Soupgiant

Confirming a caller’s identity

2010-01-28T06:18:40Z

The ATO called me last week and asked for my middle name and date of birth to confirm my identity. I told the operator that I wasn’t in the habit of giving out my personal details to incoming callers.

Rather than try to convince me that anyone could answer my mobile phone, the operator agreed it would be foolish to give out such details. He gave me his extension number, and a phone number where I could verify he was from the tax office.

Being the cynical sort, or paranoid (I’ll let you decide), I googled the ATO’s website to confirm the number. It was legitimate. I called back and reconnected to the operator immediately. The entire process took less than 30 seconds.

It got me thinking: Googling ‘<number> site:ato.gov.au’ in hope the ATO had slipped up and the non-public number was on their website was an inefficient step.

A more efficient way to confirm the number would be for the operator to give out an ATO URL: ato.gov.au/<number> being the logical choice. At the URL, there could be a short message informing the visitor that the number is an ATO phone number. Robots.txt would be used to exclude search engines from indexing that URL.

It’s a simple fix that costs the ATO very little and protects them and their tax payers.

I was running this idea past fellow giant Josh, and he put forward a problem with my solution. Rather than spoil the fun, I’ll let Josh put forward his side of the story at a later date.

10 Ways to Draw Traffic to Your Site

2009-12-03T23:23:00Z

Once you’ve started your site, your blog, or real time web app, there’s no point publishing and just hoping people will come. With that in mind, let me present ten ways to increase your visitor numbers.

1. Top Ten Lists

Create spurious top ten lists for an immediate spike in traffic. 24 hours later, you can go into Google Analytics and get a warm fuzzy feeling as your visitor numbers increase. It’s best to ignore bounce rate, and average time on site.

While your first time visitor numbers have increased, it’s unlikely that many of them will convert to regular visitors or subscribe to your RSS feed; but that was never the goal. The goal was to increase your visitor numbers: always handy for boardroom presentations.

Never too old

2009-11-26T23:23:00Z

My grandfather passed away last Sunday, November 22^nd 2009, at the grand old age of 97.

There are many reasons I respected my grandfather. After all, he was my grandfather. I could have chosen to write that he became a full-time carer of my grandmother in his 80s, how active he was in his church community, or any number of things.

But it’s his decision to get a computer and onto the internet about three years ago, aged 94 that prompts this piece. Not that this was his greatest achievement, but because we write about the internet here.

To put this into perspective, he was 25 when Alan Turing described the Turing Machine and 65 when the Apple II launched. He was already 80 years old when Microsoft released Windows 3.1.

It would be re-writing of history to say that granddad was the most competent computer user in the world. A few months ago he left this message on my answering machine:

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. <click>

I called back a few minutes later and he was slightly upset because he’d lost an email he’d written to my sister. For people my age, this wouldn’t be a big deal – we know how and where to look for a stray email. If the message is completely lost, using computers and sending emails is our second nature so it takes only a few moments to recompose ourselves and the email.

Another time, he’d managed to block my aunt and uncle’s email address in Outlook and needed help unblocking it.

Aged 94, Granddad gave it a try. Years later and weeks before he passed away, he was still trying to learn more about the software on his computer. I could not be prouder of having a man like that as my granddad. He learnt from us and we learnt from him.

If you’re not willing to try something because you think you’re too old, try anyway and you might surprise yourself. If you don’t want to try, that’s fine too.

Dedicated to Ron Feltscheer, Jan 1^st 1912 – Nov 22^nd 2009.

The "D" Word

2009-11-23T23:23:44Z

Wikipedia has a long and annoyingly complicated article about web design, which begins:

Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.

So, ‘creating presentations’ you say. To call oneself a ‘Web Designer’ is about as accurate as saying ‘I work with computers’.

Saving files in HTML format is now a common feature in Office 2000 programs. In other words, you can save Word documents in HTML format and you can publish Excel workbooks as Web pages.
– taken from Opening and saving files in Office

For years now we’ve been able to export Microsoft Word documents as HTML files. By Wikipedia’s definition, everybody everywhere who has ever created a word document could be called a ‘Web Designer’.

This topic came up recently because we had the phrase ‘web designer’, or something like it, on our About page. Meanwhile, on our portfolio page we had some, admittedly ambiguous, text about a specific piece of work we had done before Soupgiant was created.

This caused confusion. We received a demanding email from the graphic designers responsible for that work that we explain ourselves. Apparently their client saw our site and said “somebody’s taking credit for your design work”.

It took a little while before we worked out where the confusion. At no point did we intend to take credit for the design. As a matter of course we outsource all our graphic design because that is not our skill-set.

The common term is ‘Web Design’, but we don’t do design. Can we be ‘Web Engineers’ without having an engineering degree? What about ‘Web Architects’?

We’ve decided to go with the term ‘Web Production’ because what we do is more akin to a Producer’s role than anything else. We coordinate the production of websites and content. We can create, or organise the creation of, audio and video for podcasts. We can code but we also work with information architecture, testing, usability, and accessibility.

We bring together all the things that go into making a website. We stay up-to-date on technologies to ensure our clients get the best product possible for their budget. We coordinate, we define, we build, we code, we acquire, we provide, but we do not design. At least, we don’t do it well. We hire graphic designers to do that because that’s their area of expertise.

Our area of expertise is creating excellent, accessible and functional websites using every resource we have at our disposal.

Craig McLachlan, Who Knew?

2009-11-19T23:23:00Z

This week, Boxcutters featured Craig McLachlan as their guest and, in the process, providing a great example of the advantages of podcasting.

I firmly believe that it’s only in a podcast such an interview is possible

Neighbours, in Australia to this day, twenty [odd] years down the track, for me, poses the odd problem. The old guard of casting agents in Australia still don’t take you seriously…

Post Neighbours [a] small role in [My Husband, My Killer] had people [saying] ‘Crikey, Craig, who knew? We think the boy may be able to act.’

–Craig McLachlan

On traditional media, it’s possible the guest would have been more guarded. I don’t know if that’s the case for McLachlan but certainly other guests have worried that they’ve caused ‘trouble’ following a podcast interview.

As the interview went past its allotted time, Josh looked over the running sheet and started bumping other segments. 33 minutes later, all other segments had been bumped and it was time to finish the show. Having worked around the edges of mainstream media previously, I know this couldn’t happen; while a schedule isn’t set in concrete, it’s beginning to dry.

The key to this flexibility is a niche audience. While, by definition, the audience is small, it’s loyal and it’s interested. Without the boundaries of broadcast media, niche can take on a new meaning. Leo Laporte’s TWiT Network claims 2.6 million downloads a month — small compared to network television, but nothing to be sneezed at.

Advertising to a Niche

Advertising on traditional broadcast media, such as TV, is advertising with a scatter gun. Anyone could be watching: from a 34 year-old man to a 62 year-old grandmother. One will be more interested in the next generation iPhone than the other. Ratings will indicate which programme the 34 year-old is more likely to be watching but there will be a few grandmothers watching too and the network will charge for their eyes. How the television is being watched needs to be considered too: Are they watching while eating dinner? Reading with the sound down? Or have they left the room to make a coffee?

On a single subject podcast, every member of the audience is interested in the subject – so interested they’ve actively sought out a podcast. Using Boxcutters as an example, the audience may or may not be interested in the next generation iPhone, but they’d be interested in box sets of the Wire, the West Wing, Deadwood, and Six Feet Under.

If you need assistance setting up a podcast for your business, event, or group, Josh and Peter at Soupgiant can help.

Boxcutters is presented by Josh Kinal, John Richards, and, Brett Cropley.

Assigning roles and sticking to them

2009-11-16T23:23:49Z

Yesterday Peter and I spent some time assigning roles in our business.

Much like everything else that needs doing when starting up, it is the most important thing to do. Books about building a new business are full of suggestions about the most important thing to do. I suppose listing something and just saying it’s a helpful tool for getting the business on track is just not strong enough for the self-help book market.

I first read about assigning roles in The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. It seemed to make sense. It’s a really good way to get a quick understanding of all aspects of the business.

We sat down and tried to list all the departments that a business has: HR, Accounts; Sales; Legal; Project management; etcetera. Then we started thinking about all the other tasks that don’t have a “department” as such: copy editing; version control; domain name renewals; social networking; anything else we could think of.

There are only two of us and it can feel silly to assign roles when there are only two people in a brand new business. The thing is, there won’t always be only two of us. We plan to grow quickly and well. The only way to do that is make sure we have all the roles in the business outlined so that a new employee can take over some of those roles.

The thing is, we’re both going to be working on every part of the business. So what we did, instead of saying “I’ll do this and you do that”, is to just split roles into who’s taking the lead on each.

That way there’s no demarkation issue on roles. We don’t step on each other’s toes or cut each other’s lunch. A partnership is still a partnership. We are both involved in every part of the business but now, when a process falls over, we can see whose responsibility it was. We can look at why it wasn’t taken care of.

And that is a really important part of running a business.

Charging for themes? Do the right thing!

2009-11-11T23:23:42Z

Of all the Wordpress functions, I think wp_register_script, wp_register_style, wp_enqueue_script, and, wp_enqueue_style are the most elegant. It’s possible to get away with using only the wp_enqueue_* functions, but I prefer to use both for a little bit more control.

For the uninitiated, these functions allow you to add JavaScript and CSS files to the header (or footer, in later versions of WP) without running of the risk of another plugin adding the same file, that is, you avoid the following:

<script type="text/javascript" source="http://…/a-plugin/jQuery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" source="http://…/a-plugin/plugin.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" source="http://…/my-theme/jQuery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" source="http://…/my-theme/theme.js"></script>

If you develop themes or plugins for Wordpress and are unaware of these functions, you should refer to the codex to get the low down on at least wp_enqueue_script, and wp_enqueue_style – these register and queue the files, the wp_register_* functions register the file ready to be queued for output.

The Rant

Despite the value these functions can add to themes and plugins, they are under-utilised in development. The functions have wider adoption in plug-in development, but it’s still well below 100%. In theme development adoption is virtually non-existent (at least in the themes I’ve used).

This failure to code properly is evenly spread across both free and paid themes. I’m happy to look the other way for free themes. After all, the motivation behind the theme may have been to learn Wordpress development.

In commercial themes, particularly those above the US$30-$35 price point, it’s downright frustrating that these products haven’t been developed properly.

When someone purchases a theme, they shouldn’t have to debug the product to find out why a JavaScript framework is being included twice. The reason for the purchase is that they either don’t want to, or know how to, develop.

Avoiding costly mistakes

Evaluating a commercial theme on behalf of a client triggered this rant. At $195, it’s quite expensive in the world of Wordpress. As I was viewing the source code of the online demo, I discovered the faux pas. We’ll advise against using that theme as a starting point. In fact, within short time we’d found a theme $195 cheaper that would do the job.

Looking at the source code of a demo site is usually enough to tell you how the theme is inserting its scripts:

Both <link> and <script> tags will use single quotes around attributes (‘), rather than double quotes (“),
CSS <link> tags will have an ID attribute ending in –css, eg: id=’shadowbox-css-css’, and,
JavaScript and CSS files include the version number as a query string eg jQuery.js?ver=1.3.2 (although a hook can be used to remove this)

Making sure that the wp_register_script, wp_register_style, wp_enqueue_script, and, wp_enqueue_style are included properly will save time, bandwidth and also avoid some detrimental conflicts.

MYOB Invoices: Building Brand Identity

2009-11-09T23:23:26Z

When we sat down with our accountant to get some tips on starting up, we asked him what accounting software package we should use.

I had used the open source GnuCash before and I liked it. I felt like what we lost in localised specificity we gained by saving the hundreds of dollars charged by the local accounting package duopoly.

Peter had used Quicken and wasn’t very happy with it. Similarly, in previous businesses, I’d used MYOB and thought it sported some of the worst user interface design I’ve ever seen in software.

The accountant told us that MYOB was the go. His logic was similar to mine but probably more financially sound. Forking out the $300 now would save us potentially thousands in accounting fees in the future. That made sense to us.

I believe that strongly in creating a brand identity as early as possible. When a client receives an invoice, there’s a statement one business makes to another about how much they care about their appearance.

The default invoice in MYOB is not going to cut it in the same way the default Wordpress template or having an email address with Hotmail just makes a new business seem unprofessional.

MYOB’s default invoices are ugly. They are just text. Sometimes the text doesn’t fit inside the borders they themselves have created. Sometimes the text looks like it’s just floating on the page in some sort of information limbo.

Anybody who has ever tried to design an MYOB invoice template inside MYOB knows that it would be easier to tattoo your invoices onto a chicken and train that chicken to walk to your client and present itself.

The design interface is terrible. It’s unclear when if a change is going to affect one element or all of them. There’s also a whole lot of shouting “where did that thing just go?”

It turns out that MYOB is set up for those who like to print out invoices and send them via post. Also, they want to have pre-printed invoice templates that just need the information dumped on them.

Of course, not living in the 1980s, and happy to just deliver our invoices via an emailed PDF, we needed to work out a way around this. Apparently it’s easy to attach a background image to the invoice so we’re trying to design one that way.

The idea is that we print a pdf of an invoice, import that into Gimp and then add design elements in different layers. When we’re happy with what we have we remove the pdf layer, save the file as a png and upload it into MYOB as a background.

We’re still in the process of designing so we’ll let you know how it goes.

Partying like it's 1999

2009-11-05T23:23:00Z

A little under twelve months ago I wrote a post on a JavaScript base file I’d set up:

I could have used an existing frame work, such as the increasingly popular jQuery; I decided to use my own, which contains only the very basics, rather than have a larger file containing rarely used functions

–source (emphasis added for this post)

Within a couple of months of writing that, I was a convert to jQuery. There was no single reason for my conversion, from memory some of the reasons where:

the selector engine,
plugin availability,
documentation – both official and unofficial tutorials, and,
lazyness

It’s the last one that probably had the biggest influence, I’m too lazy to reinvent the wheel, and without using a framework that’s what I was going to be doing. Frequently. Examples in blogs I read, weather it be group blogs, such as A List Apart, or one person shows, such as CSS-Tricks were all beginning to use jQuery. If I were to stick to my guns and not use a framework, I’d be doing a lot of rewriting.

As for the functions that are rarely used? It’s really only the Ajax group of functions that I’ve never used, for the simple reason that I don’t like Ajax. In many of the situations it’s used, it is often fanciness without necessary function. Then again, ask me about Ajax in a couple of months’ time.

Expectations go both ways

2009-11-02T23:24:00Z

Recently we had a potential client ask for a quote for a database application. The price we gave the client and the amount they were expecting to pay were vastly different. Their budget was almost one-twentieth the cost of the application.

So who got it wrong and how did it end up so completely out of proportion?

It takes us a lot of work and time to come up with an accurate quote for a client. We put a lot of thought into every project and make sure we quote something that actually meets their requirements.

We learnt a valuable lesson: always ask a client for a ball-park figure for their budget before quoting. Maybe, if it makes them feel more comfortable, we could give them a minimum amount we expect it to cost before giving a detailed quote. Even if we told them a range that the price is likely to fall between the client would have been a lot more willing to tell us not to worry about it.

At a previous place of employ, my boss used to always talk about “managing the client’s expectations”. That’s impossible to do if their expectations aren’t actually stated.

Service businesses, like ours, also have expectations of our clients. Part of the mindfulness of dealing with providers and clients alike is being honest about what is required from each party as early as possible.

Everybody’s time is valuable. The client could have found out immediately that they did not have the funds for what they wanted. That extra time could be used to think of other solutions for their needs.

We could have saved time and done work for other clients or on our ever increasing list of things we need to continue strengthening our fledgeling business.

Also, “managing the client’s expectations” is the wrong way to look at it. It sounds manipulative – probably because it is. Expectations, much like prices, are a matter of negotiation. If everybody involved has an understanding of their responsibilities and those of their partners in the project, even if it’s just the very start of the relationship, there is accountability on all sides and things will move forward much more smoothly.