Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

It is an interesting coincidence that I was enthusing about doing it for free
random-hacks-of-kindness/
as IT Pro is pulling this blog. Do I carry on elsewhere or do I give up? The coincidence is that I am paid by IT Pro, if I set up my own blog site obviously I’ll be doing for free.

Whilst I’m enthusing about volunteering I’m not sure about just blogging for the sake of it – it smacks too much of vanity publishing. How will I know if it’s read or even if it’s worth reading? If someone pays me I know someone values what I’m doing, if not…

Anyway this is pretty much the end here for me as the mystery blogger. So I’ll say farewell and finally reveal my true identity…

I am not an IT bod at all – in fact I am a Gay Girl in Damascus
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13744980

or am I?

Vodafone gets heavy… metal!

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

We all know how a good sponsorship deal can boost your business. Associating your company with an exclusive event can get your name out there to people whose opinion you want to change, making them more positive about your firm’s reputation.

On the professional side you have HP’s attachment to CERN or Virgin Media’s ongoing Government networks.

When it comes to fun you have Trend Micro last year buying up space at Royal Ascot, SAP plumping for Wimbledon and PC Tools going down the F1 route.

But, heavy metal music in a muddy field? Would this be your first choice? For Vodafone it seems to have been a smart one.

Last weekend was Download Festival at Donnington Park. I’m a regular attendee to the event which was born out of Monsters of Rock and this year dragged along a colleague from Expert Reviews to show him what all the fuss was about.

I wasn’t sure how it was going to work with a mobile firm sponsoring a music festival but it didn’t take long to see they had some smart ideas.

First off was charging. Since we have all become surgically attached to our mobiles, being at a festival for five days can give us panic attacks at the prospect of our phones running out. Plenty of stalls have popped up over the years, offering a basic charge from £5 upwards and this is what I expected of Vodafone.

Instead, it offered all of its customers free charging at the festival in a well organised truck with little queues and knowledgeable staff. This seemingly simple idea actually made people I know buy a pay as you go Vodafone SIM card just to use the facility. Nicely done.

Next there was the “Vodafone VIP Viewing Platform.” Vodafone is using the VIP tag for all its customers, again a clever move to make them feel special. The viewing platform had seats – hard plastic but more comfortable than the soggy ground – with an excellent view of the stage, again exclusively for Vodafone customers.

But, it was behind the scenes that was the best for me personally. The company’s communications team told me they had gone to town on building up connectivity across the festival site, something that stumps any mobile user in a field, and I could really notice the difference from previous years.

The thing with metal, as I wrote last year, is it attracts geeks. These can be a mobile app developer or can go up to the CIO of a company – trust me, I have met them at festivals. Vodafone getting onboard with something like this will undoubtedly raise their reputation in consumer circles but I have a feeling there were a few impressed business customers there as well.

Now, can I convince my big bosses to sponsor Sonisphere? We will see…

Small scale email marketing works a treat

Sunday, May 29th, 2011

A long time ago, in a place far from here, on a dark and stormy night, I sent out my first mailshot to 100 names plucked from Thomson’s Directory. It read ‘Mark and Mac for hire’. The response was amazing, creating a customer base which lasted for a decade and more. My wife and I were some of the first designers in Brighton with Mac set-ups, including a PostScript laser printer and a full range of design software. It all cost a gazillion to buy, the typefaces alone were worth thousands of pounds.

Over the years, clients moved on, to be replaced with others. As new facilities became affordable we bought them: ISDN, ADSL, high-res scanning, image manipulation, large format colour prints and web page design.

Gradually I specialised into book production, with clients in London, France and America, while my wife worked for a national charity. But the bankers screwed the world, people stopped buying books, publishing moved to ebooks and for the first time in 25 years I had to get a proper job. Ironically back to my old career where there is a huge lack of staff and I’m working less for the same money I earned from design. But I still keep a toehold in the creative world, hoping for the return of the good old days.

Zany, attractive and to the point

Which is how one email caught my eye and instead of marking it as junk, I read each new one with interest. They were zany, attractive and to the point, obviously from someone who knew what they were doing, or at least appeared to do so. The email was from Keith Scott, another jobbing freelancer who was trying to create a new client base via email.

Pre-recession Keith had been the man behind British Airport Authority’s annual report. As any designer will tell you, a glossy annual report pays the mortgage for a year. When BAA were taken over, Keith found he didn’t have enough work after a career in typesetting and design for print, dating from the days of hot metal.

Keith explained: “Once BAA’s 2006 annual report had gone to print I was back in the normal run of things with no financial umbrella and wondering what to do about the monetary vacuum. I had been sending postcards then followed up with a phone call but it became too expensive and time-consuming. I decided to try email.

“I had built up a small database of about 120 contacts whom I telephoned to get an email address before starting a monthly mail-out. It was a slow, manual process but it did keep the work coming in. Eventually I set FileMaker Pro to send the emails for me.

“At the start of 2009 I had 300 friendly contacts and about 1200 who had never replied. Each month I carried on emailing both and slowly increased the friendly list, which kept the work coming in. Unfortunately, as the recession hit, work started drying up, I had to put my time to good use.

“With the help of Yell.com, Yellow Pages on line, I searched for graphic design companies in London and the southern home counties. I telephoned them and said I was an artworker. I gave them my details and asked for the email address of the creative director or studio manager. The vast majority of people were very obliging.

Life threatening

“One day, searching Yell, an odd message appeared in a new browser window. It said that I was deemed to be using their site for the purpose of making a database which was strictly illegal and if I did not desist I would be prosecuted. It frightened the life out of me.

“Now I buy low cost lists from other companies. Not all of them have been particularly useful and one even instigated a contact from another database company threatening to prosecute me for using their data without permission. A list I had bought was clearly not legal and I had used a hidden trojan.

“I now have 570 friendly contacts and over 3000 who have never replied. The irony is that I have less work than ever, although it does seem to be improving slightly. Producing an html email for a client gave me the knowledge to create my own. I tried Dreamweaver which wasn’t very successful before I settled on TextWrangler which is free and very good. I use MacMassMailer to send my html emails.”

As with all jobbing designers, Keith has had to learn new skills and software to keep up with the industry. He is keen to learn from others’ experience. In the last couple of years, MacUser articles have made him re-evaluate his approach and present himself more forcefully. For example: a recent article showed that skilled freelancers should present themselves as specialists rather than just run-of-the-mill artworkers.

Like Keith, MacUser’s Steve Caplin convinced me to switch to a graphics tablet and adopt a different method to do ‘hairy cut-outs.’ This was immediately before I created a book for the Imperial War Museum called The Animals’ War. Page after page had cut-outs of hirsute animals which even the best Photoshop filters were a major head-ache. Steve’s advice was to paint quick masks, convert them to cut-outs before generating ‘hairiness‘ with brushes and fitters. This helped when I went on to do The Children’s War.

Keith Scott concludes: “The obvious thing for me was to promote my traditional typesetting and artworking background. This is why I try hard to distinguish the fact that design and artwork are two very different disciplines.

“But I feel that I’m barking up the wrong tree much of the time – some might say I’m simply barking.”

Far be it for me to contradict him.

How to blog sulking

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Blogging is a weird business. I have no idea how many people read this. One approach is to make up a target person and write just to them; but assuming I’m writing to the great British public I have to say that I’m not speaking to you. Not “not addressing all of you” or “failing to reach”, actually sulking. My lack of blog wasn’t laziness, it was me deliberately snubbing you. The trouble is I don’t think any one noticed.

I did rather pin my colours to the mast over the referendum and as far as I’m concerned a no vote to AV put the “dumb” in “referendum”. The only people I’ve spoken to who were against it didn’t understand it – of course it could be plenty of people were against it but didn’t want to have a boring argument with me so pretended they were. Considering the majority of people didn’t vote for the ruling party (parties if you assume the lib dem’s have any rule) why wouldn’t people vote for a system that lets them have a say in their second choice…

Anyway, there are two ways we can play this. Either I get 68% of a 42% turnout* – say 17 million – comments apologising or we just forget the whole thing and pretend it never happened.

What never happened? Rather than crash the site I forgotten it already. Friends again?

(* results from
http://ukreferendumresults.aboutmyvote.co.uk/en/default.aspx turnout was amazingly hard to find for a site dedicated to informing us of the results!)

Christmas Tunes

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

I came across a fine bit of Christmas Spirit today. The very talented Gentry Morris has recorded a Christmas song which you can download for free or make a donation to “Charity Water”. There’s good use of IT for you – how would old style retailing allow you to set your own price?

With a name like “Christmas for Cowboys” you might guess he’s a bit country – well Americana? Labels are all a bit tricky! Very wistful and rather beautiful.
http://gentrymorris.com/store.cfm

My other current favourite Christmas music is also Americana, if you like Gentry you could also try Bill Mallonee. I’m really into his Christmas album at the moment
billmalloneemusic
try track 6 an instrumental simply called Nativity – have a click and listen, you can preview without buying. Again, if you do want to buy, you can set your own price but this time with a minimum $7.99. Clever stuff this online selling.

It’s not a very cheery album but who can’t love a couplet like
He was heaven sent
even for our president
(it is a pre Obama recording!).

What I learnt at my father’s knee pt 2

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

What else did my dad teach me that has any relevance to my job in IT? Well, he taught me how to do a job properly and how bodge a quick lash up or as he always put it a “temporary job”. As ever the tricky thing is deciding when to do which, sometimes it’s obvious, other times it’s not. He also taught me a those temporary jobs can be in place a long time!

So when you are planning a project you need to figure out the effort vs the time it will be in place – why make it perfect if it will be scrapped in 2 weeks / months / years (depending on the project size).

One thing he did teach me which people sometimes miss is if it is a temporary job make sure it can be taken out without too much trouble. For him that was usually about using screws not glue and nails for us in IT it’s about interfaces and documentation.

What I learnt at my father’s knee pt 1

Friday, November 26th, 2010

My dad died this week. Not surprisingly I’ve been thinking about him a lot. He taught me an awful lot – some he meant to teach me, some I just picked up as “the way to do things” like you do, especially as a kid where you define “normal” as what happens. The things you are taught without meaning to be taught can sometimes be a problem later because you don’t realise you learnt them, you think you (and everybody else) was born knowing them.

I think the hardest part of any marriage / relationships is that coming together of two cultures, two sets of unspoken (because they are so obvious they don’t need to be spoken) expectations, ways of doing things, world views, rules. If your family never wrapped Christmas presents and your partner’s family always spent more on the wrapping than the gift expect a lot of hurt and confusion Christmas morning! You aren’t going to appreciate all the time and trouble of the wrapping and the gift might be a bit pants, your partner will never get to think about the gift they’ll be so shocked you didn’t care enough to wrap it.

The worst of that is that because these things are so basic you may never talk them through and never even understand them yourself.

Anyway, enough of bereavement and couples counselling, what about IT? The same applies. The basic stuff sometimes gets left unsaid because it is too obvious. At a techie level we are quite good at defining the minutiae because we are used to dealing with machines that don’t have any common sense so we know there are no assumptions but the higher you go, plans / road maps to management (everyone knows this must run on Linux too) or even just using higher level languages (obviously dates will sort numerically) you make assumptions – and they make an “ass” out of “u” and “mption”, hmm did I do that wrong?

Work for me Earls Court!

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Unlike some of my lucky colleagues – OK, Tom is the exception as he is at an airport – I am not working from a comfy sofa with Jeremy Kyle on the TV and an endless supply of snacks from the fridge.

On this Work Wise Week, I am working remotely from the 360 IT conference at Earls Court.

The show is filled to the rafters with important IT vendors, top experts and a plethora of public and private sector executives ready to rant when it comes to infrastructure, so I shouldn’t really complain. However, I don’t think it is quite ready for the world of remote working.

There are lists and lists of reasons employers can come up with for being against remote working and many I would bat aside.

Over lunch, I talked to ESET about the security aspects of home working and they agreed it was an issue but one the industry was looking to address with an array of products.

Then there is making sure your employees are actually working, not just watching the aforementioned TV. Trust me, working remotely is hard work. Running around a trade show, lugging a laptop around and trying to find somewhere to sit and work is not an easy task.

No, the issue I have and often have at such conferences where I work remotely is finding reliable WIFi.

From what I can work out, there are about three different WiFi choices at Earls Court today yet there wasn’t one working in the keynote theatre, a pain when you are trying to work as you go.

The one on the show floor may have worked but it was far too noisy to work down there and the one in the press room, whilst working most of the time, gave lots of people bother meaning they had to swap it to a fourth WiFi connection late in the day.

Overall, I have managed, but I may have gone slightly grey under these layers of hair dye.

I do like my reliable connections at home and work. Don’t get me wrong though, I am more than sure with the number of providers and the range of wireless technologies coming into force, in the future it won’t always be as difficult to maintain a stable connection.

Until that day comes though, I better go and buy some more hair dye…

No blocking doesn’t mean they are your real friends Mark…

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

I like to think I have long left the days behind me when it would be a contest to see who had the most friends on social networking sites.

Back in the humble beginnings of MySpace, when I was in my teens, there was stiff competition. Don’t get me wrong, I was a bit of a loser and all my friends had way more buddies than I did so I never bothered to take it too seriously. However, the ones who were winning in the friends count definitely took pride in their so-called achievements.

Nowadays Twitter is the enemy. The battle for the most followers gets masses of press coverage for no apparent reason and, on a more personal level, most of us keep an eye on our follower to following ratio.

But Facebook? Now, this was a social network that never got me caught up in trying to get people to read my inane babble.

Unlike MySpace and Twitter, where those befriending you are often unknown, Facebook has always been dedicated to those I know in the flesh, people I regularly want to contact and those I want to know about.

Yes, this means I have had to ignore a few people along the way, and I have even got round to blocking some of them, but I felt happy with this balance of social networking conduct.

Today though, it seems there is one person I can never stop from invading my profile, no matter how hard I try.

Several reports today have shown Mark Zuckerberg, founding friend of Facebook, cannot be blocked from your profile and trying to do so will just produce an error message.

What’s wrong Mark? Have you been turned down by prospective friends just one too many times on your own site? Did you have similar experiences to me on MySpace and have your friends laugh at your relative unpopularity?

Look mate, I understand how painful it can be but stamping your foot around like you own the place… OK, bad choice of words, but stamping nevertheless is a tad childish don’t you think?

Plus, I am sure after the Facebook movie comes out and all the girls realise how loaded, I mean lovely you are, you will be flooded with friend requests.

In reality, reports have suggested Facebook stopped the ability to block him after it was used as a method of protest against privacy disputes, but to me this is also childish. How can you promote a network of people coming together to share thoughts and ideas but then try and stop them when they act on it?

I admit, I have never had a notification telling me Zuckerberg has added me and, especially after this blog, I find it very unlikely it will happen. However, whatever the reason for stopping people blocking him, I think it is ludicrous. You made the rules Zuckerberg, now live with the consequences.

But if you want to save his pride, perhaps just de-friending him would be the best start? I didn’t think so…

Rock ‘n’ rollers talk tech too

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

So, everyone at the office today has to regularly prod me and I have considered resorting to stapling my eyes open thanks to the stationary cupboard being in full view.

But why is this you ask? Well I have just rolled back in the office after spending a fantastic weekend in a field with loud rock music and very little shuteye.

The festival was called Sonisphere, a touring event which travels around Europe, bring the delights of alternative music to thousands of people over the summer.

Highlights of said delights included the infamous Iron Maiden, classic Motley Crue, and even The Cult showed up for good measure.

Ok, ok, this is supposed to be a tech blog right, not me raving about a good weekend away? The thing is though, every step of the way, I was greeted with the same debates we have over here. Like it or not, rock enthusiasts tend to be techies at heart as well!

It started as small as whose phone would last the longest for the weekend without needing a charge.

Whilst some (yes, like me) insisted on taking their smartphones which, whilst great for capturing festival moments and tweeting them to the masses, have notoriously dire battery life, others reverted back to classic handsets that, not only would last all week, but were sturdy as bricks to avoid any breakage in a mosh pit.

This debate stretched even further when we happened upon a press conference from 80s thrash metallers Anthrax. It took Scott Ian about 30 seconds before he whipped out his iPhone and the band asked everybody what handsets they were carrying.

Many of those who did bring the shiny devices also took advantage of the mobile app that had been built cross platform for the event, giving out stage times, maps and important need to know information for the weekend.

However, returning to Anthrax, the big debate kicked off during their press conference and was hot discussion for the rest of the weekend – filesharing. Anthrax took a very strong stance against it, for monetary reasons as artists through to it just not being the same as holding a record in your hand.

However, the next day the lead singer of Welsh metallers Skindred, Benji Webbe, told the bouncing crowd he couldn’t care less whether you had bought their music or downloaded it, as long as you were there enjoying the show.

There were so many different approaches to the subject from the different bands. Whilst some refused the idea of even selling albums digitally online, others were releasing new singles over the course of the weekend on iTunes.

The fans also had very different opinions on it too but the loud music luckily distracted us from too serious an argument.

The final theme that I can recall was social networking. Before even attending the event, everybody had used the likes of Facebook and Twitter to arrange meets ups and been using the lesser talked about nowadays MySpace to check out the bands beforehand.

Once people were at the festival, those who did bring their smartphones were all over the social networks, uploading photos and experiences, even the bands were at it.

Then as everyone sloped off home, the sites have again been dominated with looking back and remembering the fun times we had – as well as filling in the blank gaps for others.

I have one more festival to go to this summer and I am hoping to see even more behind the scenes technology that goes into putting on the show, but there is no question the likes of smartphones, file sharing and social networking have made a huge impact on the way festivals run.

Whether you think it is a positive step or not, I will leave you to decide but, for now, I think I am going to have a rest.