Tangential Ramblings

There are a number of big companies that seem to have shares in the domain registration business. Search for Nissan on Google, and in addition to www.nissanusa.com (the official site), www.nissanmotors.com, www.nissan.co.uk, www.nissan.co.jp, www.nissandriven.com, www.nissan-europe.com, www.nissan.com (nothing to do with Nissan Motors), www.nissan.ca, www.nissan-global.com and www.nissan.be complete the first page of results.

While most companies seem keen to proliferate geographically-based domains, Nike has based its domains around activities - in addition to www.nike.com, there's www.nikefootball.com, www.nikegolf.com, www.nikebasketball.com, www.nikecycling.com etc. They also differentiate by gender, although there is no male equivalent to www.nikewomen.com.

I've been troubled by this brand-dilution for a while, but www.adidas-1.com (the first intelligent footwear) was the one to compel me to post.

At first, I was under the impression that this behaviour was driven by technical issues - having a single domain fed by multiple infrastructures and content delivery engines could be quite a challenge. But this can easily be managed at the DNS level through sub-domain entries. Yahoo!'s regional domains all redirect to subdomains of the yahoo.com domain (e.g. www.yahoo.co.uk goes to http://uk.yahoo.com), each of which could easily be served by a different system.

With this excuse out of the window, I can think of only two other reasons why this behaviour might be so widespread:

- The standards (limitations?) imposed by the corporate site are perceived too limiting for the sub-site's specific needs
- The chosen domain (www.adidas-1.com) is perceived to be cooler than a sub-domain of or sub-directory within the corporate one (e.g. http://1.adidas.com, www.adidas.com/1).

The combination of these two reasons explains why there are over 3,000 .gov.uk domains. Who knows - maybe they're up to 4,000 by now.

The benefits of adhering to the standards imposed by the corporate centre outweigh the associated limitations. By creating a whole bunch of "campaign" sites, sites that often stray from brand guidelines, short-term localised goals are met, but at the detriment of the brand itself. No wonder the UK government struggles to develop a powerful brand with so much distraction.

Check out www.nikegolf.com and www.nikefootball.com. The only commonality between the two sites is that you have to disable pop-ups to get beyond the homepage - how to reduce your audience by 70% without thinking. Surely it would be more powerful if they were skinned in a similar way

Did you ever see a woman coming out of New York City with a frog in her hand,
I did, don't you know, and don't it show?

Nice and brief (and surreal) from Mr. Bolan.

I'm always somewhat baffled by the fact that every web service seems compelled to offer an email service alongside its core offering.  Whatever I sign up for, flickr to share photos being my latest example, Friends Reunited being another, as well as being able to share photos/contact old friends, I can access yet another email account.  Do they really believe that I'll decide to use my flickr account as my primary email account, informing all my friends of my new contact details?

Leave mail to the experts - Google, Yahoo!, AOL, your local ISP or Rob.  Concentrate on your core offering and make that as good as it can be, rather than trying to create an all-encompassing world that locks me in.  My view is that offering a bunch of services in parallel to your core offering will dilute the offering as opposed to increasing people's loyalty.  I'm not going to go to Friends Reunited unless I want to contact an old school-friend.  I'm not going to flickr unless I want to share some photos.  And if I want to update my professional contact details, I'll pop along to Linked In.

There are two types of loyalty as I see it: positive loyalty and negative loyalty.  Positive loyalty makes the consumer happy to be using a company's services.  In the UK, I have a loyalty to BP (not sure why), Sainsbury's over Tesco, the Gap, Tetley (beer) to name but a few.  Negative loyalty occurs when people use the service, but only because they can't get out of it.  Apart from annoying the hell out of me, this is why I've never signed up to AOL.  They lock you in through their browser and software, and using the internet at my parents' house always frustrates me hugely for this very reason.  Doing anything outside the world of AOL is hard work, too hard, they hope, for you to bother.  For a while back in the early 90s, BT was in a similar position.  In a similar way, Microsoft has done the same, although I'm much happier with the world that they have created.

Although not directly related, in the offline world, the offering of services in parallel to a company's core offering reminds me of the fact that shoe repairers also cut keys.  From a user perspective, it's rare that the two services are needed at the same time.  The lathe (to buff-up the shoes and cut the keys) is the only common element.  I wonder if there are any shops that specialise in one or the other?

I remember when Directgov went live, I was proud that "I'd" made the BBC News Homepage, as its launch was the top technology article, and a link to the story surfaced towards the bottom of the page.  (I experience a similar glow when I see links to the Department of Health site from the BBC's Health section, as I came up with the suggestion of it changing domains (from www.doh.gov.uk to www.dh.gov.uk) to be in line with its offline brand and to make the migration headache that much more bearable.)  Today, I've gone one better.

I rarely submit comments to websites, but Pete Clifton's article last week inspired me to put fingers to keyboard.  In spite of receiving "hundreds of emails", mine was one of the few he chose to reference, which made me grin widely.  The fact that the article is linked to from the homepage with a teaser picture is even better.  Ooops - there I go, grinning again.  (Note: must stop smiling to myself in the office.  People [will] think I'm weird.)  For those of you that are too busy/can't be arsed to read it all, I can be found in the "You were saying..." section almost halfway down.  "There must be hundreds of Dans in New York", I hear you say, but no others that would write to the BBC about inline links, is my retort.  Nice to hear that he's in agreement with me.  Obviously, my site constitutes a 'conversational column', and so I break my own rule :)

Slightly concerned for Alicia Hempleman-Adams in her bid to emulate her father David by walking to the North Pole.  Two points in particular concern me:

- "She will be joined by her PE teacher Jo Simmonds"
- "It's going to be pretty cold...", a quote from Alicia.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't think being a PE teacher necessarily qualifies you to venture to the North Pole.  I suppose, however, that Jo's geography skills will be up to scratch, given that it seems to be a pre-requisite academic subject for PE teachers to adopt.  As for it being pretty cold, I think she might be right.

Some time ago, my iPod lost a significant amount of charge potential, seemingly overnight. However, I've not got round to replacing it, what with one thing and another. Instead, I charge it every night, and the limitation has also forced me into a new way of listening.

I used to regularly put my 5,814 tracks on random, pressing the >>| button whenever I heard the intro. of a song I didn't like/know. This is expensive from a battery perspective, as the cache/buffer system becomes redundant due to the unpredictability of what's coming next. Nowadays, I'm more likely to select an artist, a playlist or an album and hear it through, which conserves the battery greatly.

I recently downloaded a compilation of Little Britain from iTunes: almost 2h30m for around $7. This was based on a reminder of its brilliance by my Mum. The problem is the fact that it comes as a single track, but I've listened the once, and it was a true pleasure, both to remember the characters and to appreciate once again that British humour. I'm still shocked that Benny Hill gets airtime on BBC America. Completely forgot that the American version of The Office aired tonight on NBC. Will have to tune in next week to see whether it lives up to its British equivalent.

For those of you interested, it may be worth checking out Pete Clifton's weekly posts over the coming weeks.  He promises to give some insight into the inner workings of the BBC site.  I'm sure it will be more from an editorial perspective than one of technology, but I'm sure it will be fascinating to get a glimpse into this world.

The Office of the e-Envoy hosted a conference just over a year ago, at which someone from the BBC presented on the challenges they faced in this area - it may have been Pete who gave this keynote speech.  I was gutted not to be able to attend, due to the coinciding targeted go-live of my project.  Circumstances beyond my control meant that even if the conference had gone on for three months, I would have still been back to the office in time for go-live.

Just 'bladed uptown to 12th/13th and Greenwich Avenue to pick up some take-away dinner - fish and chips, actually. The place is called A Salt and Battery. I'm sure my Dad's smiling internally at such a wonderful pun.

They forgot to put the baked beans in the bag though, so next time we go, we get a free meal on the house, which is nice. Would've liked the baked beans, though! If this was in the UK, it would be a below-par chippie, but alone in New York, it stands out and it was a welcome reminder of home. Benny wouldn't approve, though - no deep-fried ribs on the menu.

When you get to the area bound by the Westside Highway, West 14th Street, Sixth Avenue and West Houston Street, the world goes a little bit mad. This is Greenwich, or the Village. Greenwich Street and Greenwich Avenue being so close to one another I'm sure is just a cynical ploy to confuse you (or me at least). It's also somewhat disconcerting to find a section of West 4th Street north of West 12th Street, and West 11th Street and West 4th Street intersecting at right-angles. I think I'd be OK if everything was named rather than trying to maintain numbers in this mixed-up world. Finding things takes me way longer here than anywhere else in Manhattan.

(BTW, I've just noticed that the ordinal numbers assigned to streets and avenues take on different behaviours. The streets always take the numerical version (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th 5th Street etc.), while the avenues always take the written version (First, Second, Third, Fourth, right up to Eleventh Avenue). Interesting. I remember the episode of Seinfeld when Kramer dates a woman from downtown, equating this to a long distance relationship. When stumbling across First Avenue and 1st Street, he thinks he's at the nexus of the universe. While trying to find a link to a page about this episode (and failing), I googled seinfeld kramer "first avenue" "first street" only to get a single result - that of my own site - that's before I even posted this article. Freaked me out a little. I digress.)

It's been a rather alcohol-infused week thus far, so tonight is a rest day (in Tour de France speak). Tuesday, I went out for a meal with Claire, daughter of my old boss Chris - the word old here refers to the fact that he's no longer my boss as opposed to his age. Feel free to comment. After getting a bit confused on the subway (my fault - too busy chatting), we went to Penang on Spring Street for a nice Malaysian meal (as its name would suggest), kindly paid for by Chris. Thanks, Chris! Washed down with a bottle of wine and then on to Puck Fair for a couple more beers/glasses of wine (delete as applicable). I then ensured Claire got back to the hostel safely (no mean feat, since it was on 103rd street) before heading home myself - how chivalrous! Had a great night, getting home at 1:30am - ho hum!

Both affected slightly more than one would expect by the alcohol intake. I had a dull head the following morning, although it seems Claire was in a way worse state.

Then Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, so felt compelled to go drinking at work's local bar. Another good night with a surprisingly clear head to follow today.

Our apartment is the building directly below the Empire State, facing on to the area of parkland, the furthest of the two adjacent red buildings.  Thanks to Claire for the rights to use this :)

The words from The Beatles' All You Need Is Love have been voted the greatest words of all time. I mean, please!

First of all, while I love words, it's a rather farcical competition. Secondly, the song starts with:

- Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

And this is the chorus:

- All you need is love, all you need is love,
- All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

So OK, the interim verses are a little better, e.g.:

- There's nothing you can do that can't be done,
- Nothing you can sing that can't be sung,
- Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game,
- It's easy.

...and admittedly, it beats the trite that is Imagine, but is this really the best of the best of the best? We're not talking songs here, we're talking words. To put this into perspective, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" came tenth. Churchill's "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few" came fourth. Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress me Much" seventh.

(That last entry was artistic licence on my part. Her lyrics were not included in the competition, although I'm sure that if they had, they would have stormed it.)

I was quite surprised to read the headline 'Blind new Ajax boss', but then read on...

A very interesting article written by Pete Clifton, Editor of the BBC News website.  I remember seeing the image of the murdered Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov on Tuesday, and drawing a short breath at the reality of it.  Not least because it was the lead story, with the image being surfaced at the top of the BBC's news homepage.  I briefly questioned the BBC's editorial decision, but then realised that this was one of the reasons the BBC is the most respected news organisation in the world.

I'd never really thought about it, but he points out that there is no 9pm watershed on the internet.  Articles are either there or they're not, so binary judgment has to be made as to whether content can be submitted.  I wonder how workflow works on their homegrown site to enable this.  I would hope that there's a healthy balance between editorial flare and responsible publishing.

It's also interesting to read that the first four paragraphs of news stories are also fed to other media, including Ceefax, the BBC's now archaic text-based TV offering.  I wonder how its readership has changed with the advent of the internet and digital TV - when will they pull the plug?  It would be intriguing to find out how much integration work has been done at the BBC: how much of this is done automatically, and how much needs to be copied and pasted from one system to another?  I remember discussions surrounding the possible integration of Directgov's digital TV and web services 18 months ago.  The systems were not particularly compatible, nor was the content being delivered to each, so the decision was made to divorce the two.  If the reverse decision had been made, would it be live yet?  Who knows?

From a commonsense perspective, why would you separate the delivery of these two channels?  Content is content is content, so surely it makes sense to write once, deliver many.  However, each of the devices that you have to cater for - the web, kiosks, PDAs, digital TV, WAP (?), an intranet, maybe even paper - has such differing qualities and make-ups that doing this is hard.  I often heard the rule of limiting the number of words on a digital TV page to 40, which does not sit comfortably alongside the content-rich articles that you can easily digest on the web.  Such differences in content rules, security requirements, screen size etc. also have an impact on information architecture - imagine trying to get the BBC News site's IA in all its glory on to WAP, for instance.  Layer on top of this the BBC's decision to offer myriad language alternatives, and you have a multi-dimensional problem that must be great to be a part of.

In the Pete Clifton article, there is an extract from a letter from English teacher Henry Pfister (made up name?) which single-handedly explains the current state of the British education system.  His use of my favourite Latin intervention is lovely.

Robbo's in splendid form this week with his analysis of the week's football - from Mourinho to Delia, from Ruud van Nistelrooy to Westlife. A great read, and I'm still surprised that the BBC let him get away with some of the comments, particularly the patronising response to Laura Warren.

It's been a busy week at work, with some exciting times in my project and delivering a thoroughly enjoyable Excel training session for my North American colleagues. Hopefully more of that to come. I maintain that Excel 5.0 was the best package ever written, and still love using its successors twelve years after its release and 16 years after my spreadsheet inauguration.

Football (for me) has been cancelled for the last few weeks, as there seems to be a direct correlation of late between snowfall and Tuesdays in New York. Somewhat annoying, but hope to get back into it over the coming weeks, as the weather hopefully gets a bit warmer.

England broke their duck in the rugby this afternoon, while Newcastle continue to perform in Europe. Slightly odd that Newcastle are still in the running for two trophies in March. I'm sure all this will change over the coming months. Hopefully we'll get through tomorrow's game against Spurs, but with Man. Utd. and Arsenal making it to the last four, it reminds me of their back-to-back losses in 1998 and 1999.

Last weekend saw the first proper 'blading of the 'season', with a trip up the pathway that tracks the westside highway. I went from Chambers Street up to the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier at 46th Street and back again (seven mile round-trip). I spotted one of the retired Concordes nestled by the side of the mighty Intrepid - tiny in comparison. Not sure whether it's a permanent feature or just here for a visit. When I turned back for home, I realised that I'd been pushed up to 46th by the wind, and the trip back was much more demanding with the wind in my face. My attempts to keep up with the Norwegian ocean liner that was heading down the Hudson were so in vain.

Although it would be great to see the Jets come to Manhattan, and to have a world class sporting venue on the island, I'm opposed to the westside stadium project for two reasons, both selfish:

- The project is a fundamental part of New York's 2012 Olympic bid. French train staff seem to have scuppered Paris' chances of hosting it. It would be good if New York was also knocked off the list giving London a better chance of winning. I have a feeling it might go to Madrid, though, which would also be cool
- I'm sure that if the stadium project went ahead, the 'blading run down the west side would be affected. One day, hopefully this summer, I aim to go from Chambers Street all the way up to the George Washington Bridge (which is at 178th Street) and back - a 20 mile round-trip.

A fascinating article in today's Observer about Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant from Kent. While not autistic (as far as I'm aware), I do share some of his traits.

He once recalled pi to 22,514 decimal places. Although this is a mean feat, I'm wondering what caused him to stop at 22,514. It doesn't strike me as being a particularly significant number - I'm sure he could have made it up to 32,768.

He talks about seeing numbers as shapes, and calculations meld these shapes together to create new shapes that represent new numbers - that sounds fascinating; it would be great to be able to do that.

At the same time, there are some significant drawbacks. There is too much mental stimulation at the supermarket which means that instead of deciding which cheese to buy, he's too caught up investigating shapes and textures, arrangements of fruit etc. That must be so frustrating.

He was born on 31 January 1979, and seems content with the fact that 19, 31, 79 and 1979 are all prime. Yeah, but 1 (January) isn't! I was born on 19 July 1973, and am proud that 7, 19, 19 (again), 73 and 1973 are all prime - I'm the only person in my family who can boast this. (My brother's got a couple of perfect squares and my mum has one too. My dad has a perfect cube to his name. Happy Mother's Day, Mum, btw!)

My favourite part of the article is the following quote:

"I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing - in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends."

I know what he means.

The Onion is always a good source of amusement when you've got nothing better to do, and this article was possibly its best to date.  It's worth reading the whole thing, as there are some gems throughout.

In the actual news arena, two stories have caught my eye of late.  First of all, a woman in Iran is hoping to divorce her husband on the grounds that he has not washed for a year.  Fair enough, I would've thought.  And in Tyneside, 40 kids have been suspended from school for throwing snowballs.  The best part of the article was the quote from head teacher Kenneth Dwyer, who was reportedly "fed up to the back teeth".

Finally, my pearlies are now in place, and looking wondrous.  It still feels a little odd having no gap between my teeth, and my speech needs a little work, especially when pronouncing Ss and Fs, but other than that, things are marvellous.  What many considered to be perfect before has been improved.  (That last comment was put in just to test the Comment feature.  Either it's stopped working, or none of my recent posts have been sufficiently thought-provoking.)

My site doesn't get much traffic, but February was its biggest month since records began, seeing almost 16,000 hits from 2,400 visits.  I'm always particularly interested in where people are hitting the site from.  Below is a snippet.

- Switzerland, with 110 hits, was the biggest country besides the UK and the US whence most of my traffic came; followed by...
- Australia: 107 (thanks, Rob)
- Japan: 31
- Mexico: 20
- France: 17
- Italy: 16
- Austria: 15
- Argentina and the Czech Republic: 14 apiece
- Poland: 12
- Germany and the Netherlands: 10 each
- Hungary: 8
- Seychelles: 8 - that baffles me
- Canada, Singapore and Taiwan: 7 each
- Sweden: 6 (Patrik?)
- Belgium, Norway: 5
- Peru, Romania: 4

I found out this week about Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. It seems almost as ridiculous as some of the Starbucks orders that you hear. Surely there comes a point at which the flavours merge into one, or the bottle becomes too small (relatively) to support the associated signage. Can't wait for the caffeine-free, low-carb. version.

A stroke of genius last night from Andrea Arnold, a British animator, who declared her Oscar to be the Dog's Bollocks. Until today, I was unaware that this phrase, along with its last word solo, are unheard of Stateside. None of the native Americans in the office had heard the B word. It seems that ABC was flummoxed by the word's meaning, and as such, it crept through the time-delay that has been imposed on such events since the JJ right-breast incident. I laughed, especially after the concern over Chris Rock's tongue.

Dental visit four of five this evening went very well. My front teeth had arrived back from the Brooklyn manufacturers. I had a fitting - a dress rehearsal if you like - and it was incredible. They looked so much better than their predecessors. I've asked for a small change, which will be made tomorrow when they're sent back to be glazed. Visit (and payment) five on Thursday evening to get the finished product. Can't wait! However, speaking with the new teeth was a challenge at first. For the last 31 years, seven months and nine days, when I've pronounced the F sound, air has come through the gap between my too front teeth. With the new ones, it didn't, which was a bit of an issue. Apparently it takes a couple of days to sort this out.