Dell talks about their success with Social Media usage
// November 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
Credit to Jeremiah Owyang for another great interview
Truncating Characters in Body Column of Announcements
// November 10th, 2008 // No Comments » // Sharepoint
There are few options available in order to do this.
You can try the following:
1) Create a new column “TrimmedBody” of type Text and limit the number of character to say 10 or whatever works for you.
2) Open a Sharepoint Designer and Create a new workflow on your List. Set workflow to start automatically when new item is created.
3) Add one action i.e. “Set Field in current Item”. Select TrimmedBody in field selection and select Body in value selection.
You action should look Set TrimmedBody to Announcement:Body (where Announcement is name of the list)
See if this works because of the character limit on TrimmedBody Column. (It did not work for me. Despite the fact that I set character limit to 10, it workflow copied all the text from Body. :))
In order to rectify this problem, I just created another column(”CalculatedBody”)of type calculated and my formula looks like this:
=LEFT([TrimmedBody],10)
This should work. There are other ways to do it as well, for example:
1) You can also check Paul’s codeplex utility which provides custom function.
2) You can use event handler on the list which will trap ItemAdding event of the list and update the list item, but then you will have to write the code deploy the event handler etc.
3) You can use VS workflow, and that way, you have more flexibility in terms of writing code.
How the Apple Went From a Humble Fruit to an Oft-Imitated Icon
// November 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design
As a young person, the McIntosh was my favourite variety of apple. I enjoyed — and still enjoy — its crisp flesh, tart-with-a-hint-of-sweet flavour, and its smooth, red and green skin. It’s one of the simplest foods you can eat, yet possesses healthy, tasty, and satisfying qualities, all in a portable package.
In most modern conversations, “Apple” and “Mac” have less to do with fruit and more to do with the computer company, yet most of the qualities found in the fruit are also present in Apple Computer’s products. Just as the McIntosh apple has spawned numerous imitators in the form of new apple varieties, the Mac and iPhone OS X user interface is influencing UX design everywhere I look.
The Apple iPhone has certainly revolutionized the mobile phone market. Everyone, from LG to BlackBerry to Motorola, is scrambling to produce a replica of the iPhone’s beautifully intuitive User Interface. I still don’t believe that a device with no physical buttons is the best solution for dialing and messaging, but no one seems to care right now. It’s almost definitely the “cool factor” that’s driving sales of these devices. It’ll be interesting to see whether this is just a short-lived trend, or if it becomes part of the way we interact with devices.
I recently spoke to a senior designer from another interactive agency about his inspiration for a Web application he’s currently working on. His answer: the iPhone and OS X. It’s not uncommon for designers to draw from operating systems or even cell phone UIs, but I wondered if the iPhone’s visual elements would support the type of project he was working on and speak to the target audience. Would the design translate well to a full-screen Web application? Did the design meet the client’s brand objectives? Ultimately, would the design be intuitive enough for a wide audience to understand it, since some UI elements would require user input that isn’t what people are used to? Or, did the designer just want to impress the client with a “cool” iPhone-like interface?
And it doesn’t stop there. Watching the results come in during the U.S. Presidential election on November 4th, nearly every Canadian and American television network used some sort of touch-screen interface to displays statistics. Most involved the host standing in front of a large flat-panel TV and touching individual states on a map of the U.S., zooming and panning the graphics just like the iPhone or Microsoft Surface. Most of it was obviously scripted: as the host gestured over the screen, someone in the control room was doing the real driving. Do we really need to resort to flashy tactics to present news? How does this virtual touch screen support the objective? Does it enhance credibility? It’s certainly not engaging since the viewer at home can’t interact with it.
All this being said, I’m a big fan of my iPod Touch and I recently made The Switch from Windows to Mac. It’s easy to understand why so many want to imitate Apple’s products, but as designers, developers, or anyone else responsible for delivering information to the masses, we need to really think about whether or not it will truly enhance the customer experience. Sometimes the humble McIntosh apple is best left to the original.
The Power of the Groundswell… Literally
// November 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
One of the things that never surprises me but always amazes me is how we as Canadians pay more attention to US elections, particularly this time around in what seemed to be a “anything’s better than Bush” rally.
I’m going to keep politics outside of the realm of this blog because it’s not what we like to talk about here; however, we DO like to talk about influence and groundswell, so let’s do some talking.
Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst for Forrester Research was kind enough to publish some interesting figures two days ago, all related to social activity surrounding Obama v. McCain. Now that we know who won, let’s take a look at the data:
On Facebook Obama had 380% more support than McCain
On MySpace Obama… had oddly 380% more support than McCain
On YouTube Obama had 403% more support than McCain… Anybody finding these numbers weird?
The only place that didn’t reach the 400% mark (or close to it) was Twitter with 240 times more followers than McCain.
The most interesting data out of all of this is that Obama won by slightly more than the usual margin we’ve seen in the previous two elections. Could this be an indication that the force of Groundswell is one to be reckoned with? We’re talking about a force above just brand, we’re talking about an entire country!
Clients take notice… This stuff works… At least enough to help somebody get voted into office… Think about it.
Credit to Jeremiah Owyang for the stats he dug up. You can check out his blog here, which he updates at least twice a day.
Sergey Brin, Please Update Your Blog
// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
I often meet with clients to discuss their options regarding social media usage, early adoption and sometimes just to chat about something they heard about and wanted to delve deeper on. Typically the conversation moves toward “Should I blog?”.
My answer is typically contingent on the brand, their consumers and more importantly; the person asking the question.
While everyone lately is touting the notion that blogging is a MUST for any brand, this is not always the case. It’s easy to say that everyone needs to get on board with social media, but the sad truth is that not everybody is ready for it. Transparency is not necessarily a weapon of choice for all brands… Particularly those without a ready and willing PR department who can help tackle all of the tough questions. There are many companies out there that just aren’t ready to answer questions like “why is your service so slow?”
All that said, blogging is an extremely important tool as part of your PR/Marketing mix but be prepared to answer your audience and more importantly, have something to say about your brand that brings your consumers closer to the core idea of what your brand is all about. Do you have a green initiative worth mentioning to the public despite a largely presumed notion that you only produce gas guzzlers? Have you recently launched a new R&D lab in house that might prove contrary to the public’s opinion that your company is stuck in the late 90’s? Blogging is an easy way to mention these kinds of events/developments without having to send out press releases or launch microsites… But I digress.
The point of this blog was actually to talk about Sergey Brin and his blog “too”. Launched in September 2008, Sergey’s blog was ambitious with three posts in 24 hours… And then nothing. This would seem somewhat pathetic, but it’s actually quite common. The notion of having a blog to talk about just about anything is pretty cool when you think about the internet’s real intent before all the bells and whistles of Flash and “AJAX” apps became the “keep up with the joneses” norm. All we really want to do is put our message out there for everyone to read, and blogs are the simplest way of doing that, in fact, it’s what I’m doing right now. I put this blog up in about an hour and I’ve pushed it through a bit of an evolutionary process over the past few months, but all in all it’s simple technology that allows me to get my message out to you.
Sergey’s lack of contribution to his own blog is fairly mainstream when compared to the general public; however, he is not the general public. I still have his blog subscribed to on my RSS aggregator and have yet to see anything pop up on it. It would be nice to know a little bit more about the way Brin thinks, but I guess I’ll just have to read Google Press Releases like I was doing before.
Troubleshooting SPView: ViewFields Doesn’t Return the Fields Selected in the View for Display
// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Sharepoint
Earlier, when I was working on a web part, I ran into an issue; SPView.ViewFields wouldn’t return the fields I have selected in the view.
The following code:
SPView oListView = docList.Views[this.ViewName];
SPViewFieldCollection ViewcollListItems = oListView.ViewFields;
returned Columns in the default view i.e.: Type, Name, Modified, and Modified By, for the document library. I was passing the custom ViewName which I have created. So basically, it returned the default columns.
I stumbled across the following thread on MSDN forum and found the solution, thanks to Michael.
If you are using SPContext in your code, then change the following line from:
SPWeb contextWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;
to the following:
SPWeb contextWeb = SPContext.Current.Site.OpenWeb(SPContext.Current.Web.ServerRelativeUrl);
This did the trick for me.
Windows 7 Pre-Beta “Leak”
// October 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // Emerging Trends
Every couple of years our friends at Microsoft launch a new operating system (or as the folks on the floor at Momentum call it “OS”). Three years ago it was Vista, during the bubble boom it was XP (my personal favourite) before that we had ME (Millenium Edition), 98, 95… but I digress. In fact contrary to the publicly heralded rumour that I’m an Apple fanatic, I’m more at home some days behind the warm fuzzy glow of a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD - Floor term).
Mary Jo Foley of ZdNet published a post early yester-morning regarding the feature set from the upcoming Windows 7 OS. Most of the updates seem to be reminiscent of the “updates” that Vista brought to the table such as UI enhancements, “Device Centers” and of course a better version of “Support Center” now dubbed “Action Center”. If it doesn’t play highlights from last night and/or nothing blows up, you’re going to leave Michael Bay and John Madden quite disappointed.
All kidding aside I’m hoping that Windows 7 will lend a hand to overall greater User Experience than Vista. We don’t need more gadgets, just make it run as fast as it can without putting a bunch of warnings in my way or requiring me to buy a new machine altogether.
Check out the Mary Jo’s full post here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1667
Forrester Research Publishes Social Technographics for 2008
// October 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research published the latest findings on Social Media usage/adoption yesterday. Most notable of the findings was the fact that there has been a significant change in activity with ‘Inactives’ moving from 44% down to 25% and ‘Spectators’ from 48% to 69%. In other words, those of you referring to Social Media as “trend”… Please stop.
Most notably of Bernoff’s updates to the data is his release of the updated Social Profiling Tool which now includes Canadian data and several other countries.
Search EBay for Plasma Grenades!
// October 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design
Google recently started an AdSense program for in-game advertising. (More coverage fromCNET, plus the post from Google’s AdSense blog).
Given AdSense’s sometimes funny automated results in the past, I’m interested to see what the ads come up with. Do ads for Canadian Pharmacies show up while I’m playing Pac Man? 
Hiding a Custom List Toolbar Menu Item from Non-Administrative Users
// October 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Sharepoint
In order to hide a custom list toolbar menu items from non-administrative users, use the following:
<CustomAction Id=”SharePoint……”
RegistrationType=”List”
RegistrationId=”100″
GroupId=”SettingsMenu”
Location=”Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu”
Sequence=”1000″
Title=”Configure my App”
Description=”….”
Rights =”ManageLists”
ImageUrl=”/_layouts/images/myimage.gif”>
<UrlAction Url=”~site/_layouts/myApp/Configure.aspx?List={ListId}&SiteURL={SiteUrl}”/>
</CustomAction>
Rights attribute Specifies a set of rights that the user must have in order for the link to be visible. If not specified, then the action always appears in the list of actions. To specify multiple rights, separate the values by using commas. The set of rights are grouped logically according to AND logic, which means that a user must have all the specified rights to see an action.
Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460194.aspx
