bookmark_borderIn the garden of pain

After a rather good Friday night, I spent most of Saturday getting re-acquainted with the sofa whilst Louise was off buying plants for the garden. So, when Sunday rolled around and the weather was fair, we headed out into the garden.

Although to be completely honest Louise headed out into the garden and I delayed the inevitable as much as possible. I did eventually go out and pick up spade and fork to help dig over the neglected sideborder in the back garden. Now our soil sits on clay, and I don’t mean it’s a bit clay-like I mean if you dig down about six inches you can cut out neat blocks of clay from the under the soil. It’s heavy going and of course being largely made of clay our garden develops a solid baked crust that took a pickaxe to get through yesterday.

Turning over that kind of soil is bloody hard work, so why we decided to tackle the much bigger job of digging up one of the old iron clothes poles, I’ll never know.

Alas we failed to dig out the large concrete block as, whilst trying to wiggle it free, the rusted and rotten iron clothes pole started to bend and, very quickly started to break. Thankfully it was at very close to ground level so with a whacks of a sledgehammer the edges were round off, leaving me covered in rusty, watery gunk from inside the broken off stump of the pole. An exotic grass planted next to the stump finishes off the job.

Needless to say that, after some digging, and generally exerting some force on a fairly solid object, I’m a little bit achey in places I’d forgotten I had. Well, at least since the time when… ahhh.. but that’s another story.

bookmark_borderWeb 2.0 is hard

Question: How much investment does Web 2.0 really take?

Answer: A lot.

I’ve seen the same quote repeated in several different locations recently. It was uttered by O’Reilly and has the twin benefits of being short, quantitative, and seemingly true. As I’m in the midst of setting up a new website for our company, focussed on the developer community that already exists (in number if not in action), it was a phrase that made me realise just how much work lay ahead of me.

Part of the work I’m doing is to replace the existing website, rebranding and updating it in one fell swoop. Most of the work is largely concerned with uploading documents and files to make sure that everything that is currently available will be available from the new website, but there are already thoughts around how we can use the website to drive further adoption, innovation and so on.

And, of course, because Web 2.0 is the phrase of the moment there are quite a few eyes waiting to see what will appear.

One thing I have realised, and I’m still winning over minds on this, is that most of what Web 2.0 is about isn’t the technology and, whilst this may seem like an odd statement, it’s not really about the people who use the website, not initially at any rate. No, for me the big issues that surround Web 2.0 adoption by corporations are centred around information and transparency, about being part of the conversation.

That last sentence is important. You cannot drive a conversation on the internet, you can start it, you can contribute to it, but once you’ve set it free you no longer have control over it. All you can do is hang in for the ride, and that’s where transparency kicks in. As the numbers of conversations grow the easier they are to manage if you are open and upfront. For, as Tim O’Reilly said of Web 2.0 (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“The more people that use it, the more uses we’ll find”

So, just as the benefits of having a more connected community of users will increase what they can acheive both individually and collectively, so to do the number of pitfalls awaiting the cumbersome.

What this confirms is that most of the challenges around setting up a community website are largely about the individuals and being able to reach out to them, to be able to consistently engage them and ultimately offer them benefits for their time and input.

Which doesn’t half take a lot of work.

bookmark_borderMade to Stick

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck

I can’t recall why I picked up this book, most likely a recommendation from the same sources through which I discovered The Tipping Point (which itself inspired this book), but I’ve been dipping in and out of it for a while and finally finished it this weekend. That’s an indication of my reading habits recently, not any reflection on the quality of this book.

Whilst most would regard this as a business focussed book it, like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, is more about the ideas than their application. That said there are plenty of concrete examples given to reaffirm the basic premise of the book, that there are six key qualities that make an idea “sticky”:

  1. Simplicity
  2. Unexpectedness
  3. Concreteness
  4. Credibility
  5. Emotion
  6. Stories

It’s a fascinating read, including some well-known ideas (JFK’s “Put a man on the moon in 10 years”), throughout which several thoughts sparked in my brain as I started to connect some of the key qualities in a sticky idea with our profession. After all, what better way to make sure people get the most out of the information you provide than to make it sticky?!

Of course there are some parts of the book which, whilst interesting, can’t really be applied directly but I was amazed that, with a little bit of creative spin, you could probably adapt most of the ideas within to make your content stickier.

Made to Stick is very much one of those books which hold some simple truths which are well stated and analysed. Throughout the book there are many examples, so getting a handle on what each of the six qualities brings to the table is easy, and to be honest a lot of what is said you probably already know you just don’t know how to pull it all together.

There are some excerpts on the book’s website and if you enjoyed The Tipping Point then give it a look.

bookmark_borderOhhhh Two?

The contract for my mobile phone is up at the end of the month. So I’ve started looking around for alternatives, starting as ever with consideration of what I want it to do, because that’s what I do you see, research, plan, consider… I am gently mocked for this by my own wife and friends, but I knew they would, you see, having considered their reaction to my over-pondering of things, see how this works? iPhone

Having spent many years with a Windows Mobile phone (varying models), I grew used to having contacts and calendar sync’d, keeping me on track during a busy day and giving me the comfortable fallback of having enough information at my fingertips that I didn’t need to carry anything other than my phone.

18 months ago I decided to simplify things a little and try and rid myself of gadget lust. It seemed to be working:

I find that I’m not using my new mobile phone for much more than phone calls and text messages (sorry txt msgs). This, in part, in because the phone itself isn’t as functionality complete as my old phone so I’m just not using the same set of features. Yet the thing is, I’m not missing anything and it’s liberating to NOT be able to check my email at a moment’s notice. The way I use my mobile phone is regressing back to being, largely, just a phone. However that’s more the technology forcing me to make specific decisions so isn’t quite the same.

Alas the last line of the above quote is the most telling. iPhone

Increasingly unreliable, recently it’s stopped ringing at all it seems, the Samsung D900 has been (form factor aside) a failure. Whilst it looks good and feels good in the hand, the software provided is shoddy and managed to triplicate my contacts as well as randomly delete some with no rhyme nor reason. Being without a reliable calendar or having any confidence that my contact list was up-to-date has led me to hack my way to some semblance of a workable system. Thankfully having most of such things covered online (contacts aside, why HAS no-one cracked that yet?) it’s not too bad… but even that is made worse by the grindingly slow internet browser that comes with the Samsung.

Basically, my experiment failed so straight to the top of my list are the ability to easily talk to my calendar and to keep my contacts sync’d safely and to be able to browse the internet. The latter requiring a nicer, bigger, screen than the Samsung offers. iPhone

OK, a quick question, has anyone read this far and NOT figured out where this is heading? iPhone

Cutting to the chase, it looks like a straight fight. In the (red) corner (geddit!!) we have the new iPhone 3G, in the blue corner the, Windows Mobile based, HTC Touch Diamond. Both are touchscreen and… well they both do pretty much the same kinda thing. Feature wise the HTC is the richer, but since when has any Apple purchase been down to features?

Having had a quick shot of the current iPhone, and the iPod Touch, there is a lot to be said for the way it “just works” – an awful phrase that one. The iPhone also gets free bonus points for being associated with the same people who made my MacBook and the operating system which all so “just works”.

Ohh hell, who am I kidding, come July 11th I’ll be yet another ‘fanboy’ touting his iPhone around. I don’t care if it has flaws, I don’t care if it’s not the best fit to my needs, I know that everyday I pick it up I’ll enjoy using it.

Which, in contrast to my current phone which makes me want to throw it off the balcony in our office into the fountain below, and then fish it out, stamp on it then run over it with a tractor… is a good thing I think.

If nothing else it’ll help keep my blood pressure down (ahem, worst argument ever?).

Ohh and once I DO get said iPhone, I promise I’ll try not to go on about it too much.

Hey, I said “try”…

bookmark_borderI'm fascinating

The more it starts to let me down, the more interesting my body becomes.

Today I visited the physio again to restart my failed effort at getting back to running.

I learned that my knees have a good level of hyperextensibility (they can be bent ever so slightly the wrong way, if that makes sense), that my I’m slightly knocked kneed, and that my ankles are (as I knew) completely fucked. No wait, that wasn’t the term he used at first…

Anyway, I wasn’t there about my ankles – which aren’t all that bad but he said we might have to work on them if I want to get back to running… which doesn’t make sense as I WAS running on the self-same ankles – I was there about my knee.

To be fair it’s been a little better of late, I’ve been a lot more disciplined in doing my exercises but it still feels like someone is pushing a sharp pin into my knee at times, mainly when you push on the really sore bit. Which, frankly, I think he did one more time than was necessary…

He also suggested that I may have had a touch of the Osgood-Schlatters which has contributed to my weak Vastus Lateralis. You can tell this from the knobbly bits below your knees, the last bump before the shinbone starts. The one on my left leg is much larger than the one on my right, which he found odd as, having done an analysis of my mechanics it’s actually my right leg that should be injured and sore as it’s all out of alignment (again, big word for that but can’t recall it).

Anyway, I’ve got new exercises to do, and will be back in a month. I’m determined to see this through this time, so at the weekend I’ll be out to buy some ankle weights.

And just to confirm that all sadists are physios (yes I DO believe that is the correct way round), he said he was giving me an exocentric exercise (I think that’s what he said), which would “be a bit more painful but I think you need some pain”.

So there you have it, it’s almost like going back in time.