A Donkey on the Edge

One reason I found the Internet so exciting when it first approached me to give a job, was its collaborative nature.

I mean, it wasn’t a case of hey let’s agree to work together. It was more let’s make a new thing that can’t exist unless we all work together. The exchange of human-readable data on a network was new to me. Until then, everything I had come across was both proprietary and binary (well, not exactly, as I was on Decnet in the early eighties, which I guess was largely proprietory but academic-fuelled and not entirely binary). Essentially, there was no looking at the source of something you found useful, exciting or interesting.

Part of this new “view source” culture was the way the servers on the Internet were open. SMTP servers were open relays for mail messages, freely forwarding mail, news servers (NNTP), name servers (DNS) twenty flavours of authentication or directory servers were often freely usable and accessible. The idea was simple—we all give a little and get a lot back.

So why the nostalgia whinge? I do understand the cost of delivering billions of naked ladies to Thirteen-year-old boys the world over made the NNTP servers restrict service and of course the Viagra-peddling scum forced the closing of the open SMTP relay, it’s just that I’ve had a frustrating week trying to configure various networks (with unusual requirements) and have come across some seriously uncollaborative behaviour.

• From Tuesday 24th August 2004 Demon’s customer cacheing DNS servers (158.152.1.43 and .58) will no longer respond to queries unless they come from a Demon Customer IP address
• BT ADLS service does not include an SMTP server — This is just amazing, you can connect to the BT network via a BT phone line, using a BT broadband userid and password, but they still refuse to authenticate you if your email address isn’t a BT address. I can’t see how this is even legal. I spent an hour on the phone bollocking them but to no avail. I mean, you’re hardware-authenticated because of the ADSL line, you could then be software-authenticated by the mail server—hell I even offered to do it over SSL but no, this is one baby BT wants thrown out with the bath water. They are essentially forcing the punter who may not be aware of available premium-rate SMTP relaying services to switch their business to BT:-(
• I would of course never dream of putting Technorati Totty Emperatrix Katerina Fake in a list about non-collaborative Internet practices, but I will include her here as a note on her site adds to these particlar blues:

  Sad, but true. All my archives from 1999-2004, prior to when I turned off comments in July 2004, have been taken offline so I don’t have to spend hours clearing out comment spam with horrifying subject matter. I’m sorry.

• Finally, in the spirit of the age, Google is spending money fighting click fraud — Gosh, a whole new angle to white-collar crime.

And now, welcome to Skypecasting

More bat than gmail, Dug is proud to anounce he can be reached at dug@postmanpat.com (is there a dangling modifier in there somewhere?)

Boy I’ve just worked myself into a lather over at Barnett’s blog. Some chap in Canada has been going ballistic along the lines of his copyright is being infringed and his ad revenue swindled.

Alex asked the questions:

• When is it ok, is it ok to render content dynamically/statically created by another author on another site/service?
• What is fair use, what is not?
• Is it ok to take snippets of others’ content and republish (as I have done above)..if so, how much is content is too much…10%, 50%, 80%, 100%?
• If you do use a snippet, should you link to original source? (personally I think this should ALWAYS be the case)

For me, Squeezer is a proxy, plain and simple. There just isn’t just cause to go after them with a mallet (especially since their service’s life will probably be quite short). I commented:

I reckon once content is available online it should be treated as largely in the public domain.

It’s no sin to chase audience and ad revenue by repurposing other people’s content, but generally, readers want a relationship with a site, and these are best provided by active independent publishers who keep it fresh by keeping it coming.

I think Barnabas Kendall’s “Why Skweezer is good for Content Publishers” is a bit ingenuous in places. In any case, he puts his finger on the real issue:

> After all, certain sites (Bloglines for example)
> detect and offer alternative content to mobile
> browsers. In a perfect Internet, this would
> obviate Skweezer entirely.

As handsets improve (and they are—quickly) and websites become more semantic and more media neutral (and I think the rush is now officially on) services like Squeezer will become obsolete. I think we’re looking at a couple of years, so not really anything to get your knickers in a twist about.

Besides, I’ve not yet found an aggregated or repurposed site that I favoured over its original. Or, in other words, while it’s no sin, repurposing probably isn’t the best way to build an audience.

Finally, I won’t say Jim Elve is a psycho, but he’s not so much way off the mark as missing the point entirely. For now, Skweezer is a proxy service. Period. Same as websitegarage and the modem proxy you get with your copy of Analog. As a hosted service that isn’t a registered charity, of course they whack some ads at the bottom of the page.

I think this exposes a sidecar issue: Google adsense will be rubbish until it adopts standards. Google, read my lips, The IFRAME tag is NOT STANDARD it is a deprecated MSIE extension grrr

If Google let us store the adwords in page memory so they could easily be manipulated, Jim’s ads would still be on his page.

The lather I mentioned in the first paragraph is really down to Google’s implementation. Adsense is everywhere. It’s important, so why not implement it correctly?

Jay Allen has just posted a link to the new Six Apart Guide to fighting comment spam over at Movabletype.

Just came across this and I can sooo empathise.

I remember being utterly amazed when I bought my first TV after twenty years of using hand-me-downs. They had got the channel-tuning-thing automated and even the programme recording bit was within my intellectual capacity.

Mr Sony clearly never sleeps:-)

I’ve just discovered that James (Cherkoff) is in Sri Lanka and he’s OK. He normally checks in with a nudge to get a move on the day he’s back after Christmas, but this year, silence—Turns out Liz and James arrived just as the wave was hitting. They were in a restaurant high up on a hill when it happened.

Nicki’s sister lost a relative in Thailand, positive ID from dental records:-(

I think by now we no longer need confirmation that the blog is an accredited part of the communications mix. I’m guessing 2005 will see more mainstream blog awareness in the UK and who knows, by the end of the year we might be catching up with the US.

This article from Clickz just landed in my inbox. It includes a nice quote from JupiterResearch Senior Analyst Gary Stein:

A corporate blog strategy that focuses only on the creation of corporate-run blogs and the running of ads on external blogs is only half-right,” Stein said. “Companies need to remember that there are most likely already discussions happening about them in the consumer-generated content space. Before using blogs to talk, they need to make sure they’ve got their listening operation in place.

How nice, a lighter touch :-)

OK, I do seem to be posting a lot of links to Gail’s Openbrackets but this one cracked me up…

In fact, I’d say that we spend more time looking for decent porn then we do actually watching it.
— B Jan 5, 4:26pm

Fantastic:-)

Have been playing with Flickr and it’s bloody brilliant :-) Have slowly started uploading pics (several v. integrated ways provided) and came across this shot of Clem playing with Kihlo’s monster teeth:

Shopping service. First magazine that allowed visitor to purchase directly items featured in the editorial. Dug designed the launch issue and the shopping interface.

Dug designed this independent Jazz label’s online shop and listening booths.

Dug designed the award-winning Ski Club site for four years.

Designed search and retrieve interfaces for three large trade associations.

Dug created the PIM components to be reused by all three companies. Each component was built from a neutral palette that allowed juxtaposition with each company’s web interface. Dug also designed the three web interfaces (but the PIM is the really cool part).

Dug designed online shop for multimedia publisher Primal

Dug designed site for luxury country-house hotel

Dug designed white-label templates for the Vauxhall SkiNet microsite (system was implemented by IBM UK). The system used a design infrastructure established by Dug as part of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s European information-distribution system.

Dug designed a site for Irish streetwear designer Electronic Sheep.

Dug was asked by Strawberry Frog’s Brian Elliot to help out on the OM Group virtual stock exchange project.

The Dutch advertising agency had worked as a team with the client’s business analysts, the Boston Consulting Group, to establish the feasibility in business terms of running a web-based virtual stock exchange.

Missing from the equation was a team member with expertise of large, complex, web-based projects who was able to act as a bridge between the offline advertising team and the technical team at OM Group.

Dug’s advertising experience, coupled with his managing of pan-European data-distribution projects for Offworld Industries made him an ideal candidate for the job. Dug ran a creative and technology audit which he presented to the board of OM Group in Stockholm.

Dug is unusual in that if the project demands it, he can act as a technology consultant as well as a creative director. He has consulted on xml-based publishing initiatives for The Discovery Channel, Cataloguing for GE and Acer Computers among others.

For Blueberry interactive, Dug designed an interface for Gemstar’s VideoPlus online user guide.

Corporate site design. First attempt at creating Javascript objects that generate fluid transitional and typographic effects.

Dug designed and specified an Ian-Fleming-based online lifestyle shop.

I’m currently hunting down the pages and pages of work I did on the new James Bond logos, brand position and editorial strategy (including the design of a Bond magazine contract title)

Dug consulted on accessibility / usability for Gibraltar-based gambling site.

The brief was for an interactive campaign that would engage an adult audience with Shrek and encourage DVD purchases.

Dug has been developing advanced CSS-based design techniques since 1997. Donkey is the developmental test-bed for these techniques.

(Read ALA article for position-based n-column layout)

Dug directed the design of the UK version of street.com

He paid particular attention to UK journalistic idiom so that the site was truly native as opposed to a ‘port’ of the US offering.

Dug designed the xhtml templates for the magazine which allowed multicolumn layout to function correctly at all seven browser font-size settings.

Accessibilty consulting for interesource.com on a brief from US legal giant Lawtel.

Dug designed skins for a number of the applications pages.

As part of the brief, Dug also developed a methodology for the internal team to follow to protecting usability / accessibility during both the initial design and final implementation phases of the project.

Web designer: Daniel Harman

Dug ran an audit of the client’s publishing methodologies and described a creative position. This enabled the new Discovery Health website to gain credibility among viewers and establish the channel it supported as a free-standing editorial offering.

White label design templates to merge AMP bank financial services into M&S ‘Unicorn’ financial product.

Designed standards-compliant version of the Guardian Unlimited website to satisfy accessibility/usability requirements of UK educational charity (The Lecture List).

Dug spent two years developing assets and strategies for Glidrose Publications Limited, the owners of the James Bond intellectual property. One of Dug’s favourite projects is the Ian Fleming Encyclopedia.

The site contains every word written by Ian Fleming, organised in a flexible, resilient and easy-to-use database. Designed for academics as well as amateurs, the search-and-comparison facilities will be cross-referenced with relevant course data provided by rss feed from university publishing resources.

While Dug produced mock-ups of search-and-compare web pages to add the film resources of Danjaq, LLC. and MGM to the site, the IP owners are still in legal consultation and this element of the project is temporarily on hold.

The client asked for interactive ideas that would allow millions of people around the world to experience the 007 lifestyle.

Web designer: Lorenzo Sprenger

Some links to matrix solution sites:

• web.usna.navy.mil
• lar5.com
• jjorg.chem.unc.edu
• jeays.net
• www.schubart.net

The Lecture List was launched in May 2004. Over the twelve-month design and development phase, Dug was responsible for the entire user experience, from functionality specification through to application design, human interaction and control of the final coding of the site’s interface.

An impossible brief: a set of website templates that could repair themselves and shield the user from design mistakes.

Dug has worked with Cognima for a number of years. Over this period, he has developed

• A complete corporate identity programme
  • Brand mark
  • Brand guideline
  • Print requirements (letterhead, cards)
  • Website template system
  • Promotionals (T-shirts, mugs, mousemats)
  • Office signage and place-holding
  • Bilingual Japanese/English design
• Travelling exhibition stand design
• A collection of limited-edition music CDs

For client YR Media, Dug designed a set of skins for the company’s white label graphics and ringtones store.

With the Twocultureclash shop, Dug worked closely with YR Media’s Mark Panay to really push the white-label application.

Mark’s semantic markup allowed Dug to build a design around CSS selectors acting on most parts of the site without need for specific class definitions.

Motion graphics production.

Twenty minutes of ambient video communication for Saudi petrochem leader SABIC’s tradeshow stand at K2004 in Cologne. Films convey key brand messages (sample). Client: Bisqit Design

Design of all CSS ringtone shop interface. The microsite is linked to from the skint.net website.

Dug has just finished up materials for client Cognima’s “3GSM 2005”: tradeshow presence. This year, Dug developed a new stand design incorporating plasma screens into the stand walls and a new edition of Music to Replicate Data By, a series of music compilations launched in 2003.

A project to unify the IFA-facing web services of UK financial services giant Friends Provident. This was a challenging project requiring as much diplomacy as design. The new designs should go live in Ocotber 2005

Dug has developed both communications and user-experience solutions for a number of large finacial services institutions including:

• AMP Bank
• Standard Chartered Bank
• New York Stock Exchange
• OM Group
• Friends Provident
• Chase Leasing
• Flemings JP Morgan

Dug has completed another pure CSS ringtone shop interface for those wonderful guys at YR Media. We’re now rapidly aproaching the point where the ringtone shops could be assembled into an unorthodox (because these are targeted at Firefox and IE6) CSS Zen Garden. More on that thought later…

In the spirit of releasing early and often, experimentalpragmatics.org went live last night well before the design is actually finished. Dug can’t pretend to understand the concepts of relevance and utterance interpretation, but he’s happy to be able to help another non-profit onto the internet.

A couple more pure CSS application skins over at TruePlayaz and Lemonjelly and you know what, you learn something everyday—who’d a thunk you could get a dot-ky tld?

The website introduction explains it best:

Oxford Strategic Marketing, in partnership with Hunter Miller, has commissioned independent research to explore the critical issues facing senior marketers in their first 100 Days. The report will be available in January 2006 to download, and the critical issues will continue to be debated below. To keep abreast of the debate, subscribe to our rss-feed.

Redesign and restructure the main Flora website. Conceive information model based on customer insight. Develop information model into an information architecture designed to support the growth of the website and the inclusion of future advertising initiatives.

Note Acoustique Ecophon a multi-language Movabletype integration and information architecture project for client Fredrik Wackå

Redesign and restructure bioinformatics extranet application. Lead team of scientists, programmers and marketers through a complete user experience architecture process resulting in an entirely new system design.

As ever, Tim says it best:

The blog itself should become a projection of the bizarre mind of Isaac Mostovicz: karate expert, diamanteer, talmudic scholar, luxury marketer…

Isaac believes that embracing paradox can enable deep transformation. He’s written about 100,000 words on the topic so far, which I’ll be editing and extracting over the months to come—confusion will reign!

Any suggestions for links, topics and functionality tweaks on a postcard please. Big hat tip to Glasshouse associate Dug Falby.