Not paper is not cheap

A hiccup with my email provider recently left me with very little incoming email. I didn't realise there was a hiccup for a few days. When I did, and fixed it, I released a flood of emails into my personal inbox. Some of those are PDFs of paper documents from our church - a weekly notice sheet and a monthly magazine. The church has started sending them out as a way of saving money. I also get various other documents via email. The small flood made me wonder how I could easily catch up with my reading.

Now I'm not a big fan of paper. There are 3 pieces of paper on my desk at the moment, and first thing this morning there was one. However it does have its place. A few years ago a colleague was arguing for not giving people a paper copy of the internal phone directory, on the grounds that it was available on the intranet. My argument was that it was much easier to find someone on paper than opening a browser window, finding the intranet, finding the relevant page, finding the surname etc. I said that I could beat him in finding anyone he cared to mention. He didn't take me up on it and the paper copy still has its place (also available as a PDF though!).

However there is a cost to not having paper. For me reading the paper copies of those church documents is something I do when I have a spare moment. Time spent reading my personal email is orientated towards getting things done and clearing the inbox, not reflective reading. So while it's convenient to get electronic publications through my email for the sender it doesn't suit me. What I need is some sort of electronic device which I can pick up easily, starts up quicker than a laptop, and lets me read those documents. However that wouldn't be cheap...

The best article I've ever read about cloud computing

Cuts through the hype and explains what it's really about.

And most importantly if you suddenly realize that you need 50 new machines, then you simply didn’t do your job well.

The cloud is great. Stop the hype.

Clever four part form

I have just finished converting our online "enquirer" form so that it uses our new site template. The previous version hadn't been updated since it was created and didn't even match our old site (c. 2005). I can't take any credit for the form, as someone else designed it. However it is quite clever. It's a bit like a tabbed dialog as you can move between the different parts and it remembers what you filled in. When you get to the last part and submit it only then does it see if you've filled in required fields and take you to the first field that you need to fill in.

As I say I can't take any credit for it. It's a good example of what can be done. Hopefully it gets enough information from people, whilst putting off those who aren't really serious.

Search box on wycliffe.org.uk

Before we launched the new wycliffe.org.uk site we realised that despite several people looking over the proposed design, we'd missed out a search function. So I had to squeeze one into the top navigation bar.



The way I did it probably wasn't original, but I can't remember where I'd seen it. When you click the search link a text box opens up, obliterating the labels to the right.


You can view the source on the pages to see how it works, so I won't reproduce the code here. I just use a bit of jquery to show the hidden search box and hide the other labels. The other challenge was to make it work for people who don't have javascript enabled. The way I did that was to make the search text a link to a dedicated search page, where you could type in your query. If you have javascript the jquery changes that link to run the bit of code which shows the search box etc. If you don't have javascript you go to the dedicated search page.

I like jquery.

Weather report and tax information

I've recently sent out a report to a number of our workers asking them for some information about tax matters. In amongst the replies supplying the information I got this:

Weather hot (=40C) and dry (10-20%) for the moment here. I am imagining the Wycliffe Centre with snowdrops and chilly breezes. Enjoy!

My reply was:

Yes we've got both. And frost, but lots of sunshine. I'm enjoying it, but not so much for the few minutes I'm on my motorbike!

It's good to remember the variety of situations in which people working for Wycliffe Bible Translators find themselves.

OSCAR's 10th birthday

I don't carry any advertising on this blog, but I am happy to promote, for free, OSCAR, with a badge on the bottom right of the page. OSCAR is "the UK information service for world mission". (It's just occurred to me that I don't know why it's called OSCAR, maybe I'll find out today.) This is a very useful website if you are a missionary or a mission agency based in the UK, packed full of all sort of information. It's their 10th birthday today and they are having a virtual party. Why not drop by and say hello!

As well as the main website they also have an interactive community hosted by ning.com: OSCARactive, with the usual social networking facilities - groups, chat etc.

Redesigned Wycliffe Bible Translators website for the UK

With a backroom job like mine it's not often that anyone gets to see the fruit of my labour, but last week I was involved in the launch of the redesigned wycliffe.org.uk website. Credit for the look goes to the agency that did the design, Frieze Design. It all went fairly smoothly when it came down to it, and there a few things to tidy up still.