Puffbox

The launch of Google’s new Charts API last month didn’t make many ripples, or then again, maybe I was too busy to notice. But I’ve just used it in anger for the first time, and it’s fantastic.

The ability to create graphics dynamically, by passing values in a URL query string, isn’t anything new. But as ever, Google goes far beyond the call of duty. You can have line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, Venn diagrams and scatter plots. You can configure the size, the axes, the labels, the data markers and the colours (including backgrounds, fill areas and even gradient effects)… and include it in your page as easily as any other image. Just glance down through the examples on the API documentation page, and see how much it can do.

Once again, this is the kind of tool I just wish I’d had access to five years ago. I can’t tell you the agony I went through whilst at National Statistics, trying to get the IT department to buy or code me something like this.

The only catches are a limit of 50,000 queries per user (?) per day, and the rather arcane method for calculating and communicating the data values. This is just crying out for a simple web-based form to produce the necessary query string.

You want examples? Sure. Here’s last night’s Iowa Caucus results:

I’ve also added a pie chart to the blog’s sidebar, showing how many people have got round to switching from my old RSS feed to my new Feedburner feed. 🙂

If you’re a subscriber to my RSS feed, I need you to change your settings. Keep reading.

At some point this evening, this blog will record its 50,000th page view as registered by WordPress.com’s built-in stats system. It’s taken me precisely two years and ten days to reach that milestone: I wrote my first proper blog posts on 23 December 2005, making (as it turned out) some observations which still ring true. Just as well, really.

Will the champagne cork be popping? Probably not – as it happens, we’ve got a bottle of Joseph Phelps Napa Valley red lined up for tonight. (But I digress.) The reality is, ‘total page views’ means absolutely nothing in a blog context. The figure which means much more to me is the number of RSS feed subscribers… round about 100, as best I can measure it, with 70% using Google Reader, and 20% Bloglines. And in all likelihood, since I’m quite happy to distribute my ‘full content’ feed, I bet those 100 hardcore readers rarely (if ever) contribute to the ‘page views’ total.

So, having hit the magic/meaningless 50k mark, it’s time to do something I’ve been putting off for some time. WordPress.com has served me well, but with so much of my work these days centring around local WordPress installations, the only sensible thing to do is move away from wordpress.com, and blog properly on my puffbox.com company site.

In preparation for this, can I ask all RSS feed subscribers to switch to my new Feedburner-based RSS feed, located at feeds.feedburner.com/simondickson. Then, when I make the jump over to the new puffbox.com, I’ll repoint Feedburner to the new feed URL, and you won’t miss a thing. I’ll still be blogging at wordpress.com for a couple of weeks, but the plan is to launch the new puffbox.com in time for Jeremy Gould’s UKGovWeb BarCamp at the end of the month.

Granted, it’s all a bit geeky, but New Year’s Day gave an interesting insight into the workings of Google’s search ranking algorithm.

As the Google Operating System blog explains, when Google started indexing new pages ultra-rapidly (ie within minutes) last year, it created a rod for its own back. A key component in their calculation is ‘how many people link to this page?’ – but how can anyone be expected to link to a page that’s just been created? Their conclusion, derived from observing activity around Google’s special logo marking 25 years of TCP-IP, is that newly created pages get an ‘artificial’ boost.

I’ve always felt news was the natural territory for the web, and on occasions I’ve been criticised (probably with justification) for seeing it as the be-all and end-all – but this further reinforces my view. It’s also a bit depressing to see the extent to which people are prepared to ‘game’ Google’s results, in pursuit of a few PPC advertising dollars. I’d love to be able to say that I always prefer fresh content, and generally I do – but if it’s in the spammers’ interests to artificially generate fresh content, we could be facing problems down the line.

Here’s a screengrab from an early preview version of Internet Explorer v8, lifted from a video on Microsoft’s Channel 9 website.

Why is this significant? For those who don’t recognise it, this smiley face is the Acid2 test, to see if your web browser is playing by the rules of CSS coding. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it’s the generally accepted standard test. And most browsers fail it. In terms of the broad public audience, it’s basically only Opera and Safari (on the Mac). Or to put it another way, maybe 3% of the average website’s traffic.

This matters because, in a nutshell, coding websites is a pain in the arse when all the various browsers have their own annoying quirks in how they process CSS code. If we had widespread compliance with the rulebook, coding would be a breeze. Instead, I’d say the majority of coding effort is spent not on getting the initial design up and running, but on tweaking it to make it work across the board. This is costing you money.

Things are looking up. Firefox v3 will include an updated ‘rendering engine’ which will pass the test; and there’s been joy bordering on hysteria at the news this week that the latest test build of Internet Explorer version 8 – full release next year some time – passes the test.

But if I’ve learned one lesson lately, it’s the fact that big organisations (especially public sector) simply aren’t updating their browser software. Looking at the stats for the Our NHS Our Future site I built, with a predominance of public sector users: 70% of all users are using IE6. (On other private-sector sites I’ve built, it’s still well over a third.) And this is 14 months after IE7’s public release.

Yes, someone just switched on the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a very, very long tunnel.

(Anyone else fancy sharing their browser percentages?)

Thanks to Dave Winer for spotting that the top three things people asked Google (US) to explain in 2007 were:

1. what is love
2. what is autism
3. what is rss

Impressed to see signs of a Howard Jones comeback there, incidentally. 🙂

Today was meant to be launch day for my latest, and I’d say my greatest, piece of work since going solo. But with a new server arriving late, our live date has slipped past Christmas. Of course it’s the only sensible thing to do; nobody would launch anything dramatic a week before the week-long shutdown, would they?

Step forward my old mates at Sky News, who have unveiled their new Sky News Video Player – actually, more of a dashboard, if you ask me. Video was the big improvement when Sky relaunched back in April, and this takes it to the next level. You get a split-screen view with a large playback window, and an overview of all current clips, which you can arrange in a personal playlist. Then hit the huge ‘play’ button (and probably ‘fullscreen’), sit back, and enjoy. There’s even a YouTube-style option to ’embed’ each individual clip in your own page (although WordPress doesn’t seem to want to let me use it?); click on MENU to find it. Part Flash, part HTML, a bit of Ajax too. All in all, a truly, truly brilliant execution, now some way ahead of the direct competition.

(Nice touch to do the Scoble-style amateur camerawork on executive producer Julian March’s walkthrough, too.)

They’ve also added the ability for people to comment at the bottom of individual news stories: see this example on an Amy Winehouse story. I’m not sure how much use people will make of this; the implementation’s a bit patchy; and to be honest, you have to look quite hard to find a story it’s been enabled on. But I suppose it’s early days.

Finally got my hands on a Wii last week, and when I’m not otherwise occupied by work, family duties or Guitar Hero (not necessarily in order of preference…), I’m finding it an extraordinary step forward to have a web browser on the big screen in the living room… especially when it comes to Flash-powered video streaming.

But there’s two drawbacks. For one, it’s just a little disappointing that you have to download the browser manually; and that (since July 07) you have to pay for it. Admittedly £3.50 isn’t going to break the bank, but it’s a shame there’s a financial hurdle in the way. Countless families will have a revolutionary internet device plugged into their telly, and won’t even realise it.

And secondly, it doesn’t work with the BBC’s new Flash-powered iPlayer. The Wii browser only comes with Flash 7, due (apparently) to Adobe not providing a more up-to-date SDK; and it looks like iPlayer expects more. A pity, as that would have been an absolute killer.

The new BBC personalisable homepage is now publicly visible, if you know where to look. Acting head of design, Richard Titus explains the thinking: ‘a lick of paint’ for now, with the really juicy stuff – ‘your unique personal user profile’, ‘video on the homepage and an iPlayer widget’ – to follow after Christmas.

Having played with it (very) briefly, they’ve done an excellent job of delivering great functionality in a straightforward way, largely thanks to a bit of Ajax magic – and clearly taking Netvibes as its principal role model. This is not a bad thing. Interesting to see a slightly larger font than we’re used to, and some nice ‘breaking out of the box’ imagery. Expect to see much more of both on other sites.

And of course, there’s the relaunched streaming iPlayer. The geeks may tell you that ‘cross platform’ is the big story here. It isn’t. Nor is DRM. It’s the fact that streaming actually makes it usable. A ‘wait for a few hours’ service in a post-YouTube world was never going to work.

Martin Belam is writing a series of posts charting the history of blogging at the BBC. It’s well worth a read if you have any interest in this stuff, especially since ‘well, that’s how the BBC does/did it’ is still a powerful weapon in any workshop.

I was particularly struck by an almost throw-away line in part three: ‘ As I understand it, the way blogging out-reach is being done nowadays by the BBC in the English regions is to provide encouragement from the BBC for people to start blogging for themselves, but not to provide the platform.’

Quite right of course: and another significant victory for the upstart mentality inside the monolithic organisation. The fact is, a quick WordPress installation can do it quicker and better than any monster corporate-led project. And besides, I hear ominous things regarding the technology environment at the Beeb. Unrepeatable words have been used.