Puffbox

Can you pinpoint the moment you first saw the World Wide Web? I can. I clicked my first hyperlink in May 1994, during my final few days as a student. I remember being totally blown away by the ability to press a couple of buttons, and call up a photograph – specifically, a photo of the Irish World Cup squad. Remarkably, you can still find a mirror of the original site. I can also remember the day, about a year later, that I first saw Netscape Navigator version 1.1, with the ability to specify tables and page backgrounds. Suddenly it looked like a creative medium, rather than a coding environment.

So we’re talking a decade, and possibly a little longer, since the web became the mainstream medium we know today. That’s a very important milestone in its development, which organisations need to take seriously.

A child aged 11 in 1995 is now an adult aged 22. A graduate. And probably putting their feet on the bottom rungs of the career ladder. People often joke in conversations: ‘I simply can’t remember what life was like before the internet.’ For many companies’ newest recruits, it’s not a joke. They literally don’t know anything else. There’s a fair chance they have more IT experience and instinct than their line manager… and in a worst-case scenario, more than the head of IT.

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• Extend Firefox Contest Finalists :: Mozilla Update
  As good a list as you’ll find anywhere of the ‘must have’ (or certainly, ‘must consider’) extensions for Firefox. I’ve tried IE7, and I like what I see… but it’s the extensions which are making me stick with the ‘fox.
  (tags: ephemeral.work)
• Ma.gnolia beta
  Another bookmarking app, more tags, more social networking. Clearly knows its competition, as it offers direct import from del.icio.us! Certainly prettier, but too late to secure ‘critical mass’?
  (tags: del.icio.us websites ephemeral.work)
• Corporate reputations | The blog in the corporate machine | Economist.com
  ‘A new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm’s reputation.’ Another nice piece from the Economist on the blogging thing. I can’t think how many times I’ve referred people to the Scoble piece from this time last year.
  (tags: ephemeral.work)

I’ve got some bad news for Chris Shaw, senior programme controller, news and current affairs, at Channel Five. In today’s Guardian, he writes:

This week I encountered a new media buzzword: Disintermediation. Sounds like Dalek talk to me. But apparently it spells doom for the traditional media… Disintermediation means consumers can interact directly with the people running our newspapers, TV and radio… In the disintermediated future, individuals can be both consumers and producers. In theory you – the viewers, listeners and readers – get exactly what you want, when you want it, cutting out the traditional broadcasters and publishers altogether.

This isn’t the future, Chris. It’s already happening – and arguably, it has been happening for over a decade now. Certainly I remember using the word myself, as long ago as 1995. I’m actually quite shocked to see this sort of comment in a piece by a ‘senior’ news person in 2006.

The reason the media needs to use tools like text-message feedback (which, incidentally, I wouldn’t class as ‘disintermediation’) is because they need to earn their status now. If they aren’t perceived as delivering a valuable, relevant and responsive service, people can go direct to the sources for their news. And we do, in increasing numbers.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

Richard at Read/Write Web has pointed to a (rather technical) discussion about ‘disposable RSS feeds’. It’s something I wrote about a few weeks ago – but because I’m not a big-shot blogger (yet), nobody noticed. 🙁

RSS is all about fast-moving information. It may have emerged from the world of blogs, but its application goes way, way further. Every day I see new uses for RSS feeds. If I order an item from an e-commerce site, I want an RSS feed telling me of the order’s progress (and ideally, tracking the package to my door). This information is probably already on a web page in the ‘my account’ area – but I haven’t got time to keep checking that. I just want RSS to alert me, when there’s something worth alerting me to.

The debate isn’t about my degree of commitment to any particular content. It’s about the raison d’etre for the feed. Once my item is delivered, the feed has served its purpose. (I actually agree with Mark Wilson‘s point that ‘we commit more’ as we surf around the web, and find resources we want to buy into. But I don’t think it’s an either-or situation. I see myself doing more of both.)

I need an RSS ‘scribble pad’: maybe a widget sitting on my desktop; allowing me to drag-and-drop feed URLs into it, with the ability to handle password-protected feeds; polling for updates on a very regular basis; and offering one-click deletion for when the feed has served its purpose. I think we’re looking at a relatively small, lightweight app; it doesn’t need brilliant navigation or OPML import/export. These disposable feeds will have a lifespan measured in days; I don’t imagine a big collection growing in there.

(I don’t think Taskable is it, by the way.)

I spent the whole of my train journey home this evening, writing a long-term review of my mobile phone – the HTC Universal, sold by T-Mobile as the MDA. I enthused how impressive it was as a combined phone/PDA. And when I pressed ‘send’ to upload it to my blog? The punchline writes itself. Sadly the review doesn’t. I’ll rekey it again if/when I get the chance.

One project I’ve been working on recently has been adding RSS feeds to a major government department website. I drafted a quick page saying that RSS was a good way to stay informed of site updates, quoting the BBC as an example (inevitably!) and listing the feeds. Only a couple of feeds so far, but with functionality in place to deliver nearly 100.

A furious debate ensued. Shouldn’t we say more about RSS? List a few software options? Give full instructions on how to subscribe? I’m sure you’ve seen similar pages on countless sites. There’s often a similar discussion about ‘an accessibility page’, telling people how to use their own software.

I’ve always avoided creating such pages. They never get the attention they deserve, and rapidly fall out of date. Most of the examples I see don’t mention personalised homepages like My Yahoo, or the embryonic efforts from Microsoft or Google. They rarely refer to Live Bookmarks in Firefox; and obviously, IE7 never gets a look-in.

On the flipside, I sat in on a recent presentation which stressed the need for your website to be perceived as ‘a good host’. It’s a valid point, and arguably, even more valid in the public sector. A few simple lines can communicate the essentials, and maybe encourage the novice reader to have a go.

But I remain firmly of the opinion that, if you’re going to explain an evolving concept like RSS, you need to do it properly, and keep coming back to it. Nothing is worse than outdated content. Or rather, nothing is better than outdated content. You know what I mean.

At the end of the day, you’re looking at another resource commitment. Maybe not a huge drain on your day, but another thing to bear in mind. Take a hard-nosed business decision; if you think there’s real business value in doing so, if you think it will contribute to your targets (whatever they are), if there’s space on your task list, do it. And please tell me where you get all your spare time from.

• ColorBlender.com | Your free online color matching toolbox
  Pick a base colour, it’ll give you a selection of others which are sympathetic. When you’re happy, you can store it, download it or email it.
  (tags: websites coding)

PC World is making a big deal of providing the ‘best of both worlds’. But have they thought it through?

Let me tell you a story. I’ve started seeing blue screens of death, a relative rarity in XP to be fair, and I think my hard disk is about to give up. In the past, this hasn’t been a big worry. But with work material, digital photos and a sizeable collection of music on there, it’s time to take backup seriously. I decided I needed an external hard disk.

I thought I’d check PC World’s website to see what I could lay my hands on immediately. Of course, a web-only retailer is almost always going to be cheaper, but you know how it is: today could be the day the disk gives up, only for the new HD to be delivered tomorrow. I was quite surprised to find PC World’s prices were very competitive. Maybe not the rock-bottom lowest, but then again, you might pay a few quid extra for the confidence of buying from a name supplier.

Here’s where the ‘best of both worlds’ thing kicks in. You can make your purchase over the web, at a web kind of price, and travel to your local store to collect the item. The web prices are, often, dramatically cheaper than the off-the-shelf prices. In the case of external HD drives, maybe 20, 30 or 40 quid knocked off a £100 purchase. That’s too big a disparity.

Picture the scene. Two people walk into a store, go to the same shelf, lift the same item, take it to towards the exit. One of them whips out a sheet of A4, proving he has already paid – and paid a heck of a lot less than the other guy is about to. Mr Walked-In-Off-The-Street isn’t going to be too chuffed, for a start. And I bet you that next time, he’s going to go straight to the web.

But isn’t PC World’s reason for existing, the fact that it has a shop in the local retail park? Doesn’t it rely on the non web-savvy consumers for its business? So what is it doing, turning all its customers into web-first people? Once people realise how easy, and how much cheaper it is to buy online, won’t they stop coming into the shops at all? Particularly when they see – on your own website – how much you’ve been ‘overcharging’ them?

Maybe PC World sees its future in logistics and warehousing. It’s certainly a curious way to run a chain of shops.