AlexWhite.org » Technology

Tony Abbott on Facebook

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:16:05 +0000

A quick search of Facebook reveals that Tony Abbott has a massive presence on Facebook. Tens of thousands of people are fans.

Unfortunately, most of those people aren’t fans of Tony’s, but of sanitary napkins or of leaving the country if he’s elected. The biggest fan page for Tony Abbott is “Friends don’t let friends vote for Tony Abbott” with over 27,800 people a fan. The official Tony Abbott page (which hasn’t been updated since June 30 as of the writing of this post) has a mere 8,900 fans – far fewer than the negative ones combined.

Like John Howard before him, Tony Abbott doesn’t really understand the Internet or social networking. The Facebook page is used as a repository for photos, and the Liberal Party’s new whizzbang web page is used for little more than showcasing Youtube ads and media releases.

Tony Abbott really is old fashioned.

Disaster at LP

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:23:19 +0000

Just when the election starts off, pre-eminent progressive blog Larvatus Prodeo has suffered an attack (and/or code malfunction) that has effectively taken it off air.

While they are continuing to blog on a WordPress hosted blog, I must say that this downtime is extraordinarily bad timing.

Google News has destroyed a valuable asset

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:42:58 +0000

This won’t be a major issue for most people, but Google once had a very valuable asset: Google News.

Google News once aggregated 1000s of news stories from across the web and allowed users to customise “sections” according to their preference – even using news keyword searches. You could even decide how many stories would appear in each section, and the other of the sections. It was a very versatile service that worked “off the shelf”, but could be personalised.

Today, Google pushed out an “update” that turns Google News into a “feed”, much like a Facebook “news” feed. This has destroyed the utility of Google News, making it an incoherent mess. Worse still, there is no way to revert to the old version.

A Google employee stated on the Google support forums (which has 100s of complaints about the new “redesign”:

Thanks for your concern, everyone. We understand your frustration, but we have no plans to revert to the old version of Google News.

This is a terrible decision in my view. And clearly the vast majority of users of the Google feeback forums dislike the change.

I used Google News daily, but as of today will not be using it unless I hear that there is way to use the old version.

Most of Google’s services allow a way for their users to continue to use old versions of their products. GMail for example allows you to use the “old” version of Gmail (which does not include many of the new features). For a long time I used the old version of Gmail until the new one became more useable.

If Google is so confident that their new version of Google News is better, then they should have the confidence to allow people to migrate at their own pace.

Most of Google’s improvements are for the best, but in thise case they have destroyed a valuable asset for no good purpose.

UPDATE:

Looks like the easy way to “revert” the changes is to change the default country selection to make it specifically “Australia”. No idea how long it will be before the crappy “US Edition” of Google News is forced on Australia.

Should your union invest in a proprietary CMS?

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:02:02 +0000

I’ve been having a few conversations with people around the traps about content management systems for websites.

For those who may not be familiar with the lingo, a content management system is the online software that runs websites. Most complicated websites use a content management system (CMS) to look after all the various pages and applications that a website may have. There are lots of CMSs out there – many of them are proprietary and cost a lot of money to license, while others are open source and free to license. It’s like the difference between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice, or Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Almost every union has a website, and lots of them were originally created years ago before many of the open source CMSs were developed. Thus, many unions have proprietary CMSs that cost a lot of money to license, maintain and upgrade. An increasing number of unions are starting to redesign their websites to modern standards, and so the question is posed: should you license a proprietary CMS or use an open source one?

Proprietary CMS

There are lots of custom-made content management systems available. Most large web design companies have their own in-house system. These can offer integration with other union systems – usually as a package. For example, the website may integrate with the union’s membership database or accounting system. In this case, both the database and accounting software are also typically licensed and proprietary.

There are some very good examples of proprietary content management systems. The most famous of these is the Obama campaign’s website, which was a custom-designed system made by Blue State Digital. Another well regarded proprietary CMS is ExpressionEngine, which is a very powerful (and complicated) package – Senator John McCain’s website by FortyAgency uses ExpressionEngine.

The risks of using a proprietary system are fairly high however. The license fees are generally very high, and may have ongoing costs. For a union, this can be a significant factor. Furthermore, proprietary systems means that you are tied to the web design company and the programmer for a long period of time. You had better hope that your relationship remains good – or that the company doesn’t go bust, or the programmer doesn’t disappear. I have heard of several unions who’ve invested in a custom made CMS, only for the developer to vanish for months at a time, or for the company to go bankrupt. Needless to say, this left the unions in a difficult situation.

A further risk is that unless the CMS is under constant development, new features and upgrades are unlikely to come along unless you pay for them. This can leave your union’s website looking stale after a few years, and can put your data at risk from spammers. Old content management systems can have serious security flaws that only become apparent years later, as spammer/hacker technology develops.

WordPress is a widely used open source CMS.

Open source CMS

As noted, there are many free, open source content management systems available, most of which are supported by large contingents of (mostly volunteer) software developers. The two most well-known open source CMSs are WordPress and Drupal.

WordPress is (according to Automattic, the organisation behind WordPress) used by over 6 percent of all websites – 100s of millions, and receives regular security updates and new features. There is a small army of programmers and designers who can provide almost any feature or design, either for free or for a small cost. WordPress is one of the simplest CMSs to install from scratch and start using straight away. This website and most of the sites I create for my work (such as these ones) use WordPress. The UK Prime Minister’s website No. 10 also uses WordPress.

There has been a view that WordPress is mainly a blogging platform. This certainly used to be the case, but the latest versions of WordPress in the last 12 months have made it almost equal to fully fledged content management systems. Another benefit is that it is very intuitive and simple to use. It does do blogs very well, but it also does other kinds of sites – and there are hundreds of (easy to install) plugins that expand on the core features. Certainly, as far as getting an inexpensive, good-looking, feature-rich campaign site up and running with minimal technical knowledge, you can’t go past WordPress.

The other major open source CMS worth discussing is Drupal. Drupal is a very powerful content management system, and is used by the Whitehouse to run its website. Like WordPress, Drupal has a large number of programmers and designers producing high quality designs and plugins, mostly for free. It is more complicated than WordPress to install and manage, but still possible for a non-expert.

For unions considering getting a campaign site up, there are many professionally designed Drupal themes to buy or download for free, as well as lots of plugins to add special features.

There are loads of other open source CMSs out there, like Joomla. For union sites, you probably want to stick to the well known, widely used ones, as these are the most stable and have the largest knowledge base to help you. They are also the most secure, as security updates occur fairly frequently, and vulnerabilies are discovered by the army of programmers.

Conclusion

If the Whitehouse can use an open source content management system, then why can’t your union? There are loads of benefits and few downsides – and what’s more, the price is fantastic.

I strongly recommend your union consider an open source CMS for its next campaign site or main website redevelopment.

Use A/B split-testing for your union website

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:04:45 +0000

Split testing is a very useful tool for online union websites and is used by major businesses, advertisers, campaigns like the Obama campaign, and giants like Google and Facebook. All unions should use split testing for their campaign sites, and should consider how to integrate it into their Joining pages.

What is split testing (also called A/B testing)?

Simply put, if you have an important web page (such as your “Join the Union” page), you want to maximise the number of people who take the desired action (called “conversions”) – in the case of the join page, the number of people who actually join.

Most websites have static pages, where the content and design is fixed. But what if some element of the design or text on the page could be improved to increase the number of conversions (joins to the union)? What if you changed the “join” text, or changed the picture, or changed how complicated the join form itself was? This could increase the number of people who join, or it could decrease it. You want to know which, and you also want to know which change it was that increased the number of joins.

Split testing allows you to perform an experiment where you create two (or more) versions of the same page. When someone visits the specified page, they are randomly shown one or another of the “test” pages (either the original one, or the new one). You can then see which version of the page is more successful in getting someone to take the action you want.

After you’ve created the split test, you build a sample – a number of “conversions” – perhaps 100 or so – and check which version of the page was most successful. You can stop using the least successful page, and also experiment more on how to increase the number of conversions. The more you experiment and test, the more data, and (hopefully) the more conversions you’ll get.

Although the example above is for the “Join the Union” page, your campaign sites should also try to use split testing. Most campaigns will have a call to action. This call to action could be signing up to a mailing list, sending an email to a politician or employer, or filling out a survey. Ultimately, your union wants as many people as possible to perform that action.

Split testing can be used for all of these (as well as on your union’s merchandise page).

Google Website Optimizer has made the process really easy for you to add AB split testing to your site. It’s a free service (like most Google services) and links with their many other (free) products like Google Analytics.

If your union’s campaign website is a simple HTML site, then this is really easy to do. If you use a content management system, most of the open source, free CMSs have plugins that do a lot of the coding for you. WordPress for example has two plugins for this purpose (here and here).

Many unions have proprietary content management systems running their websites. Talk to the company that designed your site about split testing using Google Optimizer. Any design firm worth their salt should be able to do it for you – and since it’s offered for free from Google, it shouldn’t cost too much to set up.

This post is part of Project 52 – one blog post per week for the entire year.

Flip cameras or smart phones for unions?

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:38:29 +0000

I’ve seen a few union organisers around the place with Flip cameras, and have had a discussion about whether they are a useful tool with Atosha.

Should unions be investing in Flip cameras?

Flip cameras, for those of you who haven’t stumbled across them yet, are small video cameras that purport to make it very easy to upload content to your computer and the internet. For organisers who aren’t that technically savvy, they make it simple to film a members meeting, or vox pop or rally, then put it on YouTube. The latest Flip cameras can shoot in High Definition and can record around an hours worth of video. They include a built in USB cable, so you don’t need to worry about accessories.

The main problem I see however is that Flip cameras just can’t compete with smartphones such as the iphone. They just aren’t as versatile or easy to use, and are expensive without the extra features of a smart phone (such as calls, email, social networking, calendars, apps, etc).

There’s a really good article over at TechCrunch about this matter, which summarises my thinking.

That’s just not something they’re going to be able to do v. the iPhone and other similar devices to come.

The new iPhone takes very good video (640 x 480). That isn’t as good as the Flip (not yet anyway, word is that it actually can shoot HD video but is being slightly crippled), but it’s still able to shoot perfectly good videos on the go (example), which is exactly what the Flip is for. And the iPhone has something that the Flip will never realistically have, cellular and wifi connectivity that lets you upload your videos immediately. No need to sync back with your base computer to edit the video and upload it. You can do basic editing right on the iPhone, and publish it to YouTube immediately. As an added bonus, that video can be geo-stamped via the phone’s GPS capability.

That makes it significantly more useful as a video device than the Flip, and worth the reduction in quality. You already have to make some quality tradeoffs with the Flip anyway, so if you are going to have a second video device after your iPhone, it may as well be a slightly bigger video camera that you keep in your bag. I just don’t see people grabbing that Flip when they run out the door.

And one last killer feature of the iPhone – live streaming video from services like Ustream and Qik are already a reality – most TechCrunch authors have been using it for months on the old iPhone. At some point soon Apple will allow those apps to launch, and iPhone users will be able to stream video in real time from their phones to the Internet.

I’ve seen a few people around the traps talking about Flips as a very valuable tool for unions to use to create multimedia content.

I’m unconvinced however. There’s been a long debate in the tech world about converged devices vs. stand alone devices (e.g. the ipod vs. the mp3 playing mobile phone) – but as far as utility for union organising and campaigning goes, there’s no doubt for me that smartphones are a far better investment.

Furthermore, the new generation of smart phones, like the HTC Desire, or the upcoming iphone 4G – with high definition videos and photos – are making devices like the Flip even more redundant.

Why I’m joining Labour

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:25:44 +0000

UK Labour continue to impress, coming out with a very impressive web app only days after the general election.

Google Analytics tip for union webmasters

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:59:19 +0000

Something I just discovered (much to my annoyance) is that Google Analytics does not allow for easy (in fact, any) migration of account data from one account to another.

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for web masters to get information about their site, content and visitors. Every union website should use Google Analytics (and Google Webmaster tools). Not only do many useful web applications (such as email services MailChimp or Campaign Monitor) integrate with Google Analytics, but they are excellent ways to produce reports on the number of people who visit your site, and the paths they go through to find your content. Google Analytics also links to Google Adwords, another excellent tool for union campaigns.

A word of warning however. Once you create an account for your website, it’s impossible to transfer it to another person without giving them the password. This means that if you manage a number of sites, you will want to create separate accounts for each website, rather than use the “website profiles” option within an account.

Best practice for Google Analytics account set up:

Always make sure that every website you set up on Google Analytics is set up as a new Account, and not a new Profile.
Create a Google Account (or use an existing one) to create the new Analytics account.
Set yourself, or whoever will be managing the account on your end, up as an Administrator on the account. This will allow you to access and administrate everything while maintaining account exclusivity for each union campaign. This will also allow the account to be “unhooked” later, in case you leave the union or need to hand over the account to another person without losing all their historical data.

HTC Desire Unboxing and Start Up Video

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:18:22 +0000

Today my brand new HTC Desire arrived in the post, after much delay, from the UK. Given that I’ve watched a few of the unboxing videos on Youtube and elsewhere, I thought I’d do my own.

I plan on doing a review of the HTC Desire in a week or so, after I’ve gotten used to it – and will look at how political and union campaigns could use Android phones. After playing with it today at lunch, I can say that it is really smooth, exceptionally fast, and the touch screen is amazing. Smart phones are an experience above and beyond normal phones, and can be a bit overwhelming. The integration with Google, Facebook and Twitter is seamless, and all of the built-in apps work perfectly. HTC Sense (the software “skin”) looks beautiful and is very snappy.

Thanks to @atosha for filming and editing the video.

Here’s the unboxing video, which also includes the start up sequence.

Yes – those are my pale hands in the video. Thankfully there’s not too many um’s and ah’s.

Campaign Monitor has a world-class blog and e-newsletter

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:49:22 +0000

I just got a copy of the latest Campaign Monitor e-newsletter and was so impressed that I thought I’d comment on it, and some of the items that I think are worth checking out.

Campaign Monitor are an email service provider – that is, they let you manage email campaigns to subscribers and provide analytics. I should point out that I don’t use their service (I use MailChimp instead), and no, there’s no affiliate program or payment for this post – I just think they’re awesome.

Building your email list – Panic

Panic have done a great job building a subscribe form into the first run experience of all their software. Here’s the screen you see when loading Transmit 4 for the first time. They’ve even gone to the trouble of pre-populating the email field for you (not shown in the screenshot), removing as much friction as possible from the process. My only suggestion here would be to leave the subscribe field unchecked to guarantee every customer gives explicit permission and doesn’t just jump to the “Let’s Go!” button.

Read the entire blog post.

Using print media to market your online services

We commonly get asked to provide examples of reseller collateral such as executive summaries and slide decks. The great news is that these aren’t that far off, however in the meantime, we’d like to share Mailbox Design’s brochure as inspiration for your own marketing campaigns. Not only does it provide a concise summary of what a rebranded Campaign Monitor account has to offer, but also provides some very compelling reasons why email totally blows other sales and marketing channels out of the water. In short, the kind of stuff your new clients really want to see. Take a look at their brochure. (400kb, PDF)

Read the entire blog post.

Supercharge your email list with Flowtown

I stumbled across Flowtown a few weeks ago and couldn’t really understand why anyone would use it. Campaign Monitor shows just how useful it can be – and I hope there is integration with MailChimp.

Using Flowtown integration with Campaign Monitor, we can now turn our humble subscriber lists into rich social media profiles, based on information spread across services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. What’s better, Flowtown automatically populates your Campaign Monitor subscriber list with custom fields including geographic location, gender and even age range, so you can segment your campaigns in unprecedented ways. Here’s a short screencast that wraps it up nicely.

Read the entire blog post.