Ben Skelton's Blog

Ten Reasons for Hosting Web Sites on SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites

On Wednesday Jas and I are presenting a webcast for Microsoft TechNet entitled "Ten Reasons for Hosting Web Sites on SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites".

Join us for an in-depth look at how your organization can benefit from SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites. In this webcast, we review ten areas in which SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites is delivering concrete value to organizations that have deployed the technology.

The deck is all finished and I think we are ready... If you are curious about using SharePoint for your website or extranet we hope you will join us!

The SharePoint 2009 / 2010 Conference

I'm spending the week down in Vegas at the SharePoint 2009 Conference, which should probably be called the SharePoint 2010 Conference — a lot of 2010 goodness. We have 11 people from Habañero at the event and have been blogging quite a bit. If you are using SharePoint today or want to know more about the product check out our blog at www.habaneros.com/blog.

After the conference I am going to make my way to Soquel (just outside of Santa Cruz) and visit family for the weekend. Will be a nice relaxing break after Vegas!

SharePoint 2010

We have formerly kicked-off our SharePoint 2010 learning program at Habañero and have started to play with the bits. Ten of us will be heading down to Vegas from October 18th to the 23rd for the SharePoint Conference where Microsoft will be doing the big reveal.

The last SharePoint Conference I attended was for the launch of MOSS 2007 and it was awesome... As such, I've got high expectations for this one. A number of our clients and partners will also be sending attendees so it should be a good chance to catch up and learn what everyone else is doing on the platform.

Are you going to the conference? If so drop me a line...

Internet Marketing Conference

The Internet Marketing Conference is coming to Vancouver and I will be leading a one-day training session on user experience and usability. The session will be a condensed version of the User Experience Done Right! course that Kathleen and myself teach and should be a lot of fun! 

In this workshop you will explore a number of tools and techniques that you can integrate into any website project to create a first-class user experience. Dig deep into the key elements of successful user experiences, learn how you can develop easy-to-understand website structures, and discover how you can take your usability tests to the next level. In addition, Ben will review Habañero's best practices for website design and development.

The session is geared towards anyone who wants to learn how to make websites more usable. Executives, IT managers, project/program managers, developers, and designers will all benefit from the real-world tips and techniques covered during the session.

Register for the session

VanUE Event

Wow, we had a packed house for Tuesday's VanUE event! Gentry Underwood did an awesome job of showcasing some of the knowledge sharing initiatives underway at IDEO. One concept that really resonated with me is having an always-on video conference link between offices in the water-cooler area of the office. I think it would be pretty cool to grab a snack or drink in Vancouver kitchen while chatting with someone in Calgary who is doing the same thing. Maybe we will be able to incorporate something similar in the new office design :)

From a presentation standpoint Gentry's talk was one of the best I have seen in a long time. He had an incredible deck (which seemed more like watching a timed movie then static slides). In addition he showed us the actual IDEO intranet, which was cool to see. 

Thanks to ThoughtFarmer for footing the bill to bring Gentry up to Vancouver, Analytic Design Group for the kick-ass snacks and of course VFS for continuing to host us. In addition a huge thank you to Gentry for such a solid presentation!

VanUE will be back on Tuesday January 20th with Greg Bell.

Blame Twitter!

It has been approximately five months since my last post :(  You can blame Twitter for the lack of activity on my blog... Lately I have been finding that I can disseminate the majority of my thoughts in 140 character posts on Twitter. Not sure if this says more about my thoughts then the usefulness of Twitter. If you are interested in keeping up to date visit my Twitter page.

Anyway, here is a little update of what has been happening in the last little while:

• Habañero has been growing steadily in both Vancouver and Calgary. The Calgary office now has seven people! In Vancouver we have the entire fifth floor and recently acquired a large portion of the seventh floor. We also have our name on the sign in front of the building (a small thing, but it makes me happy when I see it).     
• I have been doing quite a bit of client work as of late. Most of it has been focused on strategy and high-level information architecture. Last year I stepped back from client work to focus primarily on business development, but I have found that spending a portion of my time on client work makes me stronger at business development. I figure it is because I have more real-world examples and client scenarios to bring to the table when chatting with perspective clients. Looking forward I am always going to try to be working on one or two client projects at a time.
• I took a month long vacation in September and went to Paris, Istanbul, Berlin, London, Dublin and Los Angeles. Istanbul, Berlin and Dublin were amazing!
• I have been flying A LOT this year. I ended up hitting Super Elite status on Air Canada in under six months. The good thing? The more you fly with Air Canada the better it gets. Interestingly enough, it is not the lounges or the upgrades that are the biggest benefit, although they are nice. The best perk? You get a special phone number so you don't have to wait on hold when you call. The second best perk? Instant KK (IKK) which means you can use your Aeroplan points to book any free seat on Air Canada at the Classic Reward level. No more Aeroplan reward seat availability problems. Yay!
• Kathleen and I will be teaching the User Experience Done Right! course in both Calgary (December) and Regina (January). During the two-day course we will teach participants how to master the real-world tools and techniques used by Habañero to create exceptional user experiences for each website, intranet, and web application we build. The cost of the course is $799, but anyone reading this blog can sign up using the Habañero customer rate of $499. You just need to send me an email first to let me know that you heard about the course here :)
• I purchased an iPhone 3G a couple of months ago and hate it more and more every day I use it. A good percentage of the calls I make fail or disconnect within the first minute and the interface is S-L-O-W. I am going to switch back to a BlackBerry when RIM releases the BlackBerry Curve 8900 "Javelin" in Canada. I'll likely pick up an iPod Touch as well for music and video on the go.

WWDC Roundup

The WWDC keynote was a bit of a snoozefest, but there were a couple of interesting announcements....

iPhone 3G
There were no real surprises with the iPhone announcement other than the price and the fact that Apple hasn't included a better camera. It is too bad that Apple is getting rid of iTunes activation, it was one of the more innovative features of the phone. It sounds like iPhones will now have to be activated the old fashioned way (in the store). Perhaps it was just too hard to work with all of the different carriers to make online activation work. I'll wait a couple of weeks before calling our Rogers rep to figure out how I can get one that works with our business plan.

Snow Leopard
Yes! More software companies should focus on performance and stability. I haven't had many problems with Leopard, but many people have found it to be the buggiest release of OS X to date. From what I can tell the only new feature is that Mail, Address Book and iCal will natively support Exchange 2007. Apple seems to be courting enterprises more and more, which is great. Perhaps this announcement will give the Entourage team a big kick in the ass to turn Entourage into the best Exchange client on any platform, and not just a medocre version of Outlook.

MobileMe
The other big announcement of the day was MobileMe, which impressed me more than I thought it would (based on the rumours). Some thoughts:

• The messaging is simple and clear — "Exchange for the rest of us". This should have been released a year ago from Redmond as Windows Live!
• The web applications look well designed, simple and elegant
• Hopefully Apple has sorted out all of the reliability problems that have plagued .Mac
• Where is the ability to use your own domain name with the service? When I stopped using .Mac I decided to get my own domain and use it for everything. I never want to have to change my personal email address again

Last night in Vegas — MIX 08

Tonight is my last night in Vegas before I fly to Orlando. Unfortunately I made a mistake and booked a flight that has a stop in Washington, DC. It is a Ted / United flight, which means it is 99% likely that I won’t have power at my seat. Looks like I will only be able to work for half the flight... I guess the non-removable battery in the MacBook Air is an issue after all :(

Anyway, back to why I was in Vegas — Microsoft’s MIX conference. MIX was really good this year and was a lot of fun as always.

A few thoughts about the past week:

• I came down a day early as Microsoft was hosting an event for influencers, which unfortunately turned out to be a little weak. It focused too much on the Expression tools and the presenters didn't answer a number of questions as they didn’t want to steal any of the thunder from the main keynote. Everyone received an 8GB Zune which was cool. I have already gifted mine to Steven at work as it won’t work on my Mac, too bad as I find the UI on it slick.
• The session on adaptive user interfaces was interesting. I am working on an intranet project right now and we might be able to make use of some of these techniques.
• There were too many panels! I hate panels! Down with panels!
• The Ballmer and Kawasaki keynote was the highlight of the conference for me. Before the conference I was somewhat lukewarm on Ballmer, but he really impressed me. I recommend checking the keynote out online!
• It was awesome to spend some time with both the Microsoft Canada team and Habañero’s Canadian peers. Microsoft Canada always puts on a good event and this year’s was no exception.
• There was very little mention of SharePoint at the conference. Unfortunately Microsoft scheduled the two events during the same week, which was a bit of a bummer. I would have liked to see more sessions around creating exceptional user interfaces in SharePoint.
• The Internet Explorer team had an awesome after party at the Kingpin Suite at the Palms. The suite had a bowling alley in it which allowed me to discover that I am not a very good bowler.
• I got to see the chicken – thanks Bryce! :)

Anyway, I think that's it. Looking forward to MIX 09!

MacBook Air Impressions

I’ve had my MacBook Air for a couple of weeks and thought I would jot down a few thoughts about the new machine…

• Pictures don’t do the machine justice. It is so incredibly light and thin that I sometimes forget that it is in my bag. As an added bonus the power adapter is a hell of a lot lighter then the gigantic MacBook Pro one, which significantly cuts down on the weight I have to lug around.
• The machine is really comfortable to use on your lap as it is light and it doesn’t get very warm. The MacBook Pro got ridiculously hot.
• The display is gorgeous. Although I probably would have chosen a matte screen the glossy display is growing on me.
• The keyboard is really comfortable. Although I like the new mapping of the function keys for play / pause, Expose and Dashboard I miss having a function key mapped to toggle display mirroring / extended desktop.
• I was surprised how well the USB Ethernet dongle works. All you need to do is plug it into the USB port on the laptop and the network is available. As someone who has used Windows in the past this is probably the most impressive part of OS X — no dialogs, no warnings, no alerts — just a working network!
• The lack of ports doesn’t bug me until the Ethernet dongle is connected to the computer. Apple should have made it a splitter with both Ethernet and USB. The USB port has enough power to drive an external SuperDrive, so perhaps it could drive both Ethernet and a USB port at once.
• Everything seems as fast and responsive as my first generation MacBook Pro. I spend most of my day in Entourage, Word, Safari, NetNewsWire and Keynote and this computer has no problem handling any of ‘em.
• I have 31GB left on the hard drive, but haven’t installed the Adobe Creative Suite yet. I think I will be a little more selective this time around and only install Fireworks. It is the only part of the suite I use somewhat regularly.

This laptop is by far the best laptop I have ever owned (high praise) and I have no qualms about it being my only computer. In fact I couldn’t imagine going back to lugging around the MacBook Pro.

iTunes Customer Service

The iTunes Music Store has the best online customer service I have seen in a long time. A couple of days ago I purchased a DJ compilation and it didn’t seem to want to play. I tried purchasing it again to see if the second download would work, no dice. I filled out the online form and within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

Dear Ben,

I hope this email finds you well. Your issue has been escalated to me and I will be happy to help you from now on until I am sure everything is resolved.

I'm sorry to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox (Mixed By Jerry Bouthier) - Single" doesn't seem to sound correct. I have posted the missing item to your account. Please follow these steps to download the item:

From the pull-down Store menu at the top, select Check for Purchases (if you're unable to upgrade and are using iTunes 6 or earlier, you'll find this option in the Advanced menu). If you can't find this option, you can also click this link to Check for Purchases:
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/checkForPurchases

Enter your account name and password, then click the Check button.

The missing item should begin downloading and appear in your Purchased playlist. If you receive an error message while downloading, try again after turning off any firewall or web-accelerator software that you may have installed. If the download process is interrupted for any reason, it should resume once you reopen iTunes.

Please let me know if your third download has the same problems. I will be happy to refund you for your duplicate purchase as soon as the transaction clears. I would, however, like to know if the third download works for you before I refund you for the duplicate purchase. I may need to refund you for both purchases if the content is still not up to par.

I appreciate your patience Ben and truly wish you nothing but the very best. If you have further questions concerning this issue please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

Fascinating... Not only was the email actually helpful, but it was also written in a way that didn’t make me feel like the customer service representative was selecting a canned response from a list. The third download worked great and I emailed the representative back to let her know that it worked. Within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

I'm pleased to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox" downloaded properly.  I hope you enjoy your purchase.

I have also reversed the charge for the duplicate purchase. You will see a credit of $5.99, plus any applicable taxes, in three to five business days. If store credit was used for this purchase, you should see the credit after you sign out of the iTunes Store and sign back in.

In the unlikely event that you receive a download error in the future, please remember that it is not necessary to repurchase items when downloads are interrupted, because the items should still be in your account, waiting to be downloaded. To learn more, follow the steps in this article:

How to resume interrupted iTunes Store downloads
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93015

I hope you continue to enjoy using the iTunes Store.

This level of customer service is really impressive, especially when compared to organizations like CIBC and Air Canada. I have sent CIBC a number of emails within their online banking system and generally I receive crappy responses that do not have anything to do with the issue I contacted them about in the first place. Air Canada often tends to solve that problem by not responding to your email.

On a related note the album I downloaded from iTunes wasn’t very good… It would be great if iTunes allowed you to preview more of a song, especially for long club mixes or DJ compilations… Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all!