I have pulled this post out from the archives of my personal blog, I originally wrote it towards the end of 2009 (I think), I believe it still holds true:

“‘Content is king’, how many times have you heard that? Well when it comes to the web, in my experience, it is pretty much a universal truth. The worrying thing is how few businesses seem to realise this, and even if they claim to, how many of them act on it?

This follows on, in some respect, from my earlier post about “design for design’s sake“. There I mused about the appropriateness of design vs what the client/designer ‘thought was best’. The idea of having good, strong, useful and appropriate content follows on from that. Too many businesses seem to think that their web presence starts … Read More »

Someone sent me a link to the Royal Opera House’s app the other day (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/royal-opera-house/id449056230?mt=8), interesting – does all the things an app should do i.e. presents content, listings, allows you to buy tickets (to a degree).

I then did a bit of research into the app developer, CloudTix, it would seem they have developed very similar (the same) app for a number of arts organisations. Further research confirmed my hunch that this is a white-label product, specifically for organisations using the Tessitura ticketing system – details here http://cloudtix.com/.

This chimed with a thought I had the other day (quite possibly whilst at the AMA Conference). Why can’t this approach by picked up more widely? Ultimately the requirements for many arts organisations are, when it comes to an app, whilst not identical, very similar in function at … Read More »

People in the UK seem to be getting more and more excited about QR codes. When I say ‘people’ I really mean ‘companies and brands’, I’m convinced that for ‘people’ the use of QR codes at present is either baffling, goes unnoticed or is mildly irritating.

If you do want to mess around with QR codes a really (REALLY) easy way to generate them for specific urls can be found by simply following this url: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=200×200&cht=qr&chl=XXXX where I’ve put the XXXX you simply need to type the url you want to create a QR code for.

Anyway, back to why I’m unconvinced by the way QR codes are currently used.

History

To start, here is a brief (probably inaccurate) history of the QR code, they were first used widely in Japan in the early 90′s where I’m lead to believe that they … Read More »

I realise this site is currently in a state of half-finished, basic, stripped back horribleness. It’s on my list of things to fix – I’ve wireframed a proper, new,  ’finished’ version but haven’t found the time required to bring it to life. Hopefully in the next week or so this can change. Let’s say August will be the month of new things.

I’ve been working at Opera North since November 2011. My job, Digital Communications Manager, is a new role within the company which means there is a hell of a lot to do but also that I am allowed to have mildly ridiculous ideas on a semi-regular basis and attempt to see them through.

I am a techie, or a developer, or maybe a ‘digital creative’ (hideous term) albeit with a fair amount of ‘traditional’ marketing experience. I am not, I wouldn’t say, an ‘arts marketer’. However, I gladly ignored this fact and made my way up to Glasgow for the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) Conference this week.

I like conferences, the breakout sessions are usually crap and the keynotes are complete bullshit peddlers but it’s always good to get away from the daily grind and talk to other people similarly revelling in … Read More »

Back in March (I think) I attended the launch of a new Arts Council England/BBC initiative aimed at ‘building digital capacity in the arts’. Now in my (admittedly short) experience this sort of thing can’t happen soon enough, I’ve had so many conversations with people working in the arts and cultural sector who are either clueless about the potential of ‘digital’ or so fixated on how it’ll solve all their cashflow problems that it actually worries me. Unfortunately almost everything I heard from the speakers at this event seemed to reinforce the latter view i.e. that digital is important (agreed), that it is something that we as a sector need to embrace (agreed!) and that if we do so everything will be ok cos we’ll have an app and a website and everything will be fine (oh god NOOO *hangs … Read More »

I’ve recently been looking at all of the admin side of things, a boring but necessary task.

We have all had those jobs that have started to spiral out of control with new and completely ridiculous demands being placed on you left, right and centre or clients who have taken months and months to pay for work completed.

Good admin makes the fun parts of your job (designing and coding) far more straightforward and effective.

I’ve found a number of great articles that outline things far better than me:

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/contract_killer_the_next_hit A great article with an example contract. I actually used this as the basis of my standard contract
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/drawing-the-line-6-things-you-shouldnt-tolerate-in-projects/ outlines some things you may want to consider when putting together contracts and processes. Could save a lot of headaches!
http://www.leemunroe.com/freelance-document-templates/ A good list of document templates that you could adapt … Read More »

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed” (Gandhi)

Last week I was doing some speed tests on what I was expecting to be a relatively slow-load site that I’m working on, the results, whilst not completely shocking, were still surprising. The site was taking up to 8 seconds to load fully over a decent speed connection (and would’ve been much much longer over dial-up). This had been an issue that had been nagging away at me more generally for a while now so I thought it was probably time to look into how to address it.

“Delays under half a second impact business metrics”

I have been reading up on the tests that Google had conducted to see how long the average user would wait for a site to load before giving up and moving on (Bing also conducted similar … Read More »

Next Wednesday I set off in a van on a 5,000 mile round trip to Istanbul to support the Istanbul to Leeds cycle challenge which aims to raise funds for the Jane Tomlinson Appeal. As a result I will be more-or-less out of action from 21st July through until 31st August – I will have some access to emails but will only be able to check and respond on an irregular basis.

Hopefully before then I will finish off sites for Will Soden (plumber), Pickles and Potter (Deli/Cafe) and the Northern Dales Farmers Markets (farmers markets) as well as getting on as much as possible with the new site for Run For All (mass-participation runs). Diverse to say the least!

Oh and as a slight aside I also found something else that results in WordPress’ wonderful white screen of death – messing … Read More »

A while ago, on my personal blog, I mused about things you should consider when you have that epiphany…”we need a website”, worth a read I’d say (but then I wrote it, so I would say that wouldn’t I…) http://ashmannblogs.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/so-you-think-you-want-a-website-4-things-to-consider/