Content Fairy – Guy Redwood's Blog

Anybody that’s worked with me know that I’m a hard core fan of Zope. I’ve been using it for at least 8 years. I used to be a dedicated follower of the latest and greatest packages etc. released by the Zope community, but not anymore.

This weekend is a 3 day bank holiday special. My project for the bank holiday is to start converting our newly acquired white van into a husky racing motorhome. I’m doing lots of research and thought that it would be useful to share that knowledge and also create a log of how the project evolves over the coming months/years. Hey – I should add a blog to our personal site and maybe even get some affiliate revenue!

Hence I stumbled upon the zope blogging engine, Bitakora – an alternative to coreblog.

I haven’t tried it, but the screen grabs look good and the team behind it seem to know what they are talking about.

So that’s 2 projects this weekend – a new blogging engine for the personal site and the start of our husky motorhome.

http://wearethemonkeys.com/

We’re gaining some traction for the first meetup of web people under the guise/working-title of we are the monkeys. Tom’s showing off his artistic tendencies and wacom abilities with the new design for the blog supporting our mission to get our community rolling. Tom’s also winning the who’s invited the most people so far competition.

So, web people of York and beyond, 31 August 2006 marks the first meeting of some great minds.

One of the fab things that we both agree on about the monkey thing, is that we’re just doing it because we know so many special things will come of it. We don’t have an agenda – the first batch of meetings may start to forge that, with those that step up to the mark.

Tom and I have been ’round this industry long enough to know that this is just a good thing to do. We’ve already attracted some interesting people and the buzz/excitement is who will next appear on the guest list.

So, if you’re moulding social software, blogs, wikis, websites, internet things and are in York on the 31 August…. get intouch and we’ll furnish you with the details to be part of something fab.

Had a meeting with Tom Smith about the concept of getting people from York in the new media industry together. A month later it’s happening… Tom’s put together a blog and 30th August is the date of it’s inaugural meeting. Let’s make sure it’s a success!

http://wearethemonkeys.com/

Guy

One of our candidates, participating in the usability testing that we’re conducting for a regional tourist board, has just just mentioned that it would have been nice to read a blog for the restaurants in the region. It was a brief comment in the midst of a task that involved choosing a place to eat in the region you are about to take a holiday in.

This is the first time we’ve ever had a candidate request this.

We test websites with a lot of people. It’s what we do at SimpleUsability, day in, day out.

This is pretty huge, he used the word blog like he would use the word coffee.

Joe Public is now asking for blogs, in situations where blogs would be of value to them.

Businesses out there, need to take note.

Whilst kicking a few ideas around the office, ranting about a few bad technical decisions a customer had made about their wesbite, I came up with a great analogy that will hopefully explain the pain and pleasure of having us onboard, within your business.

In the UK, we have a popular chef called Gordon Ramsay who’s a very astute business man. He’s about to start his 3rd season of a TV series called Ramsays’s Kitchen Nightmares – in essence he’s a trouble shooter for restaurants in trouble. There’s an interesting dilema involved for the businesses that take part. Do they accept that their business needs help in a popular TV program in exchange for some clear, hands-on advice from Gordon – or do they lie low and hope they can work it out for themselves?

Gordon’s advice invariably covers the whole business – it’s not just the stuff that goes on in the kitchen. It’s everything from restaurant promotion, team work, hiring/firing team members, workplace environment, ingredients, interior decoration, booking patterns, customer expectations/needs, menu revamps, profit, etc…

He usually bruises a few egos, sometimes looses a few people in the process of turning the failing restaurants around.

This is very much what we do in our style of ‘usability testing’ at SimpleUsability. We consider the whole business – not just where the online activities dovetail into the owner’s main ambitions. Without turning this blog entry into the web industry ‘Kitchen Confidential’ book everybody wants me to write, you have to realise that the website you own, that’s probably not working as well as it could do, has been created by a team of people. Did they set out to make something that’s below par? Most people think they need to defend the reasoning behind why they did, what they did – but we believe life’s too short and our day rate for counciling is the same as our day rate for advice.

Where the analogy of why I think the stuff I do is pretty similar to the stuff that Gordon does really makes sense is that we both regularly roll our sleeves up and do any aspect of the business we’re involved in.

This is the bit that usually leaves the biggest bruise on the biggest egos – showing the incumbent what to do – and sometimes that’s not pretty. That’s what makes the TV show entertaining/embarassing to watch.

Anybody want to improve their online business? Better warn you that it may upset the incumbent in the process… if you really want it to work… that is.

Skype Phone Review: Siemens Skype Phone – this is a significant shift. May even replace my evangelism for amazing Carpet Tiles and better carpet in the home.

After 24 hours, my head is still spinning, we have a new gadget in the building…. Some new cordless phones from Siemens in the office. The thing is, I can now recieve skype calls on any of the handsets in the building, just like a normal call. There is no difference between a normal call and a skype call, period. The phone rings, I answer it and wander around the building as normal. If you don’t get the hugeness of this, then go play with skype – it’s free international telephony over your broadband. And it’s not one of those plug in skype only phones, this is a full featured DECT phone system that can route voip skype calls to handests.

Skype is no longer a geeky thing you have to do at your computer in hotel rooms to side-step huge call tarifs.

OK, so to put things into perspective: This is totally huge. This is convergence. This is a major problem for the telcos. My subconcious is really under pressure trying to process all the implications for this…

I’ve used Skype on and off over the last few years, and to be honest, it was hassle, making sure the microphone was plugged in etc… But after a bit of argie-bargie with the siemens software and dongle, it just works.

I’ve had a few calls from Switzerland and one from Spain so far…. lets see if I still love it in a few months?

Viral Video – The Real Nerd Club
So need to do a viral campaign like this when we launch the next biggest thing to rock a certain disreputable industry. just watch this space…