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Audio Guide vs Mobile App for Museums

October 4th, 2010 · Opinion

My favourite bright spark, Sarah Dines, has been at it again, this time opining a piece In Praise of the Humble Audio Guide.  In it Sarah talks about the tried and tested benefits of the museum audio tour we all love, and why there are serious issues with the roll out of so-called audio tour mobile apps for self-guidance around a museum.

I like the piece because it echoes sentiments I have written before about museums and why they should develop web apps rather than mobile applications.  The notion of change for change’s sake, where it isn’t required, irks me, and truly, as Sarah points out, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

To my mind, the most important lessons to learn from the piece are three-fold.

  • Improve not replace – Existing products can always be enhance, improved, brought up-to-date.  It is a mistake to assume that because something is newer it is automatically better.  I see it all too often, when apps are updated to something new and the experience and usability are degraded.  This happens in so many industries.
  • Experience is king – When visiting a museum, the ‘consumption’ of an exhibition is the purpose, not to get lost in some new-fangled multimedia application.  The audio tour is unobtrusive, you can listen and view artwork at the same time, but this isn’t true of an app, as Sarah demonstrates.  Even the access buttons on an audio tour device can be felt in a way they cannot on a flat screen, so you can in fact use one without being distracted to glance down.
  • Balance - Rather than a knee-jerk reaction to developments around you, do things in a considered fashion.  Plan them and make sure they are executed properly and in a balanced manner.  Prior planning and analysis of product development will make for a  better formed and used product.  Make sure the emphasis  of development, from the application code to the design, and most importantly the content are balanced.

I understand that museums want to jump onto the next big thing and harness the powers of web 2.0, to create their very own cool corner of the web but in their haste they need to consider the reality.

An app in itself will not, by default, improve the experience, enhance the exposure of the museum to the outside world, and drive visitors. Though the possibility of any of these things exists.  The chattering classes online will always be taken by the next big thing, but as quick as they start, they will stop, and unless you create a ‘sticky’ app, as quickly as they install and app they will remove it.  An audio tour guide isn’t for life, it’s not even for Christmas, it is of course only for the duration of your walk around an exhibit, but it serves its purpose, and does it with aplomb.  It might not have the thrills and shills of an iPhone app, but it’s reliable and dependable.

Personally, as I have said before I think museums should focus on what they do and do it well, if stuff ain’t broke don’t fix it.  Build web apps, not iPhone apps, and create amazing exhibitions that draw the crowds in on the back of their ‘pulling power’.  In an age of cuts, cuts, cuts, every step needs to be considered and jettisoning existing tools for the sake of expensive, development heavy options, that may or may not work out, or improve things, doesn’t seem like the best sense to me.

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The Planet – A Reflection on 7 Years Hosting

September 23rd, 2010 · Opinion

It’s interesting how your perspective changes of a company after you have worked with it for many years, perhaps even decades.  Of course you see it grow and like to feel like a valued part of the equation, but what happens when it all starts to go oh so wrong?

The price of growth and success? Well I suppose it’s that you start to do things wrong, that you no longer care as much about the individual customers and that you focus more on the big money clients and bigger things.  That’s pretty much how I feel about hosting at The Planet.

Rewinding The Last 7 Years

The first invoice I have in their billing system is from December 2003.  That’s nearly 7 years ago now.  When I joined their rank and file as a customer, I had been dragged from pillar to post by some hideously awful hosting companies, many of which still operate today, shockingly enough.  Their network and server solutions, for the small company they were, offered bullet-proof solutions and great and fully configurable options.  In effect you could find what you needed and at a reasonable price given the quality of the service they provided.

So if it was so great, what started changing?  Well companies with investors, with owners, all wish to grow and serve their board and their shareholders, and that much The Planet has done.  They have grown and grown and grown, swallowing up competitors and enlarging their infrastructure in the great state of Texas.  All this growth has turned them into the second largest host in the world, and little me?  Well I have learned a whole lot in the process.

How So Wrong?

The rumblings of thunder started long ago when their tiered support started signing off every ticket with the parroted tune “Thanks for choosing The Planet.”  That would be all and well, bar for the fact that probably at no stage in the breath of that sentence does any employee actually mean it, and the more they say it, the more meaningless it becomes.

With their increasing size comes their obsession with performance and their need to track every last detail of employee productivity.  The problem with this is that it starts to get in the way of courtesy to customers when every time their ticket is closed, the client has to fill out a survey.  Moreover, the obsession to perform leads to employees closing out tickets before identifying that the customer is actually satisfied with the conclusion, something that only makes you look yet more cavalier with your customer service.

What Does It Matter?

What should it matter you might ask yourself?  So long as their network up-time is solid and their machines work?  Isn’t that the whole point to a good hosting company?  Sure!  I would wholeheartedly agree, but I think at some point you also need to respect clients more than being a mere # in an accounting system or a credit on the balance sheet as it rolls off the billing department’s laser printer, as paid for by said customers.

In addition, the reality is that their growing network hasn’t been bullet-proof.  Over the last year or two there have been a number of network outages, one of which caused routed traffic online to drop 25% as I recall.  That’s pretty shocking.  Before that they had an explosion at one of their datacenters that took out the second floor, something they recovered from in 24-48 hours amazingly (round of applause), but still, another painful experience nonetheless.

I suppose this was all inevitable as they grew, taking on datacenters that were setup outside the core of the initial Planet infrastructure. How hard can it be to setup up a decent datacenter right?  But of course no two people look at the task the same way, plenty try to cut corners where The Planet hadn’t in the past and which gave them the edge they required to get to where they were.

A Long Time in Business

I have been hosting ever since I hooked up a slackware box on a T2 line in my garage during the dot com bubble.  I started with 1 client and I grew my own business to a few hundred sites serving millions of visitors a month.  I did so based on the quality of the personal service I offer.  Many long time clients, with me since the beginning have become good friends.  They aren’t just faceless entities, they are artists, designers, musicians, and business owners, all people for whom I have provided a service, whose business I care about,  and to whom I have provided that service with a smile and friendly face, always being available and helpful as required.  How else would I have retained their business for so long?

Maybe I am just tooo kind.  The reality of the subscription based model, that goes month-to-month, where clients stick around without ever questioning the status quo just leads to a kind of service that is run without care and abandon for the customer, and that in reality just seems as if the customers are a thorn in the side of the business operator, whilst they milk the cash cow they have created.  I see it all the time, and not just in hosting.

Personally I prefer the niche or boutique approach because it personalizes the service and can be highly profitable.  Of course though this doesn’t mean that one can grow a business to be the second largest in the world in its field, but at least you can ensure the quality of service, and it provides rewards on both sides of the business equation.  Business needs to be kept on its toes or it becomes complacent and lazy, and the ones to do that are the customers.

Happy Again?

So will I ever be happy again with The Planet?  Well so long as their network up-time remains the same, and they reduce the frequency of sporadic network downtime, then sure.  I know that there is little point in griping about support and customer service, because unless the big boss listens, nothing will change, and it could likely be a whole lot worse, irrespective of the size of the company.

If they actually stood up and listened to their customers, actually provided the personal service and care they claim, then that would be great.  Recent interactions with other big companies have worked out well, and the reward to the company, versus the actual cost to them was minimal.  On the flip side, recent requests to The Planet regarding an outage were met with a link to their Legals and a closed ticket.  The reality is that the actual cost to them of the SLA credit is minimal, but the cost in terms of this client, possibly much larger.

When you become a faceless organisation to your clients and your employees work like automatons, then you know it is time to look hard in the mirror.

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Single Page Website SEO

September 21st, 2010 · SEO, Web Design

I’ve talked before about a single page web site that I built for a friend who shoots headshots in London, and how I optimised the site to help drive business to her otherwise off-the-radar venture.

Increased traffic & improved ranking

It has been a while since I last worked on the site, and wrote about it, but after some recent investigations, I can see that in the 6 months or less since the site was up and running it now scores on the front page of Google for the core terms that we were targeting.

Not only that, her traffic is rising and right now is increasing at a rate of 50%-100% month-on-month which means those better placed rankings are helping drive traffic as much as the best spot on the Google Places map.  This proves the point that Local Business center can help drive initial traffic, and get you out of the blocks fast, but at the same time you do need to nurture the site and improve your natural search ranking.

Highly competitive

There’s no doubt that in a highly competitive market place it is hard to drive traffic, and believe me capturing the attention of interested parties, as much of holding their attention once they get to your site is another challenge, but fighting your corner, especially when the competition is throwing everything at they can at promoting themselves is tough.

I have noted on more than one occasion that business have been changing their names in Google places all the time, performing the usual tricks of keyword stuffing and more, but to no avail it might seem.  Of course you can get all the traffic in the world, but if you can’t convert potential customers with an enticing site and great product once they get there, what good is it?

Where to go from one page?

The obvious question, is where to go from here?  And of course from 1 page you can only go to 2 and 3 and 4.  It’s a rather natural and seamless progression!  But this brings in other aspects of SEO and how to best play with a growing web site.

  • Content added should be well linked, clearly worked into the UI, and highly sharpened for the purpose of cutting through to the top of the possible search engine rankings.
  • Any attempt to add content should include a goal to try and generate site links from Google search, whether that is possible or not.  Always follow best practice.
  • You need to retain focus on your core identifier keywords and work merely around the periphery, trying to enhance visibility of the site for a wider range of inclusive 2-3-4 word phrases.
  • That being said, with a very niche product such as “headshots”, where the core identifier is one word, you need to be careful in not overdoing your optimisation and start to get penalised for what might appear to be keyword stuffing.
  • In growing, you also need to reach out to your customer base and ask already happy clients with web sites to post testimonials and to link back to your site, or even better simply pass on your name for word of mouth business.

Needless to say, as with anything web site related the hardest bit is always getting the content up and running, whether you know what to do with it or not.  As a small business owner trying to cover all bases it is always hard, more so when you are thrown into a technical world you know nothing about.  My experience, working with my friend, shows that even its possible to attain effective results with a minimum of input, and with even more effort you could do a lot better no doubt!

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iTunes for Newspapers

September 20th, 2010 · Opinion

On the face of it, the news about Apple’s development of iTunes for Newspapers would be a good thing, even more so considering the utter collapse of the industry in recent years with papers losing money hand over fist, and revenues being cannibalized by the likes of Craigslist and the internet.

The reality is though that Apple, despite offering a fig leaf to the ailing industry, is merely acting as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Apple has no desire to save the newspaper industry from impending doom, but rather to protect and safeguard their own interests, running circles around the flaming bandwagons that make up the papers of today, and use them for their own end.  True the papers might be “saved” in the process, but it would be represent shockingly blind faith in massive corporations of today, to do anything for any other reason than their own self-interest.

The recent chest beating and eventual, if not inevitable climb down over Flash on iOS devices, is reflective of this general trend.  There’s no doubt Apple, like Google and Microsoft, among a long list of self-interested parties, are just school yard bullies.  Apple, as each and every corporation would, is just trying to take full advantage of the precarious state of newspapers to basically expect them to start producing quality content for the iOS device platform and demand that they no longer provide full and unfettered access to users elsewhere.

And why not?  They’re allowed to right?  But let’s call a spade a spade, and not delude ourselves into thinking that they are doing anything else.  Corporations retain rights similar to the rights of the individual citizen and can use their clout, demand, and deep pockets of which Apple has stacked up billions, much to the chagrin of their shareholders, let’s not forget that.  Whether good or bad, right or wrong, this is the way the landscape is shifting these days, and whether inevitable or not, it is at least better to be aware of the state of play than to ignore it and pretend that your so-called foe is in fact your friend.

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Is There Really Any Benefit in Working Stupid Hours?

September 9th, 2010 · Opinion

After some 10 years of post graduate life under the belt, and a slew of working experience, I have to ask myself, is there really any benefit in working crazy hours?  Pulling all nighters for the sake of completing poorly managed projects, or running on empty for the sake of accomplishing your goals?

A wise man once told me that you could get but 7 decent hours of work out of a coder in any given day.  That being said, he didn’t practice what he preached, so in reality he wasn’t actually that wise!  But truly, I ask you, is there really any benefit from working an insane amount of hours on the trot?  At this point in time, if hard pressed for an answer I would say “definitely not”.

To me anyone who engenders a spirit of work, work, work with their employees and all hard graft for no tangible benefit, really doesn’t understand the finer points of life.  Late nights fueled by beer, pizza and whatever other carbs (which send you to sleep) and greasy food unwitting devs wish to consume remind me of school boy treats of late night ghost story readings late after bed time, but the reality is that what you gain in the short term you lose in the long term.

I don’t think I will quickly forget the 2 day stint I spent in the Stink Digital office, with 30 minutes sleep.  After nearly 48 hours in the office, I truly did stink, not least to say zombified too. A much needed shower was welcome when it did finally come, but I felt like a member fo the living dead and my state of mind was screwed for several days thereafter. Luckily for them, the only thing “screwed” was my weekend.

Taking care of employees and a personal interest in their lives, might seem like a costly endeavour to any employer, but their are definite payoffs in the long term. Encouraging self-development, a healthy lifestyle and ensuring a positive work environment are all things that, as an employer you should be thinking about. Personally I wish more employers would encourage exercise as part of the working day. A healthy mind, healthy body and a positive mental attitude are things not to be frowned upon, that’s for sure.

So what are your thoughts?

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