"Content" is a horrible word

I try and keep work/technical things on this blog, and other stuff on my other blog. However the boundaries are blurred, so you if you're only reading this one you might be interested in my post on my other blog - "Content" is a horrible word.

raspberrypi - dirt cheap computing power

I've mentioned "hobby" type electronics before, and I've come across some really expensive kits, but I've recently come across something that is cheap and powerful. raspberrypi.org are making "an ARM GNU/Linux box for $25" ($35 if you want ethernet).

My last job before this was for a small electronics firm. I remember the days when we'd get a PCB back from the manufacturers and then a few days latter we'd get a populated board and be able to hook up to it and start writing software. Exciting times. I plan to buy one of these, but it looks like it won't quite be ready in time for Christmas, so it won't be going on my present list.

I already have in mind what I'm going to do with it - hook it up to the BBC weather site so when we turn the TV on in the morning we know whether to take a coat or not.

Blackbaud NetCommunity redirect to previous page after login

After I put on the Blackbaud forums that I knew how to do this and the third person asked for details I thought I'd better tell you all.

The scenario to use this is if, say, you have a donation page and you want to offer the option of logging in. Once the user has logged in you want them to go back to the donation page, rather than the page they would normally go to after login.

First of all grab yourself the code from Stephen Morley to parse query strings (the bit after a ? in a URL). Create a document library on some sort of test page on your site and upload it.

Then create a formatted text and images part and put this in it:


Things to modify:

• Your website domain
• Set the id of the login page in the loginPageId variable at the top.
• Put the id of that page in the loginHomePageId variable that you want them to go to when they log in through some other route (where you don't want them to go back to the previous page).
• Put the id of the document you uploaded instead of "10" in this bit /NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=10
• Make sure that the function name runit3 is unique amongst all your javascript parts, otherwise change it.

Once you've done those modification you create a new page and put this part into it. Configure the login part to go to this new page after login.

You'll notice that I look for where the id of the previous page is 1. This is for a link we used to have at the top of every page on our site, but's no longer there. It had the srcid as 1 so we could track how many people clicked on that link in our analytics reports. I kept the code just in case.

Charity IT Conference 2011

I attended the Charity IT Conference yesterday.

Cloud

"I think we're all getting a bit bored of the cloud" said the chairman of the meeting. You're telling me. The first two speakers covered this subject. The first was from an outsourcing company, who reminded us that just because the technology's moved to a different place doesn't mean you don't need to get your ducks in a row with contracts, agreements, T&Cs etc.

The second spoke about the need for business processes to change. He talked about a process in a bank that took 15 weeks to get something going. Having reduced the technological side to 20 minutes it still took 12 weeks because of the other processes around it.

Bring your own device

As I'm going to be looking at security of mobile devices this was a good session as it covered that, and other aspects, like support (you don't get any) and administration (I may want to wipe my data from your device). And of course you need to be letting users know where they stand.

Website personalisation

It's a good idea.

Security

As well as detailed steps which you can see on the powerpoints when they put them up on the conference site the speaker suggested using an iterative approach - improving things everywhere, rather than trying to do one thing well. He also suggested a risk assessment approach, which I was planning to do anyway. He mentioned a Charities Security Forum that he's part of, but the website appears not to be working so I won't link just yet.

Knowledge management

The speaker had quite a hard job giving an introduction to a big subject in half an hour, but she did well. I realised that a couple of the projects I'm working on are actually doing knowledge management, so I can find resources under that name to help me out.

Final session

In order to manage my own knowledge I left before the final session as my brain was full. It was from the global CIO of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Seeing as we're a bit smaller than them, it might not have been relevant.

Social media

It was interesting to see the place of social media. Normally every conference like this has something about social media on the programme. However it wasn't there this time. Maybe because it's a bit more mainstream now. The conference had a hashtag on the publicity #citc2011, which I don't remember last time. I saw tweets about another conference Lasa European Not for Profit Technology Conference when it was on last week #lasatech11. I don't know for sure, but I get the impression that Lasa is more useful to small to medium charities (though I may be wrong), whereas this conference was definitely for the bigger charities. However they did get Martha Lane Fox, who has quite a big responsibility! Lots more tweets on their hashtag too.

My own tech focus group

Having children gives me my own tech focus group. We now have an Android phone in the house as well as an iPod Touch, so a few days ago there was a little discussion on iTunes vs Android market.

Google have tried to get people hooked on their Chrome browser. Whilst I haven't pointed it out my kids have noticed that there are now Chrome games available so they can get their Angry Birds fix for free - only in Chrome though.

Adobe appear to be backing off of Flash and so there are the usual stupid headlines about the "end" or "death" of Flash. Whilst children of all ages enjoy Flash games (though Chrome games aren't flash) I think there'll be a place for it, especially on older browsers. However HTML5 + javascript is getting closer to what Flash can do - see canvasdemos.com.

This/Next Tuesday

Have you had a conversation like this?
"I'll see you next Tuesday"
"Do you mean the Tuesday coming up, or the one after that?"
"I mean the day after tomorrow"
"Oh, I see, you mean this Tuesday"

Different people use different criteria from when this becomes next. I was working on decoding of "fuzzy" dates with Wolfram Alpha and here's how it works it out.

Today is Monday 14 November 2011.

This Tuesday	Tuesday, November 15, 2011	Next Tuesday	Tuesday, November 22, 2011
This Wednesday	Wednesday, November 16, 2011	Next Wednesday	Tuesday, November 23, 2011
This Thursday	Thursday, November 17, 2011	Next Thursday	Tuesday, November 17, 2011
This Friday	Friday, November 18, 2011	Next Friday	Tuesday, November 18, 2011
This Saturday	Saturday, November 19, 2011	Next Saturday	Tuesday, November 19, 2011
This Sunday	Sunday, November 20, 2011	Next Sunday	Tuesday, November 20, 2011

If you want to talk to Wolfram Alpha, now you now how to talk about upcoming dates.

Are you getting permission to use cookies on your website?

I recently came back to this issue when reading a Data Protection update on Lasa's ICT Hub Knowledgebase. We use cookies for donations processing and that's OK as it's necessary for the transaction. However the problem for us, like many sites probably, is that Google Analytics uses cookies.

There's a good overview of the issue on the Webmasters Stackexchange site, including a link to a simple solution for getting permission. I reread the latest guidance and spotted for the first time that it said about such third party services that they

...will no doubt adapt to achieve compliance with the new rule...

Six months to go and there's no sign of it...

Has anyone seen a website, apart from the ICO themselves, getting permission to use cookies?