Bannercontrol: Web banner online validation

You are very welcome to test and validate your own banners using our #bannercontrol

At the moment Bannercontrol supports Flash, GIF, JPG and PNG banners and auto-detects most standard IAB banner formats. Workflow is easy: open a random workspace and upload your files. You will receive immediate validation results. For Flash banners we are also checking if any kind of clickTag is present. Also we are splitting GIF banners into clickable frames. You can see all supported formats and some additional hints and infos at the Bannercontrol Formats FAQ page.

Pro-Tip: If you are working in teams it might be good to not open a random workspace but to choose your own workspace ID. You then can all work on a single workspace together.

Bannercontrol: empty workspace

The day the world turned crazy

It’s just incredible how easy it is to walk into the same trap over and over again. You are preparing for a nice initial meeting with a potential customer and during all the preparations you develop some kind of storyboard in your mind which describes what you think the meeting will be like. After hours of work the appointment finally arrives and you are really looking forward to start a solid business relationship with your new client. But then it hits you out of nowhere. Right after the first two minutes into your conversation your wonderful prophecy falls apart. It gets twisted and crushed before you even notice whats going on. Your conversation did not work out as you expected at all. All your effort crushed within several minutes.

Signs to look out for

My case which I am referring to had some clear indicators of turbulence which I should have been aware of. It was so obvious that this is not going to be a fabulous meeting. Surely I have attended many meetings but never have I seen that crazy combination of conversation-breakers before.

So there was that last business meeting which is the cause for this very blog post. Originally it was intended to be a meeting between a potential new client company CEO and me. We were going to talk about a possible website relaunch and new marketing strategies. Little did I know that my brain was going to be raped. Look out for the quotes to follow my story about a literal brainstorm.

• Location is everything

  Look out for a location which does not cause too much distractions from your conversation. Best is a small, quiet room which is separated from normal business activities with a table and seats for all participants. Personally I do not like to meet at public venues that much as there usually happens to be a lot of background noise. You also can’t be sure about who is overhearing your conversation on outside places. Sadly you do not have much influence on the location if you are invited to your clients place. You can make an art out of choosing and preparing the perfect location. A while ago I was attending a really interesting workshop about how to negotiate where we talked about aspects of meeting locations which you probably would never think of in normal life.

I was invited into a meeting room full of people. One big table which happened to host our meeting and some technicians working on notebooks on some internal project at the other end of the table. Hello trouble, here I come.

• Unexpected participants and uninvited spectators

  Make sure to invite all the needed persons and to introduce all partaking individuals. In my opinion it is really important to know who is attending a meeting. If there is a complete stranger sitting at the table of whom I don’t even know the name I really get cautiaus during conversation. You never know if you are going to offend your partners with what you are saying but in my opinion chances that you do are exorbitantly higher if you don’t know anything about the conversation partners. It’s also helpful to remove all unneeded individuals from the meeting location.

You remember the working technicians I was talking about? Turns out they were even partially following our conversation with one ear and giving quite inappropriate input from time to time. And then there was another participant I firstly thought happened also to sit silently across the table and working on his notebook. Turns out it was a mid-level executive spontaneously joining our conversation. At the beginning of the meeting everyone in the room was introduced solely by name and job title.

• Agenda and purpose of the meeting

  It helps a lot to think about the topics you want to clarify during the meeting before you sit down at the table. Everybody should be aware of the purpose of the meeting. It also is helpful to document all important decisions during the meeting. Even if you just write down short footnotes on your printed agenda draft. Following the agenda in the order on your printout is not really important in my opinion. Often the flow of the conversation results in a different order. But you can use the agenda to check if no important topic has bee left out.

I had prepared a nice agenda which I intended to follow during the meeting. Sadly the unexpected visitors had no clue about the purpose of our meeting and to some agree felt left out which caused many spontaneous discussions (even with the initially not involved technicians) about quite useless topics at that time (e.g. which CMS to use, etc.) which would have been quite useful in a later phase of the project but not at the given moment. I guess some persons were offended at a deeper level as they apparently have not been informed about my assignment as web consultant who was going to mess with their baby. Sadly I also did not define any goals for the meeting which just stopped at one point without any clear outcome for myself. The client was mostly pleased with my theoretical work but we just separated in the fashion of “Thanks for the effort. We’ll call you when we’re ready.”

• Responsibilities and fields of expertise

  It is very good to know which person on the table is responsible for what and each ones expertise. That way you don’t happen to be more clever than an attending expert in his field of expertise. Within any project you have to assign clear responsibilities to the according people and to clarify each ones weight on decisions.

I think it was an insane  mixture of all the previous and following points which lead to a quite unpleasant talking experience. The employees did not know about me getting involved with their website. They had no idea of what we were discussing that day.  People involved with application server maintenance thought I was going to relocate servers and to force them to integrate half of their applications right into the website. Without any chance to prepare for the meeting they just happened to pick up some phrases now and then and join in with discussions about topics which had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. I was marked as intruder into their territory and was met with constant distrust.

Another strategy by mid-management. Everything I said was conquered with the exact opposite opinion  (besides the tendency to turn around another 180° 5 minutes into the discussion). Everything I suggested was instantly demonized and cursed.

The highlight with no doubt was the discussion about CMS right in the beginning of the meeting. I was talking about how it would probably make sense to switch CMS. Basically I was suggesting to see what we want to achieve with a new website and then choose the CMS which would fit best for the tasks or even develop our own custom solution. Immediately mid-management agreed with me but told me about the experience with other CMSes in previous companies which were all better than the current solution in place. Also quickly came a suggestion to consult a close friend whose company has written it’s own CMS and which would provide us their CMS for little money. The circle of technicians on the other side wanted to know which CMS I would suggest. Foolish as I was I really answered with two CMS I tend to use frequently. (Reminder to self: NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!) What followed was a long discussion about many aspects of CMS and technologies in general. Somehow I managed to finally stop the discussion there. I suggested to roll back to the start and to shortly look over the topics of the prepared agenda and to have deeper discussions later.

• Preparation and vocabulary

  For future reference I have compiled a short checklist/questionnaire[1] which will help me to ask my client basic questions without to go into any technical details too early. It’s all about basic projects goals and fundamental strategies. It also defines a set of basic vocabulary which everyone in a discussion can relate to. Talking about the same things in different terms and phrases really is tiresome.

What I can tell you from my last experience is that it does not help if you try to make people clear that you have the same goals that they have. I guess they just don’t have enough time to evaluate all your claims and switch to some kind of defense mechanism. It does not matter if you state that you want to work together with them on the project and to realize the needed changes as smooth as possible. What counts is that all participating individuals are on the same level of information. That is what the website project checklist can be used for. You can use it as a reminder of points you have to clarify to do your work properly or with certain clients you can even let them play around with it in advance.

What can you do about it?

In the long run we will most likely experience this phenomenon more than once in our lifes. For me the motto is to stay calm and be professional (now that I know the outcome of the way I reacted that time). At least I am going to have a great story afterwards. In that case I don’t take this (probably) missed opportunity too serious. I think of it as a great opportunity to improve my own personality. I do not blame the client for anything. It was my pure lack of similar meetings which made me lose track and to just follow the whole discussion rather passively. I simply was overwhelmed by the attending people and disoriented by many confusing discussions. Discussions I for me thought would be obvious to hold later – but which I failed to communicate to the others.

Next time I’ll try to react differently if a similar situation occurs.

• Agenda and purpose of the meeting

I had clearly formed an agenda to follow during the meeting. Sadly we happened to not follow it exactly as happened to lose our way

I’ll ask each person in the room in detail about their job position and their anticipation and role within the upcoming project before we start talking about project details.

I’ll introduce everyone in the room to the agenda we are going to work through and the exact purpose of the meeting.

I’ll think about decisions and results I want to have at the end of the meeting before the meeting starts and ways on how to get there.

I’ll try to cut out useless discussions which have absolutely no relevance to the topics on the agenda.

All in all I hope to show more professionality when dealing with a similar situation in the future.

What are your strategies to deal with inconvenient occurences during meetings?

[1] Checklist for Website Projects can be downloaded at my company website (direct link to the PDF, about 330kB)

But first I want to show you a captcha which Google presented to me some time ago. Do you have any idea what that is supposed to mean? I don’t.

Another captcha on Twitter. Easy to decipher but still made me smile for a second. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

And now comes the video of a nice talk about re-captcha. A project with a great idea: instead of making people just waste time by solving captchas they aim to extract useful human power out of it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Once upon a time there was this fresh, young, stylish, really great Austrian mobile network operator. It was named “One”. If I remember correctly One was the third mayor mobile operator in Austria at that time and a pretty good alternative to the existing operators. They started at a time when competition was just going to blossom out and rates were falling to a level where also students could afford a simple mobile phone with a cheap prepaid card. Right at the beginning I knew it was the right operator for my needs. I loved their service and I even liked the brand they created. All was perfect for almost a decade (or was it even more than 10 years?).

Last year One was rebranded to “Orange”. I think the international Orange network operator was the major shareholder of One right from the beginning but they just let them do their business. During the process of rebranding there was total progpaganda. On TV, on the radio, in print media… just everywhere. At first sight the image still was the same. A theme song which perfectly fit the target group and still working with the image of a somewhat alternative, unusual mobile network operator.  But the corporate colors changed from white backgrounds and blue colors to black backgrounds and orange colors. Today I think I should have seen it earlier: the evil was penetrating a company I once liked.

Today I was calling the Orange helpdesk and tried to do something I did many times before at my old operator: asking about the possibilities to switch to another network plan and getting a new mobile phone. Back in the old days it was great to be able to re-negotiate your plan and maybe even get some price reduction on a new handset. Even if the switch was before the end of any minimum duration or special contract obligations you just paid a small additional fee which allowed you to switch to another in-house plan without any problem.

But not so at Orange. You simply cannot switch to another contract early – not even if you pay an extra fee. That option just does not exist. Even if they offer better plans with more features for new customers for half the price of what you are having now for a lifetime duration. You just are stuck at the old contract as long as the minimum duration period of your old contract is lasting. I also would have loved to spend some money on a new mobile phone. But that would just extend my current obligation by another few months. And if they are that inflexible I am just not going to stick with them longer than absolutely needed.

The purpose of this blog post is not to rant about my current contract. I’ll stick with it – no big deal. Also my current phone does it’s job very well. Who needs an iPhone or G1 (which they don’t even have) anyway? But to all of you who are considering joining the big happy Orange family: please don’t. Seriously. You’ll regret it. You’ll be stuck with terrible plans forever and there is no chance to get out earlier. Also the new “Bonus” system is terrible… compared to Ones. You have to wait forever or spend a fortune to get any profits from it.

Sadly ihateorange.com and orangesucks.com are already registered. I was so looking forward to put my counter till contract end online. Anybody else having similar thoughts?

Only one thing left to say: One – I miss you.

Most Zend Framework implementations (including implementations from the reference guide) are using set_include_path() within the bootloader.php file to setup the correct include path for the Zend Framework. The nice thing is that by doing so you’ll just have to write e.g. require_once(‘Zend/View.php’) for including Zend Framework classes or not even that by just using the great Autoloader feature. In a perfect environment setup you’ll just have to instantiate a new object of any Zend Framework class and it gets loaded automatically (you don’t even have to require/include any additional file as the Autoloader loads classes automatically from within the specified include path). Additionally you extend the include path to a library folder, etc.

Now it happens that in some mysterious server setups you cannot override the pre-defined include path. Neither set_include_path() nor ini_set(‘include_path’, ‘/path/:.’) have any effect on what get_include_path() is holding for you.

In such a case it might help to check you apache config which also can set the php include path. If it is set within the apache config you are out of luck. You simply cannot override it by script anymore. Same applies to setting the include path from within .htaccess. That also disables the ability to set the include path by script.

One thing I have not evaluated yet practically (but which I hope to be accurate in theory) is that you still can pre-define the value within apache config and .htaccess and at the same time allow override by script: just use php_value instead of php_admin_value when pre-defining php values.

From a webdeveloper’s point of view I am truly amazed by the great facebook framework. Seeing the great success of the platform does not make me feel anything than admiration. But from a social point of view I am really concerned about the ongoing abstraction of internet communities from the real world. It just makes me sad that I did not wake up earlier. At the moment I am just happy to have stopped this social nightmare.

The dilemma I am in right now is that my profession is webdeveloper. I am earning money by producing online systems. To not follow the mainstream is quite risky for a one-man-show company and might create a bad reputation at business partners who do believe in all buzzes. I hope those people too will one day find out that not everyone is happy with information overflow and real social isoliation created by online worlds.

My current quest is to find a way back to reality for online services. I want to use online technology to enhance my social experience in real-life… not to replace it. Today I was attending a NFC (near field communication) conference and was amazed by the possibilities this technology has to offer. That could really be a way to connect both worlds in a manner that will make me benefit from the online connectivity in a more satisfying way. Of course the internet still is holding a lot of useful ressources and services for me too. At the moment there is just the feeling that I want to spend more time with real people around than in online channels.

No matter if it will be NFC or any other kind of new technology… I am just curious about the future of the technological part of our lives.

Over time you somewhat get used to the IE6 quirks but then there is the fact that IE6 natively does not support alpha channel transparency in PNGs which make the realization of nowadays webdesigns a real torture. Spending endless hours on integrating IE6 only hacks and applying PNG hacks.

Not anymore.

From this day I will not support IE6 with IE6 specific / IE6 only acks anymore. Of course I will test layouts for full compliance with IE6 in terms of functionality but don’t expect any additional CSS rule for IE6 only.

I am happy that during the last months I seldomly had to apply any IE6 hacks on new templates. But from time to time there was just no way around an ugly “fix”. This will stop now.

Maybe it’s too early.

The statistics of my websites tell me that depending on the website topic there are between 10 and 25 % of users still using IE6. I think that number is not quite accurate. My guess is that there are some bots/spiders sending IE6 browser info.

I know at least one big enterprise forcing staff to use IE6 and I just don’t get it why. Waiting for some months for adopting new software is even recommended in most companies but not rolling out at least IE7 when IE8 gets already shipped with Windows7 is beyond my comprehension. There must be some reason but don’t ask me for it. I just have no clue.

If offending about every 10th visitor with an inferior rendering of transparent layouts is the only risk then I guess I’ll take it. At least google already decided to start the dropping of IE6 (although it’s only a recommendation – I don’t think they don’t care about IE6 at all). I hope many other big web outlets are following soon.

Many different point of views, development status of different semantic applications and best of all – available implementations around the topic Semantic Web were presented. The mix of information from introductory details for beginners like myself to insights for pros and senior programmers was perfect.

If you are looking for an in-depth explanation of the Semantic Web I would like to point you to the Semantic Web wikipedia article. There you will find basic information and further links. If you are looking for photos of the conference you will be served at flickr.com when searching for “wodpd2008″.

The possibilities of the Semantic Web are simply incredible and I am truly impressed by the current status of the development. It is quite shocking that so little information is spread publicly on prominent places. One thing which caught high attention at the conference is for example the inclusion of a semantic framework offering semantic functionality in KDE 4.0 (Nepomuk). Another really nice implementation was the semantically enhanced Wiki of the Semantic Web Company. The semantic Wiki eliminates a lot of maintenance tasks as it queries the semantic connections dynamically and displays the generated lists in an automatic fashion.

It is interesting to see that there are semantic initiatives from many different directions. There is the main movement of porting existing data from the current data silos into open semantic structures. Then there are industries which probably do not even know that they are supporting the evolution of semantic data relations. For example there are the first devices with integrated GPS capabilities (cameras, mobile phones) which store the exact geo-location into the image EXIF metadata (additionally to all sorts of other data like timestamp, camera settings, etc.). This addition of longitude and latitude values is a big step forward as it allows to relate the image to a location on this planet. Which allows endless more relations to information about the location probably also in accordance to the timestamp. And then there are some companies already investing big into semantic technology by creating products and services of the future. Of course in a closed way at the moment but at least they are also contributing to the further development and sooner or later all the data will be interlinked anyway as this is the real power of the semantic web.

From my point of view of a PHP application developer I am glad to report that there are many useful toolkits, frameworks, plugins in addition to existing and widespread PHP projects (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, etc.) are already available. If you want to get your locked-in data out there in RDF you might want to take a closer look at Triplify. Of course they already offer a wordpress configuration.

WordPress users also might want to install the tagaroo plugin which is basically a plugin demonstrating a real life implementation of a semantic web service offering additional benefit for bloggers. It is based on the Open Calais Webservice which is an online service which analyzes submitted text and allows for integrating semantic funcationality for any kind of application. Tagaroo submits your blog entry which gets analyzed and suggests tags which would fit your blog entry and on top of that you also get flickr images for inclusion which might match the suggested tags as well.

I could go on and on but I will stop here with just a few more pointers: dbpedia, dbtune, microformats, firefox gnosis extension, firefox tabulator extension, open calais

Some of the lecturers were Danny Ayers, Alan Dix, Leo Sauermann, Sören Auer, Yves Raimond, Brian Davis