typing the void

Just a short note today to talk about Drew’s Cancer. ( I know, not a good plan to start a blog with an external link, but bear with me. All these links will open in a new browser window, if that’s any consolation.)

A few weeks ago Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. You can read all about the experience on his Tumblr page. So now he’s facing 6 months of chemo, but since the cancer has a record of being 90% curable, he has a good chance of beating it. He decided he needed to attack it mentally as well as medically so he started blaming the cancer for things happening in his life, losing his keys, his team losing a game, stuff like that. A way of berating and offending the cancer. It is a common suggested treatment to visualise an affliction and imagine physically beating it to help contribute to recovery.

He got together with some friends to take the battle with his cancer to the streets, or in this case, to the interwebs, in case others needed someone/something to take the rap for things happening in their lives.  He invites you to give his cancer a swift kick, in the easiest way possible.  He created a hashtag for the cancer and anyone on twitter can have a whack at his cancer for anything not going right in their day. Something like: I #blamedrewscancer for inspiring me to keep plugging on but also #blamedrewscancer for the current Sydney cold snap! Double-whammy!

He’s teamed up with sponsors who will donate a dollar to two prominent American cancer charities for every participant who tweets with that hashtag in it. The site has been brilliantly designed by 9Astronauts in just a few weeks, maybe only a few days, to great effect. It works well, doesn’t require flash, is very Web 2.0 and is fun. A few minutes after you post your twitter with the hashtag, it pops it onto a placard as if you were at a public demonstration.

It’s great to be able to help Drew feel surrounded by people berating his cancer, but it also is a great view of community and social media in action. The spectrum of tweets are anything from people sincerely wanting to make Drew feel better, not alone, to people pimping their own blogs, events, sites, etc. Although the same person posting repeatedly does not contribute to the charity coffers, it does help spread the word, and add to Drew’s sense of not being alone.

This is what makes open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) so powerful and exciting. The Twitter API lets anyone tap into the stream of public Twitter messages and find things of interest or collate research about your brand, company, location, interests or pastimes. And not only that but collate it against something else, like how Jonathan Harris did with blogs for We Feel Fine. You are probably familiar with the example of the Google API where you get to collate maps of things of interest to you using their pool of information about the world… or the moon, ..or Mars… Open APIs are one of the knowledge-sharing elements of Web 2.0.

So if you twitter, take a moment today to blame something in your day on Drew’s cancer by using the hashtag #blamedrewscancer.

Oh, BTW: my Wordpress threw away my posting this morning so I had to completely rewrite this, and I frikkin’ well blame Drew’s cancer for that too! i.e.:

I #blamedrewscancer for Wordpress not saving my post while I was writing this today!

The site: Blame Drews Cancer

The hashtags showing recent posts: #blamedrewscancer

Tags: cancer, community, connections, participation, support, twitter

Am I the only one who seems to get upset at the massive open-air refrigerators in grocery stores?

My local council introduced a scheme to reduce the use of plastic bags, called “bagbusters” in the neighbourhood, for obvious reasons, and you can read the press release by downloading the PDF from their site. But to me it seems a complete waste of time in comparison to what else is happening in the grocery environment. I feel like it is battling only a small part of the energy waste and a small, token gesture. There is a far greater environmental impact from the chill fridges in most supermarkets.

For example, my local Franklins, in Newtown, has a 30 metre fridge along the entire side and back of the shop, and it blasts very cold air into the entire aisle so that even if I am buying coffee, I get a frozen backside by the time I’ve made my choice. From meats, through dairy and pasta to fresh juices and milk. It is a 30M x 2M fridge pumping very cold air into the entire store, needlessly.

The thing is, I recall when I was younger, back in the dark ages of the 70’s, grocery store fridges used to have these heavy plastic strips you could see and reach through, that conserved the cold in the fridge space to some degree, and the breeze of passing shoppers would not warm the refrigerated atmosphere enough to require massive amounts of energy.

But groceries with entire walls of refridgeration, pumping very cold air into the general shopping space are wasting energy, for no good reason, and with no significant conservation of time or effort for the shoppers. It does not take time to hold a door or barrier aside to reach for the steaks you like, or your yoghurt pot of choice.

It is both a near-criminal waste of energy (think: leaving the doors and windows open when your air-con is on) as well as an obvious waste of money, not to mention causing me to wear a coat just to do my groceries! And surely we already know what the excessive use of energy means to both the environment as well as the already stretched power-grid.

What do YOU think? Is it worth a complaint or am I just a whingeing old fart? …grumbling in the cheese section.

Tags: campaign, energy, sustainability, usefulness, waste

After my rant last week about restaurant sites that don’t take users into account, just like London busses, three good ones come along at once! I didn’t want to leave you thinking I was all whinge and no praise so decided to write about them here.

We were looking for a good Indian food or African food delivery in the neighbourhood and did the searching in my usual way; online.

The first happy discovery was the African Feeling restaurant,which surprised me because, for such a modest and unassuming place, it felt like a very well thought out and professional site. Not perfect, but well ahead of the more expensive and hip competition, I must say. It has room for improvement, but is a very good effort and answers the visitors questions.

Location, menu examples and prices and atmosphere images were easy to find, even if not optimally formatted (menu was a JPEG, not in searchable and SEO friendly text). Nice touches were the great portraits of staff, food, dining room and examples of how a dinner party might look. You can even book a table through the site and get an email confirmation.

My favourite though was the honesty and confidence of linking directly to published food reviews, from notable publications like the SMH, as well as including user reviews.

Nice touch!

But they didn’t deliver, we felt lazy that night, so shelved it for a dinner plan later in the month.

The next one had a name I didn’t like but understood the reasoning for. I was led to Posh Spice through the positive reviews but stayed because of the menu and ordering system which, quite clearly, had been thought about and tested by the providers, Menu Log.

The delivery prices were the same as the restaurant prices, not more than, which is what some third party delivery services charge. The entire process thought about retaining my trust, from the AJAX shopping cart system, through to the email and SMS confirmations and 15% first order discount.

Interestingly, it created confidence in both the restaurant as well as the delivery ordering experience,. difficult to do in one hit.

What pleased me was the recognition of how to speak to people in an online environment, and how to cater to letting them discover their needs. Posh Spice, with their partner MenuLog,. clearly want to help you make your decision eaily.

Oh, and yes, the food was most excellent, (I reccommend the fish with coconut and the “osso-bucco” style lamb shank!) delivered with a smile.

Tags: web2.0

Let’s cut to the chase!

Who is advising restaurants, bars and clubs that what their visitors want is a Flash(tm) animated brochure?

When I look up a bar, restaurant or club / music venue, I’m usually after a few basic slices of information, like where it is located, what the food is like or what’s on tonight or this weekend. Of course there is a lot more you’d want to know about  a venue, but these are what I would think are core pieces of information many people would be wanting from a venue’s website. Unfortunately many venues have been advised by their “web people” to publish a set of slick, glossy pictures of the venue, in a Flash slideshow/animation sequence, utilising Flash navigation, and not a great deal more.

Can anyone explain to me why these bars, restaurants and clubs don’t bother looking at what visitors want from websites and help these same prospective clients find it on their websites? Is it really in a venue’s interest to hide the location map somewhere unexpected or provide their menu as a downloadable PDF? And music venues and dance clubs: Thanks for the pictures of the pretty people who cone to your place, specially the hot babes! but since I came to your site to find out more about a night out at your venue from a flyer someone handed me, can you provide more information besides re-presenting the flyer I already have a copy of? Or did you think the babes were enough? hmm, I thought so.

Can you not tell me about the artists who will be playing, DJing there, any reviews of past gigs, what the drinks cost, whether you also have snacks, what time the club closes, when it’s not available due to a “private party” and any other thing that would make me interested in coming to your venue, instead of what YOU want to tell me?

Have you a Facebook group? A mySpace page? A twitter stream? If so, can you tie them together so I can find the others through any one of them?

If not, can you spare a couple hours a week to connect with your people out there? There’s plenty of excelent on-line tools and APIs to help you do this.

Oh, and if you want to be found through popular searches, just make sure there is something serachable and index-able on your site.

… just sayin!

Tags: brochure, information, restaurant, useful

That’s what an associate said to me recently, when describing her recent online buying experience with the Australian bookseller. No Dymocks is not Amazon, they could be even better, if they wanted to.

I keep hearing that Australians don’t shop online much, and are afraid to commit to website purchases. I also notice how online sales are often excluded in many companies’ online strategies when updating their sites for the AU market. I have to disagree with both that strategy and that sentiment. Australians spend quite a bit of time online and would shop online, if they could find sites that DON’T make it harder than extracting teeth to do what others have proved is not too difficult to do.

I have to admit, having come from the UK where you can get anything online, including courier-delivered toast (I kid you not!) it was a bit of a shock. More so with the knowledge that the Australian government is generally good at supplying information and services online. So it’s not like online is a scary, new or tentative place for Aussies. I have a friend who buys all his music online as .wav, .aiff files, or other digital formats. Another friend buys her books from Amazon US because even with shipping and duty it is cheaper than local shops, and quicker too. Many other Australians are looking for ways to buy what they need quickly without having to drive or go down to the shops or malls.

Ok, in the UK, the market is larger with a smaller geographic area, but concern for market size and proximal advantages are questions for a business, not for doing business online. If your business idea cannot support a business plan, online or offline has little difference these days. If you are in the business of shifting easy to sell commodities, like books and CDs or other stuff that fits in small boxes, why are you NOT selling online? There is no rational reason to avoid this, particularly when both the shop and the client win from the deal. The shop has less of that expensive floorspace to manage, and wins new custom among the elderly (who are increasingly looking online for their needs), disabled, remote and busy. The customer gets to research, peruse, compare and buy at a time of their choosing, an increasingly important condition in these days of TIVO and online news and video.

Most of my attempts to buy online here in Sydney have been thwarted by sites that are poorly constructed and conceived, and lacking an understanding of user needs. A depressingly large number of brands are not connected to a shop or online outlets. Many mistakenly think that providing a downloadable PDF of their brochure is a good way to market their products. Why are the mobile Telcos still so terrible a online experience? Why do so many otherwise switched on companies fail to see the advantages of a better, or even minimal but available online shop?

Even for traditionally strong products that sell well to online bargain hunters, like electronics and computers, I feel poorly served. It would be great to find a few examples of well constructed, easy to search tech sites that work. Everyone I found was sorely lacking in a crucial quality to help me get through the process without a problem. Either they don’t reflect stock levels, if they disclose them at all, many have risible search features, ignore people who want to by several related items at once, (if you’re buying a computer, you might also want to get a printer, some blank DVDs for archives, and some cabling, for example) and otherwise forget all the rules of salesmanship online. And don’t get me started on ludicrous payment gateways that ask me to read an email and transfer funds with a special code and wait 5 days for the process to complete. yeesh!

That’s why I came here. The market is ripe for people with courage to start considering selling online, in particular small specialist shops in city centres who are happy to supply to remote areas in exchange for a creditcard payment. Looking forward to helping you all buy when You want to buy. Th tide is turning, and I look forward to helping those who really do want to engage with their customers, and give them an experience that they will want to return to and reccommend.

Tags: Australia, b2C, eCommerce, engaging, research, shopping

We’re not individuals all of the time; we’re occasionally herd animals, sometimes like flotsam sometimes like wheat, and yes, occasionally the lone wolf.

I’ve been noticing how people behave when a train’s approaching. Ok, it is usually during rush hour, with that 8am grogginess or 6pm urgency that I notice this, but it’s a valid enough time to observe collective behavior.

It brings to mind the interesting point that when it comes to observing our online behavior, we are simultaneously individual and collective in our patterns. We act on our own but are affected by the ebb and flow of other users in our motions and choices.

Take for example the train chasing shuffle. This is the condition where, as the train slows into the station, people feel the need to slowly shuffle towards the door that has just passed them. Even when the next door along is going to stop right in front of them, or will be much closer than the door they are chasing, they’ll follow the train along the platform.

At first I thought it was some sort of magnetic or gravitational force, the train pulling us along with it’s substantial mass or metallic might, but that doesn’t hold up.

A force far greater than either seems to be pulling us along.

So the question is: are we being pulled, are we influencing each other, is it the actions of one of us pulling the others along?

Perhaps it is a combination of all of these answers and more, a subtlety we cannot clarify easily. As someone who likes to understand engagement, attention, usability and user flow, these are the questions I have.

Tags: commuting, discovery, shuffle, social, social networks, train

I’ve been watching you.
I mean, I like watching you.
I mean, you’re interesting to watch.

I’m digging myself a hole, aren’t I?

I like to watch people using technology in a public place, to see how considered their planning might have been, just like I like to watch people use websites, to learn how to make websites better.

Since coming to Sydney, I’ve been watching how the crossing signals and crossing buttons are used here, as Sydneysiders are a bit different to Londoners and Canadians with this.

At crossings here, there are assistive technologies with big obvious buttons, audio and sensory feedback (the crossing buttons make noises as well as vibrate in an obvious way) to let pedestrians know what’s happening. What I love is watching people use the big button.

There’s nothing simpler than a one button device is there?

My favourite users are the ones who hit the buttons VERY hard, as if it were their worst enemy, or repeatedly, as if several hits make it react more quickly.

The problem with one button devices is that we think of them like light switches; click should be on, end of story. Even when we know different, because we know the traffic lights will not change at our whim, we still treat it like a light switch.

So even a one button device, controlling something we’ve known well since childhood can throw up some surprises. Think of how many surprises your website can uncover.

Like I said, I’m watching you.

CPOTD (Commuter Pic Of The Day)

subtitled: shitty clouds, that’s why I left London innit?

Tags: buttons, crossing, lights, pedestrians, users

Bought a guitar on eBay last week, out of some sort of desire to be a bit more analogue, and realised I had no good way to know if it was in tune. So back to eBay for a tuner from the US.

Now who’s an eejit!

Completely forgot I have an iPhone and that there’s an app for just about everything (there’s three fart apps FFS!!). So my new dilemma is do I just use the tuner coming in the post eventually from the US, or repost it on eBay and buy the app?

My loyalties to analogue are in conflict with my loyalties to my lovely new iPhone.

Guess who’s going to win!

Commuter pic of the day to follow.

BTW: played guitar for 40 minutes last night in an attempt to strengthen my fingertips. Can I just say the left side of the keyboard is my enemy this morning? fingertips over on the left of QWERTY is ouchy!

Just sayin’!

Tags: apps, fart, guitar, loyalty, tuner

Yep, finally got my iPhone. So on the interest of usability I thought I’d try to blog on the train into work. Yes, the N96 is great and the blackberry does email like no other, but I have to say that the iPhone has them beat on usability even with the tiny letters on the keypad. Why?
Because you don’t need to RFM (Read the Frikkin’ Manual) to get things done. Not only does it put things where you expect them to be, it helps you understand the way it works while you use it without reverting to a manual.

So I only have 18 minutes for my blog so best be quick about it!

Usability is all about not forcing me to do all the work to figure out your device, your device should work hard to make me understand it without a manual. Like all our favourite tools do.

So to finish it off here is a pic from my view every morning as I step off the train.

(posted from my iPhone)

Tags: Apple, blackberry, get things done, iPhone, manual, n96, RFM, usability, works

I can’t find the quote right now but I remember a Charles Bukowski story, I may have mentioned it here before, but it’s the little things that drive people crazy, make them mad beyond the scope of the little thing. There’s no reason your broken shoelace drives you crazy but it does. Listen to people talk on the morning bus or evening after work drink. Before the personal stuff there is usually a story of how some meaningless inconsequential event, a late train, a missed call, a broken accessory, a lost earring, made their day that much more unpleasant.

I remembered this when I got my morning cofee today, lazy; didn’t make my own.

The coffee shop give out loyalty cards, you know the ones, buy ten, get one free; that sort of thing. Great! I said! Thanks!

But it won’t fit in the space wallets have for credit cards.

I stood there while the steam gushed through the ground coffee, smelling my morning Javanese fix getting closer and I was forced to think up new places to put this card, away from other loyalty cards, bus ticket, etc. Find a new place to keep the thing that was meant to make me feel better. You made me have to think about you when I was busy thinking about me.

My morning started with a problem, when I am on my way trying to solve big problems for other people that is worth a lot of money for them. The coffee was supposed to make me feel good, but I had a problem even before I plopped at my desk.

OK, it was a small thing but your small things shouldn’t get in the way of my enjoying your company, because it’s the small things that drive us crazy.