Bob Browning

Moving on

2008-06-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

I have decided to move to the Wordpress system. So find my blog now at

http://bobbrowning.wordpress.com/

Bob

The e-conveyancing juggernaut continues towards the cliff edge

2008-06-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

The story so far.

The land registry has decided to get into the 21st century. Which is a good thing, except they have gone the extra mile by replacing signed deeds with electronic documents containing a digital signature. In my belief this will not work - see my August 2003 newsletter for reasons why. The main one being that any punter can use a pen to sign their name but in future your Solicitor will be signing (electronically) on your behalf. So instead of simply pushing some paper around, your solicitor now becomes a signatory in very large transactions.

Final completion of the project has in the last year been put back by four years and the current completion date is 2014-15 a staggering 16-17 years into the project (it all started in 1998). Who knows how many millions will have been spent, and the absurd decision to go for digital signatures may well bring the whole project to its knees.

The most recent project was to introduce a system to create what is called a 'chain matrix'. This would provide buys and sellers with a web page that tracked the progress of the buying chain typical in house purchase transations. This has been quietly shelved after a £4.6m pilot showed little interest in it.

This summer the digital signature (Private Key Encryption or PKI) part will start to come on-stream. This means lawyers will be signing everything on behalf of their customers. A recent isssue of the Law Gazette quotes David Parton, a very senior conveyancing professional: "‘I also think lawyers will be reluctant to sign on behalf of their clients". Duh!

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Bob

Keyword Insertion - not as painful as it sounds.

2008-06-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

When you write an ad for Google adwords, it is important to include the keywords in the text of the ad. So if a user types in 'Motorola V8' you want to ad to say 'Motorola V8' not 'Mobile Phone'. This significantly improves your click-through rate.

Google will put the keywords in bold making them stand out
Having searched for 'Motorola V8' the user will scan the page for the phrase 'Motorola V8' and tend to ignore ads that do not have that phrase.
It makes you look like you are more focused on the users needs

So does this means that if you have 100 keywords you need 100 ads? Not any more. Using keyword insertion you can place the keywords right there in the ad. If the keywords are too large to fit, you can specify a default to be placed in the ad instead.

If your default is 'Mobile Phones', just use this format {KeyWord:Mobile Phones}. If someone searches for 'Motorola V8' that is what they will see. If their phrase is too long (e.g. 'I want a motorola V8 now now now!') then they will get the default (Mobile Phones)

Check out the help file for this for more details. You would be surprised how few Google advertisers use this really valuable feature.

Sales Force Automation and CRM - new approach needed

2008-05-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

I have had a pretty good look at the main serious Web-based hosted SFA and CRM solutions. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, SugarCRM, EBSuite CRM. They are all very similar and probably very appropriate in many situations.

However my opinion is that none of them are intuitive and in a sales situation none of them are fast enough. There are too many clicks for the bread and butter task which is

get the customer history on-screen
identify the contact - or record a new one
record the call,
send a mail
schedule the next call.

The user is buried in a sea of leads, opportunities, tasks, timetables, cases, quotes and projects. Each with its own list and its own update form. Of course most of this doesn't get used, but it does clutter up the screen something rotten.

In the end I wrote a system for my own use and have rolled it out to a couple of clients where we could integrate it with the web site functions so that transactional data is included on the customer screen.

The objective was to be as simple and intuitive as possible. You won't recognise it as the same animal as the market leaders I listed above, but for me at least and my telesales person it seems to work very well at the core task.

There is a demo at http://sales.textor.com

Obviously it needs development and probably money to take it any further. Here is my question. Is there an opportunity here? Should I think about taking it further?

Bob

An own-goal for IBM

2008-04-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before that once a concept becomes 'hot' everyone wants to get on the bandwagon and spin their products. So IBM has announced a new rack-mounted server "designed for heavy traffic web 2.0 social networking sites".

In marketing terms an own goal because the product almost certainly is good for any heavy-duty computer cluster application where fault tolerance for individual systems is not a huge issue (that is the trade-off). By marketing it in this way they are limiting their market to a very small number of specialised web sites. Admittedly these guys buy servers by the thousand, but the market must be much bigger.

Eye tracking - not counterintuitive at all

2008-04-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

I love eye tracking studies. This study tracked men and women separately on the Marks and Spencer home page.

http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/05/five_days_bonus_ms_revisited/

Quote "As you can see, these findings are somewhat counterintuitive. The women were extremely focused on the navigation menus and rarely looked at the main body of the page. However, while the men were also predominantly navigation-focused, they were a lot more willing to venture into the main body of the page - even though the majority of the feature located therein targeted women!"

People! Think!. The centre of the page is a picture of Twiggy with a big smile on her face and below her a couple of other very beautiful women. The men take a sneaky look at some attractive females? Big surprise!

The small print

2008-04-05T02:01:00.000-07:00

A designer who we had done work for just sent me a contract their client had sent them to sign. It was headed 'Assignment of Intellectual Property(IP) Rights'. It would assign all IP rights in the software to the client.

I had to check the date on the email but it was April 3rd not the 1st. We use the identical software on all our client's sites, so the whole idea of giving the IP rights to one of them is a total non-starter. We would be out of business.

We include on all our quotations a para that summarises our terms and conditions which includes a link to our standard licence on our web site. The licence is pretty standard, in fact rather less restrictive than an open source licence. The client has the right to use, copy and modify the software as they see fit. The only real restriction is that they can't go into business selling my software.

So why would they want the IP transferred?

I suspect some lawyer saw a chance to earn some fees. Or some manager somewhere, who didn't bother to ask some basic questions, had the idea that a really serious content management system had been written for them from scratch (in a month and a half - some chance!) and as they had paid for it they should own it. Now the Designer is going to have some difficult conversations with the client.

This could all have been avoided if designers who resell our CMS had terms and conditions which mirrored our own. All I have to is figure out how to persuade them to do it.

SP1 has arrived

2008-03-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have just downloaded Vista SP1. The wretched program warns you that it will take an hour. I watched it for a while and got bored, so I took the hint and went out for a cup of coffee. When I got back there was a 'click here to proceed' thing! It then took about an hour while I twiddled my thumbs.

Why????

In any event I would say it was worth the wait. The machine is noticably slicker. Listing directories and copying files in particular much faster. Or should I say much less slug-like.

Designers are not users are not designers.

2008-03-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

This month we have an outstanding useability column from Jakob Neilsen. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designer-user-differences.html

There are two important insights

Designers are not users
Users are not designers

Like a japanese haiku these two statements can be used for lengthy meditation and should be burned on the heart of every designer. Too many sites are built for the designer, not the user; an exotic, barely understood being. A person who doesn't know how to run a search on Google, let alone manipulate a strange scroll bar or fly-out menu.

Read

Learn.

One born every minute

2008-03-07T02:00:00.000-08:00

If you want a good laugh at other people's expense go take a look at http://www.telebid.com/. It looks like a very cool auction site with some real bargains. There is a 32" flat screen with 49 minutes to go for £197. What is the catch?

The catch is that it costs money to bid. They state very clearly that bidding starts at 10p and it costs 50p for each bid. And each bid ups the price by 7p. Do some math. £197 means that there must have been 2814 bids (197.00 / 0.07). At 50p per bid that means they have made around £1,400 in bidding fees plus the £197 someone will pay for the set.

In a bizarre twist, they are auctioning packs of 300 bids (worth £150). Bidding has already reached £122 so they have made an amazing £871 plus £122 = about a grand selling something that doesn't even costs them anything.

Are there really that many suckers around that they will pay 50p to make a 7p bid on an auction site?

WC Fields had it right. "Never give a sucker an even break."

Google

2008-03-06T06:34:00.001-08:00

This from the Google website

"Unfortunately, we're unable to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for you. If you have questions or you need legal advice on interpreting the terms, please don't hesitate to contact an attorney."

Uh!

What if they leave negative comments on my site/blog/forum?

2008-02-27T07:45:00.000-08:00

Jeremiah Owyang in his blog, asks the following question: "What if they leave negative comments on my site/blog/forum? ". The answer is that it has to be handled well, not covered up or removed.

I have always believe that a customer complaint can be a huge opportunity if handled well.

You routinely buy something from (say) a web site and next day it turns up regular as clockwork. Then something goes wrong. If handled badly you will never go back to that store. If handled really well you will not only go back, but you will tell your friends about it. Why? Because now you know that if something goes wrong in the future these guys will deal with it. It has actually made you happier because before you maybe always had a nagging doubt.

Of course repeated mistakes or mistakes on the first order cannot be recovered from. You just plain need to get your act together.

Firefox myths

2008-02-23T01:52:00.000-08:00

Firefox has been incredibly successful in digging into Microsoft's market share. But many believe every thing they hear that's bad about Microsoft and everything they hear thats good about Firefox. I know a few people who are like that about the USA. This site is devoted to expolding those Firefox myths.

Most common passwords

2008-02-22T01:17:00.000-08:00

Someone has figured out the ten most common passwords. How? I thought they were supposed to be secret. Maybe the ten most common among people who will tell you there password if you ask. Who knows.

Anyway - few surprises. After '123' and 'password' the third was 'liverpool'. Number 9 was 'arsenal'. So if you want to guess a password try some football teams.

Great idea or pyramid scheme?

2008-02-22T00:53:00.000-08:00

You may have got a mail from someone in 'the contactthem' network. It is nicely worded and invites you to make up to $4,800/month (c £2500)to place an ad on your web site.

It turns out that this is not pay per click but an affiliate marketing scheme. You get a commisssion on sales made by people who click on the ad. My experience of such schemes is that you rarely make that sort of money from them. Simple math.

The merchant is selling something for say £20 and you get 5% commission. Assuming a very generous 10% conversion rate and a very generous 10% click through rate and you can easily see that you need 250,000 visitors to generate that much money. So they only work for very high traffic sites.

So how can they make such claims? The answer is pyramid selling. Some of the ads are for the contactthem scheme and you get a percentage of any income from affiliates recruited via that link.

Will it work as advertised? You be the judge.

Useability

2008-02-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

Jabob Nielsen's regular useability column is always an interesting read. I like the analogy he gives for his number one rule - stick to standard checkboxes, radio buttons and so on.

"If you change the appearance or behavior of these units, it's like suddenly injecting foreign words into a natural-language communication. Det vil gøre læserne forvirrede (or, to revert to English: Doing so will confuse readers). "

I have noticed (like Neilsen) that the most common victim is the humble scrollbar. I have no idea why, but every designer seems to think that scrollbars are really ugly and need reworking. Neilsen observes that these "almost always cause users to overlook some of their options."

He continues:
"If Jakob's Law is "users spend most of their time on other websites," then Jakob's Second Law is even more critical: "Users have several thousand times more experience with standard GUI controls than with any individual new design." "

Another fake survey

2008-01-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

I have just received (second time this week) a 'survey' form from a charity. Both 'surveys' are similar. They start out like a regular market research survey. The last few questions are along the lines:

Do you think this is worthwhile work (Y/N)
Do you realise we are reliant on donations (Y/N)
Are you willing to donate (Y/N)

The moment I see one of these so-called surveys any sympathy I might have for the charity goes straight out of the window. These things are dishonest and sorry - I am not interested.

e-enablement, e-government and e-nonsense

2008-01-07T01:00:00.000-08:00

There is a planning document issued by the land registry aimed at solicitors preparing for e-conveyancing. Section 3 goes like this

Our preparatory research has identified that there are five possible stages in the development of IT systems in organisations.

You have PCs on desks which are not yet linked to each other
The PCs on your desks are networked to each other
Your business processes have been redesigned to benefit from
networked PCs
Your system plugs into a network external to your organisation
You have redesigned your business to reflect the interaction of networks

The "Realisation of potential benefits" is identified as going from low to high as you progress from 1 to 5.

This is not the first time I have seen nonsense like this coming out of government. It is misleading on so many levels. Primarily however the assumption that connecting your internal systems to an external network (i.e. the Internet) is a 'good thing'. Actually it is something to be done only if there are business benefits that over-ride the huge risks - which are not mentioned anywhere in this document. As this is aimed at conveyancers whose systems control millions of pounds of their customer's money this becomes a far from trivial issue.

The document comes from a web site where for example we see this phrase

The central service will provide for automatic exchange of contracts relating to all transactions in a property chain. For this and other purposes, conveyancers will need to have electronic signatures.

As we all know an electronic signature is something attached to a document and is unique to that document. What conveyancers will been is a certificate. In security terms this is a schoolboy howler that has been repeated in various documents since 2002. It indicates to me that the people over there have only the slimmest grasp of security theory. A truly frightening prospect when it seems that they are controlling the most valuable asset that any of us owns.

what is an electronic signature

2008-01-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

From the Land Registry web site

"The central service will provide for automatic exchange of contracts relating to all transactions in a property chain. For this and other purposes, conveyancers will need to have electronic signatures."

Repeat after me. Electronic signatures are things you attach to documents, one per document. conveyancers will need to have certificates.

For a simple explanation of all this see my piece on e-conveyancing.

The thing is that anyone with even the slimmest of understanding of the technology would not make such a schoolboy howler. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

e-enablement Uh!

2008-01-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I wrote a couple of semi-serious piece about the latest (at the time) government folly - e-conveyancing. The thing I objected to is the idea of storing legal documents electronically, digitally signed to guarantee authenticity. I decided to use this piece as an exercise in search engine optimisation and lo - it is number 2 now if you search in google for e-conveyancing!

From time to time I look at the land registry site to see if their grip on reality has improved. The latest is the e-conveyancing planning book.

Typical questions.

2.1 are your clients e-enabled

What in blue blazes is this supposed to mean? I looked it up in wikipedia and it aprently means:

"E-enablement is the transformation of a business system or process to make it streamlined and render it accessible via the Internet. "

Are your clients accessible via the internet? I guess if they have email they are. But see section 3 below this - there is some help.

2.2 Do you know how your clients will want to do business with you in the future (eg face to face, online, phone)?

How can you answer this question?

2.4 Are you ready to take full advantage of evolving e-systems to add value to your services?

What is an e-system when it is at home? Wikipedia is of no help here. I have no idea what it means and I have been in the IT industry for many decades. So how is the poor solicitor supposed to answer it.

3 E-enablement

Now I understand. E-enablement means you have your systems plugged into the Internet. Which you need to have "high realisation of potential benefits".

NO!

It means you have high risk of someone breaking in to your systems, which in a business dealing with millions of pounds of clients money is no small risk.

This stuff is complete rubbish.

How much !

2007-12-11T02:26:00.000-08:00

How much would a company like EDS charge to strip personal data from the database that was sent by CD and lost in the post.

The telegraph reveals that this would 'only' be £5,000.

HOW MUCH!!!

This would take most competent database administrators, say, a couple of hours - let's be generous. Five grand - that is daylight robbery. How much of our tax-payers money is being squandered on these people.

Lost CDs - not the whole story

2007-11-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

There seem to be a number of red herrings in the CDGate scandal. Firstly we are asked to believe that a 23 year old clerical officer was (a) able to and (b) did download the primary database onto a CD and send it to the audit office.

Has anyone asked how he did this. Is there a button on their system saying 'download to a CD'? I hardly think so.

Secondly it seems some senior staff were copied on emails.

Irrelevant.

It is common practice in large organisations to copy director level on everything for just this purpose - to protect someones backside. As a result senior staff get bucketloads of mail every day. If they read it all I would be asking why are they being so unproductive as 99.99% has no business in their in-tray. Sort of internal spam.

Better questions are:

1) Who asked this guy or gal to send the data on - pesumably his/her direct supervisor.
2) What exactly did they ask him/her to do
3) Who else was involved in creating this disk

I think we would be getting closer to finding out who should get fired.

VBV - cause for concern

2007-11-12T05:17:00.000-08:00

I got called out to a meeting with a client on Saturday evening, and it turned out at the bottom of it all was this: They had turned on Verified By Visa a few weeks ago, and on Saturday morning the MD of the company plus the designer tried to make a paid registration and just plain couldn't figure out how to get past the VBV screen.

If you have ever tried this you will understand this, as it is a text-book example of bad useability. Initial indications are that the level of registrations has halved since they switched it on.

I know that some firms are being pressurised by their banks to implement VBV but am very concerned about the effect this will have on business. A partner company in the US has told me that it has pretty much died over there.

Big brother is watching you

2007-11-06T04:16:00.000-08:00

Next time you tell people about your ski trip on your social networking site, don't be surpised if a ski supplier advertisement pops up. It is called hypertargeting and Myspace, facebook etc are all going in for it. They will use all sorts information about you, including messages and interests to target you with advertisements.

Good thing? I don't know, it seems sort of spooky but I guess we will get used to it. It is only a computer after all, it is not as if a human is eavesdropping on our every move.

Biba - a lesson for us all

2007-10-05T02:50:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to an evening hosted by those lovely people at Rackspace at the Kensington Roof Gardens. It all came back to me. This was BIBA.

You can tell how old you are when you are the only person in a group to remember BIBA. In the 60's it was the epitomy of cool. A department store like no other. High fashion sold in the exotic art deco surroundings of the old Derry and Tom's store. A massive place, set like a stage with mood lighting and notoriously snooty sloan ranger assistants. An at the top of it all the 30's roof garden where you could have a coffee and watch the beautiful people.

Why did it fail? A combination of things:

The mood lighting made it rather too easy for shoplifters and 'shinkage' was crippling.
It was a great tourist atraction and people came to look not to shop
Accountants took over and drove it down-market, looting this fabulous brand until it died.

A lesson for us all. No matter how great it is, it has to work.