Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

When I initially setup a website for my consulting firm I decided to use Drupal. After months of letting the site lay dormant (I was too busy actually working) I decided to take some time to get it running. I must say that I am impressed.

What I Need

As with all websites it is important to have a clear idea of what you want out of the website. I split to split this into two separate lists - what I need now, and what I want in the future. In this post I will go into what I need now.

• Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics.
• Provide an easy way for prospective clients to contact me.
• Provide an easy way to update the site.
• A blogging mechanism.

How I Got There

Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics

Visitor tracking is important to any business. It provides a way to see a few things - Are people actually visiting the site? How long are they staying? Who is talking about site?

Setting up Google Analytics is easy enough - add some Javascript to the theme and be on your way. What happens when you want to switch the theme? You have to go back and update the theme. I don’t plan on changing the theme to often but why do it if I don’t have to?

The Google Analytics Project provides the ability to use Google Analytics without having to worry about the theme. It also provides lots of other useful features:

• Role Tracking - Only track the types of users you care about. Do you really need to track what your team is doing? Probably not.
• Profile/User Segmentation - This only works for people who have accounts on your site, but it’s still a nice feature. It gives you the ability to see which users did what or even track where the users are from!
• Download Tracking - If your site offers downloads, this is a must. Imagine the following situation: You post a PDF of the requirements for a project you’re working on. You can validate whether someone, in particular, the certain user (or users) has looked at it. Great to know if you’re worried about your project schedule.

Provide an easy way to prospective clients to contact me

Why have a website if the visitors can’t inquire about your services? I provide a simple page with contact details and mailto: links but that’s rather boring and doesn’t provide many features. So I wanted a form that users could use. Now, I could write my own form to do this but every time I wanted a new form, or I wanted to change an existing form I would have to update code. Being a programmer, this isn’t really difficult, but I wanted it easier.

The Webform module provides pretty much everything I want. With no programming involved at all I was able to create a form that collects all the information that I’m curious about. It also provides more nice features - it will automatically email the form, store the results in the database, and it also works with the Captcha project to prevent Spam.

Also be sure to check the Webform Report project. I haven’t worked with it enough to write it up, but it does looking like a promising reporting tool.

Provide an easy way to update the site

This feature is default with Drupal. I would go so far as to say that Drupal is simplicity. Don’t get me wrong, there is a learning curve involved but just click around inside of Drupal for an hour or so and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.

A blogging mechanism

Another great feature of Drupal is its blogging mechanism. Again, it’s another feature that comes with Drupal. Each user can have their own!

Finalize

So far my experience with Drupal has been great. I have been able to find modules for all the things I’ve been trying to accomplish. And I’m certain that I could write my own module if I can’t, especially after looking over the Developer’s Guide.

Linked List

The list below provides an easy way to get to some of the websites that I’ve written about.

• Drupal
• Google Analytics Project
• Webform Project
• Captcha Project
• Webform Report Project
• Drupal Developer’s Guide

If you like reading about all things hype, but are sick of reading about the iPhone, check out Xobni. The website encourages you to “Take back your Inbox.” After using this application, I must say, I think it can help.

If you’re just looking for screen shots, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Backstory

While reading Paul Graham’s essays I first noticed a link to Xobni. The icon (which you find in the right hand column of this page) intrigued me. I’m also addicted to all things organization so “taking back my Inbox” sounded great. Although I was a little skeptical, I signed-up for the beta and even put the button on my web site.

I fought the Inbox, and I won.

On Friday I received an invitation to download Xobni and I was psyched. (Note: Xobni thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for not succumbing to invititis.) Unfortunately the application is only available for Windows users and only for Outlook and I use a Macbook at home, so I was out of luck. Yesterday, I installed it - boy was I surprised!!

The installation process is as simple as you expect - close Outlook, run the install, wait (up to 25min) for it to gather statistics about your email. The length of time it takes to install should not deter you, trust me, it’s worth it.

After Xobni is installed, a context-sensitive sidebar is added to the right hand side of the Outlook window. Simply click on an email, any email and watch the extra pane change. Simply awesome!

If you’re a stats junkie you will love Xobni! At the top of the Xobni pane it displays: how much email you receive from this person (by time of day), a rank (which is how much email you receive from this person in comparison to everyone else) and, using the menu, you have access to a plethora of other customizable reports!

It shows the current email as a thread, this is similar to how Gmail does it.

It shows all the files you’ve exchanged with the person.

It allows you to setup a time to meet. When I first noticed this button I expected it to create an Outlook meeting request, it doesn’t. This may seem wrong but what Xobni does is much better. When you click this button a new email is opened and it includes your availability over the next week. Highly useful, especially if the person isn’t a fellow employee.

It automatically updates contact information. Don’t get worried, this contact information is Xobni-only so there’s no need to worry about this application ruining your contact list. This is only feature that gave me a problem - it doesn’t accurately guess the phone number 100% of the time. This problem happened once out of hundreds of people, so I really don’t think it’s anything major.

It shows all the people that are “connected” to the person who sent the email. A connection between people seems to be made when they both are recipients of an email you send. By clicking on a connection you can see all the information about them.

Wrap-Up

Simply put - Xobni rocks! The UI is fantastic. The reports are great and the application very snappy. Be sure to download it at www.xobni.com!

By the way, if you’re looking for a job, they’re hiring. The only reason I mention this is because Xobni looks like a fantastic place to work.

Screenshots

I’ve seen many sad attempts at keeping someone on your page, but the attempt at Reunion.com wins the race. Not only did the page raise two javascript alerts but it also showed a fake chat dialog! See the screenshot below or check try the link yourself!

Lately Wiki’s have taken over my life - my team at work uses one, I’ve started one to share content from Ars Technica’s Boardroom and I’m even tempted to install TiddlyWiki on my USB drive!

For work, I’ve been using the wiki to store my meeting notes. I take my tagged notes and then transfer the most important ones over to the wiki. Great for sharing and for the if-I-get-hit-by-a-bus scenario! The problem is that the same subject matter can span multiple meetings and I like to break up my notes by meeting. So I began searching for a way to aggregate a bunch of single pages into one gigantic one. After a lot of searching I found a way to do it, unfortunately I lost the link but I do remember the instructions.

Below you’ll find the steps needed to create an aggregate page. The examples use the Boardroom Wiki.

1. Create a new page. This page will become the aggregate page.
2. Find the title of the pages you wish to aggregate. To do this I normally just copy the link and take the portion of the URL after the title=. For example the title of the following link http://www.theboardroomwiki.com/index.php?title=Business_Cards is “Business_Cards.”
3. Edit the aggregate page. Insert the following tag: {{:PAGETITLE}}. Be sure to replace “PAGETITLE” with the title of the page you’ve selected. Example: {{:Business_Cards}}.
4. Click the save button and voila!

My main issue is that there seems to be no way to group the individual pages on the aggregate page. I would expect the aggregate page to use the title from each individual page. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be case. Sure I could create my own group by adding a header before each instance of the aggregate tag, but this is a pain.

Another problem I have is the manual nature of this tag. Each time I want to add a page to the aggregate page, I have to do it manually. I’m not sure what an elegant solution to this problem would look like but I’m sure there’s one out there.

Please let me know if you found this post helpful - post a comment, Digg it, or share the link with your friends.

Note:

A tale of love lost and poor customer service.

The Backstory

I originally purchased Iambic’s Agendus in November 2004. Between then and now I purchased quite a few upgrades and their 3D Icon collection.

Up until recently I have been very happy with the application. I love the layout, I love being able to associate icons with tasks and appointments. I love Agendus! At least I used to love Agendus.

The Current Situation

I’ve recently run into a problem syncing with Outlook. Every time I associate an icon with a meeting Agendus it changes the meeting organizer to me! This problem is reproducible and very troublesome.

In my current job, meetings are scheduled and updated by a variety of people. So, when I sync my Treo 650, and the meeting has been updated, I don’t get the update. The update comes through Outlook and I accept it, but Outlook can’t find the meeting anymore. Therefore I have two choices - update the meeting manually or don’t worry about the meeting updated. Both are unreasonable in my opinion.

An Attempt at Resolution *

On 7/31/2007 I submitted ticket YNR-385653. The staff replied on 8/8/2007 asking for clarification on my issue, I replied to his request one day later. At the time of this article I have yet to receive a reply. In my opinion this is unacceptable for a few reasons.

1. I encounter this problem every time I add an icon. If Iambic can’t reproduce they should contact me.
2. If they are researching the issue, I should be alerted. There is no excuse for this utter lack of communication.
3. If they are able to reproduce it and are going to include a fix in a future release, I should be made aware of it.

Trying to Understand

I am a software developer. I provide customer support and I carry an on-call phone. I understand how it takes time to resolve an issue - research, coding, testing, etc. Developers are over-worked and support teams are often under-staffed. But in my experience there is never a good reason to leave a customer in the dark. It is unacceptable to leave a customer in the dark, especially for as long as I have been.

Important Reminders

For me, this underscores how important it is to keep my customers in the loop. The software I work on affects a person’s ability to do their job and it is my job to fix it. When a problem happens they understandably get worried and frustrated.

For the corporations out there, I hope they realize how important it is to keep communication between themselves and their customers.

In the case of Iambic, I think they tried but they unfortunately failed. The only means of communication I can find is their trouble ticket application. But what if, as in my case, I haven’t heard anything? Do I send another message through ticket application and have my request go to the bottom of the queue?

What I’m getting at is this - Iambic, please provide another means of communication. Have your support staff reminded of aging issues. If the support staff is too small, at least send some kind of automated notification. The best situation would be to provide a telephone number or an email address that goes to an actual person.

* My Email Communication with Iambic

7/31/07 - The First Email - Sent by Me

I’ve run into a problem when I sync Meetings between Agendus and Outlook. When the meeting is initially sync’d the “Meeting Organizer” is set appropriately to the person who sent out the meeting invitation. As soon as I change the icon associated with the meeting, the “Meeting Organizer” is set to me. Is there any way to resolve this?

8/5/07 - The Second Email - Sent by Me

It has been a few days and I have yet to hear anything from Iambic. I have even received a “Customer Satisfaction” survey but still no response. Is anyone looking into this?

8/8/07 - The Third Email - Sent by Iambic

I need to tell you a little bit about how our ticket support software works. When you create a ticket, it goes to the list. We work from the bottom in order to answer the oldest first. When you repost into the same ticket, it move to the top of the list again. I realize that you had no way of knowing this, so please just consider it information for the future.

Please explain - do you mean the Contact for the meeting? By what means are you sending out the invitations? Are you using the Attendees module over SMS? Or an Exchange Server? I don’t see a similar report in our bug tracking suite, but if you’ll give me the details, I’ll try to replicate and report it as a bug if we need to.

8/9/07 - The Fourth (and most recent) Email - Sent by Me

The company I work for uses Exchange Server 2003 and Outlook 2003 is
installed on the desktop. My operating system is Windows XP, SP2.

When a meeting request arrives from a co-worker and I sync Outlook with my
Verizon-branded Treo 650, the meeting in Agendus looks as expected. I like
to change the Category and the icon of the meetings I’m attending. I change
the Category in Outlook before I sync, I change the icon using Agendus and
then I sync again. After the second sync, I am set to the “Meeting
Organizer.”

Below are the steps I can use to reproduce the problem 100% of the time.

1. Receive and accept a meeting request. (Takes place in Outlook)
2. Update the “Category” of the meeting request and save it. (Takes place in
Outlook)
3. Sync. (Using Palm Desktop and the Outlook conduit)
4. For testing purposes, I sync again.
5. I look at the meeting in Outlook and the “Organizer” is the same person
that sent the meeting request.
6. I update that same meeting in Agendus to include an icon.
7. Sync.
8. I look at the meeting in Outlook and the “Organizer” is set to me.

If you need anymore details, please let me know.

By the way, the Agendus Issue System should alert a user if their update is
going to cause the issue to drop to the bottom of the queue. This is a major
iritation, and although it may be in the FAQ, this is an important thing to
make the users aware of.

I’ve been using Agendus for quite awhile now, and I’ve purchased many, many
upgrades. This situation is causing me to re-evaluate my relationship with
Iambic. I realize that nothing in this, or the previous, paragraph is your
fault, I just wanted to make mention of it.

Thank you for your time and your attention in this matter.

Updates!

Well it looks like Iambic has people monitoring Digg, Reddit, etc. Last night when I checked my email I received a note from the COO/CIO at Iambic. His message his posted below.

9/1/07 - Email from Adriano Chiaretta COO/CIO

Hello Zack,

I just wanted to personally follow-up to your blog’s post about your
recent misadventures when trying to get in touch with our Tech Support.

Please accept my apologies for what happened — we do our very best to
promptly and effectively reply to anyone contacting us, but at times
things just don’t go the way they are supposed to.

You can expect a follow-up on your problem from our Tech Support by the
end of Tuesday (since Monday is Holiday in US), at the very latest.

Best Regards,

- Adriano

———————————————
Adriano Chiaretta
–
COO
iambic, Inc.
1270 Oakmead PKWY STE 214
Sunnyvale, CA 94085
http://www.iambic.com
Redefining Productivity

9/2/07 - My response

Adriano -

Thank you for your email. I’m sorry that I had to resort to writing a blog entry regarding this matter but I had no other choice.

I’d also like to thank you for securing a follow-up for me. I look forward to their email.

Thanks again.

- Zack

9/4/07 - A Response From Iambic Technical Support

Hello Zack,
My name is Michael, and I am the iambic Support Team Supervisor.

Sincere regards,
Michael
QA/Support Team
www.iambic.com

9/4/07 - My Response

Michael -

- Zack

Ever since I bought my first Mac earlier in the year I’ve been searching for a nice backup solution. On my Windows machines I use SyncBack SE from 2BrightSparks. I love the application and nothing I found for Mac has come close. That is until I came across Smart Backup from Free Ride Coding.

Smart Backup is simple to use and easy to setup. It works exactly like you would expect - here are the files/folders I want to backup and I want you to place the backup here. It truly is that simple. The application also supports scheduled backups.

Test Scenario
As part of writing this post I ran a backup of my own. I use a Macbook 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB RAM running Mac OS X (10.4.10). My backup consists of my whole home directory - musics, videos, documents, downloads, etc. This totals 46.12 GB or 73,278 files.

The destination is a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive. The hard drive is connected to the computer using USB 2.0.

While running the backup I still used my computer but not for anything too intensive. I did not look at videos, I didn’t try encoding anything or listening to music. Just normal internet browsing. Although most people will choose to perform the backup during off hours, I wanted to show the backup speed while the computer was in use.

Summary

In 3hrs, 55min, SmartBackup backed-up 46.12 GB of data.

Features I Love

• Simple to use
• Scheduled Backups.

Things I Hate

• I’ve run into “beachball” issues.
• The trial screen forces you to wait 20 seconds each time you load the application.

Purchase Information
Smart Backup costs $21.00 US (15 EUR) and can be purchased directly from FreeRideCoding.

Screenshots

Smart Backup - Registration/Trial Screen

Smart Backup - Main Screen

Smart Backup - Backup Screen

I am a developer working on the requirements and design of a large application so I spend a lot of time in meetings. For example, tomorrow I have 2.5 hours when I won’t be in a meeting. This equates to pages upon pages of notes. Some of these notes are minor, some require the application design to be rethought or updated and others require some clarification from the SMEs. As you can imagine scanning through these notes can be onerous. So I’ve developed a low-tech version of tagging.

My meeting tags are very simple icons that I put next to each note or group of notes. They enable me to quickly scan through my notes and grab out what I need to do, what needs to updated or even what questions need to be asked. Below you’ll find examples of my “tags.”

• Exclamation Point enclosed in a square - Important, requires immediate attentions.
• Question Mark enclosed in a square - Requires more information from another developer or a SME.
• Light-bulb enclosed in a circle - An idea for improving something.
• “PM” enclosed in a square - A note to keep for the project’s post-mortem.

There are other icons I use, but this should be enough to get you on your way.

Why not use a computer?
I have yet to find a good note taking application. I could use Word, but I’m pretty anal about how things are formatted, so I would spend too much time formatting and therefore less time paying attention.

Don’t the icons take a lot of time?
Not really. At first, it may take a few extra seconds to draw or remember which icon you use for what, but once you get used to it, it is really quite quick.

A few months ago I visited Mozy Pro, the business version of the popular Mozy online backup company. I was just browsing - looking at specs, checking prices, etc. I decided not to use their services. Today I got an email from someone at Mozy asking if technical difficulties with the site prevented me from signing-up.

Odd thing is - I don’t ever remember giving them any piece of information besides what get’s handed-off while surfing (IP address, etc). I even checked my email accounts - nothing from Mozy except for the email today.

The email, including the headers, looks legit. I wonder how they got my information? Or is this some kind of intrepid spam whereby someone just guesses you visited the site? Anyway, below you’ll find the email.

Hi [Redacted my full name],

I noticed you visited our MozyPro Business sign up page not to long ago, but didn’t complete the transaction. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have trouble with the website or that there weren’t any additional questions about our company or product.

I don’t know if you had the chance to see, but we recently signed the 2nd largest company in the world, General Electric. The press release is very interesting and informative, and you can check it out at https://www.mozypro.com/mozy_pro/news.

If you have any further questions or concerns regarding our product, my contact info is below and I will be happy to help!

If you are ready to get signed up just follow the link provided below, and I will be able to keep track of your account, get you the 30 day money back guarantee, and take care of you personally if you need anything.

https://www.mozypro.com/ref/[redacted what looks like a referral id]

Thank you,

[Redacted name]

MozyPro Sales Consultant

Office [Redacted number] ext.203

Sales [Redacted number] ext. 203

[Redacted]@berkeleydata.com

https://www.mozypro.com/ref/[redacted what looks like a referral id]

A while ago I added a new “Friend” on Twitter named TwitterLit. The first line of his bio reads “Twittering the first lines of books so you don’t have to.” This sounded like an interesting idea at first - Twittering book teasers. Maybe I’d find something I’d like to read.

For weeks I’ve seen his tweets and never thought anything of it. Until today’s tweet when I clicked on the link that was attached. Turns out it isn’t a link to his book review, or to the author’s page - it’s a referral link to Amazon! No content, no review, just a link. Is that spam I smell?

Now this may seem contradictory as I have advertisements and use Amazon’s referral service myself. The big difference is that I’m not just posting a link to the site. If I link to Amazon, I’ve written a book review. If I display an advertisement on the site, it is marked as such.

Care to try to convince that I’m wrong? Want to add fuel to fire and help prove that I’m right? Post a comment.

Over on Arstechnica’s forum there is a verbal battle going on about Twitter. What is Twitter?

First off I’d like to describe Twitter. According to the Twitter’s website, Twitter answers the question “What are you doing?” I find this to be a succinct explanation. People post what they’re doing, where they’re going and what they’re thinking. If you’re an outsider looking in then this probably seems trite. You may be wondering why you should care about what people are doing and thinking. For strangers you probably wouldn’t care. But, when it comes to your friends, you probably do care.

In the times that we’re living in keeping in touch is hard to do. Each of us have different schedules and different responsibilities. Although email, cell phones, VoIP, IM and text messaging have helped us to work around this gap it still takes two. How often have you sent an email or made a phone call and not expected a reply? How often have you done either of these just tell someone what you’re doing? In both cases I’m willing to bet not too often, if ever. Enter Twitter.

Twitter allows us to tell our friends, family or even the world what we’re up to. Although Twitter has been described as an exercise in vanity, I don’t agree.

When we post to Twitter we do not expect a response. We are creating a log of what we’re doing, where we’re going and what we’re thinking. This log is viewable by the world or only those we choose. This log allows our friends to keep track of us and conversely, allows us to keep track of our friends. No dialog and no scheduling required.

In short, Twitter allows us to provide bite size glimpses into our lives and allows our friends and family, or even the world to view them.