RSSBeing talked about on other blogs…
Jul 31
Internet bit10, Web/Tech No Comments
While doing some vanity searches for bit10, I came across this on the infamous Warwick blogs…
Interesting to see what peoples perception of us is!
AHHHH!!! Radio 2…
Jul 31
Resistance is futile, it has finally happened, totally fed up with the purile drivel Radio 1 insist at throwing at us, and having a moment when Radio 4 just wasn’t doing it for me, I retuned into Radio 2!!
I am horrified to report that I actually liked it, I knew all the songs, the conversations imbetween the songs bordered vaguely on intelligent and interesting (of course not up to Radio 4 standards, but hey you can’t have everything)…
Is this what comes of being 30?!?!
Cannonball 8000 – I am doing it! Woohoo!
Jul 31
Life, Play Cannonball, Life, Web/Tech 2 Comments
After much deliberation, I have decided that I am going to do the Cannonball 8000.
What is it?!
For those of you who don’t know what it is check out the website here.
Essentially we will be driving from London -> Brussels -> Prague -> Budapest in just 72 hours…
There are going to be 240 drivers (120 cars), mostly petrolheads but the odd celebrity also.
In the evenings we will enjoy dinner and maybe the odd beer (however we know we need to get to bed early – so we can be nice and rested for a hard days drive!). 
Who am I doing this with?!
With one of my very best friends Ben Scammell, possibly better known to you as the man behind Pipeline Card. We have for a long discussed doing a special event to celebrate us leaving our 20s behind and hitting 30 (he is 29 and I am now 30).
We looked at doing the Bull Run, however the costs were just eye watering.
What are we doing it in?
A monstrous Mitsubishi Evo 9, this thing is heavily modified and its an animal.
Heres some pictures…
Why are we doing it?
Its simply once in a lifetime opportunity, and a real box ticking exercise!
Additionally we are going to get some good PR for bit10 and our other sponsors.
I am sure I will followup with more posts as we know more. We are probably going to be doing some live on the road blogging, streaming, etc. Watch this space!
Chiltern Railways – A Revelation
Jul 22
Today my girlfriend and I decided to go to London to visit her friends.
The usual strategy for getting to London is a simple one, taxi to Coventry train station, grab the Virgin Pendolino service down to Euston, 1hr 10 minutes later you are there.
However, today, a quick check at www.nationalrail.co.uk revealed, as is often the case at weekends, that the Coventry to Rugby stretch of the line was closed and a ‘replacement bus service’ was in operation – those of you who know me well will know my opinion of busses! Therefore this was not an option.
So we decided to try Chiltern Railways from Warwick Parkway. and I have to say I am very impressed, why? Well:
- Warwick Parkway was about 10 minutes of clear drive from Coventry (this is actually an estimated assuming you adhered to the posted speed limits – which of course I did )
- Loads and loads of parking at the station (but then again it is a Saturday), however it looks like there is more parking than Coventry station.
- I had no change for the parking, however you could pay for your parking along with the train ticket, and it was cheap – £4 for overnight stay.
- The train ticket was significantly cheaper than Virgin from Coventry (and looks to be even cheaper at peak times.
- The train was clean and tidy (mind you most trains in this area of the country are these days, its something all the operators have right).
- Mobile phone coverage is significantly better, this means its possible to maintain a 3G/GPRS connection for most of the journey, i.e. you can do useful things like blog! I think this must simply be because the trains aren’t leadlined like the Virgin ones seem to be, either that or Orange just have better coverage on this route (Virgin if you are reading this PLEASE sort out wireless Internet access on your trains!).
There are of course downsides:
- The ticket selection was bewildering and took some time to suss out, I was faced with a cheaper ticket if I went ‘via Banbury’, what did this mean?! Did I have to change? Could I only get certain trains?! I am guessing that the peak trains only go direct.
- I couldn’t figure out how to get underground added onto my ticket.
- The journey time is a bit longer (over an hour and a half).
- As I have had to leave the car at the station, as opposed to getting a cab, it means staying sober on the way back.
- No power sockets on the train, i.e. no way to charge my Thinkpad.
- They didn’t have Walkers Thai Sweet Chilli crisps on the buffet cart
- It was sunny in Coventry/Warwick, now we are nearly at Bicester and its absolutely pissing it down! The storm is in fact so bad the train has had to stop/slow down as it is difficult to see the way.
So all in all if you are not in a rush and want to save yourself a few quid I would recommend giving Chiltern Railways a try.
Blogs – does it get personal??
Jul 13
Internet, Life Life, Web/Tech 4 Comments
So I have been actively blogging for a few weeks now, and this site will go officially live, this Friday (14th July 2006), and I still can’t decide how far to go, so far my blogging has been limited to:
- Business strategy
- A bit of fun stuff
- bit10
- Interweb stuff
To date, I have avoided quite a lot of other subjects close to my heart, such as:
- My life outside bit10
- My love of Lithuania
- My other life in World of Warcraft
- My attempts to kill myself every winter Snowboarding
Its difficult to understand why I am cautious, my thoughts are:
- This blog site is ultimately run by bit10, although the authors content is entirely their own and at their own discretion what they blog.
- The primary purpose of the blog for bit10 is further shout about what we know, what we do, demonstrate us as thought leaders in our industry and obviously (and perhaps blatantly), increase awareness and cross linking to bit10.
- However why does this stop me writing about things I am passionate about?
- Are readers going to be that interested?
- The counter of that is that these subjects may well be of interest to readers.
- Do I want potential customers of bit10 forming an impression of me that influences (either positively or negatively) their decision to work with bit10?
- I could get an external blog to blogs.bit10.net, but what is the point?, ultimately bit10 do not care (too much!), what I write, and believing that its at arms length is not really feasible – afterall I am bound to mention bit10 on any private blog, therefore it will relate me back to bit10 anyway.
When I look at what other people at bit10 have been blogging during the trial period I notice already there is a big difference in styles and content, for example:
- Gemma - is taking a slightly personal/off the wall approach.
- Jacob – is taking a passionately professional approach.
- Stuart - Stuart is the champion of blogging project, and he has for a long time had his own external blog, in which he mixes professional and personal content.
This is all great, does not help me though!!! So confused!!!
Why does my website NOT deliver for my business?
Jul 13
Business Business, Interweb 1 Comment
This question (and others like it) is probably the most common question myself and others from bit10, get asked when talking to potential and new clients.
The answer is rarely the same however there are often common themes, and generally the problem is generally pretty easy to find.
So if you find yourself dissatisfied with the performance of your site, try asking answering these questions:
- Why do you think your website is not delivering?
- How do you measure the effectiveness of your webite? All too often we find that customers are doing very little to measure the effectiveness of their site and/or any marketing activity they are doing alongside the site.All too often we find that customers are doing very little to measure the effectiveness of their site and/or any marketing activity they are doing alongside the site.
Ensure that you have the proper tools in place to accurately track what the visitors to your site actually do. Have a look at the likes of Google Analytics or even our very own Sitemetrics.
- What is the target audience for your website? People often give me a kind of ‘you what? are you stupid? Its obvious!’ type of look to this question. However the truth is that its often not obvious, organisations have many reasons for having a website beyond just sales, although they do not always realise it!A classic example is that we often come across customers who are getting loads of traffic to their website but no new business, upon applying some decent tracking software we discover that its all graduates looking for jobs!, and in the truth the site has little appeal to potential customers.
Ensure you are aware of all the key audiences for your site that you want to target and you cater for them accordingly.
- What agencies do you use to help you? Are they any good?! Working for (and owning!) an Internet solutions agency, bit10, I always find this question difficult to ask customers, and do it without being biased!Often we find ourselves in the position of only providing part of the solution, for example usability testing a site where we have not done the implementation, hence we end up assessing and providing feedback on other agencies work, so we get too see the extremes of what other agencies are delivering…There are a lot of great agencies out there, however there a lot of very poor ones who can let you down in many ways (for example focusing on design before/instead of information architecture).
Choose your partner agencies carefully, we have done a useful white paper that might help, you can find it here.
- What does your target audience think of your website, can they use it? We have an expression here at bit10, ‘if your users can’t use your website, its not usable’, seemingly obvious, however a subtle point missed by most website administrators.Neither can you, as the project sponsor, company owner, web developer actually can say for sure that your site is usable by your users.
The only way to ensure your website is usable by your target user is to do real usability testing. Get some expert help to test your site on a sample of your typical audience.
- How are you telling people about your website?
This is pretty straight forward, in the short term if you do not promote your site/business via the web and/or other channels you will get little or no traffic. In the longer term as your site gets indexed by the Google, Yahoo you will eventually get traffic, however this will take time and even then may not deliver the results you are looking for.There are many ways to promote your site, from traditional offline promotion to Google Adwords. Whatever you decide to do ensure it is part of your overall web strategy.
Often we find customers have not actually set any expectations or targets for their site at the outset, and we often hear unqualified answers like ‘Well we only got 10 orders last week from the site.’.
It is imperative that up front you and your stakeholders are clear on the expected performance of the site. Make sure you set targets for visitors, hits, revenue and what ever else might be relevant to you business or service.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg, but should help you begin to root out the problems behind an apparently unsuccessful site.
My first Googlewhack…
Jul 07
Internet, Life Interweb 2 Comments
So having caught Dave Gormans rather excellent Googlewhack Adventure on Paramount Comedy one night late last week, I thought I would have a go at finding my own Googlewhacks.
My first Googlewhack ever is:
ocular sticklebrick – Links to the rather fun cutebrunts.com, ‘Phrases You Thought You’d Thought Of But We Got There First’, the full link is here. Somewhat unfortunately for me, my first Googlewhack links to page that has invented the phrase ‘ocular w**king’.
Now of course due to the nature of Google, it won’t be a Googlewhack long!
I then tried to find a bit10 related Googlewhack, I soon came up with:
bit10 larder – Links to fascinating Word Doc about Dunfermline and the Coast Planning, in which there is ‘Policy bit10′, you can read it here.
quickly followed by:
bit10 termites - Which links to a list of fictional worms, you can savour the experience here.
Not entirely sure that bit10 ones are fair game!
Hmmm… this could get addictive…
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