Category / thoughts

by Ashley Mann

I want to ride my bicycle. Simple?

Right so every day I ride my bike, normally to work, and then at weekends and things I also try and convince myself that I am a cyclist and go for longer rides. And then every now and again I convince my friend Mat to go on cycling trips with me, and we go to places like St Albans and Sunderland (I know, I know, it sounds glamourous).

I’ve had the same bike for about 2 years now, when I got it I hadn’t ridden a bike for about 5 years and no clue what I needed. I got this which has been fine and good and works just as you would expect a bike to. But now I have decided that I want something more shiny and exciting. The trouble is, having narrowed things down a little I am now at the stage I reach every time I want to buy something that costs more than about £30.

I have decided I will buy either this, this or this. They are all pretty much the same price and have pretty much the same ‘stuff’ on them at a similar level of ‘good-ness’.

Now whichever bike I choose I’m sure will be brilliant, and shiny, and exciting. But because of the level of effort I have put into researching these 3 bikes I will be left with a huge feeling of “hmmm, but what if one of the other bikes would’ve been better“. The sad thing is that these bikes are SO similar in price and setup that I’m having to try and convince myself that I have opinions about things like bike wheels and whether or not I care about carbon or alloy gear shifters (note: I don’t care about these things). Now in the course of my research I have found out there are lots of people who have very strong opinions about these things and I have been a bit rubbish and tried to trick myself into adopting some of their opinions. Tried and failed.

I get very annoyed at myself every time this happens, it usually follows this pattern

  • I decide I want a thing
  • I do lots of research into the thing and narrow it down to thing a and thing b (there will usually be very little difference between the two, non-essential things like colour)
  • I realise I can’t possibly just be a grown up and choose between the two very similar things and I then resort to THE INTERNET (because surely there is someone on the internet with a far more informed opinion about things than me)
  • I read lots and lots of reviews and forum discussions and articles about thing a and thing b (overall consensus “both quite good”)
  • I choose one of the things based on a completely arbitrary point such as ‘the manufacturers of chosen thing seem like they’d be nicer to small animals’
  • I am wracked with anguish about whether I’ve made the right choice…FOREVER

And this is why I suck at buying things.

by Ashley Mann

Let’s cycle from Leeds to St Albans…

Eddie Izzard, Dylan Moran and Reginald D Hunter are playing an outdoors gig in St Albans, brilliant. What’s more my friend, Mat, and I got tickets, brillianter. Then we decided that we’d cycle there. Silly.

So this Thursday we’ll set off from Leeds to cycle the 210 (and a bit) miles from Leeds to St Albans. We even planned a route and everything (we’re not normally so organised). We reckon it’ll take us 2 and a half days.

Day 1, Leeds, West Yorkshire to Gunthorpe, Nottinghamshire – 90 miles
Day 2, Gunthorpe, Nottinghamshire to Harrold, Bedfordshire – 70(ish) miles
Day 3, Harrold, Bedfordshire to St Albans, Hertfordshire – 50(ish) miles

So anyway, if I’m super-organised then we may be using Mat’s phone to track the route and I’ll pop it up on here and you can all see how slow we went and how frequently we got lost.

Hurray! Cycling!

p.s. I went for my first long ride in a while on Saturday and got an incredible painful knee whilst riding, apparently this is either because a)my knees are all wrong or b)my saddle is slightly too low. I’ve raised my saddle and it has made things slightly better in the knee-department, the problem now is that my feet barely touch the ground and getting onto the bike is a bit of an acrobatic challenge. Ah well, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

by Ashley Mann

Istanbul to Leeds is a very long way

Right as you may or may not be aware this summer I drove one of the support vehicles on the Jane Tomlinson Appeal Istanbul to Leeds charity bike ride.

I had previously driven support on the Appeal’s last ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End. Basically driving support means driving a big van, full of bike stuff around after a group of cyclists trying to ensure they don’t get lost and have enough food and drink and the like. I soon realised that the last ride was relatively straight forward, for a start we stayed in hotels each night whereas this year we would be camping not to mention the language and cultural differences that we would encounter whilst travelling through 10 countries.

It all started for me when I picked up the van from Rothwell in Leeds. John (the chap who was sharing the van-driving with me) and I met up with Al, Dave and Nigel who would between them be driving out the other two vehicles, a car and an RV. We didn’t have anything you could really call a ‘route’ planned although we knew the rough general direction we would be heading in, so off we went.

Despite me forgetting my wallet (idiot) the journey down to Folkestone was pretty straight forward, as was the journey as whole until we got to Austria (bar John forgetting which side of the road to drive on in France and turning into oncoming traffic…a minor hiccup). We had decided we would only be making 2 short (4 hour) stops for sleep on the way out as otherwise we’d be in danger of not getting there in time. The first stop was slightly enforced, a massive lightening storm broke over us as we entered Austria, it was nighttime and I was absolutely knackered so it seemed like a good time to stop. I slept in the van, John, Al and Dave shared the RV and Nige had the car. 4 hours later we were back on our way. The heat became noticeable as we entered Hungary and I seem to remember a sign in Budapest telling us it was 38 degrees (at about 10am) and I soon descended into a disgusting sweaty mess (the van didn’t have air conditioning).

The real cultural differences didn’t become obvious until we entered Romania, but when they did come they were pretty clear. The roads immediately deteriorated and the traffic became a mix of knackered Ladas and dusty HGVs. At one point we passed what looked like a nuclear power station being dismantled (or just falling apart), next to it was the saddest street market I have ever seen simply selling rubbish wooden carvings and giant garden gnomes – very odd. Now I’m sure Romania has some nice parts, however we didn’t see any of them. We saw the bad roads, poverty, buildings falling down, many stray dogs, prostitutes everywhere (even outside McDonalds) and numerous other things that I have since tried to forget. After Romania, Bulgaria was a blesséd relief with friendly people, less scary dogs, no obvious ladies of the night and what, at first, seemed like good roads.

However. Al and Dave had, throughout the trip to that point, unswervingly followed their sat nav – a tactic not to be mocked as it hadn’t lead us wrong until then. They suddenly decided to turn off the nice, smooth motorway that we were on and that seemed to go all the way to where we needed to be. The road we turned onto went through a forest, we were the only vehicles, or people, for miles around and this road was one of the most potholed pieces of tarmac i’ve seen in my entire life. It was more pothole than road for long stretches. Our average speed dropped to about 6mph as we crawled along being shaken from side to side by these gargantuan craters. Then we had a bit of an incident, the RV stopped. It’s hazard lights came on and Dave stepped out to sum up the situation, “it’s buggered”. Cue a couple of hours spent trying to find shade in the scorching Bulgarian sun whilst on the phone to the AA, the RAC and the company we’d hired the RV from. It eventually turned out that due to the amount of potholes the RV thought it had been in an accident and had turned itself off as a ‘safety feature’. Luckily there was a simple reset button and we were on our way again.

The rest of Bulgaria passed fairly uneventfully until we reach the Bulgaria-Turkey border. This border was pretty ramshackle and isolated and I think the guards must’ve been bored, or at least that’s the conclusion i’ve come to explain why we spent the next 5 hours there. A long story for another day but a word of warning, if your hire company says you don’t need printouts of your vehicle documents because ‘everything is done electronically these days’ then don’t assume that’ll actually mean anything to bored and slightly irritable border guards in the arse end of nowhere.

The final story of note on the journey out there (and there are a million other stories i hope to get around to retelling at some point) involves the drivers of Turkey. Now I loved Turkey, the people were amazing. But bloody hell, they’re absolutely mental drivers. I’ve no idea how we managed to make it into Istanbul and to our hotel in one piece, i involved avoiding some of the most ridiculous driving i’ve ever seen, and yes, i’ve been to India! The drivers, combined with it being at night and only about 6 hours sleep in the previous 72 meant that the last part of the journey passed in a weird dreamlike state. Probably not very safe.

But we got there, 2500 miles, 3 days, 9 countries, 1 van. Istanbul to Leeds. I’ll write up a bit of a summary of what happened on the bike ride when I get some time to gather my thoughts, it was quite an experience!

by Ashley Mann

Long time, no blog

I’m aware I’ve been a bit of a crap blogger (a crapper?) of late, things have been absolutely mental with Leeds Met graduations, final preparations for the Istanbul to Leeds madness and trying to finish off any number of things before we leave (next Wednesday!).

I plan to rectify this once I’m dans le velo…thing with regular updates on what’s been going on, starting with how I cope with the whole 2,500 mile drive in 2 and a half days which will commence next Wednesday evening…

by Ashley Mann

Istanbul to Leeds – 30 days to go (i think)

If my slightly bad maths is anything to go by (i didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count accurately), then it is just over 4 weeks until I leave as part of the convoy of support vehicles to drive out to Istanbul ready for the start of the Jane Tomlinson Appeal’s latest madcap challenge, the Istanbul to Leeds bike ride (www.istanbultoleeds.co.uk).

I’m having my final innoculation this evening (this one for tick-born encephilitis – which sounds pretty horrible) and then I’m pretty much good to go. My job will start on the evening of 21st July when I’ll meet up with the other drivers (there are 6 of us driving the vehicles out there) and the vehicles – an RV, a car and a transit van – to drive down to Folkestone and then across the whole of mainland Europe to Istanbul. It’s just shy of 2,500 miles and we hope to make it in about 3 days. Each vehicle will have 2 drivers and we’ll take turns driving, then sleeping. I think we’re hoping to be in Istanbul on Saturday 24th with the ride starting on Monday 26th July – the riders will have flown out on the Friday evening.

I’m not sure how prepared the riders are, I know the Miller family (Mike Tomlinson’s sister’s family) have been training pretty well since early this year and I have, on more than one occasion seen John (Mike’s brother-in-law) riding a tandem on his own – which must take a certain level of dedication! Mike has been cycling to work and back (a journey of about 10 miles each way) so will probably be in much better shape than he was on the last challenge (2008’s end-to-end ride), the Hinde family all seem to be fairly fit and I’m sure Stuart has been getting them out and about and Becca Tomlinson is mega fit anyways and has been subjecting herself to spinning classes at the gym. So I’m sure everyone will be more-or-less ready…a bit.

4 weeks to go…it’s going to be an adventure.

I’ll be blogging about it all quite regularly here and also on the ride’s site. You can sponsor the riders here http://www.justgiving.com/Istanbul-to-Leeds-2010. It’s an incredible challenge they’re all taking on and your support would be hugely appreciated. If you can’t afford to donate then the riders will be (hopefully!) arriving back in Leeds on Bank Holiday Monday 30th of August – it’d be great if there were some people out to welcome them home!

by Ashley Mann

Rock ness

So last weekend Becca and I toddled off to Rockness, a festival held, perhaps unsurprisingly given the name, on the banks of Loch Ness.

First things first, we were driving, or ,more accurately, I was driving as Becca is still learning. Now I realise how far Inverness is from Leeds having driven up and around there when I was driving support on the End-to-End bike ride in 2008 (http://ashmannblogs.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/bike-rides-and-vans/) but still I think my brain had blanked just how far it really is – 366 miles, 7 hours driving, mega. Although the saving grace is that it is a bloody lovely journey scenery-wise going through the Yorkshire Dales, the top of the Lake District and the Caingorms – ace! Anyways, we got there and set up the tent and drank some wine from our elegant and sophisticated boxes of wine and then wandered off to see pendulum – who were brilliant.
Saturday saw us mainly trying to recover from the Friday night and then on Sunday (in the rain) we saw the Macabees, Blondie, an amazing DJ called Benji Boko, a standup called Kevin Bridges and The Strokes – who were all very, very good.
The festival was in by far and away the most stunning location I imagine any festival could be in, surrounded by beautiful countryside, hills and of course a bloody massive loch. Add to that the fact that everyone there was incredibly friendly (apart from about 2 hours when the England match was on and everyone turned very pro-USA for a bit) and we had an excellent weekend. Rockness, recommended!

by Ashley Mann

Istanbul to Leeds

On Friday I was at the launch of the Jane Tomlinson Appeal’s latest challenge, the Istanbul to Leeds bike ride. Mike, Steven and Becca Tomlinson along with several other family members and friends will be riding the 2,500 miles from Istanbul, Turkey to Leeds, England over the course of 5 weeks. They’ll average about 80 miles a day and travel through 12 countries.

I will be reprising the role I played on the last ride (John O’Groats to Lands End) in 2008, which mainly consists of driving a van filled with bikes and gatorade and taking lots of photos and video footage.
As well as driving support I also put together the ride’s website www.istanbultoleeds.co.uk which I’ll be updating throughout the build up to the ride and then (hopefully) every day of the ride.

The ride is taking place to raise money for the Jane Tomlinson Appeal (full info here www.janetomlinsonappeal.com) and you can sponsor the riders here, www.justgiving.com/Istanbul-to-Leeds-2010.

It really is a pretty mega undertaking and any support you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

by Ashley Mann

Launches and lunches

Righty, so tomorrow sees the launch of the reason why I will be out of the country for 5 weeks this summer. If you live in Yorkshire then I think it will be covered on Look North and Calendar tomorrow evening, if you don’t live in Yorkshire then there should still be a veritable explosion of web-based excitement for you to gorge on (or not, whatever).
More (actual) news to follow tomorrow.

by Ashley Mann

Something useful

Righty, I’ve started blogging more specifically about web-related stuff over at http://bigthingsandlittlethings.wordpress.com.

In fact, I just put up the first (possibly) useful article, on Flickr’s API, http://bigthingsandlittlethings.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/flickr-api-what-ive-learnt/

So, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, why not check it out.

by Ashley Mann

Run run run/web web web

It seems that all I’ve really blogged about lately is running, and I’m going to continue that trend.

Yesterday I ran the inaugural Jane Tomlinson Hull 10k. We got a lift over with Maggie (Run For All’s head of press), which was great…the only problem being that Maggie needed to be in Hull very early and as a result we were picked up at 5am…5am! This is the second Sunday in a row that I’ve been up before 6.30am (last Sunday Becca and I went on an early morning bike ride) – it’s suprising how light it is at 4am (and how loud the birds are). The drive over to Hull is pretty boring, lots of motorway, so I carried on ready The Man Who Cycled The World (by Mark Beaumont) – which is excellent and I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in cycling, travel or slightly mad and ambitious adventures. We arrive at the Guild Hall in Hull shortly after 6 and made ourselves useful fetching and carrying things to help with a few last minute things (as one of the designated Run For All IT bods I immediately got sat at a computer on arrival).

Even at that time it was getting warm, by 8.30 as we made our way to the start line it was absolutely roasting. Luckily the course was fairly flat and part of it goes down to the river-front so there was a nice breeze coming in off the Humber. This was the first Hull 10K and the support along the course was absolutely great, comparable to the awesome crowds at last year’s York 10K. It makes such a difference to have loads of people having a great time and cheering you on and it always makes me smile to see the brilliant hand-made signs held up by kids with ‘good luck mum/dad/etc’ messages on. Despite the heat I finished in a PB of 45mins 57seconds, once again managing to convince my body that a sprint finish was a good idea – if only I could’ve kept my pace up between 6k-8k then I would’ve comfortably got below 45 minutes – need to do a fair amount of speed training over the next month if i want to stand any chance of getting close to (or hopefully under) 40 minutes at the Leeds 10K in July.

Right, that’s quite enough babbling about running, onto other things. I’ve been playing around with some ideas to enhance the Jane Tomlinson Appeal website, I’ve found a couple of nice jQuery twitter plugins and also this excellent (and very simple/easy to use) javascript flickr plugin – Flickrshow (http://api.flickrshow.com/v7/). I had a bit of a look at the YouTube API but it seems to be fairly stubborn and not hugely useful for the relatively simple things I’ve got in mind – I’m sure I can work something out.

In other web-news, I’m on the finishing leg for the Pickles & Potter and Northern Dales Farmers Markets sites – hopefully have a bit more news about them in the next week or so.

by Ashley Mann

Half marathon, easier than a full marathon

Ash Mann - Leeds Half-MarathonOn Sunday 9 May, I ran the Leeds half-marathon. It was all a bit last minute, I had been toying with the idea since earlier in the year but it had always seemed a bit soon after the London Marathon so I had decided against entering. However immediately after running London, whilst high on endorphins or stupidly tired, or both, I made some enquiries to see if I could sort out a last minute place.
Thanks to some very lovely people at Run For All, and Leeds City Council, I managed to get myself in.

The day was great, 3800 runners took part, it was all very well-organised (although bloody freezing while we were waiting to start) and i saw one or two people spectating who i knew from work, which was a nice suprise. Everything I’d read and heard about the race mentioned the hills, “oh the hills are awful, they’ll make your legs fall off” and similar. Maybe it’s because the route took in most of where i head for my training runs, but i didn’t find the hills too much of a problem. It was a little disappointing that there wasn’t much opportunity for a decent crowd to form – the route, taking in the ring road, made that fairly impossible – but what support there was was great and i event managed a sprint finish to finish in a (fairly respectable) time of 1 hour 47 minutes 21 seconds.

Have got the Hull 10K coming up this weekend, here starts my work to get a sub-40 minute 10K time (possibly a foolish and unrealistic goal).

by Ashley Mann

Ben Cotton’s life(stream)

The ‘lifestream’ (his description, not mine) that I’ve been working on for Ben Cotton has gone live www.ben-cotton.com.

Ben had asked me to develop a 1-page site that pulled together all of his online activity in one place.

The new site uses Simple Pie (http://simplepie.org/) to aggregate the rss feed from Ben’s ‘Social Web Thing’ blog and also uses Twitter’s standard JSON call to display all Ben’s latest Twitter activity (although this script is a little temperamental as it relies a little to heavily on Twitter’s sometimes unreliable servers – i’m looking at alternatives.

The site also links directly to Ben’s LinkedIn, TwitPic, Twitter, Scribd and Flickr accounts as well as using the Google Maps API to produce a location map of Edelman’s London office (where Ben works).

Last but not least I’ve also included the ever-present Google Analytics to give Ben some decent stats.

Phase two of the development will see me combining all of Ben’s rss feeds into one ‘master’ feed and providing Ben with a simple CMS to control certain elements (such as meta data) of the site.

by Ashley Mann

24/7

The result (or lack of clear result) of the British general election has seen me glued to the 24 hour news coverage for the last 4 days (particularly the excellent BBC and Guardian live blogs).
This style of coverage suffers slightly in a vacuum and, through force of necessity, ends up endlessly repeating itself. However alongside the almost super-human sleep-defying powers of messers Dimbley, Paxman et al it also throws up the odd piece of tv gold, such as this little gem which has spin doctor supremo, Alistair Darling, winding up professional moron Adam Boulton until the latter seems ready to explode.
Brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gkHwU4DRA8&feature=player_embedded

by Ashley Mann

Marathon, done. Mara-done.

26.2 miles, 4 hours 45 minutes 1 second. bloody hell, it was so hard, but so amazing.

As is usual Mann family tradition Becca and I got dropped off laughably early and were at the start on Blackheath Common by about 7.45am! The atmosphere even then was pretty immense and even pretty heavy rain didn’t seem to be able to do anything to stop everyone (especially me) getting very, very excited.

The start was a bit hectic, but i suppose that was always going to be the case with however many thousand people squeezing through a relatively small space. I took it pretty easy from the start, I think if I had been too worried about concentrating on a particular time then it could have got a bit frustrating but I spent my time toodling along and had a bit of a chat with a man dressed as a morris dancer (lots of bells!), high-fived lots of enthusiastic kids and had the biggest grin on my face.

On tv the crowds always look big, when you’re there the crowds sound loud but when you’re running – at points it’s almost overwhelming, there are so many people shouting encouragement, loads of bands, people handing out sweets, oranges and drinks. It’s absolutely amazing.

I felt absolutely fine until about 21-22 miles, I’d been plodding along, doing about 10 minute miles (which was slightly slower than planned but I thought I’d just enjoy the day rather than worry about my time too much) and suddenly it all went a bit wrong, I got cramp in my left thigh, my right hip seized up and everything stopped being brilliant and fun for a couple of miles. Luckily the crowd got me going again – having your name on your vest really helps at times like this! Massive thanks to the lovely bunch of people down on the enbankment who fed me jelly babies and high-fived me until I started running again.

When I finished I was absolutely destroyed, I couldn’t walk in a straight line, I didn’t know what was going on. It took me about 45 minutes to walk to where I was meeting Becca, near Charing Cross – which probably less than 1/2 a mile from the finish!

Now, 2 days afterwards, my body is sore – my toes and hips are still very painful.

The ballot for next year opens on 4 May (next week). Will I be entering? Try and stop me!

by Ashley Mann

So, you think you want a website? 4 things to consider

So, you’ve decided that your company should probably invest in a website. You’ve heard that they can be good for business and ‘everything seems to be online these days’ but you’re not really sure exactly how a website could help you and aren’t really sure what you want.

Unfortunately this situation could now go quickly downhill, you could get some bad advice, become completely confused and annoyed by the amount of jargon and ‘technical nonsense’ involved in the whole process and end up paying someone too much money to come up with something that doesn’t do what you want, doesn’t look how you want and is basically a complete waste of everyone’s time.

Or, you could read the rest of this post and hopefully pick up some useful information. This is by no means an exhaustive list but should hopefully start to get you thinking along the right lines when it comes to working with a designer on a new website.

Things to consider with a new website
Before you even contact any web design agencies for quotes I would strongly recommend that you have a think about some, or ideally all, of the following points. It will make the whole process far easier and more productive.

1. What does your business do?
It’s frightening how many people, when asked this question, can’t give a clear answer. If you don’t know what you do, how is a designer supposed to develop a site that accurately reflects what the business does!?
Have a proper analysis of what your business does, what its primary aims are and how you go about achieving those. e.g. we are a fantastic deli who provide delicious, locally-sourced, organic food at our shop in Leeds. We also provide a delivery service and we cater for events such as parties and weddings.
Now this is just a bit of an example but I hope it’s clear that if you can clearly define what your business does then it is far easier for the designer (i.e. me) to come up with a site that properly represents these strengths and communicates them effectively. A confusing web presence is, in my opinion, almost more damaging than having no web presence at all.

2. what do you want your website to achieve?
give some thought to how you will measure if the website is successful. just having a website is no good if it doesn’t have a clear goal (or goals) and purpose. e.g. i want to use the website as part of a co-ordinated campaign to increase telephone sales by 10% or i want to grow the number of contacts on my mailing list by 20%. Again, these are simplistic examples but they link in to the first point i made, being able to identify what your business does and what you want the website to achieve will result in a far clearer, more focussed, more useful website and will result in a better return on your investment.
NOTE!!! – don’t draw up a list of hundreds of goals you want your website to achieve, this is worse than having no clear defined goal at all.

3. what are your competitors doing?
take a look at the websites/online activity of your competitors. if you don’t know who your competitors are then, as a matter of urgency, carry out a SWOT analysis of your business!
have a look at what they are doing, how the are interacting with their customers and make a note of what you like/don’t like about their website, pay particular attention to how the site is structured, is it easy to find everything you want? etc.

4. what do you like the look of?
now this may be an obvious point but it’s one i feel i need to make anyway, work out what you like. make a note of sites that you like the look of but more importantly try to think about why you like what you like. e.g. i like the large header image, it grabs my attention and is a good way of using their logo in a high-impact way. or i like their navigation, it’s easy to use and it looks cool!
equally i would say don’t necessarily restrict your design opinions to website but do think about how they can translate to the web e.g. i really like the look of old, red BT phoneboxes, i love the color or i love the layout of the windows or whatever it is you like and think about how that can be applied in the context of a website.

i’m going to continue this list later this week…

by Ashley Mann

M-day

Right, with the marathon now less than a week away I thought I’d do a little bit of a last-minute assessment.

Injuries:
Nothing too bad to report so far (touch wood). My right hip and left knee will start to ache after 15 miles but I’ve come to realise that is just a fun thing that my body likes to do.
The blisters that flared up on my last long run have calmed down now, I imagine those parts of my feet will be sore after the marathon but hopefully won’t cause me too many problems on the way round.

Fitness:
I think training has gone ok. I could possibly have done more long runs but i did get round for one of 20 miles, a few of 17 miles and a lot of 10-14 miles. I think it’s still realistic to aim for my original target time of 4hrs 15mins.

Fundraising:
Thus far have raise just shy of £600 (although this also includes funds raised by the bike ride i did last autumn – which you can read about here http://ashmannblogs.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/coast-to-coast/) which I’m pretty pleased by, if you still fancy sponsoring me (I’m raising money for the Jane Tomlinson Appeal – www.janetomlinsonappeal.com) then it’s very easy to do via my justgiving page – www.justgiving.com/ashley-mann.

Final plans:
Anyways, we’re getting the train down on Friday afternoon – hoping to get to the Expo to register on Friday as the DLR is all closed or something on Saturday.
Will probably go for a couple of short (5-8 mile) runs this week just to check the legs are still working. Have also decided I’m going to be catching the bus to work for this week only – and leaving the bike at home.
So, wish me luck!

by Ashley Mann

Content is king

‘Content is king’, how many times have you heard that? Well when it comes to websites, in my experience, it is pretty much a universal truth. The worrying thing is how few businesses seem to realise this, and even if they claim to, how many of them act on it?

This follows on, in some respect, from my earlier post about “design for design’s sake“. There I mused about the appropriateness of design vs what the client/designer ‘thought was best’. The idea of having good, strong, useful and appropriate content follows on from that. Too many businesses seem to think that their web presence starts and ends with simply having a web site or twitter account or facebook page or blog. But this simply isn’t enough, in fact I’d go so far as to argue that having a presence on these platforms (or indeed any presence on the web) and then not using them is worse, and more damaging to your brand, that not having one at all.

People need to realise that having any one of the presences i’ve mentioned above (and all the others I haven’t) requires a commitment in time and thought. Simply registering a facebook fan page for your company, filling it with little or useless information, inviting all your friends to become a fan and then promptly never updating it displays a lack of understanding of the medium and has little or no positive outcome. Content is king, and never updating your content renders it useful to practically no-one.

I’ve encountered this a couple of times recently, with clients enthusiastically asking for bespoke blogging solutions and help with their facebook presence. I am all in favour of this, if done right. Whenever a client asks me about social media I provide them with a bit of a ‘how-to’ guide for each of the main channels/platforms, this outlines the type of content that would be appropriate (and some examples), how much time the particular platform requires (e.g. twitter=at least daily), how these platforms can be managed, examples of the types of interactions that can take place and an idea of the likely outcomes for their business.

All too often you see people painfully trying to shoehorn completely unsuitable content into an equally unsuitable platform. You need to, as mentioned in the post linked to above, consider your audience, consider what they want to find out and why they came to you via whatever platform you’re addressing them on. You must produce useful, regular, engaging content or quite simply – don’t bother.

by Ashley Mann

European wi-fi/3G coverage – follow up

Right, after some chats and a bit more research it would seem i have the following options:

Mobile broadband dongle with a UK company then pay anywhere between £1 and £7 per MB up to a usage limit.

Mobile broadband dongle with a local company in each country I go through – haven’t been able to find out exact prices for that yet.

Use wireless hotspots – it seems there is a far better network of these than I had imagined – my bad for being a bit patronising to countries such as Serbia, which apparently have a quite good wi-fi infrastructure.

Use internet cafés – i’ve been in internet cafés in the Himalayas so am sure that I’ll be able to find them to serve me needs at least once a day over the summer – however I’d like to have constant access when required with ICs just being used to supplement this/keep the cost down.

BGAN – would probably be hideously expensive but would provide more consistent coverage.

I image in reality I will end up with a dongle, mapping out reachable hotspots and also seeking out the odd internet café here and there – hopefully this should keep me covered.

I’d appreciate any further words of wisdom anyone might have.

And as for why I need this level of internet access…well…I can’t say just yet.

by Ashley Mann

European wi-fi/3G coverage – please advise!

Righty, this summer I will need access to the net whilst on the move in the following countries: Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France. There is the possibility that I will be in hotels for some of the time so this may (or may not – would welcome hearing about people’s experiences) partly solve the issue, however for the main part I will be on the road with just my laptop (macbook).

I’ll be needing to upload relatively large videos, images and text several times a day, every day.

I’d really welcome some wisdom on the subject, if I bought a new phone (iPhone, HTC/Andriod thingy ec) would this help – or is the coverage a bit patchy. Is there something I can get/sort out with my laptop that’ll help – dongle or similar? The last resort is getting a BGAN unit but that is very expensive and not really feasible at this stage.

Would also welcome thoughts on methods of uploading – particularly video as I’ve had a few problems getting large files up onto youtube in the past.