Playgroup | Creativity through play

I have noticed recently the amount of acronyms used in the digital space increasing at a phenomenal rate. I used to keep up with all the latest abbreviations and phrases but find myself lost a lot of the time now. I think this is because people are obsessed with creating a term for something that doesn't need one.

I was reading a tender the other day and it asked for experience in the following: SOAP, REST, SR/W, atom syndication, semantic Web, RDF, data aggregation, AJAX, federated identity management (Shibboleth, OpenID), user centred design, metadata taxonomies and folksonomies, service orientated architecture… and the list went on. I was immediately put off attempting to write a response to this. The fact is I have experience in all these areas but would never categorise these skills into such ridiculous tags. Can there be anymore meaningless terms than “user centred design” and “service orientated architecture”? Maybe they were worried we would design the solution for a cyborg in mind with code optimised for an Atari 2600.

Let's take “metadata taxonomies and folksonomies”. In essence what this actually is, is a website owner creating categories for you and you assigning one to any content you upload vs. you tagging your content yourself using whatever words you see fit, i.e. blog tagging. So to clarify: the Playgroup site has a metadata folksonomy. Absolute nonsense - when people start using these phrases it's difficult to take them seriously.

On Wednesday I decided to look into improving our office Internet connection; at the moment we have a 2Mb line for 50+ people and it's painful. easynet sent me some information on “SureStream” - their next big thing. On the first page the following acronyms/phrases where found: HDSL multiplexing, SDH, NOC and SNMP (there were others as well but I was familiar with those). I'm not a network administrator and all this was nonsensical to me. I gave up half way through.

Finally this week I found myself writing a user manual for a piece of software we have just finished developing. It is called SICAMS (my predecessor named it); no one in the agency knew what it stood for. This is being rolled out to 200 car dealerships next Monday and we are sitting down trying to work out what the “I” stands for. Abbreviations can lead to mass confusion: another product, EDMAPI (again I didn't name it), stands for Electronic Direct Marketing API (Application Programming Interface) and is pronounced E-D-M-A-P-I. The account handlers like to call it E-D-MAPPY, despite my constant corrections they can't get their heads around it. Maybe it sounds friendlier but when the client starts saying it as well you just have to cringe.

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The BBC is reporting that Microsoft is attempting to become advocates of open source software, specifically the software that powers web servers across the world. It seems Microsoft have paid a hefty sum (well not so hefty for them) to become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. Apache software powers more web servers than any other, including Microsoft's own IIS. Microsoft also announced they will provide patches for software such as PHP.

Let's hope that this development on Microsoft's part is a genuine attempt to improve open source software for all. I find it hard to take seriously though, especially when they are continually fined for anti-competitive behaviour and threaten to sue the Linux community for stealing their ideas.

Time will tell...

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In the past I have been skeptical of companies implementing green policies purely for PR purposes rather than them actually caring about the environment. I'm not a tree hugger but do consider myself to be a 'green' person. I use public transport everyday, the car only once a week, recycle everything I can and rarely indulge in air travel and other high polluting activities.

I have been impressed with Playgroup’s efforts in trying to cut down on paper usage and recycling of materials in particular. So now that I have left Playgroup as a full time employee I thought I would see how my new company shapes up.

I must say I was shocked when I arrived. It soon became apparent that no one is allowed a personal bin, a fan or a heater (the heater I hid under my desk was soon confiscated).  There are 5 different recycling bins on each floor and woe betide anyone who puts the wrong item in the wrong bin, as someone on floor 2 found out the other day. A gentle reminder was sent to everyone in the company that Heinz Big Soup cans should be washed before being disposed of.

I thought I was living in a military camp for the first week, but I have to give credit to my new colleagues - everyone seems to follow these processes rigidly and practically everything is recycled. Bins are emptied at least once a day and I'm sure once I get used to the system it will become second nature. I do find having to walk halfway across the office to dispose of a piece of rubbish tedious though.

It is encouraging that companies are taking green policies seriously and I find it makes you as an individual more responsible when you see your company making such as effort.

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I made a conscience decision upon leaving university that I didn’t want to go into a job working at a software house. After studying computer science I wanted a break from working solely with techie people. Although it must be said that some of my jobs since leaving university have been eventful, after 20 odd months of working at Playgroup I can say with absolute certainty that I made the right decision.

At Playgroup the atmosphere and general ethos of people wanting to do well and helping each other out makes work much less of a chore. Knowing people on a personal level and feeling part of a team, rather than a number on the personnel register is a real incentive to do well. We’ve all met the designer who likes the sound of his own voice too much, or the developer that couldn’t deliver a web project in six months if his life depended on it, but in an agency environment you tend to find these people are soon found out, although sometimes not quickly enough!

I would never say never to working for a software house and not all of them are large multinationals that might suffer from some of the problems highlighted but for now I am happy and glad I joined Playgroup.

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Yesterday Mozilla launched the 3rd version of its popular web browser Firefox. To generate interest they announced Download Day 2008, hoping to set a new world record for number of software downloads in 24 hours. At the time of writing Mozilla have just announced that they achieved 8 million downloads in this time and Guinness are now reviewing this world record attempt.

This is great news and hopefully ensures the browser eats further into Internet Explorer’s market share. According to NetApplications, Internet Explorer has fallen from 84% market share to 73.75% since last May; in contrast Firefox has risen from 11% to 18.41%. To show that there is no bitterness Microsoft sent Mozilla a cake.

I am a Firefox user and must say that I am very happy with the improvements in version 3. These start with the visual style: version 2 on the Mac looked like a Windows application, just horrible in comparison to Safari. This has been addressed and the browser now looks like a native Mac application.

As well as the one-click bookmarking system, the one new feature I imagine most people will love (and I’m sure will become ubiquitous in all next generation browsers) is how you locate a previously visited website. We have all been to a website we like, only to forget it’s URL and then been unable to find it again. Other than searching for it via a search engine or trawling through our browser history it was difficult to locate. Now you don’t need to remember the domain of the URL, all you need is the name of the website, or part of the URL. For example, if you want to go back to http://www.bbc.co.uk/football, just type football into the address bar and the BBC site will be suggested for you.

There are a whole host of other nice features available including the ability to tag websites with Mozilla declaring there have been over 15,000 improvements in total. It has been a long time in coming (version 2 arrived in 2006) but it has been worth the wait. Download it now and give it a try.

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I was reading an article in PHP Architect the other day about how coding is not as fun as it used to be. The author was highlighting that there are so many considerations and security features that you have to be aware of, writing code for pure functionality is now only a small part of a web or application build. 

I have to agree with this, if I am faced with another large website build in the next few weeks I think I will have to go AWOL. I would guess that I only spend about 10% of my time actually writing functional code. The other 90% is spent adding security features, guarding against human input error and trying to get the site to render correctly cross browser. Usually Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox on Mac and PC and Safari are of concern. We can now throw Internet Explorer 8 into the mix as well.

I always code to ensure the site works in Firefox and then break it so that it works in Internet Explorer. To be fair Internet Explorer 7 is an improvement over the previous version but as Microsoft have made the upgrade from 6 to 7 optional the vast majority of people are still using IE6. If Microsoft do the same with the IE8 upgrade we will be left with 3 versions of Internet Explorer all being used by large numbers of people, all rendering HTML differently. It is a real pain as you cannot use CSS properties like “min-height” with any confidence as you know IE6 will ignore them. 

Getting rid of Internet Explorer 6 would solve a lot of headaches. I have always wanted to build a site that does a simple check to see what browser you are using and refuses to display if you are running Internet Explorer 6. I might do this when IE6 numbers start to dwindle. If you are using Internet Explorer 6 I beg you to update your browser, not only is it annoying for web developers, it isn’t secure!

Firefox (recommended)
Internet Explorer 7
Safari

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People are increasingly looking to the media in all its forms and pointing the blame for society's evils. One concern people have is that children copy crimes they have seen from a gory film, a questionable web campaign or more recently a video game.

I have always been skeptical of this blame culture, why is it always somebody else's fault? The vast majority of children know at an early age what is right and what is wrong.

One franchise that has caused much controversy is Take Two's Grand Theft Auto. If you have been following the stories surrounding the latest game in the series you will be familiar with Jack Thompson, a man extremely loquacious on this subject.  Thompson, a lawyer, is obsessed with Take Two and threatens court action against them every other week it seems. 

It is a shame he conducts himself in the manner in which he does, as amongst the rhetoric and hyperbole he loses his core question, which is worthy of contemplation: should games that feature questionable content be allowed?

I believe they are perfectly fine as long as they are marketed to adults and carry an appropriate age rating. If children, in particular, copy what they have seen in a game, it is of course unfortunate but games are a form of entertainment in which developers should have free creative license. It is up to responsible advertisers and parents to ensure children can't access these games.

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Speaking at the Internet World Exhibition in London, Mozilla's Tristan Nitot expressed concerns over media plugins for your browser. Applications such as Flash from Adobe and Microsoft's Silverlight were called into question. Nitot explains: "You are producing content for your users and there is someone in the middle deciding whether users should be able to see your content".

I have never thought of Flash, in particular, as threatening the openness of the web as so many users have it installed but Nitot claimed that both Adobe and Microsoft have a history of poor support for 3rd party browsers. To support his claim Nitot cited the lack of Internet Explorer on Mac/Unix systems and Adobe's slowness in it's attempts to update its Linux version of Flash.

Nitot: "If you consider proprietary technologies, think hard; are you really trading convenience in the short term with independence in the long term?". Something we should all be thinking about really. However with the advancements in the JavaScript field, spearheaded by Google, and the Web 2.0 movement there is emerging a real alternative to using Flash for websites that require lots of user interaction.

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It seems Microsoft have abandoned their attempt to purchase Yahoo... for the time being at least. I took an interest in this story as on the face of it, it seems a strange move from Microsoft. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to gain market share on Google for a variety of reasons but at a base level it is because they both have inferior search algorithms. Even working together their market share would be a distant second to Google.

It seems the directors at Yahoo were just playing hardball and had no intention of selling to Microsoft, no matter what the offer was. Their shareholders must be extremely annoyed as the price offered, for a fading brand, was extremely generous. Very few companies will be able to match it, and none probably will.

I am slightly disappointed that it didn't work out as a Microsoft-Yahoo success story could have provided a real alternative to Google. It is always good to have choice and it would have kept Google on their toes. It is not surprising that Google tried to sabotage the deal and tell everyone that would listen that it was bad for the industry - they were hardly going to rejoice from the rooftops.

With the dividing line between application and web service becoming more blurred by the day there will be many more Microsoft (king of the desktop) vs Google (king of the web) battles I'm sure.

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The new designs for the British coins have been recently unveiled. There were 4,000 entries to a public competition to find the new designs; it was won by someone called Matthew Dent.

The six designs on the 1p through to the 50p coins can be pieced together to form a complete image of the royal coat of arms. You can see images of the coins here.

While the new designs are unique and a definite improvement I feel there has been a real missed opportunity here. Yet again the coins are plastered with the Queen and the royal coat of arms. The Queen is nothing more than the head of a dysfunctional family that has no relevance or interest for the vast majority of the population. I believe the coinage of a country should reflect the values and customs that that country holds dear. While there is no denying the fact that Britain is known for its Royal Family, they play little or no part in today’s society.

Britain has provided the world with many important inventions over the course of its history that could have been recognized. Inventions and discoveries that have saved peoples’ lives and changed the way we live our lives. One of the most recent ones, the World Wide Web, has changed the way we will communicate forever.

I am not suggesting we stick the WiFi logo on the coins but some reference would hold more relevance to people today. Why not have The London Eye or some reference to sport (we probably invented half of them) as we are a nation of sports fans. There are many options available that could showcase what it is like to live in Britain today but it seems we are stuck with the same archaic drivel for many more years to come.

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You can now access Playgroup's web site content through your favourite RSS feed reader, or embed the content on your own site, if you so wish! We recommend you try Netvibes if you haven't already. Netvibes allows you to add content from all your favourite sites in one place, including various news sources such as the BBC and social networking widgets.

Links you will need:

Blog feed: http://www.playgroup.com/blog/rss
News feed: http://www.playgroup.com/about/news/rss

Each Playmate also has their own blog feed. To find out more visit the playmate's page you are interested in.

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Check out Ajax Rain, it has loads of demos and examples of Ajax and DHTML in action. With the desktop-feel becoming more prominent on the web and everyone harping on about Web 2.0 it is good to look at sites such as Ajax Rain for inspiration.

I have also been looking at Mootools, a popular Javascript framework which allows for all the fancy Ajax effects. Most of the effects they demo on their site could prove useful in web design, one that I particularly like is the Morph effect. If applied properly it can work nicely.

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