Having problems with Typepad's lastn attribute?

A word of warning to TypePad template designers. If you’re trying to use ‘MTEntries lastn’ to specify the number of blog posts to pull out, it stops counting after 30 days. If you haven’t written anything in the last 30 days, you’ll get an empty list.

This came as news to me, having spent the best part of an hour tweaking every conceivably connected option to try and make it work. I keep a spare blog under password-protection for development purposes, but none of the sample posts in there were within the 30 day limit. Hence the blank page.

Yes, of course I’d looked up the Typepad documentation to see what might be causing it. So of course I’m more than disappointed that nobody has thought to mention this, in the nine months (or more?) since the change was apparently implemented. Thank heavens for the blogosphere. I’d still be hacking away if I hadn’t found this.

Typepad – I expect more from a paid service. When you take my money, the expectations rise exponentially. But that is no excuse. Sort it.

By way of comparison: I sent some feedback to wordpress.com this morning. It was a bit of a stupid point on reflection… if I’d bothered to look, I’d have found the solution to my problem on the ‘Options’ page. I got an email within hours from the mighty Podz (hi Podz) explaining why my suggested solution wouldn’t work, and recommending a better one. This is on a free service. WordPress 1, Typepad 0.

Does Sky News finally get the web?

Surely the most obvious change in the few weeks since John Ryley became the Head of Sky News has been the increased promotion of the channel’s website. It seems like on the way into every ad break, there’s a web promo – interestingly, usually for a story not receiving much coverage on-air. You’ll probably also have noticed the new animation intruding on top of the on-screen clock, pushing the sky.com/news address.

OK, cards on the table – this is a very personal subject for me, having been one of the driving forces in the Sky News web team for nearly three years. We never felt we got a fair crack of the whip from our TV colleagues, and as the BBC raced ahead into online publishing, we made do with a setup not much smarter than you could have put together at home, with a half-decent PC, a standard Sky digibox and any old editing software. So this is not a moment before time.

But the sad reality is that the Sky website – and its underlying strategy – hasn’t moved on much in several years. (In fact, they’re still using some promo images I put together back in, um, 1999 I think?) With Ryley at the helm, it’s time for some fresh thinking… and, I’d suggest, a radically different approach online.

It’s time for Sky to drop the ‘UK News’, ‘World News’, ‘Business’, ‘Money’ sections – as they did with the long-doomed ‘SciTech’ earlier this year (although its RSS feed is still turning over… erm guys?!). The BBC does this much deeper, much better. And unless things have changed dramatically since I left, the traffic just isn’t there.

Online, Sky News must embrace what Sky News on TV is best known for – immediacy.

The homepage should be a large-scale treatment of the big story at any given moment – and when I say ‘large scale’, I’m talking a full-screen presentation using Flash MX (or something). We had numerous successes while I was there with a philosophy of ‘throwing everything at the big story’… and this is the logical conclusion of that approach. How to do that with limited resources? Easy. A maximum of ten stories on the go at any one time, but ensuring that each of those includes the very, very latest information. All killer, no filler. Lots of still photos, with the occasional bit of video thrown in.

And really, really push the blogging thing. Efforts by Jeremy Thompson and Adam Boulton are a decent start, although the generic skynews.typepad.com doesn’t really engage. Give all the senior correspondents (rather than the presenters) their own blogs, and encourage them to post something every day (not unlike at the Telegraph). Be brave, and think about doing something with ‘user generated content’.

Otherwise, Sky’s in a really difficult situation. The BBC left them for dead (despite protestations from some of us); and if they’re not careful, the print-based media will do likewise. The trend across all the newspapers – serious and now even tabloid – is to get into the ‘rolling news’ business via the web. Sky’s web audience is there for the taking – unless Sky decides what it’s trying to do with its website.

Steve, Adam… you know where I am. 🙂

BBC boss Sambrook's safe blog

The BBC’s former social media guru, Euan Semple points out that the Corporation’s head of news, Richard Sambrook now has a public blog. Somewhat disappointingly, this will run in parallel to his Beeb-only internal blog which is often quoted as a great case study of senior management blogging within big organisations. Somewhat intriguingly, it’s hosted (hey! guess what!) at Typepad, rather than on the Beeb’s own blogging platform.
I’ve never seen the ‘Secret Sambrook’, but I’m wondering what could be so sensitive in it, that it needs to remain locked behind the firewall. We don’t really need another blog pointing to Jeff Jarvis; we need an insight into the strategy leading (arguably) the world’s leading news organisation. And hey, due to the unique way the BBC is funded, surely we all have a right to understand the thinking driving the internal decisions? It’s our money you’re spending, Richard.

Think big, deliver small

A report earlier this week from the Work Foundation reckons that the problem with government IT is that we’re too ambitious.

Contrary to the stereotype, public sector managers have sometimes been too gung-ho in their attitude to risk when developing and implementing information technology projects, wasting many millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money in the process.

I don’t disagree, but it’s easy to misunderstand the core ‘evolution not revolution’ message. This isn’t an invitation to abandon all ambition.

I absolutely agree, the only way to deliver change is through steady, incremental improvements. But you need people at the top who can think in revolutionary terms. The journey of a thousand miles begins – and continues – with a single step. But you need to know where you’re headed.

What's the point of documentation?

When times get hard, the Signal vs Noise blog by the guys at 37signals keeps me going. It’s always good to have someone reminding you why you love this business, and how it can work.
A post today prompts an interesting debate about agile work processes in big environments, like the public sector. My heart is with the 37signals view:

The problem is when you build confidence with documents, you are nailing yourself down to assumptions that are probably wrong (assumptions always seem to fall by the wayside once things get real). Yeah, you may feel better that you have a recipe written down. But if it’s a recipe for failure, what’s the point?

Bingo. Documentation does not get the job done – ever. More than anything else, you need to be working with good people you can trust, and to let them do what they’re good at. If you trust them, don’t put them in a straightjacket. Don’t be scared to let them tell you how it should be done.
But there is a point to documentation: it defines the battleground when (or being optimistic, if) it all goes wrong. See it in those terms, and its purpose – and indeed, its practical importance – become clear.

E-gov minister's non-blog

I mentioned in my last post that Iain Dale’s guide to political blogging will almost certainly point you to a blog or two which you didn’t know about before. I’m thinking specifically of the blog by the UK’s minister for e-government, Pat McFadden.
Before you rush over there, be prepared for a disappointment. It started in July 2006, a few weeks after McFadden took on the e-gov brief. There have been six postings since, on a weekly(ish) basis with long gaps. It looks like an extension to the site’s barebones CGI-driven CMS, rather than any recognisable blogging tool. There’s no comment function, no permalinks, no RSS.
The content is purely constituency-centric, and even then, it reads more like the ‘MP’s Diary’ column you typically see in the local paper. In fact, one wonders how seriously he is taking his e-government duties: his biography makes no reference to the portfolio.

Guide to Britain's political blogs

The rather one-way spat between Guido Fawkes and David Miliband continues, this time in the pages of Iain Dale‘s new Guide to Political Blogging in the UK (PDF). Published just in time for conference season, Dale’s 32-page guide lists the top 100 Labour, Tory and LibDem blogs, plus the top 100 ‘non-aligned’ blogs. It also features contributions from some of the UK A-List.
Miliband – writing, let’s remember, from the office of a Cabinet Minister – describes how blogging lets him ‘break out of the usual parameters of politics’. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, to be honest… but it’s useful to keep handy for quoting purposes:

Through the Internet we can reach more people directly and faster than ever before. We (need) refreshing ways to find out what people think of the department and what we are trying to achieve. I can open up a conversation with people from around the world who are interested in my work. We share ideas and learn from each other. … Politics and government are changing in a fundamental way. We have to become more transparent and open. I believe that the internet, and interactive tools like blogs, are ways of achieving this.

Fawkes, sadly, uses his dedicated page to bash Miliband’s efforts. Only to be expected, I suppose, if you’ve ever read his blog… and arguably, it perfectly demonstrates the fundamental Fawkes negativity.

The blogger who breaks all the rules is David Miliband, the blogging minister. Last month he blogged on only five days. He doesn’t connect with readers, he writes in the aloof jargon rich language of a true policy wonk. His blog is about as politically honest as Pravda in the days of Stalin. His blog is more about bridging the gap with people who agree with him. Worst of all, he hands down his wisdom in a self congratulatory tone. He is a master class in how not to blog.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Miliband deserves significant respect for trying to do this from a Ministerial office. Believe me, I’ve worked more than a decade in central government communication. Miliband has worked wonders to get the blog up there in the first place; for most ministries, any kind of two-way dialogue is a genuine culture shock.
Iain Dale, incidentally, deserves a lot of credit for this work. I’m not sure what value the ‘top 100’ lists actually constitute: being realistic, once you get past the upper echelons, you’re into very small fry. But look down the listings, and you’re bound to spot somebody on your personal radar who you didn’t know was a blogger.

How to get permanent ink marks off a whiteboard

I read ages ago that the magic way to remove permanent marker ink from a whiteboard was to scribble over the top of the marks with a normal dry-wipe pen, then wipe it off as normal. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it. I finally got the chance to test the theory today, in a meeting at a supplier’s offices… and it bloomin’ well works.

Labour's blog-forum fusion

Thanks to Stuart Bruce for pointing to the new Labour blog ‘Let’s Talk: Renewing Labour‘. Party chair Hazel Blears invites you to ‘put forward your views on how we renew our party and deliver to the next generation a party which is fighting fit and ready for the future’. From there, it’s basically a blog that wants to be a discussion forum. And it’s a bit on the purple side. I think it works. (Although not perhaps the purple.)

The ‘posts’ act as introductory texts (and are by definition read-only), with readers invited to add their opinions below. It’s quite a nice way to offer a focused forum (presumably with a degree of post-moderation)… and one has to assume it’s much quicker to set up and manage than a proper forum arrangement. Oh, and it’s another new type of blog to add to the list. Interesting to see what volume and level of comments it gets.