduced FormDriven. It'll handle the the basic form conversion under the watchful eye of 4Point experts. If they hit a wall, have a question, or need some insight into best practices, the 4Point team is but a phone call away.

Our goal is to give our customer's a great experience. And we believe that FormDriven will help with that. Our customer's can get great rates for form conversion confident that it's all taking place under the umbrella of the 4Point team.

Check out the FormDriven site to get a sense of the company and what forms they will be converting. We're proud of our "little sister" company. Welcome FormDriven!

The Science of New Marketing - Really

2011-03-25T14:21:07Z

I wrote a new blog posting. I did. But it was "stolen" by an Adobe gremlin and posted on their site. So here's the link: The Science of New Marketing. Enjoy.

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Cold Marketing has a certain allure, but.....

2011-03-17T14:04:42Z

Your customers want you to turn up the heat.

What is "cold marketing"? That's the new fixation on analytics and targeted marketing. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's great to be able to pull analytics, review what your customers are looking at, what they've bought, what they're interested in. And then use that to offer up dynamic and targeted messages. I personally love analytics and have a slight addiction to tracking pages, content, time on the site, etc. So I'm all about that. BUT....

We can't forget the beauty and joy behind basic human interactions and finding something unexpected and new. And as marketers we have to remember to offer these things to our customers as well. We have to remember to do warm marketing....
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It also means that you offer a more personal, warmer picture of your company. The cold faceless corporate speak isn't winning customers. When you can open a brochure and change the name and "look" and it adequately describes five other companies...you have a problem. It's not you.

We used to know our customers, because we knew them. We can use excuses like my customers are all "online" and / or we've simply got "too many" to service in a personalized manner (really? you have too many customers? cause I can help you with that....). But with social media and collaboration tools there are multiple opportunities to get to know your customers. (Check out the CEO of ING Direct @CEO_INGDIRECT on how to handle this one. He blogs, tweets, and regularly talks to customers. He's got warm marketing nailed.).

Truth is, there is always going to be a gap between you and your customers with straight cold marketing. Numbers alone don't deliver the whole picture or offer the perfect solution. Don't get me wrong. Instituting an analytics package or dynamic/targeted content will help deliver results. But the marketing differentiator of the time that is now is a question of what you do or don't do to bridge that gap.

Warm Marketing can simply mean mixing the analytics up with something social. Amazon and others do this with offering up something like a "other people who liked this also liked these" links. Brilliant. If just for the weird fascination of seeing yet again how I am actually on nobody's wavelength (this has been scientifically confirmed....trust me....there's a game....anyone I play with loses it repeatedly).

I check these lists out often and sometimes I find a little gem, something new or weird that I've never considered before. And that's because that list was only partially targeted on my past behavior. Instead, if done right it's taking in the very real, very odd dynamics of all the other people out there. It's personal on a human-level that beats out just pulling from my data and using "keywords" to match me up with other keywords and spitting out "same as".

The personal touch still matters (will always matter) and it will stay a key differentiator between those companies that take things to the next level in the next few years.

Social Media is Not a New Form of Marketing Collateral

2011-02-04T15:43:33Z

Just finished reading some articles on Rocketfish's recent Liminal report. I'm about to read through the report itself (and I'm sure I'll have something to say about that too), but for now, I've got something to say about the coverage and a long-standing opinion of mine.

In particular, MediaPost's article entitled: "Razorfish: Facebook, Twitter Don't Make Customers Feel Valued" starts off with the sentence: "While marketers have flocked to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, consumers still don't view them as important ways to engage with the brand...." and goes on to state that most people still prefer to engage via email, word-of-mouth, or websites. Stating that the reason for that is because that's where the value is.

Great. I agree. Customers want value. So what's the big irritation for me? That we're surprised (as marketers, as businesses) when we treat social media as a big piece of collateral and then don't get results. Hello? When has yet another piece of collateral ever delivered results? That social media EVER was seen as a piece of marketing collateral is frustrating but perhaps not so surprising.

Collateral has become king in organizations as a way of communicating what a company offers, static websites continued this trend as they are also just one big brochure.

But social media and online interactions have changed the game. And we've taken an old response (marketing collateral) and used it to address a new medium (it worked for websites....so....).

But, as Ben Watson's post "Consumers don't want to engage with brands on Facebook and Twitter" points out:

My take on this is that social media engagement itself has to have a reason....

No kidding. It's not a touchpoint in a campaign, it is not another piece of collateral. Watson goes on to state:

Treating it as an experiment or side project makes it even harder to integrate down the road. We need to accept and embrace that we live in a multi-channel world and a multi-screen universe and that each one has strengths and weaknesses, but more importantly that each one needs to be able to 'see' the other.

Yeah Watson! Exactly again. We've got options here: interactivity, multi-channel chaos. It's fun. Finally being online is not a static store front...now it's the body and soul of your store. This is good news. Embrace it.

Social media is part of who you are as a business. It is a way for your customers to know you and you to help them when and if they need it. It is no different from a customer opening up your door and walking in to your bricks and mortar store. You say hello. You ask them how you can help. Do they want information? Find it for them (and please let it be as clear and simple as possible). Do they need help? Help them. If they say they're just looking. You let them look. AND you let them leave when they want. You never just shove marketing collateral at them over and over again. Over time you'll get to know the regulars, what they like, what they need. You'll reward your loyal customers. Maybe kick a couple to the curb. That's business.

We've let marketing collateral and a static relationship become how online businesses communicate with customers. But times have changed. It's no longer a face-less static relationship. Technology has opened the door.

We're back to the beginnings. Where people walked into our stores and talked to us. We've got to stop being afraid of talking back.

My Mantra: Know the Rules and Then Break Them!

2010-11-23T19:25:49Z

Okay, before anyone else points it out, full disclosure: Often I don't even know the rules and yet, I still happily break them. But, I would like to state that as a general rule, I do try to know beforehand what they are, so that I can act in an informed, rational manner when I ignore them.

But I digress. What I'm talking about today is websites. Why? Because it's overhaul the 4Point website time!

With a rip and replace dangling from my fingertips like a diamond necklace, all sparkly and shiny, I've undertaken a radical review of our content over the past two years and how people navigate our site. Extended
]]> And a lot has changed in 2.5 years.

First of all, when I started here at 4Point (the last time a website overhaul happened was on my arrival) there was no analytics. Now, I've got two years of really good solid data on how our site is used and where the value lies in its current structure.

I'm also undertaking reviews with all of 4Point's departments on how they currently see the site working for them, and their wildest guess of how the website could work for them. (Always talk to your stakeholders...another golden rule).

Armed with industry examples, best practices, and a little bit of insanity (that's my natural value-add if you're wondering), I'm meshing together what people want with what people use. And in three months or so I hope to have a whole new site ready to go (maybe four if I get my way and do some really neat s**t).

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Where I start...

When I undertake a website review I always look at the current menu (standard tree format) and debate what can go, what can stay, and what speaks to the company's core message. Tree menus have always been nice logical rational ways to order information. Like a bunch of pretty file folders all stacked in neat filing cabinets. (BORING. I'm on a top five messiest desks at 4Point list...should be the first clue on how I feel about it).

Of course, I know I can't toss out everything about the classic menus, especially after I just muttered on in my last blog about how some sites dumped the basic "Contact" link on the main page and spiralled me down into a Betty from Mad Men moment (think gun, cigarette dangling from mouth, shooting at harmless pigeons).

But I do Play Two Questions...

20 Questions takes too long. Two key questions does the job nicely when deciding do you love it? Do you not?:

Anybody looked at that content for the last month? Six months? Year? Two years?
Is the content integral to your company messaging?

If the answer to number one is a resounding NO (and your mother, friends, and internal employees don't count), move on to question number two. This question addresses the very real possibility that maybe the content is just not positioned correctly or easily accessible and that's why it's not been visited. But, if this second question is also a resounding NO. Well...sharpie across the page line on the site map. It's gone. Vaporize it. As a past co-worker of mine often shouted up and down the halls: LET IT GO. Remember: He who has the most web pages does not win.

So to Break the Boring Navigation Rules...

Know your data! Even boring menu items can go if you know your data. In our case the contact page is one of the top 10 (if not top 5) pages accessed on our site, consistently. If that's the case, you don't go hiding the contact page link. You make it easy to find. Because if you hide it, you probably just single-handedly pissed off a lot of people, and you're continuing to do that every month. Unless that's your goal (I don't judge), you may not want to do that.

Undertake that same test for every top-level and submenu item. Review the data, take a look at your top content, go over common navigation paths from your data (how people are actually navigating your site) and compare that against what you really want to say about your company right now, today.

Still not seeing it? You can even play a game. Get a big room and lay down index cards or stickie notes for existing content and start walking along these paths in real customer-used pathways. (There's always guinea pigs running around companies...get them to help and watch the chaos. Highlight the bottlenecks. It's like Twister crossed with PacMan, but with real work value. Even better, if you're like me and work in a tech company, and have geeky guinea pigs infesting the corridors, they'd probably line up to play on their own time. If all else fails, it's never a bad idea to offer beverages.)

Once you've tossed out the never stepped on garbage (talking content here...not the geeky guinea pigs who refuse to play the game) and highlighted relevant but under-used old content with keywords of value to your current positioning (don't forget: always think SEO), you've probably got the beginnings of your new navigation structure.

Managing Your Customer's Experience: Old School Still Rules

2010-07-27T20:53:34Z

We're not quite snowflakes. But all the same, we're unique. (Some of us more than others, as my co-workers point out to me).

This unique nature of humanity also makes the delivery of a satisfying online customer experience complicated. When you don't have the privilege of a direct interaction with your customer, but still want to deliver them personal service, what do you do?
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Bad Retail Practices are Still Bad Retail Practices Online...Times Ten
In the "old days" customers walked into your bricks and mortar establishment. You met them on a face-to-face basis and could build a relationship. And that worked. Still, it's not to say that such interactions didn't result in the "wrong buttons getting pressed" and "abandonment" out of "frustration", because it did. But interacting with customers directly offered the option to read body language, sense tempers flaring, and decide on the appropriate response.

Not so online. One failed shopping cart, incorrectly labeled or priced product, or inadvertent 404 and we are (ahem...I am) out of there. In a perfect retail environment there is a helpful sales person running over to lend a hand and stop the implosion (aka desertion). Instead, online, that often turns out to be a new vendor with a website that works. Lesson learned: Making bad retail practices online is deadly.

What do you as a business do? Certainly you can end up flipping from one idea to the next in order to keep up with the varying degrees of customer interest and trying to decipher what was "good web content management" that will drive repeat business and what was simply "blind stupid luck never to be repeated in your lifetime".

As a result it's easy to get caught behind the "all things for all people" eight ball in your scramble to keep up.

Don't give up and don't panic.

Do revisit your current online presence, regularly (yes, it's hard to find time, but try to put it into your annual plan somewhere). Don't throw out what may be perfectly good web content just because you think it is "outdated". First of all, because something that works is never outdated, it just may need a refresh, and at the very least, analyzing what about it was working falls under the "good to know" category.

Old School Retail Idea Works Online: Know Your Customer
If you've recently embarked on revisiting your web presence and how best to deliver your web content to customers, rest easy. First of all, there are multiple best practices for the design of a comfortable online user experience. The most basic is to not confuse your customers with design, but to instead use design to complement and enhance their experience. (Yes, I know, easier said than done.) Always make sure you keep the rules of good web content management front and center. I recently visited a site and I couldn't find the "Contact Us" link. Don't do that. People expect basic simple common menus. Deviate too much from that and you've sacrificed common sense...and customers.

Next (and I can't say this enough), building a website with the latest technology and the latest social media links is not by default knowing your customers. Back in the early 90s I worked with SMBs asking the very real question of whether or not they needed a website at all. They had the same feeling of "what are we missing" and were near panic in their rush to slap up a website.

I would sit them down and ask them the same basic questions that today I would ask someone contemplating a website upgrade in the face of this "social whirl". Who do you want using your website and why? If you don't know, you need to find that out first, because that will drive your website content and design strategy. Websites need to be part of your marketing strategy, not a "everyone else is doing it so we should too" afterthought.

I have joked more than once that the perfect website for some companies is a big blank page with a toll-free phone number on it. The websites either suck so badly that you have to call, or the company really had nothing to share...and people only needed the number.

Know Your Customer....Analytics
So before you run off to build a fancy bright website (or a blank page with a phone number on it), take some time to review and understand who is going to use your site and why. Take a look at how it is currently being used...if you don't know (either because you don't have web analytics installed or haven't looked at your analytics since you installed it) find out. Either install an analytics package and take a month or so to review what is going on or pull some reports off your existing analytics and start looking at the data and thinking. Try to understand what keywords are bringing people to your site, what your top content is, where people go on your site. Run a survey. If you have a bricks and mortar store, run a survey there as well.

Compile that data and compare it against some research and ideas on who you really want on your site. Define your virtual customers. And then start crafting a site that meets their needs. With hard work and constant tweaking (and you'd better throw in some good customer service), you will make those virtual customers a reality.

And last of all, embark on your website and online strategy knowing that you'll never make everyone happy. In that sense it is no different from running a bricks and mortar retail store. You do your best to give everyone a great customer experience, but there are some customers who, be honest, you don't want in your store. Don't be afraid to show them the door. (Is it wrong to ask for a big animated boot kicking them out and then a big red...you don't get to enter anymore...sign? I don't think so....but maybe that's why I am no longer in retail.)

Percolating: Next up in my brain is a mash of my retail experience managing stores in the late 80s and early 90s and how that translates to an online experience.

The iPad and the Kids' Hardcover Book Market

2010-04-13T21:33:10Z

Looking at an example of an ebook like Alice in Wonderland on the iPad immediately makes me go "duh".

In the early 90s I covered ebooks and wrote an article that said, at that time, that ebooks wouldn't go anywhere. The technology was, to put it bluntly, lame. And I was right. It went nowhere. I mean who'd give up a book to stare at a computer screen?

But the times have changed. Or more appropriately...the technology has grown in leaps and bounds. eInk is nothing short of a great leap in the right direction.

And while I think the iPad is too heavy for what I want in an ereader (I'm still embarking on the path and after reading my first three ebooks on my my iPhone I have my Kobo on pre-order. I'll see how it goes.), where it excels, and I hope the publishing industry is on this....is those bloody kids' books for preschoolers that are 20-50 bucks due to the pretty illustrations and minimal words.

I hope the iPad wipes out the market and replaces it in the next five years. Cause it should.

(Sorry, I had tone there...probably cause of flashbacks to working in a book store and shelving and shelving, and reshelving, and reshelving again, and then sorting and reshelving again and again and again all those mismatched and oddly sized hardcover books.)

Why again would anyone ever produce a hardcover book for preschoolers? Get an iPad and download the best of illustrated stories...with action. It's a no-brainer. Kids will love that shit. It's brilliant.

And I'm guessing they can deliver the hardcover monstrosities for a lot less than the going rate today. Print runs are small in hardcover kid books and pricey. Kids Can Press...are you listening? Do it. Do it now.

Even better, as an Aunt, I can just send off ebooks as gifts to my far-flung nephews and nieces and be done with it. I like it. I like it a lot.

Of course please remember that we need to find a way to make them have the smallest footprint possible....the challenge is on.....publishing companies...go forth and conquer......

Broadband Infrastructure: It's our Environmental Future Too

2010-04-13T20:27:54Z

It's easy (particularly for those of us who live in urban centers) to believe that the wireless world will continuously allow bigger, better, more.

In the early days of the Internet, and the pain of dial-up, the focus was on making access easier and faster. But nowadays with high speed access, it seems like websites are trying to outcompete for how much they can ramp up the content...and often this acceleration in graphics and gizmos is also correspondingly rich in resources. Add to that the proliferation of mobile users who are accessing the Internet and it's no surprise. We're eating up our broadband infrastructure (figuratively) by breakfast.

This is not unknown. The FCC Chairman today announced that the Mobile Broadband was a priority (and its current status a concern). And the U.S. is certainly not alone. The proliferation of users has created a high-level of traffic congestion and seriously strained the existing infrastructure.

I am sure that many countries are talking about building up their infrastructure and the push is on for technology to fill the gap: by adding better data transfer capability, blah, blah, blah. But they're should be, and can be, a double pronged solution to the problem.

Consider roads. Initially it too was a good idea. Zipping along from A to B was brilliant. And unlike the Internet, you could even laugh at the losers who didn't have cars as you blew past them. But then a whole lot of people started driving. Zipping around became a thing of the past, and in urban centers congestion became the norm.

The answer? Well....we'll just build more roads. And then again more roads. And again. Why? Because building roads is a temporary fix. Congestion returns. And with it a nasty side effect: pollution.

Now, many urban centers are starting to look at alternate solutions. They're pushing mass transit and considering building communities not around the car, but around other means of transit. One of the biggest reasons? They can't afford the infrastructure costs. And thankfully, people are trying to scale back. Minimize use and footprint. Companies are responding and developing options: hybrid vehicles, smaller vehicles.

We need to consider the same thing with the broadband infrastructure. Rather than blindly following the technological answer that is a bigger, better, more infrastructure to match our over-use, we need to consider being sustainable and responsible.

This includes being responsible in the development of Web applications. The Internet is an environment too. And we need to think about it in a sustainable manner. If we focus on developing Web solutions that keeps one competitive eye on how small of a footprint we can make....we're being ecologically responsible towards our Internet.

Of course, we as humans can't seem to manage sustainability for important things like clean water, clean air, clean food.....so it's hard to imagine we'll approach the Internet any differently than we've approached the rest. We may wait until things are so bad and perhaps even at a complete standstill/breakdown before we make a change.

But one can hope.

So....Web developers....it's our Internet Environmental Future. Why not show the rest of the world what sustainability means?

Your Subversion Repository - Treat it with Respect

2010-02-05T18:47:54Z

I learned a lesson this week: it's called good manners when it comes to the subversion repository. Apparently it does not like it when you just randomly delete files on your local system, add in new ones, and then try to check them in. It throws up its hands in horror and red flags go up everywhere. Go figure.

It all started when I started working on a revamp of our website. I copied my local website on my laptop, and then working from there, created an entire new website structure and design on my local machine. Fired it off back and forth with a design company working on our new home page and menu bar, and never gave a thought to my existing website that was merrily being checked in and out of subversion (using Coda).

When it came to uploading the new site and flipping the switch...I simply deleted the old site using Finder and added the new.

This was really the wrong thing to do. Really wrong. For a couple of reasons:

First of all, in doing this, I also deleted the .svn files (hidden). The removed files also had not been correctly deleted in the repository...so it thought they were still there, but had red flagged them as missing.

Secondly, about five months previously some other changes had been done to our site by another website company and the changes had been made on the server. I did not get a list of changes made to the site and I was unaware that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and committed to subversion, because I did not know they had been changed or added.

This means that when I copied my local folder to work on recreating a new website, I then missed these files. The local copy I handed off to the new website company for further changes and we all merrily went on our way not realizing that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and checked in.

In short, the entire thing was a mess and took about three hours to clean up in the subversion, plus another five hours tracking down the previous changes that had been lost in the process.

Lesson learned. Real good.

In the future, I will treat my subversion repository with a lot more respect. I hereby decree that from now on, I will:

not allow anyone to make server side changes without letting me know what they've changed and what I need to download and commit
download the entire site, if server side changes do occur and i'm unsure whether or not I've got them all, and carefully commit all changes into the subversion
I will no longer delete folders and files in my local copy using Finder
If I delete files and folders I'll do it in Coda, and appropriately delete them in the subversion
I will carefully monitor my subversion repository and address any red flags when they arise

In short, I promise to understand how subversion works and treat it with respect. I swear.

The Magic of Panic's Coda

2010-01-23T17:01:41Z

Currently I'm revamping our corporate website. Updating content, rearranging pages, actually doing a complete overhaul. I'm taking a momentary break to worship at the altar of Coda.

Coda, to be honest, was one of the biggest reasons I wanted a Mac. I had heard about it, read reviews, and envied those who had Macs.

But I didn't quite understand just how good it actually is. I'd set my standards low from working with multiple inferior products. The last time I revamped the website was pre-Mac. It was painful. I had limited access to pages, rearranging stuff was a nightmare, and modifying the HTML was a nightmare.

This time around, Coda makes everything easy. For example: I've got blocks of HTML I want to re-use, but not necessarily in a global search and replace (which is fast and easy with Coda too, btw). I need to make tiny modifications to it, but don't want to sit and retype it all each time. Nor do I want to go back to pages where it's been used and copy and paste it each time.

I was thinking, wow, a clipboard function would be really handy. Seems logical, I look around, see "Clips" on the bottom of the Coda UI and go: "hunh". Yup. It's a full clipboard with the ability to save clips of HTML in different folders, make them accessible global or just by site (I manage several sites...this is worth a lot to me), and even better than the average clipboard...I can EDIT the HTML at whim if I find that I'm making a particular change on a regular basis.

Best of all, it's an overlay clipboard that I can move around. I just drag it to my second desktop, let it sit there...and it's a simple double click to add the HTML to a page. I don't have to keep re-opening to access what I need.

It may not seem like much. But when working on a lot of pages with limited time...I have to say Coda has shaved hours, if not days off of my work.

Add to this subversion accessibility, the ability to share pages between users, terminal access through the main UI, and a host of other really important functions...and Coda offers everything I need to manage a website.

Thank you Panic.

The answer to everything? Almost.

2009-07-23T18:03:31Z

For those of you following my exploits with the instrument of torture that is my home laptop, you will be happy to know it's been solved. Here's the long and the short of it. After re-installing Vista on the beast and routinely waiting up to 20 minutes for it to load and experiencing up to 23 crashes in an evening I found the solution.

Let me backtrack.

It all started one bright, shiny, happy day when a nice FedEx man who didn't mind my lurking in the hallway (that much) delivered my shiny new Mac. They say the iPhone is the gateway drug: and it's certainly true in my case. I will never go back to a PC. You can't make me.

So the Mac-ifying of my life continued on in a rocketing snowball fashion. It soon rolled right over my Dell Mini 9 (That started when I sorta locked it by letting Linux background install too many apps...100% of mini's mini 4GB hard drive used up. oops. my bad. Purchased a 32GB replacement and solved the mini's biggest limitation. If you're looking for a replacement hard drive for your mini consider www.conics.net in Japan. Offer good selection, good price, amazing delivery.).

Once all was said and done, my new world order made me look at my instrument of torture in a new light. Whereas it had seemed slow before...well, now compared to the speedy Mac it operated at a painful crawl. Action was immediate.

No, I didn't take a sledgehammer to it. Number one reason being that a fire a few years back a fire at my cottage resulted in the firemen taking the sledgehammer (a small price to pay for salvaging the ruins of my home I think). Number two reason being that the perfect solution to my wiki woes (side story here: I snapped up a five-user Confluence license when they went on sale awhile back...but sadly the server I was using for my brother's website can't handle the install...needs more juice) is setting up my own home server. I had hoped to steal the kid's computer. But he resisted. Something about college, homework, etc., I have to say it all seemed really trivial to me, but he wouldn't let me take it. How rude.

So my greedy eyes next lit upon the instrument of torture. A-ha! It had once held Linux quite happily. Could it, would it be the perfect solution?

Well...it took me all of five second to make that decision (once I recalled that the sledgehammer was gone). Vista: no more. And good riddance. As one of my past installs on the instrument of torture was Ubuntu, I decided to go with the Ubuntu Server on it (Jaunty for those who care). Biggest blip in the half hour it all took to configure was setting it up with a static IP. And that took about two minutes.

Tonight I'll be installing Confluence and setting up my wiki once more. Yippee!

Yes, I know this is not Flex. And it is not that Flex is dead to me. It's just that playing in the world of shells and wikis is a lot of fun and very very distracting. Some day, once my wiki woes are long forgotten I'll return.

I'll keep you updated on the Confluence install and I'm also toying with adding Melody for my brother's website (currently on Movable Type).

[Note that Ubuntu now has a netbook remix...interesting.]

Browser Wars

2009-05-15T19:42:43Z

I've been quiet for a bit (except for twitter), the day job has been getting in the way of the day job (that makes sense to me). Though I may be quiet on this front, I am not generally a quiet person at the day job. For example, last week I inadvertently (ha! right!) started "the browser wars" here at work with the tech group.

It all started with our blogs not displaying correctly in IE8. I happened to respond that it struck me as interesting that our blogs display correctly in Chrome, Safari (for XP no less), and Firefox...but not IE. Begging the question, what is everybody doing right? (Okay, I actually said, what is Microsoft doing wrong.....).

This prompted a response pointing to browser stats, and a raging discussion on the merits of IE versus the others...browser wars. Someone even suggested that the other browsers were (egads) fads. I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about...you've had these wars...possibly lost friends to them.....

So this got me thinking. I had a pretty good idea of our own stats for our website, but what about our blogs? Did they both match the browser stats above? I couldn't resist and here's the results:

Onestats (I picked worldwide because I picked worldwide on our stats too):

Worldwide	March 2009
Internet Explorer	79.79%
Mozilla Firefox	15.59%
Apple Safari	2.65%
Google Chrome	0.86%
Opera	0.54%
Netscape	0.31%

Our Website:

www.4Point.com	March 2009
Internet Explorer	69.09%
Mozilla Firefox	24.67%
Apple Safari	3.96%
Google Chrome	3.67%
Opera	1.07%
Netscape	0%

Our Blogs:

blogs.4point.com	March 2009
Mozilla Firefox	56.16%
Internet Explorer	33.65%
Google Chrome	4.76%
Apple Safari	3.27%
Opera	1.56%
Netscape	0%

Yes, you've read it right. Firefox wins when it comes to our blogs. I'm sure others have seen this trend on certain types of websites as well (and note that Chrome beats out Safari). My analysis: Our blogs are techie, techies visit them, techies are more open to new technology...hence the whopping change in browser usage.

Which is of course why we had the argument last week...techies care about this stuff. I can bet that the average household isn't having neighborhood arguments with signs on their front lawns declaring browser affinity...but maybe they should. It's gotta be good to criticize technology (that's another longer discussion, but check out this article by John Siracusa on arstechnica.com as a starting point).

I think we'll see more and more change in browsers as more generations rise up that our Internet savvy (and Apple consuming).

And before I launch another battle right here and now, let it be known that I think all the browsers have flaws...which is why I have Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and IE on my desktop and interchange them depending on the site and situation. Ridiculous, I know. But until one of them manages to do it all right....it's the world I live in.

Hence, I predict that we'll actually see more and more a flattening of the numbers as more people start to shift and split their browser usage depending on what they're doing. Currently, I predominantly use Chrome at work (Firefox and me don't get along, though I used to love it, due to a memory glut issue that kept crashing my work) and Safari at home (on Vista no less). On my Linux OS (my Dell Mini 9) I use Firefox.

So now I leave it there. Share with me your own browser war stories or your own stats. I'm intrigued.

Because, let's be honest. It's no fad. And yes, thems fighting words.

UPDATE (June 18, 2009)
Just read another notice about how Google Chrome is rising fast. We'll see if it can hold on past being a 'fad'. Check out this article: Chrome Market Share

Learning Paths for Flex

2009-02-03T21:59:58Z

Darn it. They're making it too easy. Now they've got these handy dandy learning paths for Flex. And they made one especially for me called "Designer / Web Developer" (it most closely matches my experience). I'm in pain. Now I have to balance Flex in a Week and this!

Good news is, now I'm actually sidetracked by Flex itself. Which is a good thing I think.....it gets me back on track.

Sorta.

Cocomo...Now if I Just Get That Song Out of My Head....

2009-01-27T16:52:56Z

Reading about Cocomo, Adobe's Platform as a Service offering (beta only) has resulted in me being intrigued by how I can potentially use Cocomo to my advantage when it comes to my AIR knitting application (currently in limbo from lack of time to learn Flex in a Week).

Hosted on acrobat.com, the options Cocomo has for social capabilities has me pondering the initial parameters of my app and contemplating bigger, better, more potentials.

The downside is I now have that song stuck in my head from the movie Cocktail. Sigh. You know the one? Tom Cruise? Elizabeth Shue? That bloody song by the beach boys called Kokomo? I hope you're feeling the pain as I am....