malcolm coles

Dear Microsoft,

You have asked me to let you know the following.

You run a site called The Mojave Experiment. This is a high-profile advertising campaign for the Windows Vista operating system. You may be familiar with it as it’s yours.

Message on Microsoft’s The Mojave Experiment…

The message saying you need silverlight to run the mojave experiment site.

When I visit this site of yours, I see the following message:

“This website [The Mojave Experiment] has been updated to run on the very latest version of the Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 plug-in. Please re-install. You can also view the Non-Silverlight version by clicking here.“

I decided to view the non-silverlight version first. Then I clicked on the link to see the enhanced silverlight version.

Message on Microsoft.com about The Mojave Experiment …

I was taken to the microsoft.com site and shown this message about The Mojave Experiment site (just to be clear, this is a message from Microsoft about its own site):

Microsoft - please tell yourself to upgrade your own version of silverlight

“The site that you visited [the Mojave Experiment] was built for an earlier, beta version of Silverlight - not the current one. Please contact the site owner to let them know that they must upgrade to the latest release of Silverlight 2. Let us know if the site is not updated shortly so we can try to assist in upgrading the site to the latest Silverlight technology.“

Are you reading this …?

I’m not sure how to contact the site owner (Bill Gates - let me know if your read this). But Microsoft - Microsoft says you need to upgrade. And if you don’t, tell yourself so you can assist yourself.

Bored with the out-of-the-box functionality of blog commenting, increasing numbers of bloggers seem to be turning to advanced commenting systems like Disqus, Sezwho and IntenseDebate - offering threaded comments, cross-site reputation scores and so on.

However, if you install these on your blog, you are likely to be hiding your comments from google - not  great from an SEO point of view.

(Also, for wordpress users, wordpress 2.7 is about to introduce threaded comments).

Google ignores javascript

Google doesn’t bother to run javascript when it indexes a page. And the problem with these commenting systems is that they use javascript to do their fancy functionality - but also the basic stuff like actually showing the comments.

Update 7 Nov: IntenseDebate say they are rolling out a version that works with JS off - see post below.

Follow the test links below with javascript off (in your preferences in firefox / safari on a mac, probably in tools on a PC) to see what I mean…

You can prove that google isn’t indexing the comments for disqus and intensedebate by searching for the name of the person with the first comment on the page - when you do, you get no hits. (EG this search returns a results for the disqus page, not the simpable one).

Disqus with javascript off: 4/10

Where the comments should be, you see a link that says ‘View this discussion thread’. This takes you to a page on the disqus site with the comments on your blog.

This is better than nothing, as there’s at least a link back to your page. But it means google thinks the content in the comments belong to disqus, not you.

Page used to test this: http://simpable.com/code/disqus/ and http://www.sexywidget.com/my_weblog/2008/08/disqus-updates.html

Sezwho with javascript off 6/10

You lose the functionality (couldn’t they have provided a static link to the info?), but at least the comments are visible.

Page used to test this: http://www.webbiestuffs.com/2008/07/how-i-solved-sezwho-problem.html and http://andybeard.eu/2008/03/mybloglog-social-activity-time-line-disappoints.html

IntenseDebate with javascript off: 0 / 10 (moving to ?/10)

You see a link that says ‘leave a response’ but nothing happens when you click it. Comments invisible to google, therefore, and also a fairly poor implementation - surely they could have made something useful happen when you click it.

Page used to test this: http://www.ultimatenoob.com/?p=425

Update 7 Nov See Jon’s post below about a new version that’s non-javascript friendly. However, the number of posts shown with javascript on, for instance, his latest post on is 9. With it off, you see 4. And I found this post by the designer of IntenseDebate. You can also see some posts with javascript off. HOWEVER the number of posts with JS on is 37. With JS off it is 15. The new version is only in beta but maybe some more testing needed?!?

Fascinating news headlines: You need to have javascript enabled to view this ...

Following my recent post on the guardian and accessibility, I’ve discovered another newspaper group that seems to have given little thought to its reliance on javascript: Johnston Press Digital Publishing.

Check out how its pages appear in google news.

Surely you’d occasionally check how you appeared, and do something about this?

I upgraded from the Nokia N95 to the Samsung Omnia i900. Am I pleased with it? Yes. Are there some things it could do a lot better? Yes. Would I go back to the N95 if it wasn’t broken? Possibly …

Samsung Omnia

This is that rare thing - a review of a mobile phone where the purchaser doesn’t claim it’s rubbish and going straight back, or the best thing ever. It’s a mixed review - the omnia is one of those bits of technologies that feels like it was released 6 months early.

Samsung Omnia: good points

The touch screen is good, obviously. It’s nice and big (not as big as the iphone’s), and display photos well. It looks good. There are loads of features - it does pretty much everything.

And it connects via pop3 to get my emails better and more easily than most computers I have tried to set this up on. This is the reason I’m keeping it - it’s brilliant.

What the Samsung Omnia could do better

Here are its major drawbacks:

1. Have you seen the stylus? It dangles from your ear like a stupid earring. You can’t dispense with it as some functions require very precise screen touching, and my fingers are too fat to do this without the styles. Yours will be too.
2. The flash on the camera is rubbish. I read this somewhere, but thought it couldn’t be true. It is - any close photos taken with the flash are completely over exposed. This is one of the main reasons I might have gone back to the N95 …
3. Windows 6.1 is a bit rubbish. At times, the phone is slow to respond, so you end up pressing the buttons repeatedly, and then of course it all goes wrong. This happens particularly with web browsing. You think the page has loaded, so you try to scroll down. Nothing happens, so you try some more. Then you shoot to the bottom of the page.
4. The touchscreen doesn’t always give feedback. Sometimes it vibrates. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’m sure there’s a logic but I haven’t worked it out.
5. And finally, and this might be me, it’s actually slower to type using the touchscreen than to use two thumbs on a normal mobile. I think this is because you have to pull your fingers / the stylus completely clear, whereas with normal phones you don’t. Anyway, it’s slow.

Overall though, despite all this, I’m keeping it, mostly because of the email. But if I were Samsung, I’d bring out a version in 6 months with the stylus integral to the phone, a camera that works, and a slightly better web browser.

The Guardian’s redesign of its comment section breaks its own accessibility policy by relying purely on javascript. Not only that, it’s a usability nightmare.

Guardian comments and javascript

The big problem is that to even see the comments, you need to have javascript turned on. Without it, the comments are not shown.

What you see on the guardian site with javascript off - nothing

This means you also can’t post - meaning the Guardian has blocked its commenting functionality from anyone who isn’t using javascript - something that often applies to people using assistive technologies to surf.

(This also means the Guardian is arguably in breach of the disability discrimination act, which ‘makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public’).

Guardian’s accessibility policy

The guardian’s own accessibility policy says that ‘We have placed great emphasis on testing with people to ensure a better experience for all users and all technologies’ and that ‘We are in the process of introducing a new design for guardian.co.uk, taking care to ensure improved accessibility’.

Neither of these statements seems to be true - they are forcing users to use javascript.

Other problems from relying on javascript

The fact that you have to have javascript on to see the comments has had several other side effects:

• Google can’t index the content (making the guardian the only newspaper site with web 2.0 functionality that hides users’ posts from a search engine)
• Mobile devices can’t see it reliably (lots of mobile phone browsers don’t use javascript so the comments sections can’t be used).
• The pages take ages to load (all that unnecessary javascript).
• The comments are sloooow to appear Once the page has loaded, the JS runs and the comments are loaded into the page. This is slow. Really slow.

Following several complaints, the guardian has promised to post on its use and reliance on javascript. But we’re still waiting.

Funnily, in one of the posts to the guardian’s inside guardian blog, it is said approvingly that ‘Chris advises avoiding Javascript if possible. Use Javascript and CSS to benefit the user, not to create basic functionality.’

If only they had followed their own advice.

There is no such word as minimalistic. The word is minimalist. Don’t believe me? Try this dictionary. 

There’s something a bit ironic about people misusing minimalist by making it longer than necessary … Although as there are 1.7 million uses of minimalistic on the internet, perhaps ironic doesn’t quite cover it.

Google is running a public service ad about its USA election 2008 pages and how they can help you register to vote.

Google public service ad: you can make a difference

‘You can make the difference’ says the ad.

Clicking on it returns page not found. Perhaps you can’t make a difference …

Page not found

What do you think?

Update: Someone stole our Bugaboo pushchair from outside a church. Can you believe it?!? I’m looking for a tall thief …

I’m tall - 6 foot 4. Pushing pushchairs gives me backache as (1) I have to bend over because the handles aren’t high enough and (2) I have to try and stand back from the pushchair otherwise I kick the axle. These two aims conflict.

Very few pushchairs are designed for tall people.

The ideal pushchair for tall people

After a lot of trial and error - in shops, borrowing other people’s pushchairs, buying the wrong ones, reading pushchair reviews - I’ve decided there is only one pushchair for tall people: the bugaboo cameleon.

Yes, it’s expensive. But the handle extends so high that I don’t have to bend, and I don’t kick the axle. The key thing about the handle is that it extends, rather than rotates. Pushchairs with handles that rotate are useless if you’re tall - although the handle becomes higher, it also makes you stand nearer the pushchair. So you kick it. 

No other pushchair comes close to the Bugaboo Cameleon if you’re tall.

No axle pushchairs - Quinny and Stokke

You might think that a pushchair with no axle would be good for tall people, such as the Quinny. The problem with Quinnys is that if you put the shopping bag underneath, it goes where the axle would be … so you kick it.

The Stokke Xplory is another option if you’re tall. This is probably as good as the Bugaboo, although I haven’t used one that much so I can’t promise. It does look a bit wierd though - still, we bought the bloom fresco highchair, so what do we know!

If you’re tall, what do you think?

I’ve been using the spinvox service for about 6 months now - it takes voicemails left for you, converts them into a text message, and sends them to you. Frankly, it’s brilliant. 

Spinvox review: good points

Spinvox is pretty accurate (apart from names …. see below) - there’s only the occasional word it gets wrong, and you can nearly always work it out.

You can still listen to the message if there are problems with the conversion (eg poor signal or the caller was standing by a busy road).

It’s only when you have this service that you realise how much people ramble on! The joy of it is that you can read a one-minute voicemail in about 5 seconds.

And if you’re somewhere where you can’t listen to voicemail, such as a meeting, you might be able to sneak a look at a text message - so you can see what the person said.

Spinvox review: bad points

It’s not perfect. Spinvox’s main problem is names - it’s not always very good at working them out, especially with nicknames (my friend Mog is always Mark). Usually this isn’t a problem as you can work out who it is from from the context of the message. And you can always listen to the message if you can’t.

The other issue is that you are charged for the call that the person has made to you - it’s redirected to a liverpool number, and you’re charged for the call. I can’t find a mention of this on the Spinvox website, but again, it’s not a huge problem - although it does mean it’s not quite as cheap as the £3 they make out.

Verdict on spinvox.com

Overall, get Spinvox if listening to voicemail annoys you in any way. It’s great.

Childcare voucher schemes - the government’s scheme where you sacrifice some of your salary in exchange for an equal amount of childcare vouchers - make sense for employers and employees. Employees don’t have to pay tax or NI on the vouchers. And employers don’t have to pay employers’ NI. So savings all round.

Childcare voucher schemes: employers’ costs

Employers will have to pay a company to administer the scheme (but this cost is less than the NI saving). Here’s a list of the companies and how much they charge (remember, you’ll save more than this in NI).

Accor, Busybees, Sodexho etc childcare vouchers: administration costs

For some reason companies are reluctant to put these figures on their websites. All figures are for a one-person childcare voucher scheme.

• Kiddivouchers - 2.5%
• Voucher solutions - 4%
• Early years vouchers -From 5%
• Kids Unlimited - 5%
• Gemelli - 5%
• Sodexho / childcarechoice.co.uk - 6%
• Accor Services Childcare Vouchers - 7%
• Vouchers4Kids - 7%
• Employersforchildcare-  7%
• Faircare - 9%
• Busy Bees - still waiting for call back

So there you have it. The cost of running a childcare voucher scheme is between 2.5% and 9%. I can’t quite see why you would look beyond Kiddivouchers or Voucher solutions myself.