I decided that my experience with IE7 on Vista was sufficiently positive that today I upgraded my main machine to Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows XP SP2 or IE7 as it will be known 
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Category: Technology
A Free Software Adventure
Over the last few months I’ve been working on a project in my spare time. This project has been a departure for me because it has been for a charitable organisation where the terms of reference have been significantly different.
I’m used to situations where the questions of cost v benefit are defined in pounds and dollars.
I’m used to working in situations where the requirements specification is reasonably well understood (well sometimes anyway).
I’m used to large scale situations.
As a diversion from all of these, this project has been fun. It’s had a life of its own and hasn’t finished yet, but I thought I would share where I am up to.
The project in question is the web site for the church we attend Fulwood Free Methodist Church.
The first question I had was this: “What is a church web site supposed to do?” We had some key aims that we wanted to achieve, but apart from two or three basic things this was a journey of discovery.
My architecture skills helped (a little) with this journey; it helped me to break the problem down into a number of different areas:
- Audience – What was the primary audience for the site?
- Content – Where was the content going to come from? What type of content was it?
- Freshness – How was everything going to stay current and fresh?
- Technology – What technology were we going to use?
It was obvious early on that we needed to have some sort of content management system and to move away from one person being responsible for all of the technology, the content and its freshness. I looked around at a few Open Source Content Management Systems and settled on Joomla. This was a few months ago and it wasn’t 100% clear at that time whether Joomla was going to take off, but thankfully it has. We already had an agreement with a hosting company which included MySQL and PHP included, so that was the easy part.
The next thing to tackle was the audience and to structure the content around the audience. We concluded that our primary audience were those people who didn’t attend, with church attendees being a secondary audience. With that we did a bit of brain storming around the type of questions that someone not attending might ask:
- What is on?
- What should I expect when I visit?
- etc.
We also wanted to make future events and important content visually up at the front.
Joomla has a concept of Sections, Categories and Items. Items are created in Categories which are within Sections. Any item can then appear on the front page along with selected modules. Modules provide added functionality like a calendar or a document management capability, or a banner. This is then all displayed in a template.
Since starting we have constructed the main site and sorted out the structure. We have also sorted out most of the content, though there is more content to come.
The next challenge was how to make things more interactive. Being a blogger I am now encouraging the church staff to get blogging. Joomla is a bit clunky when it comes to blogging so I decided to make a break from Joomla for blogging and to add WordPress into the mix. Have WordPress alongside Joomla also allowed me to put the mechanics in for podcasting the Sunday Talks.
Although very different to Joomla, WordPress has a similar set of concepts and structures.
So without spending any money on software we created a web presence that:
- Is interactive through feedback and comments
- Stays fresh with time based material
- Controlled making some information available to everyone and some only available to registered users.
- Allows multiple people to update it so I don’t have to do it all.
- Allows changes to the theme without messing about with the content.
- Continues to be extended with new components, modules and widgets.
- Supports subscription
- Supports documents
A big thank you goes out to all of those people working away at producing this software so that the rest of us get such great functionality for the best possible price.
It’s been great fun learning something new.
Go and have a look and let me know what you think www.fulwoodfmc.net.
OneCare 1.5 Beta
Why are Web 2.0 applications successful?
Rod Boothby has been having some fun this week poking a stick it the IBM Lotus community (here, here).
I’m not going to join that particular fire-storm, instead I am going to use it as a branching point.
Rod seems to assert two things:
- People use Web 2.0 applications because of their nice web interfaces.
- The primary interface that people use is a browser.
If you read through these two posts you will find these statements:
Quoting Charles Robinson:
“Not everyone likes working with applications in a browser. We’ve done extensive usability testing at work, and in nearly every case users prefer the Notes version to web-based implementations. We tried to force a group of users to only use web-based mail and they simply stopped checking it because they hated using a browser. (We tried them on Zimbra, too, and had the same result so it wasn’t just Domino Web Access.)”
Rod’s answer is:
This, to me, is a surprising result. The examples of Yahoo! Mail, HotMail, Gmail, MySpace, Flickr, YoutTube, FaceBook, Wikipedia and the 50+ Million blogs out there would tend to contradict that user testing.
Is that really how it is for everyone out there? Because it isn’t for me.
I don’t use Web 2.0 applications because of their browser interface I use them for far more basic reasons:
- I use flickr because it is a great way to distribute my photos to my friends.
- When I post an image on flickr I get my ego massaged when people comment – that’s why I post them to groups and the like. I want someone to comment.
- I look on YouTube every now and then because I want to see what’s hot, I don’t want to be left behind. I am one of the huge majority of people who looks, but posts nothing. I’ll do some rating and some commenting, again to massage my ego, to be seen.
- I use Wikipedia as a reference source, but I don’t contribute at all. I don’t really care whether it’s Web 2.0 or not; it’s a reference source.
- If I had something I thought would get noticed on Wikipedia then I’d contribute.
- I don’t use MySpace because none of my friends use it (yet). There’s no-one their to massage my ego.
- And what am I doing right now, I’m expressing myself in order to solicit a response. I want to know that people read my blog otherwise I wouldn’t do it.
In summary: I use these sites because I get something out of it. I’m selfish. I’m not using them because they have a great interface.
When it comes to using these tools through the browser:
- I use a client applications to upload to flickr.
- I use a client RSS reader (FeedDemon, NewsGator).
- I use a client blog writer (Windows Live Writer).
- I used to use Hotmail – but only through an Outlook connector.
I didn’t write all of these tools so I’m assuming that I’m not the only one who would prefer not to use the browser.
Unfortunately I don’t have any statistics for it, but I would guess that I am using my browser less now than I was 18 months ago. The important thing to me is that the data is in the cloud and that I can access it from wherever. Now that most of my data is coming to me via RSS I don’t have to use that slow browser thing.
The need for accessibility means that I want a browser interface, but I’m not going to use it every day just because it’s there. The browser interface is not optimal so I’m better off using the things that is.
Making Testing Fun
Yesterday I wrote about the fun of learning the times-tables, and how important I believe fun is.
The sad part of this story is that Emily didn’t do great in her time-tables at school.
She did worse than she was doing at home.
Why?
Because being tested wasn’t fun. Being tested was stressful.
None of us, especially children, perform well when we are stressed.
So why do we test our children so much?
Does someone think it’s good for them?
Why can’t we make the testing part of the fun?
This year is going to be an especially test ridden one because it’s SATS. Having seen one child through it already it would appear, from a parents perspective, that for this whole year education is set aside so that the children can learn how to pass a test. The doubly-sad thing is that this test is all about the school looking good in league tables and has absolutely no value to the child.
The SATS themselves are only supposed to take a few hours, but that doesn’t stop them dominating the whole year.
Identity Theft Experiences
I now have two experiences of identity theft.
They both involve cars.
In both instances I was only aware that part of my identity had been stolen when the authorities came looking for me.
The first time I came across the issue of identity theft was a few years ago now.
I was sat at my desk when the PA for the most senior manager resident in that building phoned me. This was unusual but not completely unexpected. When she said “Can you come upstairs immediately please!” I was a starting to get worried. My worries were confirmed when I walked through the door and was introduced to two police officers from CID.
Their first question was exactly what you would expect it to be “Can you tell me what you were doing on the xxth of xxxmonth?”.
Like most people I had absolutely no idea off the top of my head. I excused myself and went to retrieve my diary. It turns out that on the day in question I had traveled back from Washington DC overnight, landed in the UK in the early morning and then gone home to bed.
The whole story is quite a long one, so all truncate it to keep it short.
It turns out that a car identical to mine had been used by a gang of individuals who had stolen a load of laptops from a hotel in London. When I say identical, I mean identical, color, model and registration plate.
The time between my plane landing and the time of the robbery gave me enough time to get to London and commit the crime, a time when I had no alibi because I was alone.
How do you prove you weren’t somewhere, unless you can prove you were somewhere else. In my case I couldn’t prove where I was, because I was the only one there. That was at least what I thought at the time, it turns out that I picked the kids up from school that day and others remembered me doing it.
I no longer have that car, but I do wonder whether the new owner has ever had any more trouble from its other identity.
Fortunately the CCTV that had captured my car also captured the gang, and I didn’t look anything like any of the gang members. I never got to see the CCTV but I did spend a few hours helping the police and having my photo taken.
My second experience of identity theft arrived today in the form of a bill from my car leasing company.
Attached to the bill was a Penalty Charge Notice which stated that I was in London a few weeks ago and stopped illegally in a box junction.
This time I was sent photographic evidence and apparently my car morphed from being a VW to being an Audi somewhere between my home and London. The number plate is mine, but the car isn’t.
This one is, at least, easier to rebuff but it doesn’t stop the fact that a car is driving around London with my car’s number plate on it. That part of my identity is no longer exclusively mine, it’s been hijacked. There is no knowing what traffic violations will start to arrive.
In a sense this is trivial compared to how bad it could be. It’s just hassle sorting it out. As an example of how vulnerable our identity is it should make us all think. It also makes me wonder about how much of my identity is being used elsewhere around the globe without my knowledge.
How much of my identity do I just give away without even thinking about it? If you knew where to look on the Web I suspect you could find out enough about me to be convincing enough if you wanted to impersonate me.
tags: identity+theft
If you can't measure it you can't manage it
The other day I wrote a post about the process of problem resolution. This follows on.
one of my earliest mentors used to use this phrase almost every day.
“If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it”
If truth be known he used it so often we hated it. I find that the shoe is on the other foot and that it is me who uses this very same phrase (or variants of it) time and time again. In most cases I use it when talking about the resolution of problems.
My own variant on it is to say that if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist. It’s a slightly provocative way of getting people to focus on the facts. Focus on the measurements that do exist, if they aren’t measured or can’t be measured they aren’t there. I find it’s a great way of getting people to focus on defining the problem rather than focusing on a set of issues. Most IT systems seem to have some issue or other.
When I first heard this phrase the issue of measurement was huge. The IT systems that we were trying to analyze were relatively simple single box systems. The metrics available to us were very limited. For the most part things either worked or they didn’t. When they didn’t there was a Hex Dump to grind through.
Today’s systems have a different problem. Today’s problem is deciding what to measure so that the system would keep working and not spend all of its time collecting metrics. The chances are that you haven’t been collecting the right information historically because it was too system intensive.
The skill of measurement and management is still, therefore, the same as it’s always been. You need to know what measure will tell you what and what it won’t tell you. Knowing that means that you need to know far more about a system than most people seem to want to know these days.
tags: problem_management, measurement
My Own Apple Speculation
There is loads of speculation around on the likely announcements at the big Apple event next week .
Every time I read one of these reviews I have the sneaky suspicion that these people have less information available to them than I do. So I thought I would come up with my own prediction.
I’m talking a world exclusive here.
And here’s my exclusive.
I predict that Steve Jobs will announce his likely retirement from Apple within the next 12 months 
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With Jobs having been a lifelong follower of Bill Gates it would make sense for him to follow him into retirement too. Or perhaps he has been so captivated by the goings on in the British Parliament this week that he wanted to grab some of that limelight 
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(If you believe that, you’ll believe anything , I just wanted to show off that I now had Emoticons working in Windows Live Writer 
)
tags: apple, jobs, live+writer, emoticons
Vista RC1 Upgrade – Still Going Strong
My upgrade to Vista RC1 (from Vista Beta 2) seems to be fine.
I was about to write that it had all gone horribly wrong because none of the tablet buttons were working. Before I had chance Windows update had picked up on there being an updated video driver and that seems to have fixed it. The screen rotation switching is definitely better than in Beta 2.
The first thing I noticed about the upgrade was that the power management is much better. The standby function is fabulous. Not only has it got some new eye-candy which fades the screen in a nice soothing way, but the recovery from standby is much much faster .
Vista RC 1 – Upgrade – Foolish or Lazy
I decide this morning that I would upgrade my Vista Beta 2 build to RC1 on my Tablet. That’s right – upgrade. I was speaking to Steve yesterday and he started from scratch, so I decided to try the other path (that’s my logic for being lazy and I’m sticking by it).
It’s been running for an hour so far.
Not sure yet whether I’ve been foolish. I’m normally a bit wary of upgrades because you can never be 100% sure about what you’ve got, especially when upgrading a beta to a release candidate.
What have I lost if it all goes horribly wrong – a few hours of computer time. The upgrade doesn’t need watching and I have other equipment to work on while its running. I can always start from a clean install at a later date.
As a further complication, I thought I would see if it was possible to complete the upgrade without plugging in a keyboard – so far so good.
“If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” Ecclesiastes
And now IBM's attempts at The Office
Following on from the Microsoft Office videos with Ricky Gervais we now have the IBM examples (actually I’m not sure which followed which).
You definitely need to be in the know already to understand what message IBM is trying to give here.
As a send up of sales techniques they are great. As a method of marketing they are obviously doing their job, because I’m not the only one who picked up on them.
Mainframe – The Art of the Sale, Lesson One
Mainframe – The Art of the Sale, Lesson Two
Mainframe – The Art of the Sale, Lesson Three
Via Volker Weber
tags: ibm, mainframe, the+office, video, youtube
Green IT
We are continuing to see all sorts of movements in the Green IT’ arena. Over the weekend Greenpeace issued a report which positioned each of the top vendors and their ‘green’ credentials. Collaboration Loop commented:
Over the weekend, Greenpeace, which monitors such things, released a report that ranked the very devices we use every day for knowledge sharing and collaboration “on their use of toxic chemicals and electronic waste.” Greenpeace also ranked leading manufacturers’ decisions to actively recycle their products in a safe manner. The results, if accurate, were shocking. Using a scale of 0 to 10, no device maker ranked higher than 7. Nokia and Dell both received 7s, “barely acceptable,” based on the fact that both companies have decided to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in their devices and also to publish a timeline for future reductions. Three major manufacturers, Apple, Lenovo, and Motorola, received failing grades.
This has provoked a lot of other comment.
There was also some interesting comment on the promotion of Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs at Wal-Mart which was started by Fact Company (via RPM)
Jonathan Schwartz has been banging the drum for some time. It does look, though, that Sun are starting to see some traction for their ability to deliver low-power equipment.
I have been involved in a number of evaluations of equipment and software and never have they directly considered power or toxic waste issues – it looks like that’s about to change. I was contacted today by a colleague who is interested in how we construct a desktop service that is ‘green’. There are a lot of interesting elements to that question, the starting point would appear to be power consumption.
One example is the impact of software on power usage. It’s one thing understand the power rating of a piece of equipment, it’s another understand the impact of piece of software or system. If a piece of software stresses the processor more than another then it uses more energy software should really come with a power rating too.
Another interesting thing is the cost of services like file services. Is it more power efficient to have a file server spinning fast disks all day for hundred of users, or to have a local hard-disk do that work.
And then there is the issue of power rating the whole, a desktop infrastructure doesn’t just have a desktop and a network, it has a directory and file services, and print services, and backup services, and management services.
There is also the issue of location. A desktop which pumps out heat in California needs to be cooled (most of the time), a desktop which pumps out heat in Scandinavia reduces the heating bill because it is warming the space. Using a PC as a heating device is not an efficient use of energy, but it’s certainly less of an issue that the cooling required in California. Thinking about it, why do we put data centres in warm parts of the world where it costs more to cool them than it would in a cooler part of the world?
It’s certainly time to change the evaluation criteria.
tags: green, greenpeace, sun, power, evaluation, criteria, wal-mart
Graham Chastney 