Simon Griffiths Blog

AppleTV

Having been frustrated with the AppleTV in my last post, I have got a workaround which seems to do the job for me.

In iTunes preferences, click on the advanced tab. At the bottom of the first section is the checkbox to “Copy files to the iTunes folder when adding to library”. Unchecking this box allowed me to add the videos stored on my external hard drive into iTunes, without overloading my laptop. From there they then synced over to the AppleTV, and seem to stay there even when the hard drive is disconnected from my laptop.

Okay, I’ll admit it’s hardly ideal! I am hoping that by using appropriate commands I won’t get files littering my hard drive, but at least it makes the AppleTV useful!

I got an AppleTV the other day and have got it all hooked up. It is very slick, but really annoying in one respect and unfortunately that is why I actually bought it.

First I should explain that I have a small child, so the first thing I like to do with a new DVD is back it up. This is from experience of knowing it can last anything from a week onwards.

Obviously this gives me a management problem. I usually put films on my 80gb iPod video and that is very full. I now either delete ones he doesn’t want to watch anymore, or back them up to an external drive using Senuti to pull them off the iPod. I have a MacBook with a 120gb drive which only has 10gb left so I don’t have the option of keeping them on my mac.

So I bought the appletv with a 160gb hard drive so I could move the films off the iPod and onto the appletv. Trouble is that the sync is either automatic or semi-automatic. No manual management.

That means that I am effectively only able to use a few GB of the drive, unless of coarse I buy everything again from the iTunes store. This seems really odd on apples part. Why would you do it one way for the iPod and another for appletv?

The end result is that I really can’t use the atv to anywhere near it’s full potential. So I am left with a choice of using a device that should work for what I need it for, but doesn’t or hacking it so it will work!

What to do, what to do! Any advice out there?

Pushing wireless internet to faster and is probably a master move from Telstra. Increasing the speed of wireless seems to make it more and more attractive to the user (obviously there are the limits per tower). However the big strategy seems to me to be that a wireless network has high latency making VOIP next to useless. This means that it is fine for browsing, but Telstra maintains its stranglehold on the public which would need to keep their landlines.

Obviously this is great for Telstra shareholders, which the board of Telstra reports to at the end of the day, but useless for customers. Just one more reason why structural separation is probably the only way to go.

I have particular experience of this trying to use Skype video conference with someone using a wireless dongle in the UK. Both systems report 8MB down, but there is a huge issue with dropped packets on their end.

** UPDATE 24 November 2009**

There are now a few options available if you are looking for a portable wifi router using a wireless signal, and a battery to allow access on the road.

If you live in the states there is the excellent mifi device that uses the Verizon network, however for the rest of us that doesn’t seem to be available elsewhere.

Thankfully the king of wireless access sticks, Huawei has now come up with it’s own device, the snappily named E583X. This is a great little device allowing up to 3 users (laptop, iPhone and iPod!) and has a built in battery that is said to last 5 hours. I have to say that it looks cool too.

In Australia you can get one of these from Virgin Mobile for as little as $19 per month (post paid only it seems) for 1GB, $29 for 2GB and $34 for 5GB. Quite a bargain! Note though that Virgin uses the Optus network which is already a bit clogged with iPhone users.

What this will allow you to do is: -

• Use your iPhone/iPod Touch and Skype as a cheap way to make calls without an iPhone (hopefully the service will be up to this).
• Play wifi games on your iPhone, iPod Touch
• …and access the internet while out and about without having one of those dongle plugged in all the time.

** OLD POST **

A good while ago I posted about wanting a wireless router that would retransmit an internet connection from a USB dongle. That way I could use my iPod Touch on the go. At the time there was really only a company in the US making these and they didn’t have good data for Australia (although I believe it would have worked).

Well 3 have just launched the device I have been waiting for I think. Their page details the router which even looks quite slick.

3 router

My only concern was that they don’t mention whether it is powered or not, and I can’t find any tech specs. I finally phoned up their support and you have to plug it in! Nightmare, it’s a portable router that isn’t portable!

I have been playing with Google Chrome for a few days now and for the most part have enjoyed the experience. However there are areas which essentially mean that I will not use it as my default browser but and will only keep it for testing.

I won’t go through all the good points. I have to say though that I like the interface, even though it doesn’t really match the standard windows ‘chrome’. I haven’t however found it that fast in fact it seemed to open Google docs slightly slower than Firefox, although I have not timed this to be sure.

So what would stop me using Chrome? If I discount the very very dodgy EULA, I still think security is a major problem. In Safari there is a default privacy setting that ensures 3rd party cookies cannot get into the system, and this is on by default. All other browsers have similar settings, although most aren’t on by default. However Chrome doesn’t have a similar setting, and instead has a rather dubiously named ‘treat 3rd party cookies differently’ or something of that order setting. Not only is it not clear what this actually does, but it seems clear that it doesn’t block 3rd party cookies going out. This is of coarse exactly what Google subsidiary Double Click would want, but it is not good for consumers and their privacy.

My second and biggest reason not to use Chrome, is that it seems to be aimed squarely at Firefox, as there is no way that the large majority of IE users will ever switch. So why would Google take aim at Firefox? In my opinion the main reason could be the much smaller announcement of Firefox Ubiquity about a month before.

If you haven’t had a play with Ubiquity you really should. It is a bit like the launchers available on the Mac. What I mean by that is that you open up a dialogue box with a keystroke and then type a command. This allows you access to functionality in a few keystrokes. With Ubiquity you can add maps into gmail, add calendar items and much more all by typing a few keys. Note that most of the functionality here is to do with Googles apps. and this tool allows you to bypass Googles own interface in many cases. This you would think isn’t a bad thing, but it is where Google makes its money with its ads.

The reason for Chrome could therefore be a shot across the bows for companies trying to bypass Googles ads rather than a particular desire to make a better apps browser.

I tried the new Google Chrome browser yesterday and went to one of my sites to test it. I was amazed when it through up a malicious site warning so went to investigate.

What I found was some code had been added after the closing HTML tag on the page which pointed to Google-analysis. At first I thought this was some odd response of a beta browser to google analytics but on further investigation found it to be a Trojan.

At this stage I thought it could have been either our ISP trying to track our usage or our host, so I uploaded the page again and the problem disappeared. In further investigation I found that our hosting provider Smartyhost has had problems with this as far back as March of this year, and there was quite a few reports of infections and reinfections after the code had been removed.

I phoned up smartyhost support and asked them to explain why this had happened, why it has not been fixed 6 months later and why they had not informed their customers. The guy couldn’t really answer but said to stop reinfection I should change my password, and write a complaint by email.

First I went to change my password and found that I was warned not to do that due to certificate issues as I logged in. I know that smartyhost have taken the thankfully unusual approach of signing their own certificate, but am unsure if this is the problem or they have further infections. Eventually I decided I was not game to do this.

Having had all these issues I sent what I think was a strongly worded but business like email to them asking for a response in 4 hours, which I think is reasonable especially as they have had 6 months to work up a stock reply. 6 hours later and no response.

The moral of this story is that Smartyhost does not seem able to cope in any way with this sort of issue and I would strongly advise you to think twice before using them. If you are already with them I would probably say change your passwords if you date and get out fast!

I was sat in a meeting last Friday, which was looking at a spreadsheet showing data, and going over a presentation that will be made this week.

There was a couple of things that I thought were interesting. I was using my iPod Touch to view the spreadsheet, and my colleagues were using printouts and scribbling on them. When we got onto the presentation 4 people were taking the same notes going over what should be said. You could argue that this wasn’t the most efficient way to conduct a meeting, but imagine this future.

We are sat around discussing the spreadsheet, and I am able to make changes on the fly on a tablet, which are then reflected in the others versions they are looking at on their screens. When we get to the second bit, everyone can write notes about the presentation and these are reflected on all the screens. One person taking notes and that person can change.

I guess you can probably do this now, but a small tablet, a bit bigger than an iPhone, would be a great form factor. Not too big to stop you bringing it to a meeting, not so small that it is hard to manipulate. Using fingers and being able to type on a screen based keyboard also gives you a lot of flexibility that a tablet system cannot. Sounds like a large iPhone to me!

Sharing could be similar to the iChat screen sharing facility. Easy to set up and powerful.

Now image that at $600, just the right price point for a company to buy all their employees. A paperless, environmentally friendly office at a relatively small intro price. Now image Apple finally in the corporate environment!

In these days of tighening economic conditions you would think that business owners would jump on every opportunity to develop relationships and respond to enquiries. However it seems that is not the case online. In a recent study it was found that 59%, yes that’s fifty-nine percent of Australian companies did not answer an enquiry within 7 days of it being sent.

Now at this point I have to say that as a user of those systems, I am not surprised at all, but on the other hand, even the successful criteria was a response within a week…a week!!! If I send a web enquiry I want it answering fast, or I’ll send it to someone else. A week is hardly fast in anyones reckoning.

As an example, I have recently had an experience where I have sent 2 web enquiries to Xerox Australia, neither of which was replied to. However in their defense, I also left a phone message and they didn’t reply to that either! What I don’t understand is that at best this is leaving our customers thinking we don’t value them, and at worst they just go elsewhere.

In the company I work for, we currently generate quite a few web enquiries, many of which I know don’t get followed up. The sales manager for one of the states has told me “I know those that are worth replying to, all the others are just looking for a price”… no shit Sherlock! In reality what he actually means is that if he doesn’t know them already he is not interested.

So having said how bad we are at handling web enquiries, what can we do to resolve the situation?

Well first thing is to make sure when you design your enquiry system, be prepared for the enquiries that result. Have a system prepared for how you are going to handle what is coming in. That might be a fully automated system, semi automation, a manual system with templates set up, or even having a follow up system with your sales team which they must feed back into within a given time.

If you want to get specific the following may be of some help: -

Customer service

Customer service, unlike an enquiry for a product should be something you are looking to reduce. If your customer service is right first time, there will be very little need for people to contact you. There is also a rule that says if they are not satisfied with the result of the first call, they will carry on and on, taking up more and more of your time. So have a system that feeds back into your process with problems to try to design them out. If you get repeated questions, either find a way to fix them, or put them in an FAQ section.

If your team is getting swamped in emails, which are backing up, enable clickcalling or even add in a text service. Clickcalling allows them to talk to an operator, which should reduce the amount of time spent with minor issues, texting on the other hand ensures that your answer have to be short and sweet, saving you time.

Lastly, if you are in a large organisation working in a help desk environment you may find another department is causing you misery. This could be a new product, or a marketing campaign or whatever. Well charge them for your services. If they see charges adding up, they will be much more inclined to fix the problem.

Enquiries

These are what every company wants more of, but most don’t handle when we do. Short of the designing automated systems mentioned above, I can recommend a few other actions which can help.

Firstly if you are going to change and improve your enquiry system, test the new one on a small section of your site first. As you can see from my previous posts I have done this and know that changes I am going to make will increase the enquiry rate by around 550%. If I know this, I can design a system to handle it, otherwise I might get totally caught out.

Another approach is to design two enquiry systems. One is designed to maximise the number of enquiries, so it might for instance have the simpliest form requiring little info from the user. The other is designed to produce the most qualified and committed enquirers. This may have a much more complex form to fill out, so that sales people get to know a lot of additional information about the client. You may for instance if you are a b2b supplier try to filter out companies interested in one off, low value items. So it could include questions that ask them to state how much they spend on your type of products a year. This means only the most committed enquirers will complete the form.

So why do this. Well if the sales team want more leads you can go with the first option, if they want more qualified leads you can switch to the second, and if you are really smart you can use A-B testing procedures to run both at once so that you only generate the number of enquiries a day you can handle.

I have to say that although this is a perfectly valid approach I would be careful that it doesn’t drive away potential long term customers. For the company I work for, my preference would be to have an automated system, but that really depends on your products, your pricing strategies and sadly often your internal politics.

One last thought is that you should not forget lead generation firms. These companies will follow up your enquiries for you, and the advantage of using them is that they are an infinite resource. If you get more enquiries, they put more people on it. You pay for it of coarse, so as always, it is a numbers game.

Hopefully if you are one of the 59%, this should give you some ideas on how to solve your problems and improve your situation. Lets get that number down, and lets work on that week response time so we are all replying the same day. That can only be good for our businesses.

I’m sure this isn’t exactly original but I thought I would mention it anyway.

I have just added a Dreamweaver plugin form2excel to one of my sites. This adds some PHP that collects form data as a Excel form and send you an email of the info every time the form is completed. This is a great time saver if you use Excel for analysis or as a mini database, as obviously there is no retyping.

However what we found was that the emails could not get through our corporate firewall as they are sent from the same address as they are going to. Obviously any reasonable firewall will spot this and stop it dead.

What we did as a workaround was to send it to gmail and have gmail automatically forward it to an address behind our firewall. The added bonuses are that we don’t need to open our firewall up, we have a backup of all enquiries, we get great spam filtering and the enquiries are much more searchable in gmail if we need to go back through them.

Next step is to use Google Spreadsheet API to just dump it in. Ahh digial nirvana!

Since the update to mobileme on my mac I have been noticing more and more ‘qwirkyness’ on my MacBook. It started in the Mail app, but now seems to happen when ever I access the net.

Safari only loads part of the page and I keep having to refresh to get the complete info and iTunes errors when I try and download podcasts. Yesterday it actually kernal paniced.

The bit that is worrying is that I have only changed one thing recently and that is mobileme and the associated updates that needs. The fact that it is on accessing the net also makes me suspect mobileme.

So here’s the weird thing. There seems to be mo way of turning mobileme off independantly of your Internet connection. My only choice looks like it might be an operating system reinstall, as I have pretty much done everything else to isolate it.

Is anyone else seeing these issues?