The role would suit a small design studio or a freelance graphic designer. It would also be a great opportunity for someone out there who is considering going freelance and is looking for that great first client to get them off the ground, out of the rat race and enable them to work for great people, from home on some very visible design work.

I can’t mention names but you could not work for a nicer company. They’re based in Dublin but it’s possible for you to be based anywhere in Ireland.
Get in touch - Peter@edenweb.ie

For such a new service, the range of content they’ve lined up from the Networks is quite impressive. Having watched a few minutes of CSI NY already, I can see how appealing this will be for both viewers and publishers. Sure, YouTube is great if you want to watch the odd silly videos through your browser. But what if you want to watch something a little more produced, informative and professional from your own desktop?

Here’s the official blurb from Adobe.

Pick the episodes you love to watch, and Adobe® Media Player software will track new episodes and download them so you can watch whenever you want.

• Catalog — Discover new Internet TV shows and video podcasts from leading media companies.
• Personal Videos — Stream, download, manage, and play your personal collection of rich media videos right from your desktop.
• My Favorites — Automatically download new episodes of your favorite shows and video podcasts.
• New Episodes — Quickly manage and play new episodes from your favorite shows and video podcasts when and in whatever order you choose.

UPS arrived about 2 minutes ago. I have brand new copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Master Collection) sitting in front of me waiting to be installed. I can’t wait to start playing with this. Here’s a list of the included software in the Master Collection.

• Adobe InDesign® CS3
• Adobe Photoshop® CS3 Extended
• Adobe Illustrator® CS3
• Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional
• Adobe Flash® CS3 Professional
• Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3
• Adobe Fireworks® CS3
• Adobe Contribute®
• Adobe After Effects® CS3 Professional
• Adobe Premiere® Pro CS3
• Adobe Soundbooth™ CS3
• Adobe Encore® CS3
• Plus Adobe OnLocation™ CS3 (Windows® only) and Adobe Ultra® CS3 (Windows only)

Just like the right photograph, the right font can make or break any piece of graphic design. I love these font catalogues and can easily spend hours browsing through hundreds of pages of Serif, Sans serif, Gothic, Display, Blackletter and Slab fonts just to find the right typeface for a graphic design project. Unfortunately, typography on the web isn’t as versatile as it is in the printed world and that’s something I still miss about designing web sites. Still, these book are gorgeous pieces of graphic design in themselves and a great reference tool for a logo I’ve just been comissioned to design.

If you work in a shared office I’m sure at some stage you’ve come to a website where the music or narration started playing automatically and never gave you a choice?

If HP have put this level of thought into my online experience then I’m interested
in exploring their actual physical MediaSmart Server. Poor usability and design is the bain of my tech life so here’s a few free links for making such a thoughtful gesture.

HP MediaSmart Server
Use it to back up your files, remotely access your PC, share and stream digital media

 We are also involved in some really nice work for Dublin City Council, The National Botanic Gardens, The Office of Public Works and more…

More soon!

The logos will also be available directly from the IIA site and newsletter shortly.

Download your logo

Thanks!

Peter

The IEDR today announced relaxation of the rules for registering personal dot-ie domain names for individuals. This means you can now register YourName.IE for approx 25 Euro per anum. Furthermore, most combinations of your first, middle and surname are acceptable.

An applicant named ‘John Paul Smith’ can register the following alternatives:

Johnsmith.ie [first name / surname]
Johnpaulsmith.ie [first name / middlename / surname]
John-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / surname]
John-paul-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / middlename / hyphen / surname]
Johnpsmith.ie [first name / middle initial / surname]
John-p-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
Jsmith.ie [first initial / surname]
Jpsmith.ie [first initial / middle initial / surname]
Jp-smith.ie [first initial / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
J-smith.ie [first initial / hyphen / surname]
J-p-smith.ie [first initial / hyphen / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
Paulsmith.ie [middle name / surname]
Paul-smith.ie [middle name / hyphen / surname]
Psmith.ie [middle initial / surname]
P-smith.ie [middle initial / hyphen / surname]

You should contact your preferred hosting, web services company or the IEDR directly for further details.

Update (Sept 13th 2007): The IEDR press release is now online 

There is huge scope to dramatically increase hosting companies conversion rates and vistor numbers based on the evidence and feedback I’ve been listening to over my several years as a web designer. Sure, there are some companies out there that are doing it well but as both a customer and a family-member/friend/aquaintance to many, many people who have tried to source hosting services, I find that they are failing on key areas of their web sites and that this is losing them business.

UPDATE…(the above was drafted last week)

Just today I was wondering why hosting companies often have such terrible websites when I received a great little promotion in my email from hosting company, RackSpace. In an industry where most companies are in a race to the bottom and all about the lowest price, these guys are selling to me with clever campaigns, great design and benefit-driven messaging.

Good design is problem solving regardless of the medium. Wether it’s print, pixel or product design, the world relies on designers to bring creative and fresh ideas to new or everday problems. So when blogger Amy Tenderich posted her “Open Letter to Steve Jobs” in April imploring Apple to bring their renowned product and interface design to a device that is used by over 20 million Americans it took San Fran company, Adaptive Path to step up and have a go.

Charmr - Diabetes Management Device by Adaptive Path

Charmr - Interface designs by Adaptive Path

Here are some links

• Amy’s open letter to Steve Jobs
• How we got involved by Adaptive Path
• Video of the design concept for Diabetes Management Device (Charmr)
• Charmr interaction and visual design by Adaptive Path

Enjoy!

Custom illustrations are a great way to bring something unique to your web site and can really enhance content heavy websites.

I’ll upload the other illustrations later in the week and possibly a screen grab of the new website which is being designed by EdenWeb. The other illustrations in the series are for

• Coastal
• Wetlands & river corridors
• Gardens
• Woodlands, trees & hedgerows
• and Grasslands habitats.

Contact me directly for more information. All work is copyright EdenWeb>Peter Knight.

On Friday I spent a few hours at Microsoft’s European Product Development Centre in Dublin with Reeves Little previewing project Gatineau and running through some of the new features being built into their upcoming website Analytics program.

I’d been a fan (and customer) of analytics company and product, DeepMetrix for several years and was interested to see how the product had evolved since the technology was bought by Microsoft in 2006 and what exactly Microsoft had brought to the analytics mix. Reeves is part of the team in Dublin that are building some new components into the product and was kind enough to ask me over and get involved in some user testing and sign up for the upcoming BETA programme.

I have to say, it’s looking really good for Microsoft’s foray into the web analytics arena.

The Gatineau user interface is looking fantastic and detailed levels of reporting now include info on visitor age and gender and will be invaluable for anyone selling goods or services across the web particularly those operating within specific demographics and eCommerce clients. Reeves pointed out that all of the age and gender info is pulled anonymously from Live ID to help avoid privacy issues.

An NDA prevents me from saying too much but I also got to play with several new modules that are being integrated into the BETA. Microsoft have created some very interesting ways to view visitor paths, funnel data , keyword and page view information.

Gatineau is planned to hit the web in late summer ‘07 and we’re looking forward to being involved in the Beta programme and doing some tyre kicking across our own sites.

More screenshots and info on Microsoft Analytics available over at the following websites.

• http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/want-to-see-gatineau.html
• http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/2007/07/microsoft-gatin.html
• http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/07/23/gatineau-finally-revealed-with-screenshots/
• http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/07/23/a-sneak-peek-at-gatineau-microsoft-s-web-analytics-tool.aspx

Reeves’s den over at Microsoft Ireland!

Photographers were asked to submit pictures on the theme of ‘on the beach’ and there were more than 1000 entries submitted.
Visit Derek Knight Photography for more great travel, documentary, music, corporate and commercial photography.

Since moving myself and the business down to Wicklow several months ago I’ve been really impressed with the work that the Wicklow County Enterprise Board (WCEB) are doing for small businesses in the area and just how proactive they are on the seminar, networking and roadshow initiatives. So I’m glad I caught this seminar alert in the local paper earlier this week.

Here’s an excerpt from the website…

Wicklow County Enterprise Board are hosting a Seminar entitled “Heads up - The Latest IT Tools for your Business“. The Seminar will give a snapshot of the most up to date technology that can be used to run a business more efficiently. Specifically, the event will cover: Blogging and Podcasting; gadgets that make business life easier; mobile technologies & PDAs; online applications can save money for offline business activities.The guest speaker is Damien Mulley (http://www.mulley.net) , one of Ireland’s best known bloggers and technology correspondent with the Sunday Tribune.

Looking forward to that. Full details are available from the WCEB website.

I’ve seen this technique appear now across several web sites from DELL to RTE to CNET.

1. Do a search for the item and choose 6 sites from the hundreds available. All 6 are from the first search results page.
2. I have a quick browse through each site and choose the 3 sites that are actually usable, well designed, have relevant information and appear trustworthy.
   Side note: I don’t consciously ‘choose’ these - the sites are just effortless to use and a natural choice.
3. I drop a site because they don’t have my item in stock.
4. I drop another site because because the ‘view larger image’ opens a pop-up window that is the same size as the thumbnail (how annoying is that!)
5. I do an ‘add to basket’ on the final site and fill out my details.
6. The ‘Add your details’ is insisting on some information I just can’t give (details below) and because it’s a ‘mandatory field’ the cart is refusing my order.
7. I leave the site and give up.

In fact, I’d say about 25% of all my online purchases fail because the form fields on eCommerce sites are badly configured, broken or have shopping cart systems thats just plain confusing. And I work in the field as a Web Designer so I’m comfortable with eCommerce and having to ‘work around’ usability flaws.

And it’s not just “Sheila’s flower shop” or your local DVD store with the tiny web presence and some technically brilliant but unusable e-Cart software that is losing them customers at the last step of a purchase. Larger companies that spend massive amounts of money on R&D, Compliance, Strategy and User Experience can get it wrong too and here’s a nice example of that in action.

I’ve seen a product that I want to buy and the site is integrated with Google’s new Checkout shopping cart.

I add my details to the payment form. Name, email, phone and country are all fine.

The postal code field (high lighted above in red) is mandatory and insists that I add it here. My address (and most addresses in Ireland outside of Dublin city) doesn’t have a postal code so I usually add ‘NA’ or ‘NONE’ when shopping online to circumvent this. That won’t work here because not only is the postal code required but the web site thinks that a postal code is a certain amount of letters or numbers long and is trying to shoe horn my details through their mandatory fields.

Thinking that the tiny question mark icon beside the Postal Code field will tell me how to get round this issue and allow me to order my product, I click on it. This opens a new window at the An Post web site.

It looks promising and someone is thinking in the right direction but this site just helps me locate my local post office. It doesn’t help me find my postcode and even if I had one, it doesn’t help me find it. I eventually go back to the check out page and try a few more hacks and give up. I was only shopping for a Letterbox but now I think I’ll just drive into town and buy one in a real shop.

So in closing, I understand that certain fields are consistent and can be made mandatory across most sites on the web.
For example

• All credit cards are 16 digits long and have an expiry date
• All credit cards have a 6 digit Card Verification Value on the back
• All credit cards have a name or company name and associated address

but other details which we take for granted or assume are global often just don’t translate to a one-size-fits-all format. Worse still, some details are driven by user preferences. IE an email address may not match my company domain name because I don’t want to be spammed at work.

So, when it comes to mandatory form field Vs user preference or regional fromatting, the retailer will loose but the consumer won’t win either. The biggest wastage for both in the example above is that it took me hours of searching for this product and dismissing several other sites to get to that particular website. With the average website losing 9 out of every 10 customers, its a real pity that the final site fell at the last hurdle.

Incidentally, doing a quick Google on the whole mandatory fields issue has brought me to this post from Tom Raftery who is having similar postcode trouble with Yahoo.

If you can’t see a product box below then you will know I still haven’t gotten to grips with this yet!

The first paragraph reads

In the US today there will be only one technology story: the iPhone [/FIRSTPAR]

Obviously, thats meant to signal the end of the First Paragraph.
Just a little thing I spotted today that made me smile a little!

From A List Apart…

Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession.

Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

The first ever Web Design survey is almost closed over at A List Apart. If you design, develop, architect, write, break or build websites, please head over and complete the Web Design survey 2007. Over 30,000 people already have.