College essays
 

ICT lessons to change – A computer scientist’s opinion

On January 15, 2012 in General, Off Topic.
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“ICT is boring” seems to be among the top of the complaints pile for A-Level students studying the subject. In response to this, Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced the traditional ICT curriculum will be dropped this September to be replaced with a more ‘rigorous computer science’ course.

Interesting. Moving away from the 15 year old structure is surely a good thing – we all know how quickly technology develops – but replacing the entire curriculum with an open-source code based emphasis doesn’t seem like a great move, in my opinion.

The opinion of a computer scientist

Excel Sheet

As a ‘Computer Scientist’ (I don’t really think of myself as one, but I have the skill-set to call myself one at times like this) I understand the importance of being able to code. But as an ‘Online Marketeer’ (more inline with my job role) I respect the importance of knowing basic (and advanced) office IT skills.

Take for example Excel. It was the primary focus in ICT, with emphasis on advanced calculations and spreadsheet design. This will be removed and replaced with basic game development in some specific language (currently under industry review).

Now, I love being able to code. But I admit it’s not exactly a ‘life skill’. The number of people I encounter who can’t use a simple excel chart, Word document or Access database is incredible. I don’t think anyone can argue that being able to write a simple program is more important than basic IT office skills.

So why are these office critical skills being replaced? What’s the proportion of A-Level students who go on into a computer science orientated career? Compare this to those who go into an office based career where tools such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint are used almost daily. I think you’ll find the later is a much higher number.

The result of changing the curriculum

Code

My expectation of changing the curriculum is that a lower number of students will take the ICT A-Level. Those that do will be more likely to proceed into a computer science degree. However, I expect this to be due to creating a more niche subject, rather than the effect of the course on it’s students.

In summary, the conversion rate of students moving into a computer specific career will increase, however the number of conversions will drop as more versatile students decide against the coding based A-Level.

If I were to have a say on the progress of the ICT course, I would suggest bringing the existing curriculum up to date (whilst maintaining the tools used). Almost an ‘ICT for an office environment’ course. In addition, an ‘Advanced computing’ course could be created, for those dedicated to software engineering and alike.

Of cause, that’s just my opinion.

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Server Migration – Issues to look out for

On January 8, 2012 in Internet.
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So this week saw the migration of my employer’s website from one server to another. Luckily it all went (relatively) smoothly, despite over-running by a few days due to an unresolved (critical) issue before the Christmas break. Never the less, it went well with only a couple of issues. Here’s a breakdown of what we encountered during the migration.

So, we used a migration specialist, SEM Solutions, to aid with the process. They handled the database copying, which is always the tricky bit, and uploaded the entire file-structure (public_html in the case of the old server). This is really the first two points to be aware of.

1 – Exporting / Importing databases can be hard! Make sure you know what you’re doing before attempting this (I tried it once and ended up having to recover my articles via wayback-machine and Google Cache, although that was a few years ago!).

2 – Check your full URL paths. When linking directly to files, if you include the web root folder from the FTP be sure it’s the same on the new server. For example, on the new server is uses ‘http_docs’ rather than ‘public_html’ as the web root folder.

There’s another similar issue here; the server back-end UI. Be sure you inquire about which one comes with a server before making the switch.

3 – CPanel vs PLESK. Parallel PLESK is new to me, as I’ve always used old faithful CPanel. PLESK, despite looking less functional and more dated (in my opinion, at least) has similar sections in terms of functionality. It’s quite well documented too, as is CPanel, meaning a switch between the two shouldn’t be too much of an issue (it wasn’t for me, at least).

There was one final issue, which caused the delay in migration. It’s a site specific problem, but it can be applied to almost any website with a contact form.

4 – Mail Transfer Agent. The issue we encountered was the following: We have a contact form. It adds data to a database. It also emails the data to a range of email addresses and produces an XML (more to follow). The contact form was functioning, but it seemed sporadic in the emails (they always came through blank despite the data being added to the database. The solution, you ask? Well, after a few days of head-scratching we discovered it was in fact ‘\r\n’ in the functions file of the form being rendered differently by the new server’s MTA (QMail as apposed to EXIM). This produced an additional line break which ended the header section of the form.

As I said, site specific. But if your experiencing similar issues it’s worth checking the PHP functionality for unnecessary line breaks!

5 – Permissions. A final note – Check your permissions! The XML mentioned above was failing to be created (even temporarily) due to permissions! This is something a ‘live chat assistant’ can usually do over the chat-box.

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Self Sufficient Website Development

On December 14, 2011 in Development, General, Internet, marketing, Website Design.
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To be self sufficient is to be independent. To be able to provide or support for oneself, without the help of others. Applying this concept to website development can be a tricky task without the correct skill sets. That’s actually kind of the point – the skill sets (rather than set). The goal of a fully functional, attractive and effective website is not one that your average ‘website developer‘ can accomplish single handed – It takes much, much more than a good knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3 (which are awesome, but that’s another post!).

Skill Set #1: Design

Self Sufficient Website Development - DesignFirst things first – You need a good design. The attractiveness of a webpage can affect the users perception of credibility, the read rate and of cause, overall bounce rate. Here Photoshop is your greatest ally, quickly (a relative term at best!) mocking up several designs at (again relatively) little cost.

This skill set is as much about prior experience as it is intuitive design ideas – although the two do generally go hand in hand. Knowing what your audience likes is, perhaps, a skill of it’s own – ‘Monitoring’. Being able to take ideas from thought to paper (or canvas, in the case of Photoshop) is another paramount feature of designing.

Skill Set #2: Development

Self Sufficient Website Development - DevelopmentPhase two – The area that most ‘Website Developers’ are associated with. And with good reason. This code orientated skill set is based on taking the designs (from oneself, in a self sufficient methodology) and converting them to a functional structure. This often includes the knowledge of HTML, with DIV’s being the favored method for website structure.

CSS, a styling method, is also a must know language for development. The method in which a self sufficient developer does this is up to the individual; either opting for the quicker inline technique, or the more structured style sheet approach.

Skill Set #3: Content

Self Sufficient Website Development - ContentThis is the area that many, including myself, find most challenging. When done well it seems effortless and can definitely be the difference between a successful website and a struggling domain. But creating content for a page is a lot harder than it may seem from an outsiders perspective. Text is the key to most websites, and can change rapidly with altering trends. It does seem, for now at least, that the whole ‘Web 2.0′ friendly and personal approach is here and in full swing.

Text is only the start of it: There is images to contend with too!

Skill Set #4: Marketing

Self Sufficient Website Development - MarketingOften overlooked, this is probably the most important factor to producing a successful website (along with content, which is king, of cause). AdWords, Search Engine Optimization and all those other online marketing tools are essential for getting the word out to your potential readers / customers.

Managing your search engine result position (SERPs) with your chosen keywords is a fun and ongoing battle. SEO isn’t a one-time action: It takes constant maintenance (within reason) to ensure your audience keeps on flowing to your site (and converting, if that’s how you roll!).

Skill Set #5: Analyzing

Self Sufficient Website Development - AnalyzingThe final piece to the self sufficient puzzle, analyzing those visits to the site is important in order to identify your strongest areas, possible pages of improvement and generally keep track of how you’re performing on the web.

You can track your performance against others, too. Competitors, friends or similar websites. Analyzing a developed website doesn’t mean that you’re finished: A good (proactive) self sufficient web developer will continuously use these individual skill sets in parallel to get the best results.

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5 interesting things about Social Media Marketing

On November 13, 2011 in Business, Internet, marketing.
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Social Media: We all use it, and lets be honest, most of us love it! But it’s a great tool for online marketing, too!

Demographics

Aligning your company’s demographic to that of social media users is critical in proving the campaign / strategy is worth while. There’s lots of useful information on demographics of social media users out there. For example, he older generations involvement with Facebook has almost doubled over the last year (up to 43%). Different social platforms have different demographics, so be sure to check out a range of sources to see which platform/s are most useful to your campaign! (LinkedIn is the most used social network for over 50′s, however it’s a very B2B platform, which may not suit all strategies).

Engagement

So, you’ve selected your demographic. If only it was that simple! You’ve also got to consider how your target audience interact with social media. For example, do 45-55′s comment on blogs more than 25-35′s? Theres one source (Forrester) who have a pretty awesome hierarchy ladder/model which considers the engagement level of users (Inactive/Spectators/Joiners/Collectors/Critics/Conversationalists/Creators). Identifying the percentages for each of these groups within your demographic can help you plan your strategy more precisely and predict which elements of a platform will be most utilised.

Strategy

Now you’ve got your demographic, your interaction model and your platforms of choice. It’s time to use that information (there’s lots more you should collect, too!) to produce your strategy. This essential document will map the usage and policy of your social campaign. To produce one can take time, but there’s lots of online documentation. The basis of a strategy usually orbits around four sectors; Monitoring, Analysing, Interacting and Engaging. This approach should form the foundations of a personal, customisable and iterative strategy.

Benchmarking

Your social campaign has been running for a while. Is it successful? Don’t know? Then why bother? Just like PPC, SEO and pretty much any other business element, things should be tracked! This tracking falls into two main sectors: Return on Investment and Key Process Indicators. Tracking these goals can be tricky, but there are lots of free (and paid) tools out there to help! Followers : Following ratio is a good example, as is Sentiment, strength and passion.

Results

Without results, don’t expect your social strategy to survive. This is linked (obviously) to benchmarking. It’s been shown, however, that if it’s done well, it can have amazing results! Take, for example, the 7 million views of the ‘Royal Wedding’ video hosted on YouTube by T-Mobile, the 20 million impressions by the ‘GoGranny’ SuperBowl campaign or the 25% increase in users for Under Armour’s ‘Ultimate Intern’ Twitter competition!

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Working Professional: My First Week

On November 5, 2011 in Business, General, marketing, Off Topic.
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As some of you may know, it’s been my first week working for EvoEnergy this week. And what a week it’s been!

It all started on Tuesday, the first of the month and the first day of the new financial year for EvoEnergy. The previous day, however, had been far from tranquil. With government cuts affecting almost every sector, the FiT (Feed In Tariff) which effects Return on Investment (ROI) for solar panel installs was cut by 50%. No problems as such with that, it was forecast a long time ago. What was more of a shock to solar specialists, however, was the December 12th deadline (three months prior to expected!). Anyway, that’s probably as much (if not more than) I’m aloud to say on the subject. Needless to say, EvoEnergy sold a ton of stock on Monday and it’s been a pretty manic week for the company (all with a positive outlook, however). You can read more here.

Anyway, so my new position as Online Marketing Associate is based around the website structure / maintenance, E-Marketing and Campaign analysis. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basics.

My own little desk space comes equipped with a lovely new laptop, 22” screen and peripherals, located to the right of the copywriter. There is also Suzy (Marketing Manager) alongside Daniella and Rachael, who make up the marketing team (headed by Tom, the Group Marketing Manager).

So, what’s it like!?

EvoEnergy is already a great company to work for; They provide tea and coffee (which is a great start) and gives the general atmosphere of the internal workings! The composition of young, skilled, professional enthusiasts makes the office a bussing place to thrive. There’s even a Kitchen area and sofas to ‘relax’ (although there hasn’t been much of that this week!).
Another great touch is the interaction and “real life” approach of the CEO, Dr. Kevin Hard, who is in and around the office regularly, and has real involvement with the office happenings.

So there is it, a bit of a review of my first “real” (excluding Thermo Fisher Scientific UK Ltd) week at work! Bring on next week (after a bit of a rest, please. Going out on “work nights” is proving a bad return on investment!

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Real-Time Google Analytics – What, Where, and Why?

On November 4, 2011 in #60SecondShout, Internet, New Technology.
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Have you seen the new feature Google Analytics is featuring? It’s pretty amazing. Useful too. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s definitely worth checking out! What’s that, you don’t know what I’m on about?! It’s Google Analytics… Real-Time!

What?

For those of you that don’t know, Google Analytics lets you track traffic, keywords, campaigns and other interesting stuff that basically makes a successful website (page hits, visitors, demographics, traffic… The list goes on!). So, you used to have a 24 hour wait to see useful results, but now you can track website traffic down to the second (or minute, or hour). It’s a great dashboard layout (as is all of the Analytics pages… AdWords should take a leaf!) and is simple to understand. Wondering why you need to know who’s on your website at any specific time? Well you’ll have to wait until the ‘Why?’ paragraph, I’m afraid!

Where?

To get there is easy! Just log into your Google Analytics account (If you don’t have one, why not!) and make sure you’re using the new version. (You can switch to the new layout in the top right). Done that? Good! Now, go to the Home tab (top left) and then select “Real-Time” from the left most column! Hay presto, you’re done!

Why?

For some, knowing who’s on your site at a specific time is well useful! For example, say you just sent out a new email campaign. Gone are the days of waiting 24 hours to see conversion rates via Google Analytics, now you can see your page views increase as it happens. You can also get a better idea of how web behaviour changes throughout the day (for example peeking / dropping at lunch?) and lots of other cool stuff, too! I could watch it all day!

So there you have it

So there you have it, a very (very!) brief overview of Google Analytics Real-Time! It (could) change everything. At the very least, it’s a cool, and long awaited for some, feature from Google.

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Best contract for upgrading iPhone each year

On October 11, 2011 in Apple, Business, iPhone, Tutorials.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you’ll know a couple of things;

One. Steve Jobs has sadly passed away.
Two. It’s getting really cold after a lovely warm start to October.
Three. Apple have just released their newest iPhone in the range, the iPhone 4s.

Now, I’m a bit of a sucker for Apple tech… They’ve got me each and every year since the original iPhone was announced back in 2007. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s 2011, and I’m preparing for (yet another) upgrade from my iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4s. Now, I’m not going to debate whether its a viable upgrade for one main reason: My 18 month upgrade has come to an end (3 months early as I’m a gold priority O2 member), so it’s time to get a new phone!

I decided to take a look at a couple of options, and found that there is a more cost effective way of buying an iPhone than the typical 12/18/24 month iPhone contracts that O2 provide (Yes, I’m on O2, so I’ll be focusing on that.. Although similar tariffs will undoubtedly be available on Orange et al!).

Want to see contract comparison details? Read More »

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The new Facebook layout and what it means for online marketing

On October 10, 2011 in Development, Internet, marketing, Website Design.
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If you’re keen on online marketing, you may already know that Facebook is about to roll out a major update to user profiles layouts. This UI update adopts a “timeline” approach, enabling a chronological view of a person’s activity. Using Facebook’s developer centre, it is (and was) quick and easy to view the new layouts before general release.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my timeline Facebook profile (annotations to follow!)

Facebook's new TimeLine layout

Iv’e blacked out the parts of the profile which remain (pretty much) the same, and highlighted four new / highly altered page areas.

When you see the new layout for the first time, it’s quite shocking. Not much has remained the same. I think a lot of people will be put off by such a large change at first. Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about… So let’s get onto the four annotations.

Firstly, there’s the all new “cover” for your profile. This is a banner across the top of the profile, which users can customize by uploading their own images. Note that I’ve already been playing with mine, to incorporate the profile picture (which lays over the top of the cover). The introduction of these “covers” is a huge step for brand awareness via Facebook pages, as I’ll discuss in a minute!

The second alteration is the timeline. Contrary to previous speculation (including my own previous article) the timeline takes a vertical approach, rather than a horizontal one. The “horizontal rumors”, as we shall call them, were imagined with the possibility of reducing the amount of content under the fold of a typical profile. The ATFC (Above The Fold Content) has been addressed with annotation four, however!

Annotation number three comes in the form of conglomeration. Friends, Photos, GeoTagging, Likes, Music and much more are now accumulated in respective groups (almost like Folders) which can be expanded independently. This generally tidies the profile (in my opinion) and leaves more room for the all important “wall”.

The final point is the wall itself. Facebook have divided the area into two columns (4″ to 9″ wall, for those in the building trade?!) to maximize on space saving. This works well, especially with a blue timeline running down the middle to show when individual posts were added.

It’s a good looking, next generation profile layout (and it’ll look lovely if replicated for Facebook’s iPad app!).

Want to know what this means for Online Marketing? Read More »

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Facebook to Change User Profiles and Launch iPad Application?

On September 29, 2011 in Development, Internet, New Technology, Website Design.
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So, like it or not, when a Facebook update is released you can expect a wave of opinions in the form of status updates! And it seems the coast is no longer clear with a tsunami of opinions eminent!

Facebook User Interface ChangeFirst off there is the revamp of the Facebook profile pages, up until now laid out somewhat uniform, with the profile picture on the left, paragraph of information at the top, stream of tagged photos parallel and the wall below. It seems, however, that this is soon to change; In favor of a timeline approach style! This new style will (probably) conglomerate tagged pictures, status updates and activity on the social networking site, to eliminate (or at least reduce) the amount of content hidden beneath the fold (beyond the view-able screen without scrolling).

Secondly, as discovered a while ago, the iPad Facebook application is “launching soon” according to a 9to5 Mac article. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it launched alongside the Facebook UI updates!

So, this change again will inevitably cause a current of opinions in the world of Social Media… With everyone holding their own thoughts (and most posting/tweeting their feelings) be prepared (Social Sandbags?) for the next wave of “I love/hate the new Facebook layout” status’.

I leave you with this famous quote from Winston Churchill;

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

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Technology and Long Distance Relationships

On September 23, 2011 in #60SecondShout.
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Love TechnologyLong Distance Relationships (LDR’s) are notoriously hard. But when you snag someone way out of your league, you have to go the extra mile to make it work! With internet, mobiles and increasing intuitive ideas about communication, LDR’s are becoming a thing of the past.

Now, I’m not going to go into Social Media (such as Facebook) because that special someone might not have it!

However! Skype, for starters, allows a face to face conversation. The next best thing to an actual chat. Sure, it misses a couple of the main aspects, but it’s a pretty decent substitute. For the camera shy, there is a voice only option (VOIP) which is free and can even be downloaded on mobile devices, meaning you can chat long into the night! Save money and hear her voice! Two birds!

Another great app for the iPhone (and I think Blackberry now too!) is WhatsApp, a text, audio note and image/video p2p application which allows free text and media messages between people free of charge. Yes, you need the internet, but it’s a great way to share your costa coffee, digitally, with someone else!

So, moral of the (rather short) story: Long distance relationships (if you want to call them ‘relationships’) are feesable – You just need technology on your side!

If it gets too much, you can always download the “national Rail” app, and see when the next cheap train is!

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