Archive for April, 2007
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Link Checking - Keeping it all together
The problems with an ever changing web site is that it allows errors to be introduced which can affect the user experience - the most common of which are broken links which may either mean that images don’t display or worst still that a page doesn’t display at all. Using a content management system helps significantly in this respect as this would typically look after all your internal links, but there is always the possiblity that some manually managed links e.g. to other websites can become broken and effectively give end users a negative impression of your site.
I use a wonderful little tool called Xenu Link Sleuth for checking links on sites - both as a quality check prior to deployment and as an occasional health check. You just tell it what the URL of your site is and off it goes and quickly (and I mean quickly) checks all the links on all the pages for dud links. You can then either view the results and filter them in tabular format, or create a report which will tell you which links are broken and importantly, which page has the link to that resource.
Visit the Xenu LinkSleuth page and download
Automated link checking is a great way of ensuring that your links are up to date. It is not a pure substitute for human checking though e.g. if you have a link on your site that says contact us but goes to your investor relations section, then it is unlikely that an automated link checker will flag this up as an issue. Beware also lapsed domain names when linking to external sites - if web site owners don’t keep up their domain name (this happens quite often with small sites) then they will typically lose control and the site either reverts to the domain registration company or be snapped up by a domain holding company. Under such circumstances an automated link checker probably wouldn’t notice the change as a page will still be served - only a manual check will be able to do this.
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Preparing PDF Documents for search
When deploying search technologies to client websites, I frequently get feedback from clients who aren’t entirely happy with the way their search results are returned or thier ranking. Nine times out of ten, this is due entirely to inappropriate document properties - in particular, the internal title of the document. Search technologies e.g. Google, Microsoft Index Server and Verity, usually give highest ranking to search terms found in the title of the document. They also typically use the value of this title when displaying search results. This is easy enough to set in HTML documents but what about Word an PDF documents?
This is a typical instance of the kind of problem I see all the time - the title actually shows the original filename of the Quark document which was used to create the PDF document and as you can see these are rarely indicative of what content will be found and these obscure titles would have not helped in establishing the relevance of these documents.
The problem however is that Acrobat does not allow us to set a new title here (Acrobat is essentially a file viewing tool not a file editing tool) and to do this you would typically use a PDF editing tool. As we are only interested in editing the title in this instance, there are fortunately a number of free utilities available in the public domain which will allow us to do this e.g. Bureausoft produce an utility called PDF Info which you can download to help in this task.
Treating your PDF documents in this way will make it easy for people to find the most relevant documents on your site from both your internal search engine and external search engines
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Seeking a perfect search
As ask.com makes a public onslaught against Google under the guise of democratising the world wide web and freeing us all from the virtual shackles of a monopoly, it is interesting to see a spate of new providers attempting to evolve search. The main reason for this is in large part due to the amount of online information growing phenomenally day by day - the quantity of pages Google throws up is soon likely to stretch from here to the moon and back. Some canny developers are therefore catching onto the fact that while Google’s eye is off the ball as it diversifies its offerings, creating more web-based applications in its lab, an opportunity in cyberspace exists.
As Chris Anderson states in his book, The Long Tail, the next generation of web users will have higher demands as they search for more relevant content, more quickly, more succinctly. In a nutshell, more information filtering is needed and how that is presented could change. While every web user is familiar with the simple Google library-style text listings, surely it won’t be long before user-interface
designers get in on the act to produce a new animal such as http://kwmap.net/uk.html and http://www.kartoo.com (pictured above)?Although these new filtering services are not always as accurate in their search results, it provides food for thought that perhaps another innovator is just waiting around the corner. Just type in the word ‘Search’ in Google and the most-widely used search engine provider turns up fourth in their very own listings - poor search engine optimisation or a warning sign?
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wisdom of crowds
August 24, 2007 1:00 pm An amazing (yet sad) video of the wisdom of crowds (VT massacre) and how quickly wikipedia (people) acted . The video is a time-lapse of the first 12 hours of the Wikipedia article documenting the Virginia Tech Massacre .
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This week’s signposting
This is some of the stuff we’re reading:
1. web 2.0 participation lower than expected
Web 2.0 sites have lower levels of audience participation than is commonly assumed.2. A guide to CSS Support in Email: 2007 Edition
handy guide from our friends at Campaign Monitor on email support for CSS3. Video messaging platform
An online video messaging platform ideal for both personal and business communications. It offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment.4. Stop Using Your Shoppers
According to experts, up to 70 percent of shoppers to abandon their carts before completing the purchase5. Web counting tools ‘need change’
The way web audiences are measured could be ripe for an overhaul, according to two reports out this week -
Project management
A project manager is a client representative and has to determine and implement the needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm we have and are representing.
The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the company, and to form close links with the client them is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost; time; quality; and, above all, client satisfaction, can be achieved.
We are always getting asked what we do as project managers, just to clear this up… we are responsible for:
provide a day-to-day central point of contact
- by telephone, email and regular meetingscoordinate the Precedent resources for your project
- requesting resource time at our weekly production meetingsmake sure your project stays on time and budget
- informing you when timescales and budget before a problem occurs
- documenting and maintaining a project plan
- estimates, billing and budget control- keep your project running smoothly
- project documentation and specification
- day-to-day tracking and recording of changes
- regular project status reports
- providing quality control
- organising meetings
- purchasing outside resources eg. print and photography -
e-learning for the i-generation
The only e-learning tool I used at Uni, was the now rather ol’school Blackboard - also known as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It was supposed to be a useful online resource to post work and to facilitate discussions with our teacher and fellow students. This didn’t really happen. I mean we posted our work, but that was about it. The lively discussions and valuable feedback we gained in the classroom was never recreated.
It turned us off, an we actually started our own blog (it’s in Swedish) as we found it to be a much more flexible and personal tool for posting work and receiving feedback from fellow students, teachers and anyone else who was interested in our work. We actually found ourselves discussing related topics with peers worldwide (check out the map on our blog).
This wasn’t too long ago, and more and more universities are now utilising (and/or asking us for) tools like blogs, podcasts and wikis on their websites (it is being called e-learning 2.0…) and although not designed particularly for use in education, these ‘new’ tools can be used to make e-learning more personal, collective and adaptable.
Teachers are starting to realise the potential of blogs, media sharing services and collaborative tools in enhancing the e-learning experience and they are starting to push for these new technologies just as they are pushing for new pens and other equipment that will aid the learning process. This is not only exemplified in my experience, but also in a recent study where one humanities lecturer is reported to having said:
“I found out all my students were looking at the material in the VLE but going straight to Facebook to use the discussions tool and discuss the material and the lectures. I thought I might as well join them and ask them questions in their preferred space”. Read the full report here.This teacher (as most other teachers) has experienced the first wave of the i-generation i.e. the generation with no recourse to a memory of (or nostalgia for) a pre-internet history). To them, blogs, podcasts, online video and collaborative tools are a part of the ‘natural order of things’ and using anything else (for example the blackboard) will simply put them off.
The universities marketing people are also feeling pressured by the i-generation and they are wondering if these technologies can be used to attract more students. Moreover they are wondering if the i-generation is examining their online offer as much as their offline offer? Is the online community equally important as the offline community? Can simple publishing tools like blogs be used as online word-of-mouth tools? What happens if they criticise us on their blogs? These are some of the challenges today’s universities are facing, and as always there is no out of the box answer.
However, as always, benchmarking is a good start and I’ve highlighted a couple of links to get you started.
Warwick University is probably the most innovative university in the UK. Here’s why: warwickblogs, Warwick icast, Warwick Podcasts , Warwick on MySpace
Brunel University is using podcasts in an innovative way. their podcasts are guiding students through the application process which makes it more pleasant and user friendly. Stanford’s collaboration with iTunes is also an interesting example. Check it out here.
Jean-Claude Bradley is using Blogger to teach chemistry at Drexel University in Philadelphia. check out his blog here.
There are also a lot of new platforms for collaboration popping up, such as open source Elgg (used by University of Brighton ), nuuvo, stu.dicio.us and Digication. These are just a few so please add more e-learning examples or tools by commenting on this post.
