Well, I've actually been back for a couple of days, but I had better things to do with my time than write blog entries.
The Lake District was wonderful. It was the first time I had been there. This was a great time of year to go - the weather was good (well, certainly better than I expected) and there were very few tourists around.
There's a set of photos over on Flickr.
In a couple of hours we're off to the Lake District to stay in a small cottage in the middle of nowhere for a week. I won't have a internet connection so I won't be blogging or answering email until the 28th at the earliest.
Whatever form your solstice celebrations take, I hope you have a good time.
I've started to get cold calls from phone dealerships offering me free upgrades for my mobile phone. Currently I'm getting two or three of them a week.
The pattern is always the same. They claim to be calling from an "Orange dealership"[1] and ask if I'm happy with my current phone. When I ask where they got my number from they always claim that they got it from Orange. But they never have any more details of my account. They rapidly lose interest when they discover that I last upgraded my phone just a few months ago as this means that I'm still in my twelve month Orange contract and there's no way that I'm eligible for a free upgrade.
There's also no way that Orange would share my number (or anyone's number) with another phone dealership. Orange like me to get my phones from them. Actually, perhaps that's not true. When I last upgraded my phone Orange made it very clear that they weren't happy with the small amounts I spend each month and they made it as hard as possible for me to get a free upgrade. Perhaps they would like to shift that cost onto anoter dealership.
Oh, and this number is registered with the Telephone Prefence Society which means that in theory I shouldn't get any cold calls like this. When I challenge them on that they always claim that because they are "connected with Orange" then it's not a cold call. Which is clearly nonsense.
It's hard to see how this kind of marketing is cost effective. Unlike spam, there are large costs associated with it. You need to pay someone to make the calls. And you need to pay for the calls themselves. Obviously they will only continue doing this if it's cost effective. Which means that some people must be responding to these calls. But who could that be? Everyone I've ever spoken to about it is really annoyed by these calls. What idiots are welcoming them?
[1] Orange are the mobile phone company that I use.
It's been a few weeks since we've had a "Java is dying" post. But it seems that the idea is really starting to take hold. There's a story in Business Week this week which covers much of the same ground as we've seen before. Previously I've only seen this kind of analysis in media aimed at techies. Business Week is read by management. I wonder if having the story covered in places like that will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's interesting to see the various parts of the LAMP stack described as "upstarts" - given that most of them have been around at least as long as Java.
People seemed interested in my recent post about basic password handling so I thought I'd write another similar post. This time we'll look at another example of basic customer interaction that so many people get wrong - sending bulk email.
Note that I'm not a lawyer, so this doesn't cover any of the legal stuff about getting people's permission to contact them or registering with the Data Protection Register because you're storing people's personal details. This is about purely technical issues that should be simple to get right.
As always, I'm interested in any comments you might have.
Rule 1: Send text versions
I'm going to get drummed out of the geek club for saying this, but I'm not going to tell you not to send HTML email. I don't like HTML email. I don't read HTML email that doesn't have a plain text version attached. But I know a lost cause when I see one. Companies are never going to stop sending HTML email and I'm not going to waste my breath explaining why they should.
I am, however, going to recommend that you don't send pure HTML email. You should always send a plain text version of the email alongside the HTML version. A very small percentage of the people you are emailing deliberately won't read HTML email. But a larger proportion will occasionally want to read your message using a device (maybe a mobile phone) that doesn't support HTML email. You'll be making their life easier by sending both versions.
And notice that you need to send both versions every time. Asking customers whether they want to recieve messages in HTML or plain text is just stupid. It makes your life harder and it doesn't help your customer who has asked for HTML email but needs to access your mail on a device that doesn't support it.
Obviously, the best approach would be for the text version to contain the same content as the HTML version. But perhaps you have good reasons why you only want people to see your message in the full colour HTML version. In that case you should still attach a text version. It should contain information on who you are, how the customer can unsubscribe from your mailing list and, if at all possible, a link to a copy of the email on your web site. It certainly shouldn't contain a rude order to "upgrade your email program" or the pointless information that "you can't read the content of this message". Just last week I got an email from a large online shop where the text attachment consisted of the words "text content". Content like this just makes you look unprofessional.
Rule 2: Say who you are sending it to
I have a number of email addresses that I use for different purposes. I'm sure I'm not unique in that respect. So when I get bulk email it's very helpful if the message tells me which email address it was sent to. This is particularly useful if I want to unsubscribe from your mailing list and your unsubscribe page prompts me for the address that I want to unsubscribe.
Also, by including the email and real name (if you have it) of the person you are contacting, your email is less likely to look like a phishing attack. This is the approach taken by companies like Ebay.
Rule 3: Send it from a real address
It's incredibly rude to send an email from an email address that won't accept replies. Sure, I know that you don't want to expose email addresses to potential spammers. But these are your (potential) customers. You need to trust them. And anyway you should have good spam protection installed.
There are two good ideas for addresses to send bulk email from. The first is to have it come from an unsubscribe address. That way, someone can unsubscribe from your mailing list simply by replying to the email. The second is to have it come from a customer service address where replies will be read by a real person who can deal with any queries that the recipients of the mail might have. It's probably not a good idea to have it coming from a real person's address as that can make it look a bit like spam.
Either of these are a good idea, but it's important to make it clear which one you are using. You don't want customers' queries going to an unsubscribe address!
Rule 4: Make it easy to unsubscribe
Much as you might hate it, occasionally people will want to unsubscribe from your mailing list. And you should make that as easy as possible. You should always either send the email from an unsubscribe address (see above) or put clear unsubscribe instructions in the email (and in the text version).
And you should respect unsubscribe requests immediately. I still get email which confirms I've been unsubscribed from a mailing list but adds that it might still be mail for the next few days. That is unacceptable. If your software doesn't honour unsubscription requests immediately, then you need to upgrade your software.
Four simple rules that should be well within the technical capabilities of any bulk email application. If yours doesn't follow all of these rules then you should consider changing to one that does. If you don't then you run the risk of needlessly annoying your customers and potential customers.
(Thanks to Chris Heathcote for some suggestions)
Update: Here's a good example of how not to do it. I recently ordered something from HMV's web site. The products went missing in the post and I've been in touch with them to get either a replacement or a refund. Every single email I've got from them - the order confirmation, the shipping confirmation and the messages from their customer support department - had a text portion that consisted of the text "textContent". None of the messages needed to be in HTML. Having them in HTML added nothing to the content. They all just contained text. Not even a logo. I can only assume that whoever set up HMV's customer support email system was a complete idiot.
I'm going back to shopping at Amazon.
I spent most of the 1980s living in various shared houses. One of the effects of this is that there are large holes in my record collection as I wouldn't bother buying music that someone else in the house owned. Sometimes I can't remember which albums I own. Sometimes I'm surprised by albums that I own. I came across a good example last week.
For some reason I felt like listening to some Dire Straits. Don't ask me why. I have no excuse. Sometimes I just get an urge to listen to music that I normally wouldn't go near. I knew I had at least one Dire Straits CD, but I wasn't sure exactly what. So I went to look and was appalled by what I found.
Oh, I had Dire Straits CDs. But not the ones I hoped for. I didn't have the first album. The one that's still really rather good. The one (the only one) that I'm still prepared to defend in an argument. The one with "Sultans of Swing" on. Nope. Didn't find that. I didn't even have the second album. The one that isn't anywhere near as good as the first but does, at least, have "Romeo and Juliet" on it. Apparently I never got round to buying that either.
I did find Love Over Gold. Terrible album. Its only redeeming feature is an obscure album track called "Industrial Disease". Oh and it has "Private Investigations" which I definitely remember hating even back when it was in the charts. And, even worse, I found Brothers in Arms - the very epitome of 1980s yuppie coffee-table music. The closest it comes to having anything interesting on it is "Money for Nothing" which was reasonably entertaining the first million times I heard it, but unfortunately MTV has overplayed it just a bit and it's now pretty much impossible to listen to without grimacing.
Wasn't there a law back in the mid-80s that it was illegal to sell a CD player without selling at least one Dire Straits CD with it? To demonstrate the quality.
Strange how tastes can change so much. What was I thinking? Sometimes I think that if I ever get a time machine I'll just waste my time going back and trying to drum some taste into my younger self.
I didn't listen to either of the Dire Straits albums I found. I listened to some 10,000 Maniacs instead.
Update: Oops. Further research indicates that I'm misremembering Dire Straits' early albums. It seems that "Romeo and Juliet" was on their third album, Making Movies, not their second album as I claimed above. The second album was apparently called Communique. But, be honest now, can anyone remember that album at all?
I like a good musical parody. Note the word "good" in there. I'm not talking about the Barron Knights here[1], but I enjoy listening to The King covering Nirvana in the style of Elvis Presley or Frank Bennett covering Radiohead's "Creep".
So there's one level on which I should have enjoyed the busker in Tottenham Court Road tube station who had reduced Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" to an end of the pier singalong. But I strongly suspect that the busker didn't have an ironic bone in his body and that he was playing it that way because he plays everything that way.
It was horrible.
[1] Am I showing my age by mentioning the Barron Knights? Can anyone under 40 remember them?
Another book review. This time it's XML Hacks. O'Reilly's Hacks books are great and this one is no exception.
And whilst we're on the subject of political rants, much applause to Harold Pinter for his acceptance speech at the Nobel prizegiving ceremony. I particularly enjoyed the speech that he suggested George Bush should use.
God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.
Of course, this will only get reported in places where the readership already know most of what Pinter says. So I don't expect it to change anything.
I was sorry to read that Maggie Thatcher had spent the night in hospital. To clarify, what I mean is that I was sorry to read that scarce medical resources had been wasted on that nasty old witch.
Oh, I know it's fashionable these days to grudgingly admit that "she was actually pretty good" or to see her as nothing more than an increasingly mad embarassment to the Tory party. But I can't do that. I was seventeen when she became PM and the first ten years of my active political life were spent campaigning against her and her policies. The UK is still recovering from the damage that she did in the 80s. She will always be the one politician who I can't have a reasonable conversation about. The very thought of her starts me foaming at the mouth.
She's the person I always think of when I hear the final verse of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War".
And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket in the pale afternoon
I'll watch as you're lowered down to your death bed
And I'll stand by your grave 'til I'm sure you are dead.
Tomorrow is the twenty-fifth anniversary of John Lennon's death. To celebrate... er... no... to commemorate that fact the BBC is running a vote to find the greatest Lennon song.
We'll skim quickly over the fact that the selection of songs to choose from is pretty bizarre (only one Beatles song!) and leap straight to the current results. And oh, look, Imagine is winning with 25% of the vote. There's a surprise.
Think about it. Is Imagine really such a great song? Or is it just a pile of over-sentimental crap. Remember, this is the man who also wrote Instant Karma, Working Class Hero and Cold Turkey. Given those alternatives, how can anyone vote for Imagine?
Of course that's a rhetorical question. People have no taste.
So if you're going to vote, please think carefully. Try to imagine a world where Imagine was never written. Isn't that a better world?
Update: Oh. There's another Beatles song on the list. Julia from the White Album. Which may be a bit bit obscure but would be a fine choice.
I've written a review of Chris Date's book Database in Depth. All in all I thought it was rather good - tho' in places it reminded me a bit too much of some of my college higher maths lectures.
I've got a bit behind on book reviews. I have a large pile of books here. More should trickle out over the next few weeks.
I've been meaning to mention this for about a year. I remember it every time I go shopping for books on Charing Cross Road, but then forget it by the time I get to a computer.
What happened to Blackwell's computer books department?
When Blackwell's first opened their branch on Charing Cross Road (some time in the last five to ten years) they had a great computer books department. The only shops in London that could compete with it were the Waterstones up near the University of London and Foyles. The Waterstones was too far away from all the other bookshops and Foyles... well Foyles was "organised" in such a way that it was impossible to find a book[1]. Blackwell's fast became the place where I bought most of my computer books.
But about a year ago, their computer book department suddenly lost a third of its shelves. They were given over to business or economics or something like that. And over the following months it continued to shrink. It's now an embarassing shadow of it's former self forlornly clinging to a few bookcases in the far corner of its previous space.
I know that the computer books market is going through a bit of a bad patch (I'm a computer book author, I know how bad it has got) but this seems to me to be a bit of an over-reaction.
Luckily (well, in one sense) the old lady who ran Foyles died a few years ago. And apparently the bizarre layout was her idea. So now their books are arranged in a far saner fashion. So I do most of my book browsing there now. I say "browsing" because, like most of the world, I do my actual buying from Amazon.
[1] "Where are your books on Perl?" "They're organised by publisher, so most of them are in the O'Reilly section, but there are also some by various other publishers scattered around the department."
Back St. George's this morning. This time for a bone densitometry examination. This is just a safety measure as the steroids I'm on can reduce the calcium in your bones and lead to osteoporosis. I'm on a calcium supplement to counter that but it's always good to know for sure.
I was in Oxford St this afternoon trying to get some christmas shopping done. A lot of the presents I buy are CDs and DVDs so I buy a lot in Virgin, HMV and shops like that.
I went into HMV with rather a long list of things I wanted o buy. But about two thirds of the shop seemed to be cordened off. And the bit that wasn't cordoned off was really crowded. At the far end of the shop I could see a spotlight shining on someone and then I noticed the posters on the walls. They had Mariah Carey there signing autographs.
So three weeks before christmas, HMV thought it was a good idea to close off most of their flagship shop so that a crap singer could sign autographs. Sure there were a lot of people there, but how much money were they spending? Does that make any kind of business sense?
I couldn't get anywhere near anything that I wanted to buy, so I gave up. I went to the Virgin Megastore. Where I proceeded to spend close to £200. HMV could have had that money.
In my opinion one of the best and most important talks at last Saturday's London Perl Workshop was the first talk in the beginners track where Greg McCarroll talked about "Rediscovering the Joys of Perl". Greg introduced a couple of quick hacks that he had written to make his life better. He went on to say that the best way for a programming language to prove itself is for people to stop building over-complex frameworks (or, worse, talking about building over-complex frameworks) and to just get on and write useful applications. If people took just one idea from from the LPW then I hope if was Greg's message of "JFDI"[1].
Greg and I were talking about this in more depth last night and we agreed that the Perl community often suffers from a lack of JFDI. In many ways CPAN has proved to be a double-edged sword. Of course it's great that it enourages people to write and, more importantly, share reusable code. But on the other hand it often seems that writing reusable code libraries is all that Perl programmers do. There's precious little evidence of them ever writing useful end-user applications. Of course there are great Perl applications out there, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
During our discussion we came up with a rough and ready way to measure whether what you're currently doing is JFDI or not. The idea is that if a programmer knows that what they are doing isn't currently JFDI then they have a strong indication that they would be more productive if they reordered their priorities.
So, I give you the McCarroll-Cross Productivity Indicator (MCPI):
If you can't explain what you are currently doing to a non-technical person in one short sentence, then you are not JFDI
[1] "Just Fucking Do It".
Over at Guido Fawkes Blog they've announced the winners of their Press Plagiarist of the Year Awards which points out print journalists who have "borrowed" ideas from blogs without crediting their source.
The winner was Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright who turned postings from The Policemans' Blog into a two page article and somehow forgot to mention the source.
But I was most disappointed to see that the second place went to the Guardian's Marina Hyde who has apparently been doing "research" on a number of blogs.
Blogs are, of course, a great source of journalism material. And I'm sure that most bloggers wouldn't mind their work being used in newspapers. But a credit would be nice.
I wonder if it would help if more people applied a Creative Commons licence to their work. All the work on this blog is licensed under the Attribute ShareAlike Licence which means that you're free to do what you like with it as long as you a) credit me and b) apply the same licence to your work.
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