David Emery Online

Mind the troll

Well, my broadband is back working – I’m slightly surprised, having read so much about Bulldog’s appalling customer service.

While I was gone, a momentous event happened for this site;

A milestone.

A joyous occasion.

I got my first troll!

He’s bounced around the latest set of iPod/Zune posts, posting rapid arguments about his hatred for all things Apple. There’s some real comedy gold in there, so it’s might be worth digging through the latest posts to check them out – in one, he says iTunes is just a rip off of RealPlayer, which actually made me laugh out loud!

It touches on some of the points that Tom Coates has been blogging about recently – namely that of ethical blogging, and how you deal with commentors. I have so far left all of the posts up, and responded to them as well (as it’s quite fun), baring a couple which were crude and very sweary which I replaced the text so that people could see a comment was there.

I think that, in general, if you’re going to allow comments on your site you should really try and censor them as little as possible – the ideal would be not at all, but there’s a...

Disconnected

Bulldog have rather nicely suspended my broadband service, which means that until they fix it I’m not really going to be able to blog.

Hopefully it shouldn’t take too long to fix…

Five Years

It seems both incredible that five years have already gone past, but also amazing how much has changed in that time.

Everybody has their own personal story and viewpoint on the day itself and the after effects it had, and I find it very hard to pin down exactly how much the world has changed since then; I have a feeling that it hasn’t really, more my perception of it.

It was the first historic “where were you when…” that I witnessed or was alive and paying attention for, at least, and I think that – more then anything – had the most profound affect on me. Suddenly, things like Pearl Harbour, JFK’s assassination, the assorted IRA attacks on London and many more all resonated with me that much more. I had never even realised or thought that I would witness something on that scale; not so much because I didn’t think that that kind of thing could happen, but more because it never occurred that it would.

Of course, the world really has changed in that intervening time – and it’s probably worth noting that the US deaths in Iraq are now approaching the deaths at the World Trade Center – but...

This is what we need

In these times of global terror, of war, of governments that cannot be trusted we need something. Something to focus on.

What we need, is a space program

Orion, NASA’s just-announced name for its forthcoming set of missions to the Moon and Mars signifies something exciting – or at least, something that I hope will be exciting. Just think how amazing it will be if we can actually manage to put a man on Mars… while it doesn’t magically solve all of the worlds problems, at least it would prove that we are still capable of something astonishing.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that the US Government can actually follow through on a project this large? Sure, it requires a huge amount of money, but since when have the US been shy of spending money? Manned space missions – exploration missions – are the only way to galvanise the public into supporting the space program; it’s nice to see that NASA seem to be back on track.

Of course, just think what would happen if they discovered oil on Mars…

Hype is only hype

As you may have heard, Snakes On A Plane – possibly the most hyped film of the year – has tanked at the box office . This comes as no surprise to anybody that’s seen the trailer, let alone the film, as by most accounts it’s a dismal film, with a weak story, appalling script and wooden acting.

I say most accounts, as there are quite a few people – all the people that hyped it up in the first place – that really liked the film (an interesting take on how it’s still a success if you follow that link, as well).

Here’s my hypothesis; firstly, take it as read that the film isn’t any good (if you liked it get off my blog just stay with me anyway). Secondly, look at the fact that you have a large – in web terms, but not Hollywood terms – mass of people who have not only been saying this film is great before they’ve even seen it, but telling everybody they can it’s great. And making t-shirts. And singing songs.

Are these people seriously going to do a u-turn when it turns out the film sucks?

I don’t think so.

It’s pretty much...

Pesky White Lies

Lies in marketing don’t work anymore (unless your customers are stupid).

Stupid enough to not realise that you think they’re stupid, at least.

With this rather important fact in mind, if you want to use lies in your marketing, you’d better hunt out a stupid audience first. Not an internet user, that’s for sure; even if your lie isn’t a big-whopper, but more one of those pesky-white-lie types someone somewhere will pick up on it. Of course, if one person picks up on it, and makes it sound like a big deal…

Boom. It is.

The audience for lie tellers is getting rapidly smaller.

Even stretching the truth a little is getting pretty difficult.

What’s maybe more important though, is that people are savvy enough to realise when they are being lied to, but also when they are not; “the most effective xyz in the world”; “Proven to be more effective then abc”; “More reliable then foo” – they just don’t cut it any more.

“We like our product”; “We think it’s better because of x”; “This is our story, we hope you like us” – it’s the only way to effectively target an audience that’s been marketed to for a hundred years.

People always moan

The best festival in the world – bar none – happened a few weeks ago; the Truck Festival in Oxfordshire, England. Truck is a small festival, and all the profit goes to charity (after the considerable costs are paid for – it may be small, but it still costs a shed load to put on a festival).

This year, they raised the price of the tickets by a huge 30% – from the bargain price of £30, to the – err – bargain price of £40. That’s £40 for a two day festival, including camping. Just to put that into perspective, V festival – also a two day festival – costs £120. You could quite easily pay that much for a single gig, let alone a weekend festival.

Not a bad deal, then.

It’s also worth taking into consideration that Truck is massively over subscribed – the tickets sold out within a week of them going on sale.

So, what do you think happened when the price raise became public knowledge?

If you said that a large number of people moaned, bitched and generally sulked on assorted online forums and other public outlets; well done! You either a) successfully read the title in rather large...

Critical

No doubt you will have seen all the furore about the latest exploits of the “evil” terrorists, and the subsequent crippling of the countries airports.

In my eyes, this is one step by the government too far.

Granted, it appears that they have credible information which has lead to the arrest of around 20 people that were going to attempt to blow up 10 planes on their way to the US. That’s of course assuming that the information is credible (they don’t exactly have a good track record…). But what are they trying to gain by the hugely increased security measures at airports?

For a start, they have stopped the “terrorists”, so why the need for security? One reason I’ve seen is that there could be other terrorist cells that they are unaware of that could perform a similar attack – but surely that’s no different then any other point in time; there could always be terrorists planning attacks (and there probably always are).

Also, the measures they are taking are to be completely draconian. According to reports the plan involved the use of liquid explosives, so stopping people taking liquids on board would seem to be a reasonable precaution (although obviously traditional policing...

No Logo

The other major change I made with the redesign is the loss of my “de” logo. I’ve had that logo for at least 5 years, so I’m a little sad to see it go but it really had to be done.

For a start, it didn’t fit in with the new design particularly well – it doesn’t scale down to well – and does look a bit “tired”. The main reason was, however, a small epiphany:

Why do I need a logo at all?

In fact, why does any person (not company) need a logo?

Almost every personal site I go to has some form of logo, and really – their isn’t any point. Are you a brand? Does your logo create recognition with your readers? Logos make sense for companies; to help their customers recall them, and strengthen their brand but does any of this really make any sense for a personal site?

I don’t think so.

It’s all about the content; not some faux I’m-a-company branding exercise. Oh, and don’t get me started about the sheer number of freelance web designers whose sites look like they’re a company of multiple people. If you’re a single freelancer, just say so – it’s normally painfully obvious...

Beware falling blocks

I’m back!

I had a mere ~10000 unread items in Bloglines to get through, but I think I’m all caught up now.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet as while I’ve been away I’ve done 90% of the work on my upcoming redesign, so hopefully within a couple of days round here should look a little different.

In the process, however, things may well look a little screwy for a while, so beware! Also, an apology to my rss readers as I have a sneaking suspicion the changes I’m going to make will make all my recent posts show up as new posts in my rss feed. Sorry!

UPDATE: OK, so as you may have noticed the redesign is progressing nicely. The rest will get done tomorrow – still got to backdate some new images for articles, populate the work section and then move the whole thing up a directory (so this page is the main page of de-online.co.uk). That’s going to be a little tricky (got to set up redirect rules for everything) so it’s going to have to wait till tomorrow.