The nhs service to find a doctor or hospital has gone all web 2.0 with microsoft maps.
http://www.nhs.uk/ServiceDirectories/Pages/ServiceResults.aspx?Postcode=BN41&ServiceType=GP
Now instead of just getting a list a clicking to the map of each one they are all on the map and easy to see. The only thing is the messages by the pins on the map do not line up in firefox.
Not quite so 2.0 is my local doctor who's menu is random for firefox. The map has made my search easier so thank you NHS choices.
My electrician in Portslade is rather more 1998 but he is a nice guy and has linked it in from alot of directories. So I thought bz electrical deserved a back link.
Friday, 20 July 2007
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
What should be in a tech test of an interview
I have been attending interviews for work for the last few weeks and the question of a Tech test in the second half of the interview has come up again. And having the test there is fair enough as you need to test skills that are easy to talk crap about and could really be crap.
As some one trained as a designer a test in an interview is new still, though I have never been a Graphic Designer and for the last few years represented a Web Developer. I would after my degree turn up with my over sized portfolio and talk about my work and mostly I do that now, but my portfolio is digital. When talking you can try to aim your words at the responses of the people your are talking to. Talking up or down points that you hope they want to here and that they believe you are the best at doing. In a test though you have to guess what they want to see and then use your words to justify it afterwards.
There is no tech or coding standard to mark against so the other person will just use the standards they like or see if the methods they like are in there.
I was given one PHP test where i was asked about UNIONS and KEYS and an other to draw a basic class. These are more trivia types so fair enough right or wrong. But the sort of things that I could get from a manual while coding. The more complicated ones are displaying patterns or thinking. So the test i thought was quite nice was write code to do "a + b / c" you can then ask questions and write out the code. This is great as there are some good tests like, where is the data coming from, are they letters numbers or variable that the maths will happen on. I wrote a class and tested the vars and then ran and output the result. i forgot that the values could be negative though. (I do not deal with may negatives, mostly keys and positives flagged as negative).
The test that came next was code with a new library a small function (a ticker in ajax). Now how should one approach this in 2 hrs? nice commented code? hack it up quick? clear code? How do you gauge the marking strategy? Do they want to see a real world app or just how quick you can learn something new. Do they want to jest the JS you use a but or the PHP you will use all the time? I think it is a big gamble as to what you spend your time on.
I went for make it clean and real world and then if I could not finish I could describe the steps. I did not know the lib so if I code the rest of the app the last bit can use up all the time I need. Also I can state that someone sharing the product would have had the ground work to base other work on or finish. For me it took too long to code the base class (I have never timed myself so did not know how long it takes to make the get sets selects etc.) I put it in a framework (CI) to save time on db calls and urls. But I got stuck in debugging where the new lib should be added into the framework and then debugging the apache and php and the javascript set up on my machine for the lib. So I did not finish the task. This was disappointing as I though I would have, but the lib worked with the code in a way I would not have so I got stuck in the wrong direction with my other code.
I did learn from it, but was disappointed in the assessment that I had not done it right when I made the code work and hour or 2 after. My critera would have been make the stuff work to the user and make the code as usable to another developer or later work. I think I did this, but I did not use the xAJAX lib in the right way. I do not think you would do many live projects this way but I guess learning new things is always a test you have to fit into a budget. The answer was apparently copy the example from the documentation and add some sql and a refresh loop in one file. But I would not do that normally so why would i show that to someone in a test that i want a job from? So after 4hours with them I'll wait and see.
How long should the test be and are certifications the way to not need the tests? Think I will look at Zend now.
As some one trained as a designer a test in an interview is new still, though I have never been a Graphic Designer and for the last few years represented a Web Developer. I would after my degree turn up with my over sized portfolio and talk about my work and mostly I do that now, but my portfolio is digital. When talking you can try to aim your words at the responses of the people your are talking to. Talking up or down points that you hope they want to here and that they believe you are the best at doing. In a test though you have to guess what they want to see and then use your words to justify it afterwards.
There is no tech or coding standard to mark against so the other person will just use the standards they like or see if the methods they like are in there.
I was given one PHP test where i was asked about UNIONS and KEYS and an other to draw a basic class. These are more trivia types so fair enough right or wrong. But the sort of things that I could get from a manual while coding. The more complicated ones are displaying patterns or thinking. So the test i thought was quite nice was write code to do "a + b / c" you can then ask questions and write out the code. This is great as there are some good tests like, where is the data coming from, are they letters numbers or variable that the maths will happen on. I wrote a class and tested the vars and then ran and output the result. i forgot that the values could be negative though. (I do not deal with may negatives, mostly keys and positives flagged as negative).
The test that came next was code with a new library a small function (a ticker in ajax). Now how should one approach this in 2 hrs? nice commented code? hack it up quick? clear code? How do you gauge the marking strategy? Do they want to see a real world app or just how quick you can learn something new. Do they want to jest the JS you use a but or the PHP you will use all the time? I think it is a big gamble as to what you spend your time on.
I went for make it clean and real world and then if I could not finish I could describe the steps. I did not know the lib so if I code the rest of the app the last bit can use up all the time I need. Also I can state that someone sharing the product would have had the ground work to base other work on or finish. For me it took too long to code the base class (I have never timed myself so did not know how long it takes to make the get sets selects etc.) I put it in a framework (CI) to save time on db calls and urls. But I got stuck in debugging where the new lib should be added into the framework and then debugging the apache and php and the javascript set up on my machine for the lib. So I did not finish the task. This was disappointing as I though I would have, but the lib worked with the code in a way I would not have so I got stuck in the wrong direction with my other code.
I did learn from it, but was disappointed in the assessment that I had not done it right when I made the code work and hour or 2 after. My critera would have been make the stuff work to the user and make the code as usable to another developer or later work. I think I did this, but I did not use the xAJAX lib in the right way. I do not think you would do many live projects this way but I guess learning new things is always a test you have to fit into a budget. The answer was apparently copy the example from the documentation and add some sql and a refresh loop in one file. But I would not do that normally so why would i show that to someone in a test that i want a job from? So after 4hours with them I'll wait and see.
How long should the test be and are certifications the way to not need the tests? Think I will look at Zend now.
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Photos of the Black Rat
The Black Rat Restaurant in Winchester
Sorry they are not so clear they are on my phone
the Black Rat restaurant
Saturday, 23 June 2007
Thing to watch for this month - Registration forms
I have decided after being asked how to get more traffic to a mailing list and looking at their registration process to start with, that this month I am going to watch out for good and bad registration processes.
Registration would seem to be so easy to get a newsletter for example, but greedy marketing people still seem to want to max out the forms, or the form gets forgotten about when looking at the email.
All that is really needed is an email address box and a button to send it to the list. Maybe you could add your name too, but really most lists do not get past sending an email to the whole list anyway. A password can be handy so that you can stop spam and also be able to change your settings. But this can be authenticated and sent to the users email address anyway.
Registration would seem to be so easy to get a newsletter for example, but greedy marketing people still seem to want to max out the forms, or the form gets forgotten about when looking at the email.
All that is really needed is an email address box and a button to send it to the list. Maybe you could add your name too, but really most lists do not get past sending an email to the whole list anyway. A password can be handy so that you can stop spam and also be able to change your settings. But this can be authenticated and sent to the users email address anyway.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
New Restaurant in Winchester
Come eat in Winchester. My brother was in the kitchen for the opening of his new restaurant The Black Rat. (88 Chesil Street. 01962 844465) Owned by the guy who runs the famous The Black Boy pub (and a review) round the corner it is a great gastro feast. On the corner on Chesil Street and Wharf Hill, at the lower end of Winchester on the way to Bar End and the Water Medows.
They opened quietly on friday 15th June, and I'll get an update later today from my sister who went to Saturday with friends. He is sharing the kitchen and running of the place. But as he has run other kitchens and hotel kitchens I am sure it will be great!
So who am I to say any more but go there and EAT!
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Should you register an account everywhere online?
My thought today is should you register an account on all the major websites as soon as they start to become useful?
How you tell this is just a matter of listening to what people are talking about or if you see a site you may in some way use. Even if you have no plan to at the time. This is because you need to get in early to be able to get the username and often url that you want. Most people, like me want the same username accross all community sites. This is because you want to remember it but also so that seo and other people can find them. I never want to have the name+random number option but some people like my brother have adopted that style as the default as his name is too common. chrisbailey79 or baileyboy79 allows him to have a year and get his name. My name is not so common so I can get mine mostly but a new problem was recently highlighted to me, i think in boagworld or .net podcast, namly takeovers. Google and yahoo buying companies they take on the user system and add it to their own in a dual manor and sometimes require it too be the same name.
Some people who paid for Flickr accounts then had to create Yahoo accounts if they did not have them, and Yahoo being slightly big can be almost harder than hard to find a real name you can use. Their account would not work if they could not create the account, and this is a service they paid for.
Also a point for the future is if the good services online are run by Google, Yahoo, MSN etc... and the usable names are used up in less than 10 years what will happen if my son wants an account in another 10 years? Two things may happen, more domains, like google and some service providers have, so my username is tristanbailey then @gmail.com because I registered early but other friends have arksports then @googlemail.com and we just have this second part as a choice not free entry. It is like namespaces for usernames I guess. Or the systems will have to be broken up into pieces or run a bit like keychains on my Mac, having lots of usernames (probably auto assigned) assigned to one username and password. Both these do not really solve the problem for one website.
I'd be interested in any other ideas, to solve it. I figure I will have to make a system work for a site I work on at some point.
How you tell this is just a matter of listening to what people are talking about or if you see a site you may in some way use. Even if you have no plan to at the time. This is because you need to get in early to be able to get the username and often url that you want. Most people, like me want the same username accross all community sites. This is because you want to remember it but also so that seo and other people can find them. I never want to have the name+random number option but some people like my brother have adopted that style as the default as his name is too common. chrisbailey79 or baileyboy79 allows him to have a year and get his name. My name is not so common so I can get mine mostly but a new problem was recently highlighted to me, i think in boagworld or .net podcast, namly takeovers. Google and yahoo buying companies they take on the user system and add it to their own in a dual manor and sometimes require it too be the same name.
Some people who paid for Flickr accounts then had to create Yahoo accounts if they did not have them, and Yahoo being slightly big can be almost harder than hard to find a real name you can use. Their account would not work if they could not create the account, and this is a service they paid for.
Also a point for the future is if the good services online are run by Google, Yahoo, MSN etc... and the usable names are used up in less than 10 years what will happen if my son wants an account in another 10 years? Two things may happen, more domains, like google and some service providers have, so my username is tristanbailey then @gmail.com because I registered early but other friends have arksports then @googlemail.com and we just have this second part as a choice not free entry. It is like namespaces for usernames I guess. Or the systems will have to be broken up into pieces or run a bit like keychains on my Mac, having lots of usernames (probably auto assigned) assigned to one username and password. Both these do not really solve the problem for one website.
I'd be interested in any other ideas, to solve it. I figure I will have to make a system work for a site I work on at some point.
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Do you need a homepage anymore?
I have being thinking about what the homepage should do for the site now that search is king and most traffic enters 'inside' your site.
Then Chistene mentioned in her post The Content Gets Priority's that Jared Spool had written on UIE Brain Sparks Is Home Page Design Relevant Any More? and I started thinking about it again.
The homepage now is used as a splash page for advertising url responses on off line media. But online I would almost never send anyone to the homepage, out of choice. A user once in the site often only needs to (or should not need to) return to the homepage when they get stuck or do not know where they should go next.
So maybe that is what the page is for guiding the uninitiated or the lost. Not to help people who know but for those who do not. I know form my use of sites that I browse the homepage of a site very quickly to get a picture of the site and see if they tell me if anything has changed or is new. I come up for air after swimming around on the more useful search and reference pages linking the desired content. I know the one thing I want from the homepage, to get off it and find something better, something i am looking for.
So maybe the homepage will drop some of the brand and gain more of the help and deep linking that will get me to the content I am looking for.
Well I can only hope my work can achieve this and see what everyone else does.
How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content has a great example of this in two diagrams. Users are no longer using the navigation of the site until after they have first found what they want. The links then must be a call to action after they have found what they want and a trigger to the scent they are looking for if this was not it. Either way, most sites require people to find and understand the interface around them, navigate to the top of it and then back down to anything else they were looking for.
I think this leaves allot of thought out structure for users, actually for search engine to find the pages for the users and then a new set of navigation to move site ways and around the content for users when they have started at the bottom of it.
Back to the navigation drawing board for me, things are evolving.
Then Chistene mentioned in her post The Content Gets Priority's that Jared Spool had written on UIE Brain Sparks Is Home Page Design Relevant Any More? and I started thinking about it again.
The homepage now is used as a splash page for advertising url responses on off line media. But online I would almost never send anyone to the homepage, out of choice. A user once in the site often only needs to (or should not need to) return to the homepage when they get stuck or do not know where they should go next.
So maybe that is what the page is for guiding the uninitiated or the lost. Not to help people who know but for those who do not. I know form my use of sites that I browse the homepage of a site very quickly to get a picture of the site and see if they tell me if anything has changed or is new. I come up for air after swimming around on the more useful search and reference pages linking the desired content. I know the one thing I want from the homepage, to get off it and find something better, something i am looking for.
So maybe the homepage will drop some of the brand and gain more of the help and deep linking that will get me to the content I am looking for.
Well I can only hope my work can achieve this and see what everyone else does.
How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content has a great example of this in two diagrams. Users are no longer using the navigation of the site until after they have first found what they want. The links then must be a call to action after they have found what they want and a trigger to the scent they are looking for if this was not it. Either way, most sites require people to find and understand the interface around them, navigate to the top of it and then back down to anything else they were looking for.
I think this leaves allot of thought out structure for users, actually for search engine to find the pages for the users and then a new set of navigation to move site ways and around the content for users when they have started at the bottom of it.
Back to the navigation drawing board for me, things are evolving.
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