Puffbox

Wow – it turns out that the little guy can still do a better job than the big corporates.

I’ve been looking for a library program to bring some sense to my photo collection, before it gets totally ridiculous. I tried Google’s Picasa, and whilst it looks gorgeous, it’s missing some critical features – I couldn’t find any easy way to call up only the photos I’d just added, for example. I tried the free Adobe Photoshop Album, and whilst I really liked its keyword tagging, it refused to open a surprising number of my pics (just standard JPGs?!). Both were full of extra commercially-driven features, which I didn’t want.

Today I came across Picajet, which comes in freeware and paid-for versions. And I’m delighted to say, it’s the best of both worlds. Very neat drag-and-drop keyword tagging, easy searching and filtering, everything I was looking for. Plus a few other cute things, like a choice of skins, so you get a say in what it looks like. A very easy way to win your heart as well as your mind. At the moment, it’s a clear winner.

Now I just need to go through all my photos and tag them up… 🙁

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)