Life is grand

This deserves a lot more thought but I regularly here people saying “make your site sticky” or “get users back to your site” or “don’t let them go.”

because of the fact you are needing to “push” information to the user rather than the user taking action themselves. In the particular case where this is the majority of your traffic, it means your web product has failed to integrate itself in your user base’s life, and there isn’t a recurring set of traffic that you can depend on.

If you are getting 10 million visits a week and the majority come from your notifications then there is nothing wrong.

User retention: Why depending on notification-driven retention sucks has some good points but I think the quote above is too ardent. Yes, Facebook’s email notifications are awful. But Dopplr’s emails are very good, as are my build system and source control emails. The Carbon Account and Coudal Partner’s emails are excellent.

There are many sites out there doing a good job of integrating into my life by using emails and other notification systems.

There is a real obsession with bringing users back to our websites. There are other ways. I use Plaxo every single day and yet I rarely visit Plaxo.com. Dopplr works very well from afar and I can see it building more off-site services that benefit Dopplr and benefit me.

Yes, don’t do notifications like Facebook does. But if users never have to visit your site and interact with your service through notifications then I don’t see the harm (just make sure your business model still works.)

This site is probably going to be going “up and down like a whore’s knickers”* over the next few days. I need to get my hosting, DNS etc. sorted out, got it in a bit of a pickle at the moment. Updates over on paulmwatson.wordpress.com. If all goes well you won’t have to change any links, feed subscriptions etc. If all goes badly then I’m going to get my name changed and pretend this never happened…

* I’d never heard that saying until I came to Ireland. The Irish sure have some colourful sayings.

Advergirl notes “Doc’s VRM sounds way hard. I don’t want to manage my relationship with Target or write a RFP for a blender. I don’t have an acquisition dept.” (via Doc Searls) about VRM.

At first I agreed with her and then I turned it around and thought; you do have an RFP. Everytime you spend time researching which blender to buy you end up with an RFP. Price, features, location, colour etc. The difference is that you looked at three or four websites to find the one that matched the RFP in your head.

Or use this example (and I hope Advergirl doesn’t take this as sexist); shoes. If Advergirl is looking for shoes she has a notion of they must be red, small heeled, open topped, large buckle and suitable for summer (my girlfriend just bought shoes like this.)

Unconsciously we build RFPs in our heads when we look into buying something. Calling it an RFP is a bad idea but the concept is the same. One real problem though is the process of arriving at the RFP. By shopping around the RFP is built up in bits in reaction to what is available. You weren’t sure if you wanted red or blue but then on looking in a fashion store you found out that blue is this summer’s colour and so your RFP changes to stipulate “must be blue.” Most official RFPs are more intentioned than that, they are formed and sent out before they may change a bit to reflect the market.

We tend not to notice how much work our current marketplaces are. VRM may not be less work but you at least get to control the conversation.

A past dream realised by HD cameras and broadband technology. A link between New York and London under the Atlantic.

I love the scale of influence of the web but at times I wonder about the satisfaction one feels on completing a physical project like this.

Just a note but Fiona and I will be spending 3 days at Brook Lodge in Wicklow. No laptop so I won’t be online. See you on Thursday.

It’s a nice idea, and I think a lot of home users would choose a safer, if more limited, online experience.

They sure would but they would sure be wrong in doing so. The problem being that once you go down the safe route you lose power to change. There is no recourse in a safe zone. A safe zone is patrolled, monitored and safety is enforced not by the citizens but by the walls and the builders of the walls. The builders of the walls are given power to choose for you and once they have that power it takes, in most cases, a violent revolution to take their power away.

In the red/green model proposed though you can exit the safe zone whenever you want.

A safe zone however renders you unable to survive in an unsafe zone. You lose the skills and perspective you have to have in a dangerous zone. So when the safe zone crumbles or is overthrown the people inside are left incapable of surviving.

And once you have spent enough time in the safe zone you may have the option to go to the unsafe zone but you won’t do it. You know you will get creamed in the red zone so you cower in apparent safety in the green zone. The freedoms you used to have are gone and you cannot choose anymore.

Most people though will grow frustrated by a safe zone quickly enough to switch to the red zone and remain there. This is what is happening with Microsoft Windows Vista and UAC. Most people turn it off. They go from safe and restricted to unsafe but free. They get hassled, they have security breaches and they curse at Windows but they hate UAC even more and they battle on.

Until we come up with a better idea than red and green we just have to battle on. Just don’t choose green, you’ll regret it and will be powerless to change.

The Economist has a break-down of smoking by country. Greece is at the top with 3000 ciggies per year per person with India at the bottom at less than 100 per person per year.

Here is my in-depth, PC-free analysis of the results:
Greece (3000): You’d rather smell the fish I gutted this morning?
Ukraine (2500): I’ve got bigger problems e.g. Chernobyl.
Slovenia (2500): It is our capitalistic right to smoke!
Russia (2000): You’d rather I drank stolichnaya?
Spain (2000): It’s either the bulls or the smokes.
Japan (2000): Raw, fermented eel taste better after 10 smokes.
Lebanon (1500): A gift of secondary smoke for our neighbors down South.
South Korea (1500): You’d smoke too with our nuclear-happy neighbours up North.
China (1500): The Chairman never said nothing about smoking.
United States (1000): Yippee kay ya mother…
Cuba (1000): One more box and my cigarette boat is complete! Miami here I come!
France (500): I do it to spite you, English prick!
Britain (500): Can’t let those frogs beat us at yet another thing eh!
Brazil (500): All this sex…
South Africa (500): It’s like a portable braai.
India (100): Maybe I come back as a vending machine.

Kids. Don’t smoke. Cheaper ways of killing yourself.

If you are looking for web-dev work in the South East of Ireland then check out a senior and junior positions with FeedHenry, the company I work for.

Nothing was likely to change until we healed the “split between what we think and what we do.

Wendell Berry, 30 years ago talking about environmental problems and peoples attitudes towards them. Fascinating that a man spoke before I was born on today’s issues that people think of as only being recent.

Michael Pollan has an interesting article on why we should even attempt to “go green” when in the face of it our actions may be little better than betting on a horse.

I am an optimist who would like a better, sustainable world. I want to be more independent from the energy grid and the food production and transport system. But as Wendell points out there is a gulf between what we think and what we do. A lot of the push-back seems to come from social norms and desires. The nice house, the nice car, the nice TV and, as I am about to become a father, the completely irrational guilt of not doing buying everything your child needs wants. I have a pregnant girlfriend that I want to keep comfortable and safe.

Saving the planet is going to involve a lot of arguing with the people around me.

And with myself. I’d love a Playstation 3 about now, nearly bought one on the weekend. Yet I want to cut my carbon footprint. One or the other has to give.

Another thing is that my family lives back in South Africa. That is a long, expensive flight. How do I tell my mom I’m not going to see her every year or two because it is bad for the planet? How do I say she may not see her first grandchild for years because the world is falling apart and I have to do my bit?

Then you get onto energy independence; solar and wind. I’ll take the initial hit but what happens in 5 years time when they need to be replaced? Turbines wear out, storms and accidents break solar panels. There is a lot of glass, plastic and silicon in solar and wind generators. Glass takes heat to shape which comes from coal power plants. Plastic comes from petroleum (oil.) God knows what is involved in getting silicon into solar panels.

Plus the various parts of a wind turbine aren’t something I know how to maintain never-mind build. They have to come from somewhere, probably China.

Some of the solution to that involves talking to the people around me. A few co-workers are pretty handy with hardware. But I’ll have to break some social norms to get their help.

Local communities are going to have to come back in a strong way for us to build a sustainable world. I can’t rely on cheap labour and manufacturing in India anymore.

As for food, I’m getting there. Meat is going to be hard to cut but I’ll cut it down, if not out. Vegetables I am working on growing myself with some help from composting all that kitchen waste. Fruit will be harder in Ireland but some recycled packaging for a greenhouse might do the trick. Other things I’ll just have to wean out completely. How the heck do I get local brown sugar for instance? The sugar industry in Ireland went bang awhile back.

None of this takes into account some other important parts of life that we’d do well to be independently capable of; water, waste disposal, medicine, education, communication.

It is a bet. But I’d be happier to go out on the bet than having done nothing.