Turning the eWrite “How Can I Help you?” experiment into a Wordpress Plugin
Posted on April 7, 2009, under General.
A few days ago Gordon Murray from eWrite, Cork wrote about an experiment, where he was grabbing the referring query from Google and displaying a “How can I help?” box at the bottom of the screen, telling the people to leave a message if they were not finding what the wanted.
I have picked up the idea, which I think is great for welcoming random google-referred visitors and turned it into a Wordpress Plugin, which I will we releasing, as soon as my own alpha test is over.
Please tell me what you think of this functionality! Thanks!
How to organise heavy workload – Part 3 – Timetracking with Kimai
After organising, filtering and sorting my stream of Information and structuring my day through task management I usually get down to business.
Some days are still messy and unorganised, as little requests keep on coming in: phone calls, email, things I remember I wanted to check but didn’t bother putting into my task manager. These things happen. My goal is to react to client requests within an hour. Even if it’s just a quick reply, telling that I will be looking into the requested matter within a certain time frame. For me this is one of the most important ways of building a good relationship to my customers.
I also found out over time that it is me messing up my days, because I want to. This happens mostly, when I am tired, unfocused and bored with the stuff I should be doing. It’s not the others, it’s 80% me.
So when I actually get down to do some “real” work I need to track the time I spend on a project and client. I use to different approaches:
Kimai
www.kimai.de – Kimai is an Open Source Time Tracking Tool, which is pretty simple to set up on one of your servers/sub domains, such as e.g. timetracking.yourdomain.com, it needs a database and php but is set up within minutes. Kimai is able to manage different users, so it’s handy if you are working in a team. You can organise your users in groups and grant permission these group-based permissions to certain projects or clients.
First You set up your Clients, that you add Projects per Client, you also have the possibility of setting up different kinds of activities, such as “programming”, “design” or “phone”. These are not directly connected to projects as they can come up in all your projects. So to use the Time-tracking you just choose a Client:Project and an activity and hit the start button. When your done you click on stop. Afterwards you can (with sufficient rights) edit the entry or ad a comment. I usually write what I have been doing in detail.
There are some plug ins/extensions, one of which is an interface, to check the tracked activities on a date-client-project-user base. It also shows the comments, so I use this functionality when I write my invoices.
Spreadsheet
Yes, I admit, I am a spreadsheet addict. I use Open Office Calc to do my over-all planning
I log the times, I start and finish working, duration of breaks and duration of time I spend on a certain client or internal task-group. The spreadsheet calculates average duration of working days, which allow me to plan until what date I will be working on a project. I use these projections to give deadlines and to tell my clients how much notice I need for new jobs.
The spreadsheet has a lot of individual functionality, which I have been building, optimising and customising to my needs over the last two or three years. It is very individual, so I won’t get into this in more detail. I you want to know more or see a copy, let me know.
Unfortunately I have not found a tool that combines the task and time-tracking functionality in I way I need it and plugs into gmail. So if anybody has an idea, I am open to suggestions.
Your Design Sucks – Procedures for getting a design sign-off
Found this Video on Vimeo and I believe it’s worth while watching. There are loads of good ideas and approaches in it.
Your design sucks! from Paul Boag on Vimeo.
What is your approach? Do you have mentioned problems with your clients?
Is twitter really that bad?
I’d be interested in your apinion about twitter? Do you agree with the video? What do you use twitter for?
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Released
A few weeks ago I wrote about not supporting the IE6 any more. Now Microssoft has finally released the IE8.The 8th release of the Internet Explorer is said to support CSS 2.1 which is shown by the ACID2-test. Unfortunately the ACID3-test shows how far the IE8 is still behind standards.
Certainly the IE8 is a step in the right direction and will save developers a lot of work, but time will show if the adoption of the new Microsoft Browser will take as long as it did for the IE7.
You can download the new Intenet Explorer 8 here
Microsoft praises the IE8 as the fastest available Browser, which seems a bit unbelievable as the earlier Microsoft browsers are all rather at the end of any benchmark lists. But i believe it will not take long before up-to-date benchmark tests will show the true speed or lag of the IE8.
The question remains if the new Microsoft Browser will be able to regain any of the dwindling market shares, which are -as the graphic shows- in firm hands of Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
Market shares of the 5 most common browsers
(Source: Webmasterpro Webanalyse)
Magic Wand SEO – How to get good SERP with no effort
I have quite a lot of request of people that seem to slowly become aware of the importance of a good Ranking in Search Engine Page Results (SERP). Nearly all of them say something like “I’d be interested in getting a quote from you for some SEO work” or similar. This is what I call “Magic Wand SEO”. But unfortunately my wand exploded and my spellbook was destroyed last time I tried to tamper with Googles free will.
To make it clear: This kind of SEO is an illusion. SEO is a time and money consuming, highly specialised task, which will take up to 3 month before you may notice the results. By results I do not mean just a rise in visitors to your website or even less relevant things like the rise of your websites page rank.
There is only one real and relevant measurable for good SEO:
The rise in conversions and there for rise in sales. They do not have to be online, SEO can and should affect your offline sales too.
No Guarantee
Another important fact is that there cannot be any guarantee for success. And if there is success the question remains do I get a Return Of Investment (ROI) and when. The Google algorithm for ranking the results consists of something between 100 and 200 parameters, that keep changing frequently. Any company promising a SERP1 result are impostors.
Why am I just talking about Google?
Simple: Google has an effective market share of over 93%. The remaining 7% are shared by Yahoo, MSN and others. Of course “the others” have to be considered, but I don’t think they have to be mentioned 
Poll: Irish Food – What are typical irish dishes?
I have been asked by a german customer, who is working on an english-german restaurant/gastronomie glossary to make a poll amongst irish people or people living in Ireland. The question ist:
What are typical irish dishes?
Please list 5 to 10 typical irish dishes.
Please do not google for it, just give a quick spontaneous answer. You can give the answer here as a comment (please read the other comments only after you wrote down your answer). Alternatively you can write an email to fritz@kerndter.de
Thank you for your help!
How to organise heavy workload – Part 2 – Organising your Tasks with Remember the Milk
In this stream of information there will always be some tasks. So usually before I start working on these, i will always organise them using a task manager of some sort. I used to du this with Outlook, but as I told you before, I have switched from Microsoft products and while doing this it was important for me to find a solution, through which I could access my data from anywhere.
Remember the Milk
At that stage Google did not have a task manager, so I started using Remember the Milk, which you can use with Google Mail and Google Calendar, through Firefox Extensions. [7.4.2009:] Apparently it is possible to e.g. Tag an email and it will automatically show up as Task in RTM. Unfortunately it only worked for a while and now not anymore, probably because of my extensive use of other plug-ins, scripts and gadgets It is working again, in the settings section of your GMail you will find a tab, where you can set wether you want to add a Task when starring and/or tagging an eMail with a specific tag. It now also has the information if your RTM is working with your Googlemail version. There is also an interface between RTM and Twitter.
Using Lists
There is one cool function you should use to show your task in an organised and structured way:
- In your Task List use the Search Options
- set e.g. the due date within 1 Day of Today
- This will give you all tasks, that are due Today
- On the right hand side of your list, click on the save-tab
- Give your “Smart List” a good name e.g. “01 Today” and save.
This Smart List now shows up as blue tab above your to-do-list, so in future you can access your “tasks of today” with one click. You can use the search options to set a lot of useful views of your tasks and save them as smart lists. If you can’t do something using the form, you can also use the advanced search function. To delete a smart list go to Settings -> Lists in your main menu.
Sharing Tasks
You can, if you are working in a team, share your tasks. The cool thing about that is that you are really sharing the job, it is not a copy that is sent to your work partners. The difference is, that when you complete a task, the task will not show up anymore in your team.
Does anyone have other tips and tricks for RTM? Let me know …
Ever had to teach a topic your not familiar with?
About five years ago I got a phonecall from somebody, asking me if I would do some teaching for the German Bundeswehr. I asked for the subject and the person told me, that it was a Java Course… The person asking was my Java tutor, I had done a cours with, only 3 months before.
I didn’t take me long to decide and with shaking legs I accepted. I knew, that it was mostly about knowing more than the participants. As I was pretty sure about their level of Java knowledge and I had about three months to prepare, I expected things to turn out fine… And they did! Do you know the feeling? Tell me about it!
Now, I am still regularly giving courses, but the subjact has switched from Java (which I was and am not to fond of anyway) to Web Design, Web Development, eMarketing, SEO and more… I really enjoy the job, even though I now have to travel to Germany once every three months. I would really love to do some teaching in Ireland. Anybody and Idea?!
How to organise heavy workload – Part 1 – The Morning …
So far the recession has spared me. In the contrary, the goals I have set myself for this year are likely to be dwarfend if the pace of the first two months of this year continues. About a week ago, Gordon from eWrite wrote a post about “Learning the time management thing“. Joining this, I want to tell you about my approach to the same problem.
Beginning the day
My day usualy begins before dawn, as I like the peace and quite for reading my mails and news. No phone, no skype or icq and even twitter is kinda quite. Just me and my mug of sweet and strong caffee latte.
First thing of course are my mail. I use googlemail with some labs and greasemonkey extensions. I addition to the not-to-bad gmail spam filters, i also have some tight server filters, which keep my spam load pretty low at roughly 150-200 per day. About three or four spam show up in my inbox, while I have about the same amount of false positives in my junk folder, which i check and sweep regularely two to tree times a day.
I organise my mail by using the “Superstars” and “Custom Label Colours” from GMail Labs, every client has its own star/color. Importantly I only keep current mails i have to look after in my inbox, everything else is moved to the archive. To consequently do so, I use GMail Labs “Send & Archive”. I addition to that I use the Greasemonkey “Folders4Gmail” plugin and some Gmail Filters to label my mail corresponding to my customers, so I have easy access, even when archived. I also use the Gmail search function a lot.
Next, I read my rss-feed. I follow a lot of SEO related blog and even if the subjects seem to be similar or comming up again and again in regular intervalls, i still find some interesting posts in between. I have also set up some google alerts, to monitor my presence on the web. When I find a post I like and want to read it later, I usually grab it with Evernote. If its a new blog I find worth following, i use my google reader and when it’s just an URL with e.g. a tool of some sort, I bookmark it with delicious.com. I use the same procedure, when I look through the twits I get over night.
After having cought up with the over nights stream of information, I move on to organising my day …
