If you’ve got any thoughts on government websites, you might want to contribute to the National Audit Office’s ‘Government on the Web 3‘ public survey. Just ten questions, so nothing too taxing.
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The Times it is a-changing
Er, is it me or does the new Times website look a lot like the fairly new Telegraph website, only not quite as professional? Both ultra-wide, both very black-and-white… but the Telegraph site just pulls it off better. I’m afraid the Times site just doesn’t look finished… with some glaring problems that surely shouldn’t have got through any serious QA process, like the multi-line headlines running into each other, and the Newsvine / delicious links showing without spaces.
OK, so let’s assume it’ll get better over time. All eyes now on the Guardian… which still hasn’t brought in the Berliner-style masthead. How long do they need?
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Security hole in LibDems' online manifesto site
Looks like something interesting coming out of Cowley Street: ‘For the next election the Liberal Democrats will produce a web-based interactive manifesto, which will use audio-visual communications as its centrepiece rather than the written word.’ Makes a lot of sense… I mean, did you ever read a printed manifesto? It’s party members only, but a quick glance at the source code shows it’s been done in WordPress 2.0.5, so you know what to expect.
I notice, though, that there’s a bit of a security hole in it? You aren’t meant to be able to get in unless you’re a party member, but it’s possible to see the latest postings and comments via the automatically-generated RSS feeds, which are currently unsecured. You can only see the first few words of each posting, but the comments are shown in full.
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Defra's online response to bird flu outbreak
Saturday morning probably isn’t the time you’d choose to announce a major bird flu outbreak, with a full two days before offices are fully staffed again. Mind you, it could have been much worse: like, say, six weeks ago. A national turkey crisis in the week before Christmas… can you imagine?
I have to say, Defra have done a decent job in splashing their homepage with bird flu links. ‘H5N1 avian influenza (Asian strain) in poultry, Suffolk’ doesn’t perhaps include the magic words ‘bird flu’, but the H5N1 reference is clear enough, and it’s right at the top of the page’s body area, so you aren’t going to miss it. It’s especially good to see a single page describing the ‘latest situation‘, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets prominent front-page promo space on Monday.
Search-wise, Defra’s bird flu homepage currently appears at slot #6 on Google results for ‘bird flu’, behind a few BBC pages and something from Health. Not a bad showing, really.
But perhaps the most encouraging aspect of all this is the extent to which they’ve clearly been planning ahead. Not only do we have lots of background information, but there’s an interactive map application which (by the look of it) has been sitting ready-to-go. A shame, then, that it’s a mapping tool from the era before Google Maps. Navigation is awkward, and it’s a full page-refresh every time you pan or zoom. A hint of Ajax technology would be relatively easy to implement, and would be much more user-friendly.
And it’s a bit of a pity that we’ve got nothing from David Miliband (yet) on the ministerial blog. The recent trend seems to have been to use the blog merely as a ‘have you seen?’ bulletin board, with few posts going beyond a few sentences. So I’m a bit surprised there isn’t at least a one-line pointer to that ‘latest situation’ page; but maybe it’s a conscious decision to keep ministers (and indeed Defra generally) out of the spotlight.
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Microsoft's 'rip-off Britain' pricing strategy (or did Bill set the price of Vista in March 1985?)
Did you catch Huw Edwards’s toady performance with Bill Gates on the Ten O’Clock News? He did ask the ‘killer question’ of why we were paying double what the Americans are being charged for Vista… and clearly had The World’s Richest Man on the ropes. But no knockout blow. A clearly unbriefed Bill’s best answer was that: ‘We try to keep our prices largely inline from country to country.’ Well, Bill, you clearly aren’t trying hard enough.
And you can’t get away with blaming exchange rate ‘drift’. Amazon.com has Vista Home Premium Upgrade for $153.99 (equivalent to £78.63 at today’s exchange rate of $1.96-ish). Amazon.co.uk has the exact same item for £144.99. That would equate to an exchange rate of $1.06 to the pound. It hasn’t been anything close to that low since March 1985 (as this US government data proves). That would be eight months before the release of Windows 1.0. You’re either the world’s greatest forward-planner, Bill, or… well, you tell me.
Incidentally – I’ve checked the recording, and Bill definitely said: ‘You’ve always got to obsolete your old products’. Aside from the inherent crime against grammar there, I’m with the Green Party on this one. We’re looking at ever more power-hungry components, and lots of perfectly adequate machinery being chucked in the nearest landfill. Your current XP machine simply is not obsolete, no matter what the Vista Upgrade Advisor thing tells you.
But while we’re at it… it’s generally A Good Thing to see a UK translation of the Apple ‘I’m a Mac / I’m a PC‘ ad campaigns from the States, featuring Mitchell and Webb. Internet-only apparently, although I did see a poster at Oxford Circus tube station earlier today. If only Apple would like to consider applying the same transatlantic conversion principle to its prices. Based on today’s exchange rate, we should be paying £561 for a MacBook. Not £749. ‘And that’s a bad miss,’ one might say.
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Three keys to a great website?
A few weeks back I interviewed for a possible new contract. It wasn’t a bad interview, but we didn’t really click, and I didn’t get the offer. But one of the questions I was asked – and it was clearly the interviewer’s ‘killer question’ – was this: what are the three key qualities to a good website? Er, not one I had a stock answer for.
I’m actually quite pleased about the answer I gave ‘off the cuff’; even if I’d had time to prepare, I don’t think I’d have answered it differently. But I’m interested to hear if anyone’s got any better ideas?
Standards, formal and informal. I hope I don’t have to make a case for the use of formal standards: it’s good citizenship, and it should pay dividends in the long run. But informal standards matter just as much. There’s a reason why most websites have a logo in the top left corner, and a search box in the top right: because we (virtually) all do. Visitors will simply refuse to spend time learning your innovative new metaphor for navigation, and will go elsewhere. Make it easy for them, by making them feel comfortable.
Plain speaking. Yes, ‘plain English’, avoiding tech jargon and all that – but I think there’s more to it. Most people spend most of their online time dealing with friends and family (even at work?). Email, instant messaging, blogs, whatever. They are used to a certain tone of communication when they sit down in front of keyboard and monitor: casual, informal, chatty. I’m not saying that FTSE100 companies should have a homepage saying ‘hiya mate, how ya’ doin?’ But if you’re looking for one-to-one engagement, and most of us are, then you need to adopt that informal tone. Lose the pompous authority, lose the vague marketing-speak.
Know your statistics. It never ceases to amaze me how little attention people pay to their usage data. In there, you will find everything you need to know about your user base. What do they like? What don’t they like? What did they want, and did you supply it? Cost just isn’t an excuse: your website is churning this stuff out free of charge, and a powerful analysis tool like Google Analytics is also free. Any decent web manager should be able to recite details of his/her traffic levels and trends without even hesitating. And then doing something about them.
If anyone agrees or disagrees, or has any better suggestions, that’s what the comments box is there for. 🙂
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Iain Dale had better be careful
Now Iain Dale’s stirring about the cost of government blogs. He points to a PQ in which DWP admits that it’s costing half a staff member’s time to run the Welfare Reform and Child Poverty blog. Once again, the retort is that ‘well, I do it in my own time for next to nothing’.
Iain – who, let’s remember, isn’t even an MP yet (although not for lack of trying), never mind having ministerial experience – falls into a classic trap here. It simply isn’t fair to compare the two. Iain’s blog is a personal project, with no formal or official standing; no chain of management to answer to; no need for the left hand to check what the right hand is/was doing; no concerns about the expression of strong political opinions in the comments. As soon as it’s an official initiative, on a .gov.uk server, with the Government ‘seal of approval’, it’s a whole new ball game.
So – for example – Iain can shrug off any difficulties with his blog’s hosting, where government would be (rightly) lambasted if they trusted an official website to a freebie with no recourse in the event of such problems.
Even if the comparison were valid, is Iain is a glass house with a pile of stones? Questioned by the Guardian in October about online TV channel 18 Doughty Street, he said this:
Viewing figures, he says, seem to be up in the thousands but are hard to determine at this stage and, anyway, “We’re not going to let the viewership dictate what we do.” A former bookshop owner and publisher, he says, “It’s like when you publish a really good book that only sells a few copies – it was still well worth doing. That’s the way we look at it, and we’ll see where that takes us.”
So is it OK to condemn the value of an initiative on account of low readership/audience numbers, or not? (I’m guessing Doughty Street viewing figures are ‘low’, judging by the Alexa trendline and an apparent lack of any official statement to the contrary… but I’m happy to be told otherwise.)
Be warned, Mr Dale. Despite the best efforts of myself and the small number of people like me, Government – or more particularly the civil service – just does not work that way. If/when the Tories win the next election, and if you decide to bring in the zero-cost ‘guerilla communication’ philosophy, good luck to you… and I’d be delighted to help. But comments like these are certain to come back to bite you in the behind.
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Seriously MediaGuardian, please stop it
Yesterday it was News 24’s new graphics, today it’s BBC coverage of Celebrity Big Brother. Somebody at Media Guardian has clearly been tasked with monitoring the BBC’s blogs, and turning each day’s pieces into a shocking exposé. Please stop it. It’s unquestionably a good thing for editors to be prepared to engage with their audience, and take the criticism as and when it arises. And hey, guess what – if you invite feedback, sometimes it won’t be praise. This in itself is not a story.
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New inflation data in Findless
Regular readers may be aware of my little side-project, Findless – which aims to provide shortcuts to frequently sought information. We’ve done a few Google-based search engines with a ‘whitelist’ of recommended sites, tailored for the health & safety and education sectors. There are a couple of map-based mashups, featuring English and Scottish Premier League football news, and your local MP.
Most recently, I threw together a quick inflation calculator called Inflation Buster, which lets you compare prices for any two years – as far back as 1750. I’ve used a few javascript tricks to offer slider-based date selection, and in-page results. It’s not pretty, but it’s really just a technical proof-of-concept.
Just to let you know that Inflation Buster has just been updated to include the new 2006 inflation data, and I’ve fixed some IE7-related presentation problems. So for example, if you’re wondering what level to set your kids’ pocket-money, based on what you got as a child, we’re here to help. I also upgraded the project blog to the new version of WordPress, which was remarkably quick and straightforward. It isn’t often that an upgrade or installation routine manages to make me smile, but WordPress did. Love those guys.
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Vista buyers, prepare to be fleeced
The dollar-pound exchange rate is heading ever closer to the magic £1:$2 point, which suddenly makes it all too easy to compare prices on both sides of the Atlantic. And the first victim of such calculations, I suggest, will be Microsoft. Brace yourselves, TVP.
US residents will be expected to pay $239 for an upgrade from Windows XP to Vista Home Premium. A quick bit of mental arithmetic reveals that to be about £119.50 sterling. But according to stories circulating here at Christmas, you should be expecting something closer to £200 – or higher.
Oh, and to make matters worse: Microsoft will be making it available as a download to North American purchasers, who use the exact same internet that we do in the UK, at those same lovely dollar prices. I look forward to seeing them justify it.