CHRISdotTODD

Love @ First Website 2009 notes

2009-11-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

For the last five years iSiteDesign has been hosting Love @ First Website (#LFW). It's a half-day event where you get to listen to 3 or 4 speakers share about their business and their website and/or web presence. I've attended 3 of the 5 events and have always taken away a few nuggets. This years theme was "Dare to Delight." My notes follow.

Carri Bugbee
Owner of Big Deal PR; Instructor of Social Media Marketing at Portland State; and ghost tweeter as Mad Men's (AMC) Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) Twitter @peggyolson Lessons:
1. Get there first
2. Stay on message
3. Always listen first
4. Admit when you're wrong; Give credit due
5. Build community; everyone wants to be acknowledge.
6. It's a real job; it's a real tool (i.e. It takes time and effort to have a Twitter/social presence)

Paul Zaengle
Sr. Director of eCommerce, Columbia Sportswear
Columbia Sportswear basics:
1. Make Brand the #1 Focus
2. Be Truly Multi-channel (Zipcar demonstrated this)
3. Think Like a Customer (Zipcar demonstrated this)
4. Provide an Online Experience
5. Overload with Images & Info (i.e. Make sure that you have the content for those who are looking for it)
6. Leverage Content (At Ralph Loren/Polo, each group (offline/online) did all their own photo shoots and other collateral. At Columbia, they all share everything)
7. Socialize (When they [finally] added a Facebook Fan Page, it grew [huge number] on the first day)
8. Build a Scalable, Global Digital Platform
9. Encourage Innovation (They have innovated re-usable boxes, "A Box Life" -- 68% of online orders select to ship in a used boxed: so much that they are running out of used box inventory. All new and used boxes have a trackable re-use sticker, where receivers can log into a website and tell how they are re-using the box they have. This is not Columbia branded, and will shortly open to three other companies.)
10. Look to the Future

Lesley Mottla & Lisa Rigano
Zipcar:
1. Understand your customer experience. ("Eat your own dog food.")
2. Get the basics right and do them really well.
3. One size doesn't fit all. (Different cultures have different things they want/like. E.g. Portland wants bike racks; London wants small cars.)
4. Schedule randomness, spot awesomeness. (You can't do something extra for everyone, but you can schedule time to do something extra for some. They had learned a customer liked Skittles. Onetime when the customer reserved a car, they surprised him by having a bag of Skittles in it for him.)
5. Get out of your own backyard.

Exclude Websites in Your Searches / Custom Searches

2009-10-30T10:58:00.001-07:00

I've been doing quite a bit of research lately on technical topics, where the results would frequently include results from a pay site, Expert Exchange. If you;re familiar with Expert Exchange, they've been very successful in getting their pages to return high in the list of Google results. I have found it very frustrating when I inadvertently click-through on one of their pages.

With a little research, I found that Google has a custom search option, where you can include and exclude certain websites. I have created a custom search that includes all Google results with the exception of Expert Exchange. To make it really useful though, I needed it to be in my search bar in Firefox, which I use almost exclusively for new searches. I found a Firefox Add-on to do that too.

Here's how you can make your own custom search.

If you don't already have one, you must have a Google account.
Go to the Google Custom Search page and click "Create a Custom Search"
I had to start with a search that favored a site, and then returned to their Control Panel to remove the favored search and add the Expert Exchange exclusion.
Test the search
Add the "Add to Search Bar" Add-on to Firefox
After restarting Firefox, right-click on the search box and select "Add to Search Bar..."
Click the down arrow on the search box and select "Manage Search Engines..." so I could move my new custom search to the top.
Test from the Firefox search box.

Of course this is just one of many uses for Google's Custom Search. If you want the same Expert Exchange as I do, you don't need to create your own, you can use the custom search that I've created.

Clean imported Excel data

2009-10-30T10:06:00.001-07:00

Sometimes when I get data from systems in CSV format, it includes a leading apostrophe ('). When viewing the data in a cell, the apostrophe does not appear, but when I look at it in the formula bar, it does. Without removing the leading apostrophe, any comparisons come up false.

I tried removing the first character, but it removed the first displayed character. If you have a numeric field, you can divide the it by 1 (=c2/1), but that doesn't solve the problem for text fields. The solution is a built-in function Clean: =CLEAN(C2).

Windows 7 is (finally) here

2009-10-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Microsoft for their delivery of Windows 7! You can search about anywhere and read stories from all the news outlets. Of course the industry experts have been talking about it for longer, and have reported good things. I think it's worth mentioning a couple good practices when considering new software, particularly when it's an OS.

Unless you have a compelling need, don't be first. In the case of Win7, I think we can be fast followers, but give it a few weeks to be sure there are no significant, unforeseen problems.
Wait and get the OS on a new machine. Why?
- You're likely running XP, which means there's no clear upgrade path -- you need to re-install.
- It's possible your machine is 3 or more years old -- you bought one just before Vista came out, because you knew it had problems, so it's likely underpowered for Win7.
Benefits include:
- Drivers will (should) work on the new hardware.
- You wont have to go through the painful install yourself. (All OS installs are painful, this is not a Win7 issue.)
- You can use your old machine as backup storage, connected it to your TV, and/or give it to Jr.
- Hardware prices will likely drop as we get closer to the holidays. Some experts have reported that manufacturers have over-built.

And somewhat related, if you get a new machine so you can get Win7, and you're considering the low cost netbooks, I highly encourage you not to get one with an Atom processor. The Atom processor is under-powered, and is not up to the task for many common functions -- don't blame Microsoft for that. (The Atom may be okay if you are only reading books and email. For example, it'll likely disappoint you if you are viewing videos online or trying to work in a spreadsheet.)

IE Only - Invalid Argument

2009-10-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

I adopted some older code that I think had been working for some time. This code is part of an admin screen, and as I was testing some improvements I noticed an error with Internet Explorer. Since I predominately use Firefox, I'd never detected the error as a user of the admin screen. Internet Explorer reported the first character as having an Invalid Argument.

The simple code was opening a new browser window. The problem was a hyphen in the window name (Help-Venues).

window.open("venue_all.php","Help-Venues","height=800, width=720,scrollbars=yes")

Firefox 3.5 is embarrassed -- not as stable as Firefox 3

2009-10-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

I had tweeted shortly after Firefox 3.5 was released that it was too unstable for day-to-day work use, and I had to rollback to version 3. Finally after successfully using Firefox 3.5 for about 3 weeks at home I thought I'd give it a go again and upgraded late last week. Today (Monday, 12-Oct-09), I've had two crashes. I suspect it is related to memory usage, as I've had many tabs opened and closed as I do some data cleanup in our CRM system.

Below is the last message upon restarting Firefox. While I'm disappointed and a bit frustrated, Firefox is embarrassed.

We'll see whether this is a consistent problem, forcing me back again, or if other daily tasks workout.

Manage your Contacts

2009-10-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Most of us have Contacts spread among many systems and it takes a lot of effort to keep them in sync or they're not in sync and you find yourself re-entering contacts in each system. With the help of Outlook (2003), LinkedIn, Gmail, My Digital Life, and Contact Scrubber for Outlook, I was able to sync a majority of my Contacts.

Here are the steps I used:

I downloaded and installed the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook. With the toolbar app, I was able to add Contacts from LinkedIn into my Outlook Contacts -- the master list.
Then I used TeamScope's Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge any duplicates that Outlook hadn't already picked up.
Next with the help of My Digital Life blog, I exported my Gmail Contacts and imported them into Outlook.
Again I used Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge duplicates.
Then with the help of My Digital Life again, I exported my Outlook Contacts and imported them into Gmail.

Notes:

Contact Scrubber for Outlook is a Trial that works with 1000 contacts or less. I also had to try twice before getting it to install on my XP computer.
My iPhone keeps sync'd with Outlook, so I had no additional work for my phone.
Over time Outlook and Gmail will accumulate differing new Contacts, but a repeat of the process will bring them back in sync. (With the new LinkedIn Toolbar, those Contacts will keep in sync with Outlook.)

New Survey on Privacy and Tailored Advertising

2009-10-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has posted a recent survey on tailored advertising (“Contrary to what marketers say, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It”) released by professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkley. It was not a surprised to learn that 2/3 (66%) of Americans do not want online tracking. It was a surprise to learn how many did not understand our privacy laws – most assumed they provided more protection.

First I want to dig into the perceptions of our privacy laws as reported in the survey. If a website had a privacy policy, 62% of the respondents thought that meant that your collected data couldn’t be share with other companies. Another 16% didn’t know. Therefore, only 22% knew that a privacy policy was information the website provides on how they may or may not be using collected data about you. Other misconceptions in regards to privacy policies were as follows.
If a website has a privacy policy…

54% assumed that if requested, the website must delete information about you
46% assumed that they have the right to sue a website for violating the privacy policy

Of the 5 questions in all about online privacy, the average score was 1.5 correct answers.

Offline privacy fared very similarly, as survey participants had bad assumptions too, with an average score of 1.7 of 4. For example, 49% assumed that a store cannot sell your address and phone number without your permission.

This survey also debunked the belief that young adults don’t care about their privacy. The 18 to 24 year old group reported more than half the time (55%) that they do not want tailored advertising. It jumps to 86% of young adults against tailored advertising when it is based on data collected about them across multiple website. The number hits 90% for young adults against tailored advertising when the tailored advertising is as a result from following them across multiple website and offline behaviors.

As I had blogged about recently ("How Safe is Your Data?"), this survey also mentions the difficulty of protecting your privacy on websites through regular deletion of cookies, and how it is even more difficult to remove the Flash cookies.

There is much more information in this survey that makes it a good read for Policymakers, Marketers, and individuals with seeking better understanding of Americans’ expectations and perceptions on their privacy. Clearly people expect companies to take their privacy seriously and it’s an easy way to lose their trust. Americans also have expectations that regulations would be in place to protect their privacy.

If you want to get more involved in driving changes to privacy regulations, there are a number of groups in this space including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Consumers Union, and Center for Digital Democracy, among others. In fact I have found a Legislative Primer, September 2009 (13 pages), “Online Behavioral Tracking and Targeting Concerns and Solutions from the Perspective of Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy Lives, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Privacy Times, U.S. Public Interest research Group, The World Privacy Forum.”

Create Hyperlinks in Excel Cells

2009-09-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple trick. Some times I have data results in Excel, if combined with other URL data, it would take me to a specific record. For example, if I extracted Contact Record IDs from Salesforce.com and combined it with the URL prefix, I could view the record that corresponds to the ID.

There are a few different approaches, but it all ends up using the same function: Hyperlink. Hyperlink takes two parameters: link_location and friendly_name (optional). Here are some examples:

=HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2)
=HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE(A2, B2))
=HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("https://na2.salesforce.com/", B2, C2))
=HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2,"Joe Smith")

The link location, in addition to being a URL could be a drive path (c:\foo\), a UNC path (\\Server1\folder1\), or even a "mailto:" (=HYPERLINK("mailto:" & H2)).

CADNA reports on House Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on New TLDs

2009-09-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

In a CADNA newsletter released today, they shared with us the results of the House Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on New TLDs. In addition, CADNA has called for a full-scale audit of ICANN. For history on this issue, see my two prior blog posts here and here.)

Congressional members who were in attendance expressed skepticism about the benefits that the potential TLD rollout...

ICANN held their position that by adding the new, "potentially unlimited" TLDs, will promote innovation and competition. Further they stated that "protection mechanisms are being actively considered." If protection mechanisms are being considered, doesn't that indicate that even ICANN knows there's a problem with this? And if protection mechanisms are needed, wouldn't they wait and finish the work to have appropriate protection BEFORE rolling this out?

Members of Congress pressed witnesses with questions about ICANN’s operations—many raised doubts regarding the benefits of rolling out an unlimited number of TLDs and others expressed concerns that ICANN is not adequately addressing a multitude of complex issues and concerns as it moves forward with the rollout process.

With a week left before ICANN is supposed to roll this change out, with the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) expiring, it doesn't seem like the governement is moving fast enough. And if ICANN needs to wait for the agreement to expire to make these changes, it also points to the fact that the benefits promised really aren't there -- otherwise it seems that it could have been made while the agreement exists.

The Internet Governance Project also has an opinion. They recommend letting the JPA expire and "and immediately initiate an international agreement that formalizes and completes the transition of ICANN to a stable form of multi-stakeholder global governance rooted in a nonprofit corporation." This may well be the right approach, but only if ICANN does not make any policy changes, including rolling out the new TLDs program, until the new agreeement is in place.

This entire topic doesn't seem to get the attention I think it deserves. How is it that a resource such as the Internet, where every governement, business, organization, and consumer uses and looks for ways to utilize the Internet, and yet this (and other issue in regard to the Internet, such as Net Neutrality) get very little main stream attention? I would recommend you share this story with people in your company and organizations who are responsible for marketing and domain name management. Have them become familiar with organizations such as CADNA, the Internet Governance Project, and the EFF, to see how they can look out for the best interest of your organization and your customers (us the consumers).

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

2009-09-21T15:36:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of xkcd.com

Lawmakers asking for information from ICANN

2009-09-21T09:10:00.001-07:00

In July 2009 I wrote about ICANN's plans to expand the Internet's top-level domains (TLDs), and how I and others believes this will have a significant negative impact on companies, big and small. [TLDs are the .COMs, .ORGs, etc at the end of URLs.]

"...companies are already losing over $1 billion annually due to cybersquatters misrepresenting and redirecting traffic on the Internet through taking advantage of URLs not purchased by companies. The proposal being made by ICANN can skyrocket those losses and increase expenses..."

As reported by nextgov.com, 'Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith and Courts and Competition Subcommittee ranking member Howard Coble, R-N.C., said they are worried that a vast expansion of domains will carry "serious negative consequences"...' in a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. Smith and Coble have reiterated the concerns over ICANNs plans for the additional TLDs and have asked for a reponse by September 22, 2009.

While ICANN is trying to become independant, Washington is trying to make the joint project agreeement a permanent relationship. Naturally this is a very contiversial topic, but to date, ICANN has made many mistakes that in the future could be amplified if they were an independant organization.

Back to the topic of expanding the TLDs, there is also an opposing point of view that believes this move is positive. In short, it will give ICANN an influx of money to operate and "new domains will be safer space for trademarks."

My position is still one of not allowing the expansion of additional TLDs. There is a track record of cybersquatters taking advantage of consumers by sucking up TLDs, such as getting .CO and .CM TLDs to capture traffic more typos of .com. ("Out of the 183 [.CM] domains, an astounding 97 percent are owned by a third party—only 6 domain names are owned by the target company.") There also is no real argument for needing more TLDs, when many that are available today are not being used. In fact, as we learned in the .CM situation, the ones that are being purchased are being done for defensive reasons and by third-parties.

To recap the implications -- businesses, big and small, there will be an increased expense by having to buy more TLDs for defensive reasons. And the implication to consumers is the confusion of landing on an alternate TLD (such as .CM), and the cybersquatters that are fooling them into thinking they are at the right place. So my hopes is this latest inquest by lawmakers will lead to stopping ICANN from going forward with their plans for more TLDs.

To read about this and other related subjects, there are several sites you can visit.

CADNA: The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse
ICANN
ICANN News: "your unofficial source for daily ICANN news and commentary"
Domain News: domain name industry news
Internet Governance Project
Search "ICANN news" in Google, Bing, etc.

How Safe Is Your Data?

2009-09-16T09:30:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I worked on a project where I needed to export many of our company contacts. I also expect to be out on medical leave soon, and suspect that there may be a need for someone else to access my computer while I'm away. This made me think about how secure is my sensitive data -- whether my own or the companies.

After reviewing my files, it turns out I've been a bit sloppy -- there were definitely some files on my hard drive that if my laptop was stolen, customer data could be harvested. Mind you it would take some effort, but all the same, the data was accessible. So, I moved those files to my TrueCrypt volume or I deleted them.

As you may recall from a March 2008 blog post, TrueCrypt is a free open-source software that you can run on your computer to provide encryption for your files. The nice thing about TrueCrypt is that the encrypted volume looks and feels just like another hard drive -- anyone can use it.

The other security practice I was already using was keeping my passwords secure. All of us have too many usernames and passwords to remember. (Remember, if you use the same password for every site, then if one password is cracked, they all are.) I use RoboForm (see prior blog post), which allows me to store and easily access my usernames and passwords, all the while being secure by a single master password -- very similar to how TrueCrypt provides a master password for your encrypted files.

So now I've re-instuted secure file management and continue to secure my passwords, but there must be more...

In theory, my email and contacts should be secure if no one has my login. Perhaps some research to better understand the risks and protections might be in order.
The same applies to the access I have to email and contacts on my phone. I've just added a password to my phone, so at least it's a little more difficult to get into it if lost or stolen.
My wireless network has a strong secure password, but if my laptop is compromised, what are my risks? Perhaps some additional research in this area would be good, too.
Of course I keep my OS patched -- auto-notification and dilligence in applying them.
I have current, up-to-date virus protection.
I only ever use Internet Explorer on websites that I know and am required for work.
I keep common plug-ins such as Flash up-to-date.

Looks like I have two areas that require a bit more research, but all-in-all, I'm secure and using good security practices. How secure is your data?

New "Cookies" and your Privacy

2009-09-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

On Monday this week (Sep 14, 2009), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released the first article of a three part series on how we're being tracked on the web today. After a review of cookie technology as originally designed, the EFF article discusses new forms of cookies. The article is rich with links to more detailed sources.

What I would consider the most concerning of technologies is the use of Adobe Flash cookies. Unlike the traditional browser cookie, there is no easy way to delete cookies that are stored by websites using Flash as their storage mechanism (more on this below). I'll also add that all the new "Privacy Browsing" features in the current release of browsers apparently do not always clear all your tracks. If you found this feature helpful in your web browsing, its worth digging deeper into the limitations, and not take the vendors claim of privacy without investigating yourself.

I'm not anti-cookie. In fact I think it's extremely important to providing a good experience when I visit websites, not to mention in using on sites that I develop. What I don't like is third-parties using cookies to track me across multiple sites, and sites that wont allow me to manage cookies as I see appropriate.

There are a few defensive things we can do to help protect ourselves.
If you're a Firefox user:

Go to the Options screen, Privacy tab.
From this screen you definitely want to turn off third-party cookies. [These are cookies coming from www.ad_ad_ad.com when you're on www.content_content_content.com.]
You can also choose any site that you do not want cookies save from at all. [Not a feature I use, but perhaps there are sites that you do not want saving any information, so your next visit you appear as a new visitor.]
You can also tell Firefox to clear cookies whenever you close your browser or to ask everytime you close it.
If you click the "Show Cookies..." button, you can view and clear individual cookies.

If you're a Chrome user:

Go to the Options screen, Under the Hood tab.
Change the Cookie settings to Restrict how third-party cookies can be used.
If you click the "Show cookies" button, you can view and clear individual cookies.

As I mentioned prior, Adobe Flash seems to be the biggest problem here, as Adobe doesn't make it easy to view the Flash cookies or make changes. To get to the Flash Control Panel, you have to go to a website -- http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html. [The domain is Macromedia.com, because Adobe has not moved this since purchasing Macromedia several years back.]

There are six tabs (see all six screenshots at the end of this article). What we're most concerned about is Web Storage Settings (last tab on the right) and Global Storage Settings (2nd tab from the left). Here's my recommendations.

Web Storage Settings:

Go to the Flash Control Panel and click on the last tab.
The list will show you all the sites that currently have stored some sort of data about you and/or your prior visit(s).
Click "Delete all sites" to clear all the Flash Cookies.
I haven't tested the implications, but if you move the storage (slider) to None, it implies that nothing will be captured moving forward.

Global Storage Settings:

Go to the Flash Control Panel and click on the 2nd tab (from the left).
Uncheck Allow Third Party Flash Content to store data on your computer.
Here we see the storage slider again, and if you already moved it to None, it will be at None here, too. What's not clear to me is if there are certain Flash sites that actually need first-party Flash cookies to work. If you've made this change to None, and you have Flash sites that are important to you that fail, you might try adding some storage space back.

I've really just scratched the surface on the current and upcoming issues. I encourage you at a minimum to turn off third-party cookies. If broser privacy is important to you, you probably want to read the EFF article as a launching point for more information.

What Firefox Add-ins are you still using?

2009-09-13T14:57:00.001-07:00

I really like the extensibility that Firefox Add-ins provides for browsing -- it is the only reason I have not switched to using Google Chrome as my primary browser. (Google Chrome is compelling due to it being faster.) With that in mind, I though it would be a good time to review the Add-ins I currently have active in Firefox. These are the Add-ins on my home pc, using Firefox 3.5.

AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox: An absolute requirement for any browser I use on a regular basis. Roboform stores all my usernames and passwords, making it extremely easy to login to all my favorite websites. Roboform has a single master password that must be entered only the first time used during a computing session.
Clear Cache Button: Very convenient way to clear the browser cache when I'm working on new code.
ColorZilla: Perhaps my newest productivity saver. Using ColorZilla, I can sample any color on a webpage and immediately determine its value in hex and rgb.
CoLT: Makes it easy to copy link text and locations.
Cooliris: I've added and removed this several times. Cooliris provides a nice interface for browsing images on your favorite websites such as Picasa and Flickr.
Ctrl-Tab: Firefox tab navigation. If only Excel had this.
Delicious Bookmarks: An easy way to bookmark and retrieve Delicious bookmarks. One of the few toolbars I always have enabled.
Download Statusbar: Provides a tiny download indicator and manager for downloads.
Forecastfox: See current and upcoming weather. Forecastfox is also integrated with sever weather alerts, for easy notification.
FoxClocks: Easy to see the local time for locations all over the world. This is a very flexible add-on that can be placed almost anywhere.
Gmail Manager: Shows me at a glance if I have new email. When I click, it opens a new tab and logs me into my Gmail account. It can also manage multiple accounts.
Hyperwords: Double-click on any word (no need to select it first), and you get a drop-down menu with many choices from getting a definition, to searching, to translating, and more.
IE Tab: Switch page rendering to IE in a single-click. Fortunately at home this is not needed much, but a must use at work.
Java Quick Starter: Reduces the time required for Java Apps to load. Again not a real need at home, but a definite must for work.
NoScript: By default NoScript disables scripts on all web pages. When you visit a page, you can enable scripts based on the domain. There's a lot of extra clicking when you first load, as each of your frequently visited pages needs to be authorized. It's a great tool to block advertising and tracking; in particular from those advertisers that sell on multiple sites, and therefore can gather your aggregated browsing habits. It is also very helpful to test your webpages to see how they work (or don't) if a user doesn't have scripting enabled.
ScribeFire: My newest add-in -- I'm using it for the first time to write this post. ScribeFire provides an editing window within your browser to post to the most popular blogging environments. So far, I'd have to rate it higher than Blogger's own interface.
TimeTracker: Tracks the time I spend online. TimeTracker does a great job recognizing when your browser is open but you're not actually using it.
TinyMenu: A favorite add-on of mine, it provides the ability to compact toolbars and menus. It essentually gave me room to add one more toolbar without taking up any more verticle space.
TwitterFox: Track and post on Twitter
Web Developer: An old favorite, Web Developer is a toolbar with many helpful web development tools.

In addition to these 20 Add-ons, I have a few others that I've left installed, but are disabled:

Firecookie: Helps manage cookies. Requires the Firebug add-in to work.
FireShot: Provides the ability to take screenshots, and edit and save the screenshots. Since I use SnagIt, I never found myself using it, but if you don't have SnagIt, it looked to be a very useful tool.
iMacros for Firefox: Automate various web browsing tasks. A good little tool to test web pages.
RefControl: Control what's sent as the HTTP Referrer on a per site basis. More fun that valuable.

I didn't research all the links for this post. Most should be easy to find if you search for them in Google.

As you can see, I noted a few that I find to be highly valuable. There's roomer that Google is going to add add-in/plug-in support to Chrome, but it's going to take some time to build comparable functionality on top of it. In the mean time, Firefox will continue to be my browser of choice.

Word, "This file contains macros with an expired..."

2009-08-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

I started getting this error message when I opened Word, "This file contains macros with an expired or revoked signature." In my case, this was due to a Global Template Add-in that had an expired certificate. Word behaves differently depending on the Macro Security level.

Very High: You only get a message that macros are disable for this project.
High: You get an initial error message of "This file contains macros with an expired or revoked signature," before the prompt of macros being disabled.
Medium: You get the option to Disable or Enable the specific macro. This dialog box will also provide some clues as to the source of the problem.
Low: No warning or disabling of any macros.

To change the Macro Security, go to Tools >> Macro >> Security...

With an expired Certificate, if you still want to use the macro or template, you either need to set the Macro Security to Medium or Low. A Low setting can open you up for other problems, while Medium requires a click every time you open Word. The best solution is to remove the offending macro and get a new one with an updated Certificate from the creator.

Here's how you remove a Global Template Add-in:

Set your Macro Security to Medium (see above)
Close and Restart Word (and Outlook too, if you use Word as your Email Editor)
Restart Word and note the name of the macro template causing the problem
Go to Tools >> Templates and Add-ins
On the "Templates" tab, in the "Global templates and add-ins" section, find the template or add-in mentioned in the dialog box of step 3, and uncheck it
Click OK
Set your Macro Security back to High
Close and Restart Word

If the problem persists, i.e the template persists, do these additional steps.

Repeat steps 1 - 3 above, and note the name and path of the template (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\STARTUP\sforce.dot)
Close Word (and Outlook if necessary)
Go to the path you just noted and delete the template file
Restart Word

This solved the problem for me; Word seems to be working just fine again.

MS Access -- Run-time error '3464'

2009-08-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

Being that I don't use MS Access often, I always look for examples of my prior work to assist me with my new problem. Today I ran into this error, Run-time error '3464': Data type mismatch in criteria expression, which was a good reminder. When writing a VBA query, Text needs wrapping in quotes, Dates need wrapping in hashes, and numbers need neither of these. If you get it wrong, you'll get the 3464 error message.

Has ICANN Gone Too Far?

2009-07-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.

ICANN is pushing to expand the Internet's Top Level Domains (TLD or gTLD) from its current 21 to some staggering, unspecified new number. TLDs are the .COMs, .ORGs, etc at the end of URLs. "The advantage of all this is there will be many more ways for sites to be described. The question is whether it will really help Internet users or confuse them." asks Saul Hansell in a recent NY Times article. But that's just scratching the surface of the issue.

According to CADNA (Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse), companies are already losing over $1 billion annually due to cybersquatters misrepresenting and redirecting traffic on the Internet through taking advantage of URLs not purchased by companies. The proposal being made by ICANN can skyrocket those losses and increase expenses to try and manage the new TLDs. One estimate predicts an additional $1.6 billion in expenses for the top 1500 companies if ICANN goes forward.

That sounds like a lot of money - $1.6 billion. It is! With ICANNS proposal, if you want to get a new TLD for your company, say for example .TODD, it would cost you $185,000. All of a sudden the leveling of the playing field that the Internet has provided has been shaken up, because most business just can't afford $185,000. Mr. Hansell at the NY Times in his article "The Best Internet Addresses Will Cost a Cool .Million" estimates a cool $500K to $1 million for any given company if they want their own TLD.

Clearly this is a big issue that has folks taking sides. CADNA has members from Nike, HP, Dell, and Marriott, to name just a few, who are pushing back on ICANN. The team working with ICANN is "governments, individuals, civil society, business and intellectual property constituencies, and the technology community." The amount of technical in nature paperwork generated on this is too much for the lay person to go through and make sense of. Fortunately, someone with expertise and resources at his disposal has weighed in. Ken Hittel, Vice President of the Corporate Internet Department at New York Life Insurance Company wrote an article, "Just Wait a New York Minute"

Mr. Hittel makes some interesting points. Here are some of what he covers; click-through to read it yourself.

Do we really need new TLDs? ...New York Life has a relatively small portfolio of about 400 names and 90% of these are not and never will be in use...
Have we really run out of .coms?
How much are the new TLDs going to cost us?
How do the new TLDs benefit the consumer?
Who, then, benefits from the new TLDs?

The benefit seems to be for ICANN and/or "The other party that could benefit would be cybersquatters and online criminals" concludes Mr. Hittel. The "gaming" of this new system has already begun and their is fear that ICANN is not prepared to handle it. In a paper released today, "New gTLDs: Let the Gaming Begin, Part I: TLD Front Running," Michael Palage speaks to the problems already starting and what ICANN needs to protect against.

What can we do? I would suggest a few things to begin with:

Let ICANN know how you feel
Join a group such as CADNA
Spread this with others who care about the impact to their organizations

I'm sure there must be more we can do. If you have additional input on this for the Internet community, let me know.

You're Only Borrowing That Digital Content

2009-07-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

With Amazon's most recent removal of content off of the Kindle, we're reminded that you're only borrowing digital content; not buying it. Farhad Manjoo of Slate wrote a great article, Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, that reviews the limitations and dangers of having digital content.

Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren't really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else.

For me, I'm still buying CDs and paperback books because I like the physical item. I also look for low cost and garage sale DVDs. One day I might not have the choice, but while I do, I choose to own over borrow.

Browser Wars III - Revenge of the ...?

2009-07-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

Since Microsoft killed off Netscape (Browser Wars, the original), most users were not aware of any alternatives until Firefox (FF) came on the scene (Mozilla vs. Godzilla - Browser Wars II). Actually, there was a 3rd browser that was and is quite good, Opera. More recently, Google announce their own web browser, Chrome, while Mozilla had released Firefox 3 (now FF 3.5 is available) and Apple released Safari 4.

Since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 (IE5), I've been quite unhappy with the browser. It has suffered from security holes (predominately due to ActiveX), proprietary solutions (ActiveX again raises its ugly head), and slowness. I've also come to really like Firefox due to its extensibility with Add-ons.

With the popularity of Firefox and now the additions of Chrome and Safari, you could say that Netscape is finally getting their revenge, sort of. Since Firefox came out of the aftermath of Nestcape and the additional fire power of Google and Apple, Microsoft is in for a fight like none before (err, except search, but that's another story).

As users and businesses, why do we care what browse I use or my customers use? I already mentioned my reasons for not liking IE and liking FF, but it doesn't end there. Google and Apple have seemed to pass everyone with the fastest browsers, using the WebKit guts and their own JavaScript engines. Opera is still in the game with their new Opera Unite product. And then there are many sites that require IE, too.

It's all about the experience!

As a user, I am impatient, so I get annoyed when a site is slow. This has led me to avoid IE (and also why I use FoxIt to read PDFs). Some companies that I deal with have forced me to use IE, and therefore have led me to also dislike them too. I don't want to have to run more than one web browser; at work I have to run Internet Explorer, so I have two going at a minimum and 3, 4, or 5, when testing our website.

As a web developer for my organization, I need to decide what browsers I will test for, and what browsers I'll support. My engineering team who develops our products has the same challenges. If we leave out a browse, our customers will blame us. To add a browser, will increase our development costs.

Let me close by saying, I love the new browsers; I love the pressure it has put on Microsoft to either fix IE or get out of the game. What I don't like is having to run multiple browser to get the full web experience I want. Currently Google and Mozilla seem content on co-existing, but how long can it really last? Opera Unite is offering some compelling options not seen in any other browser, but how much longer can they survive? Five years from now... I think we'll have 3 players: Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Until then, Browser Wars III is on, and it promises to have a lot of carnage.

Internet Strategy Forum Summit 2009

2009-07-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

This is not my typical post, but interesting for many of us all the same...
I had the opportunity to attend the Internet Strategy Forum Summit on Thursday July 23rd, 2009, and these are from my notes and some relevant and related links. Don't take the gaps in my notes as a sign of unimportant content -- rather I volunteered at the event, which distracted me some times, and of course I networked with friends and colleagues, which created other distractions. For only $200, this is an event was and has always been well worth the cost.

(Speaker list: http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/events/Internet_Strategy_Forum_Summit_2009_Agenda_as_of_07-14-09.pdf.)

Katherine Durham, HP, VP of Marketing, Imaging & Printing Group

Shifting the Digital Marketing Mindset to Harness the power of an Integrated Approach

"Flat is the new up."

"If content is king, context is queen"

Marketing Mix by Stage in Funnel: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3749801824/.

See notes at from Sarena Regazzoni: http://ow.ly/15ICLg.

And notes from Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester, who spoke later: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/23/how-hp-integrates-digital-and-social-kathy-durham-vp-marketing/.

Sheila Tolle, Intuit

Combining eCommerce and Community: It’s a new normal and there is no going back.

People have always talked, now it's just quicker and permanent

B2B is still B2C, i.e. person-to-person

In their QuickBooks client, they have integrated their community. Looks similar to the Help window that emerges on the right next to MS Office products -- easy to open/close; right next to the product you're working with. [Seems like something we should add to our product roadmap.]

5 Recommendations for Social Media

Listen
Become part of the community
Live your higher purpose, i.e. see your mission statement -- its not just about selling widgets
Create amazing experiences
Embraces the chaos

Social Media. Start listening and have a response strategy -- be there ahead of time, so if you need to respond (to something negative that has gone viral), you're prepared. See this for an example: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-dominos-2009-4. In this case, Dominos was ready.

Social is an opportunity to hear from your customers and it's so much cheaper than bringing in a bunch of customers for testing.

Also see notes from Sarena Regazzoni at: http://ow.ly/15ICLg.

Lisa Welchman, Founding Partner, WelchmanPierpoint

A Gossamer Ceiling for Corporate Internet Executives?

[I used to listen to a podcast she produced on content management. I think she's very competent and knowledgeable in her field.]

Lisa discussed some of the findings from the ISF annual survey on Internet Strategists -- her company sponsored the research.

And back to basics: Be systematic about your web / digital work

Develop a strategy
Must have web governance. It's what makes thinks like Wikipedia work.
Success requires (execution)

Product Manager
Program Management

Measure

Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst Social Media, Forrester

Between these two posts, it seems to cover what he covered in his presentation.

Contextual Ads Blog post: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/06/18/contextual-ads-based-off-social-network-profile-twitter-and-facebook/

Emerging Social Eras (read blog post on this at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/04/the-future-of-the-social-web-in-five-eras.html)

[missed it]
Social application framework

B2B on LinkedIn
Go to where your customers are
Corporate websites fragment to communities

Social colonization: your friends go with you

You use Facebook Connect or OpenID instead of your own sign-on solution / How you get Leads will be different, but the accurracy will be much better
Whether you want it or not, your site will have a community around it; when a user visits, they can see/get feedback about it from their network
See Yahoo!s new home page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3743073022/in/photostream/ - and old: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3743073244/in/photostream/) that just launched as an early example -- Portals are embedded within the Yahoo! Portal.

Social Context

Social contracts - user opts in for exchange of something else

Social Commerce: comunities define furuter products

Johan Jervoe, VP of Creative & Digital Marketing, Intel

Consumers will/are deciding how they want to consume information

Differentiation is as much about doing things differently as it is about doing different things.

Vendor ROI Panel

Craig Macdonald, Covario
Phil Lodico, FairWinds Partners
Justin Kistner, WebTrends
Eric Atkisson, FatWire
Jeff Cram, iSite Design

Craig Macdonald got the conversation really going over how businesses waste so much time of their own and vendors with long RFPs. They have gotten so bad that he no longer responds. This led to a lot of good conversation, which brought out important points about knowing your use cases before shopping for a vendor. Made me think about how bad most organizations are with requirements gathering.

Some advise / lessons did emerge (which weren't new to me), including:

Start small (but with the end in mind).
Don't over buy technology.

Save some fo the money to help you install, configure, operationalize.
Don't buy features and functions that you wont use for another 2 or 3 years. Priorities will change, and what you thought you would need, many never come.

Everyone thinks they're different, so they think they need a custom solution, which increases cost, but typically has low return. Our brand, our product, our message may be different, but the systems and how we manage our business is the same.

Phil Lodico, Managing Partner, FairWinds Partners and VP, CADNA - The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse

[Phil was a sponsor, and had a short 3 minute spot. I also spoke with him later.]

ICANN is pushing to open the TLD (top-level domain, such as .com and .org) space to a virtually unlimited number. They want to sell these to the top bidder. For example, Chase could buy .bank and therefore have a URL of http://chase.bank. The question is, what happens to BoA, Citi, and other banks? If this goes forward, the likely scenario to play out would cost companies billions of dollars. It is the belief of CADNA that the only winners are ICANN and cyber squatters.

[This reminds me a lot of the net neutrality issues, and I expect that I'll be doing some more research and discovering around this. Watch for a potential post in the future on this subject.]

Duane Schultz, VP of Interactive Marketing, Xerox

Web experience must cover the entire integrated experience before its put on the website. i.e. just a web page without the strategy and supporting processes will not get on the site.
Build standards. Takes labor and time.
(see Lisa Welchman: #2 Web Governance -- #1 and #2 seem to be talking at that point.)
Measure the results end-to-end.

Chris Dill, CIO, Portland Trailblazers

Lots of technology happening. Current project will use CMS to run menu screens in Rose Garden. Provides flexibility to do more than menus. e.g.

Brand menu for event
Remove beer off of menu after 3rd quarter, since that is when they quit selling
After the game, replace with arrows to exit and promos for upcoming events

CRM is a new and important technology for sports teams

Have moved Courtside Monday night to be delivered over the Internet. Cost reduction and wider reach for Blazers. I like because I can see the video version without having Comcast.

===================================

Needless to say, there was a wealth of information and networking. This is a Twitter stream graph for the #isf09 tag: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/3750563314/sizes/o/. You get an idea of the popular topics and speakers.

Online Discounts with Coupons

2009-07-08T22:15:00.001-07:00

Here's a little tip to save a bit.

When you purchase online, and you see the box for "coupon" or "coupon (if available)", this is your clue to search for a coupon and get yourself a discount. In most cases you can enter "[company name] coupon code" into Google, and you will find a site with a coupon code.

A coupon code for my most recent online purchase saved me 6% off the total price.

Adobe Photoshop CS Hangs on Load

2009-07-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

One day when I tried to load Photoshop CS on my Windows XP box, it hung. I don't recall having it crashed on my prior usage. I tried killing the app, closing my other apps, and loading again. Still no help. I next tried rebooting; again no help.

After searching a bit, I found a solution within a thread on Photoshop 911. I removed all ".psp" files from the "Adobe Photoshop CS Settings" folder -- I just moved the files into a temporary folder. Photoshop recreate 3 files when I launched it:

Adobe Photoshop CS Prefs.psp
Favorites.psp
PluginCache.psp

Depending on your specific XP installation, you may or may not find the "Adobe Photoshop CS Settings" folder in this location:

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\8.0\Adobe Photoshop CS Settings

Where [username] is your login username.

Excel displays formula instead of calculating

2009-06-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a new one I just ran into. I entered a new formula into a cell, and it just displayed the formula, instead of calculating the results. It turns out the problem was due to the field being formatted as a Text field. Unfortunately, just by changing the field to a Number does not solve the problem. You must change the field to a Number and then re-enter the formula.

Concatenate and Combine Access Rows

2009-06-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

I was working with a dataset in Access, where I had a single field that was different to an otherwise exact data row. I wanted to merge these rows, so I had a unique record; I wanted the single field of different data to be concatenated together, as to not lose the data.

I was able to create a VBA function that I then called from a query to perform the merging of rows. It does have one shortcoming -- if you have duplicated data in the field you are concatenating, it may miss it and add it again. Here's what I mean:

Removed Duplicates: Data order a, a, a, b, c -- output = a, b, c
Creates Duplicates: Data order a, b, a, c, a -- output = a, b, a, c, a

Note that given the time/effort, you could improve my function to remove all duplicates.
Here's the function. Press Alt-F11 to get to the VBA Editor.

Public Function Concat(email As String) As String Dim rs As DAO.Recordset Dim strSQL As String Concat = "" strSQL = "SELECT [Some ID] FROM MyTable WHERE [Email Address] = '" & email & "';" Set rs = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(strSQL, dbOpenSnapshot) Do While Not rs.EOF If Concat <> "" Then ' check for duplicate If Left(Concat, Len(Concat) - 2) <> rs("[Some ID]") Then Concat = Concat & rs("[Some ID]") & ", " End If Else Concat = Concat & rs("[Some ID]") & ", " End If rs.MoveNext Loop 'remove last ", " Concat = Left(Concat, Len(Concat) - 2) Set rs = Nothing End Function

In your query call the function and pass the lookup variable -- in my case, it's an email address. See "Public Function Concat(email As String) As String" -- Concat is the function name and email is that variable that you are passing. The variable strSQL uses the email address passed to the function. Here's the expression in my query:

Expr1: Concat([MyTable]![Email Address])

I found this to be a valuable solution that can be re-applied to several situations in working with data in Salesforce.com.