If you’re an avid gamer, you will have no doubt noticed that Quake Live has entered open beta now – if you were in the private betas then you will have no doubt experienced the huge surge in waiting times to join a game! Well, that aside, it is very interesting to see how the future of gaming is shaping up.
Geoff Adams
Programmer, Research and Development
A good reputation is something which takes a long-time to create but can be lost very quickly; something which RyanAir must be learning to its cost. If you are in business, your good reputation is the result of being competitive and supplying the needs of your customers or clients effectively and your online presence is an extension of your good reputation.
Without a good reputation, you lose trust and without trust there is no business. While most transactions run smoothly, occasionally things can go wrong, be it faulty product, misunderstanding or even just an awkward customer. The power of internet makes it possible for a dogged person to do a disproportionate amount of harm to your reputation. That is why it is important.
In most case reputation management consists of simply putting things right before they get out of control. Therefore, effective customer service is important first line of defence to keep things in check before they can escalate. Keep an ear to the ground and identify what your customers are saying about your brand on the web. Identifying potential problems can be a simple as performing a search for your company’s name in Google, Yahoo and Live search engines and looking at the results. Are there any results which show your products in a negative light?
Sir Pumpkin Longshanks
Programmer, Research and Development
When writing a blog it is possible to get to a point where you find it difficult to think of what to write about. This can happen even if you know the subject very well. By planning things out you can define ahead of time what you are going to write about and also think about what connects to your subject. The easiest way I have found of doing this is with a mindmap.
A mindmap starts off with single node in the middle of the page, this branches out into things that are related to the center node. The mindmap should branch so that everything down a branch is to do with a related subject.
As an example I thought I would quickly put together a simple mindmap about skepticism. This is by no means complete, but it is the sort of thing I would use to write about skepticism if I was planning on writing a blog on that subject.
I started in the middle with the main subject, and then branched out to science, pseudoscience, logical fallacies, origins and skepticism in the media. Each of these branched out into more branches. Although I created this map in about 10 minutes I now have at least 20 blog titles that I can expand upon.
In case anyone is interested, I’m not planning on writing a blog on skepticism. Partly because I can’t spare the time to devote to another blog, but mainly because there are many good skeptical blogs available on the subject.
Software
You could just use a pen and paper to create a mindmap, but there are some software versions available. Here are a couple of free products that I had a go at:
To create the example above I used a program called Freemind. Freemind is written in Java and is therefore available on multiple platforms. The only complain that I have about Freemind is that it is quite difficult to use and there are a thousand features that I don’t think I will ever need. However, once you get the hang of creating simple maps it isn’t too difficult.
Another free mindmapping software that I had a quick look at is XMind. This software not only covers mindmaps, but also has the capability of creating time lines, gnatt charts and even sharing it with other users. It is written in Java and is therefore available on many different platforms. XMind was named "Best Commercial Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) Application" at EclipseCon 2008 so it is worth a look.
Benoit Gilloz
Programmer, Research and Development
For a long time now, there has been a lot of buzz around the concept of the Semantic Web. A great deal of resources has been poured into researching viable solutions to the issue of linking together data on the web with meaningful meta-data and relationships. Unfortunately, even in the W3C’s own words, most of the ideas or standards coming out aren’t close to being implemented fully. This is why I don’t see it as the ‘next big thing’ for the web which so many of us are waiting for. Read the rest of this entry »
Geoff Adams
Programmer, Research and Development
