graham at home

I’ve been very busy lately with my various web activities.

Firstly I have been making progress with my professional site. I have set up the domain names (two actually) and have chosen to continue with my Web Host Siteground because I have had nothing but good experiences with them since hosting my first site a few years ago. I have chosen and modified a theme and worked with my personal graphist (my daughter) on the artwork. I’ve added some content on what the business is all about and layed down the foundations for the rest of the site. The hardest part is defining the details of what I am offering and laying the groundwork for what I will charge for doing it. It’s not a get rich quick scheme but I don’t want to lose money either. I also have to decide and give limits to the time I am willing to devote to these activities so that my employer (of my real job) gets what he is paying for.

Secondly I have been working, once again, with my daughter, on a website for some clients. They want a website and wish to manage the content themselves. I’ve arranged the domain and the hosting, installed the software (WordPress) and I am currently adapting it for a non-blogging website. In doing so I am using a theme that lends itself to using pages in preference to posts and that can accomodate different headers, footers, widths and lengths. I’ll write more on this later.

Lastly I continually find new andf exciting stuff on my travels around the web. First you might have noticed the new badge for utterz which is a great service that even has a local number here in Switzerland. The base activity is phoning the number and leaving a message which is automatically added to the website but also to various blogs and social media depending on configuration. Any image, text or video sent 10 minutes before or after the call is mashed into the resulting post. I should perhaps have said “maybe” because I sent some images to calls I made early this morning but I had to add them manually afterwards. Perhaps I did something wrong?

The other service I subscribed to this morning is Issuu which transforms pdf files to “books” on a public timeline and viewable a lot like the previews to Amazon books (You flick through the pages). It’s rather neat although most of my PDF files aren’t that interesting at first sight.

Over to you. What’s up and happening around you?

Although I wrote a week ago indicating I was going into hospital and wouldn’t be updating for a while, an interesting post by Stephanie has prompted me to slip this post in before making myself rare again for a while.

From my point of view I’ve spread my self about as thin as I can get over the Web since the beginning of this year. The other day I attempted to MindMap my presence but was unable to get the big picture (or rather I gave up after a several iterations).

As each new Web 2.0 product came on line I was there with a login and enjoying the sparkliness of it. I had the impression I was spending my time filling endless profiles and likes and dislikes and when I was happy with it something else came along.

Well I’m easing off all that now. My job is in front of a computer all day long and my leisure time was pursuing this “in front of computer” doing all the unprofessional computing activities that you can’t or don’t do at work.

The end result, although stimulating for a time, was becoming increasingly frustrating and also, if I try to be honest, somewhat addictive. I think it goes with my personality and I’ve seen it before.

A few years ago I was an MMORPG gamer (Asheron’s Call, Earth and Beyond, Everquest, Guildwars etc etc.) I would play for hours on end, discuss game related matters on the forums and sleep infrequently.

That time has passed and in retrospect, and having had the time to reflect, this whole Web 2.0 phenomenon has a lot of similarities.

So how do you balance it all I wonder? Do you get the time to get out and about, to watch films, read books, watch DVDs and enjoy the company of others?

This blog has become an extension of me and I am no longer in any doubt whatsoever that I will continue to maintain it but I am at the same time integrating the essential benefits of Web 2.0 while stepping back from being an early adopter and grabbing all that is offered. I’m avoiding the sparklies and relearning that life exists outside the computer monitor.

I think, in a nutshell, that I’m aiming to integrate Web 2.0 into my life rather than integrate my life into Web 2.0.

So tomorrow morning I go into hospital. I’ll see y’all on the other side and I’m looking forward to that.

I read an interesting post by Megan Berry this morning called “when worlds collide”.

She was musing over the fact that some Facebook users are worried over the collision between private and business profiles. She says :

“As a Facebook “expert” I get asked: “what Facebook apps do you use?” “why not just email instead of using Facebook messages?” I do my best to answer and sometimes wonder just what it is about Facebook that has so captured the minds of numerous thirty-somethings.

For this generation of thirty-something web users much of their business marketability has come from being web-literate, young, and in touch with the latest Internet trends. As a new generation joins the work force who is younger and learned to use a computer before they learned how to ride a bike the value of the thirty-somethings is slowly changing from youth and knowledge of current trends to experience. I suspect that many who try to join Facebook to prove their youth are instead finding that it makes them feel old.”

If the thirty-somethings are supposed to be feeling old where does that leave me and those in my age group? Do we fifty-somethings have somewhere nice to go on the web? Are there social apps geared toward us hidden somewhere? Is age a problem?

That got me to thinking that during the preparation of my daughter Jennifer’s wedding we spent some time with two of her friends that will be getting married in a few weeks time. They are a wonderful couple and we spent a few really nice evenings with them.

I remember saying in my wedding speech, while thanking them for their contribution, that only a few decades separated us from a great friendship.

Generations don’t mix easily in the real world and it would seem that they don’t fare much better online.

I have been working in IT for over 15 years and through that time software has always been seen as being effective in solving business and real life problems.

There is however a dimension that has been sorely neglected and that is organizational and social structures and human psychology. If you look at this as a triangle it makes sense. The bottom third is the technological infrastructure, the middle layer is the functional features whereas the top third, the cone, is users and usability. So initially software was chosen on it’s technical merits and then functional matrixes were elaborated to make sure that software was functionally rich.

We can see this in the evolution of products such as Microsoft Word. Initially it had to work albeit with a minimal function set. Then it evolved into a functionally (too?) rich product. The problem was that not many used a significant portion of these functions but many complained that although rich in functions it wasn’t particularly “usable”. The latest version therefore is functionally very similar but a vast effort has been made to make it more usable (or at least more visibly attractive).

I could expand on this but the point of this post is really to highlight a problem.

My work description leads me to promote collaboration in my organization. My employers are obsessed (in a way very rightly so) about the technical infrastructure, standards and frameworks. On it’s own this leads to very frustrating, functionally poor and unusable software packages that are almost always rejected.

It was then decided to create and test software on a functional matrix using real world tasks and problems to “functionally fit” the software to the organizational needs.

The problem of course is that if the software is not given usability tests by focus groups or future users we inevitably end up with software that is technically excellent, functionally rich but users don’t want to approach it let alone actually use it.

Good software then needs a holistic approach with all three considerations factored in.

There is however a further problem that needs to be solved or at least considered.

Human psychology and sociology is independent of software.

Unfortunately, you can give the best collaborative software available to users but if they are not collaborative in nature or if the organization is structured and organized to impeach or hinder collaboration. The software will fail.

This is why, in my opinion, that the organization needs to be stimulated by management through structure, processes and education to become collaborative in nature precociously before or during the introduction of collaborative software.

This brings me to my last point in this post. I am not really a social animal at heart. I suck at polite conversation and social skills although to balance this I love meaningful conversations and real discussions so I’m not a social outcast either.

The Web 2.0 is here and with it we can all join in. I blog here (and elsewhere), I have a flickr account, I partake in de.lic.ious, Facebook, MySpace, Netvibes, Last.fm, Twitter, Pownce, Picassa, StumbleUpon, MSN, Gtalk, Digg, etc etc

Has this made me any more “social”. I fear not. What I remark the most that most of my friends are on most if not all of the aforementioned “networks.” What we need is training in social skills because mine sometimes are spread very thinly and I sometimes wonder if I would happier signing up for less new things and concentrating on existing ones (like this blog for instance ;-).)

I’ll leave it there for today.

Everybody seems to be requesting Pownce invites so I climbed onboard and requested one too. It took less than a day to get one but now you can get your own invite as I have six on offer. Just leave a comment with your email and I’ll send it to you.

Be nice and add me as a friend afterwards on my account. That will be my bonus.

On a completely different note I’ll be flying to the UK for my eldest daughter’s wedding this coming weekend. Violet will be marrying Trevor on Saturday on the magic date (07.07.07). At the same time, here in Switzerland, my Goddaughter Vanessa will be marrying Mark and that is where my wife and children will be attending. It’s a weekend of weddings. I’m sure you know people that are celebrating on that day too!