All posts in the “article” category

Yesterday Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook, took to the stage for the first time to fill Steve Jobs’ well worn New Balance trainers and announce the next generation iPhone.

Sadly it was not the iPhone 5 we had all hoped for and instead was the much feared iPhone 4S. Fair enough it has a beefed up processor in the Apple designed dual-core ‘A5′ chip, an 8 mega-pixel rear camera with the edition of an extra lens and a larger aperture allowing more light in creating sharper images and the ability to shoot 1080p HD video. There is also a new battery but on closer inspection it only adds an extra hour of talk-time, so no great shakes.

Along with the iPhone announcement came talk of IOS5 (iPhone software update with over 200 new features), iClould (sync-able data between all your devices over the ‘cloud’) and an interesting new feature called “SIRI”. Essentially a personal assistant kept prisoner within your phone that when asked has the ability to; read your texts, schedule appointments in your calender, set your alarms, give you hourly weather forecasts and so much more. Annoyingly this feature is restricted only to iPhone 4S, much like the video camera was only enabled within the 3GS. These kind of science-fiction realisations however often have little practical use, imagine standing in line at the post office and asking your phone to read your text then replying via dictation, these are the actions of someone who sees no shame in wearing a Bluetooth headset 100% of their day and not just when a hands free situation is called for.

So will I be queuing up at an ungodly hour in the cold on Friday 14th October to get my iPhone 4S…… Sadly not. Call me shallow but if I’m going to upgrade my iPhone and fork out a couple hundred pounds I want it to at least look different, even the slightest redesign and I’d be reaching for the sleeping bag and preparing for a night on the streets outside the Carphone Warehouse.

I guess we’ll all have to wait patiently for the iPhone 5, which if the release cycle history is anything to go by, we’ve got another year to avoid smashing our screens. Good luck everyone.

10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral

1. Respect Recipients’ Time
This is the fundamental rule. As the message sender, the onus is on YOU to minimize the time your email will take to process. Even if it means taking more time at your end before sending.

2. Short or Slow is not Rude
Let’s mutually agree to cut each other some slack. Given the email load we’re all facing, it’s OK if replies take a while coming and if they don’t give detailed responses to all your questions. No one wants to come over as brusque, so please don’t take it personally. We just want our lives back!

3. Celebrate Clarity
Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. Avoid strange fonts and colors.

4. Quash Open-Ended Questions
It is asking a lot to send someone an email with four long paragraphs of turgid text followed by “Thoughts?”. Even well-intended-but-open questions like “How can I help?” may not be that helpful. Email generosity requires simplifying, easy-to-answer questions. “Can I help best by a) calling b) visiting or c) staying right out of it?!”

5. Slash Surplus cc’s
cc’s are like mating bunnies. For every recipient you add, you are dramatically multiplying total response time. Not to be done lightly! When there are multiple recipients, please don’t default to ‘Reply All’. Maybe you only need to cc a couple of people on the original thread. Or none.

6. Tighten the Thread
Some emails depend for their meaning on context. Which means it’s usually right to include the thread being responded to. But it’s rare that a thread should extend to more than 3 emails. Before sending, cut what’s not relevant. Or consider making a phone call instead.

7. Attack Attachments
Don’t use graphics files as logos or signatures that appear as attachments. Time is wasted trying to see if there’s something to open. Even worse is sending text as an attachment when it could have been included in the body of the email.

8. Give these Gifts: EOM NNTR
If your email message can be expressed in half a dozen words, just put it in the subject line, followed by EOM (= End of Message). This saves the recipient having to actually open the message. Ending a note with “No need to respond” or NNTR, is a wonderful act of generosity. Many acronyms confuse as much as help, but these two are golden and deserve wide adoption.

9. Cut Contentless Responses
You don’t need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying “Thanks for your note. I’m in.” does not need you to reply “Great.” That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

10. Disconnect!
If we all agreed to spend less time doing email, we’d all get less email! Consider calendaring half-days at work where you can’t go online. Or a commitment to email-free weekends. Or an ‘auto-response’ that references this charter. And don’t forget to smell the roses.

visit http://emailcharter.org

We’ve just launched the spring summer redesign for Weavers Door to include a revamped homepage and fresh colour scheme to reflect the season.. Gone are the dark grays and winter blues and in come big fresh images of products and a showcase to the various top brands available.

Visit Weavers Door for the latest collection of Alife T-shirts, Barbour, Edwin Jeans and other top brands including Penguin, Nudie Jeans, Fred Perry and Folk

The release on Monday of Internet Explorer 9 by Microsoft, was downloaded just over 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours, according to Microsoft. The beta version of the browser was downloaded “just” 1 million times during its first day of availability.

Compared to other web browsers, the downloads of IE9 are not quite as impressive. In just the first few hours of availability, Firefox 3.5 saw more than 1 million downloads in 2009. By the end of the first 24 hours the year before, Firefox 3.0 had been downloaded a total of 8 million times according to Mozilla sources.

“We would like to thank everyone around the world for downloading IE9 and for the enthusiastic reception,” Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior developer of Internet Explorer, wrote on the Microsoft blog.

The lastest version from Internet Explorer includes HTML5, an improved UI and greater control over data prtoection and the storage of surfing trends (cookies etc). It is available for download at BeautyoftheWeb.com.

IE 9 will soon face greater competition from Firefox, the beta version of Firefox 4 has been widely applauded with a final realeas due on the 22nd of March 2011.

This has cropped up a few times for existing clients so I’ve enlosed the csv file below for anyone who needs it.

Its a delivery rule for UK, European and Rest of the World customers based on their ‘shipping location’.

The first part denotes the whole world so this is where you would put your price rules for say USA/Canada Japan etc. The second part is the UK specific rules, which over ride the first rule and then finally I have the European countries, each listed by their 3 digit ISO code in alphabetical order.

This is tested and working on Magento 1.4.1.

Its specifically for the (free) Product Matrix from Webshopapps but can be modified for the default CSV table rate built into Magento.

UK, European and Rest of the World Table Rate

The BBC have posted a recent article on government expenditure and the breath taking costs for the design and maintenance of the Business Link website.

This is not a typo, the cost per year for the website is £35m. That’s thirty five million english pounds for the design and maintenance of www.businesslink.gov.uk!

The company in charge, Serco have even provided a break down of the costs;

£6.2m on strategy and planning, £4.4m on design and build, £4.7m on hosting and infrastructure, £15.3m on content provision and £4.5m on testing and evaluation.

I cannot work out why design costs would be carried over to year two and three but they are.

The article in full can be found here

Marketing aims to create consumer interest in goods and services based on the assumption that the target consumer is buying a lifestyle or habit, with some income, location and loyalty considerations thrown in.

It draws from information about the target demographic; however, personal preferences about color, type size, logos and so on do not represent those of the target demographic.

One person on a committee might be a target consumer, but certainly not the committee as a whole. Should people from disparate demographics second-guess the visual approach taken by the designer to the target consumer?

Read the full article over at Smashing Magazine.