My blog over at IT PRO has been a bit quiet of late, but there are three new posts this week that you might be interested in:
When is a free laptop not actually free? When it comes with a dongle!
Microsoft planning a Zune-based smartphone
Leaked pics of the Skypephone 2
Please take a look.
After one small comment on Twitter about my day spent sweating over spreadsheets, it seems that many people within the IT publishing and PR world are very interested in what I was doing.
Every few months I perform what I call a contributor/traffic analysis. This involves generating a report from the main IT PRO site stats tool that shows the page impressions (PIs) and unique user visits (UUs) generated by author, rather than by article type or section.
I then merge this data with the main contributor expenditure spreadsheet, where we record and track all our freelance spending.
The end result is that we have the traffic generated by an author alongside how much we’ve spent with them over the given period. You divide the amount spent by either the PIs or the UUs and you end up with a cost per PI and a cost per UU, based on a specific author.
It’s not a perfect system, as the PIs and UUs also include legacy content written by that author that was accessed during the given period, not just the new stuff you’ve commissioned and allocated budget for. However, it still provides a valuable metric on the effectiveness of that author’s work to bring in traffic to the site, as well as the cost of acquiring that traffic.
There’s a lot we can do with this data. For example, we can compare the cost of traffic acquisition via a given freelancer’s work against alternative sources, such as newswire copy, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, traditional marketing, sponsorships, list rental, staging competitions, copy sharing, content licensing deals with overseas or non-competing titles, referral deals with other sites and so on.
Doing this, we can see whether we are achieving a suitable return on investment from our freelance spending, we can benchmark in-house writers against freelance writers and visa versa, we can see which freelancers are popular and unpopular with our readers, highlight popular niche content strands and more.
Why do we do this? As a relatively new publication we re not shackled with the legacy of long-term contracts or historic arrangements with writers. We are also an online pure play, which means all our commercial and editorial focus is directed at the online ecosystem, where readers (or users) wield ultimate power, capable of making or breaking a site with a single shift in web surfing habits.
I honestly believe that in the not too distant future, online publications in all sectors, not just technology, will have to adopt a results-driven approach to freelance commissions in order to maximise revenue and to achieve maximum return from their freelance budgets.
The most likely outcome will be that publications begin paying writers purely on how much traffic an article pulls in. Also likely is that commissioning editors will need to take a more frequent and brutal approach to deciding which freelancers to commission regularly and which to drop from their rotation, based on the kind of metrics I am currently looking at.
What does this mean for freelance writers? For a start it means that freelancers will need to think about their working processes and the relationships they have with the publications that commission them. Right now it is far too common that a freelancer will get a commission, write a piece to a given word count and word rate, file it, invoice and get paid. The freelance writer is almost entirely detached from the process that takes place after the piece is filed and published. This will need to change going forward.
Freelance writers need to maintain responsibility for content and for ensuring it can reach the widest possible online audience even after the copy has been filed.
Things that freelance writers will need to consider and change their working practices to incorporate:
Search Engine Optimisation – This is key to the future of online publishing. All writers, whether they are in-house or freelance need to understand the importance of making copy search engine-friendly. That means understanding how search engines interpret content, how they look for keywords and what relevant keywords are popular at the time of writing and publishing. Writers also need to track the online zeitgeist to understand what search terms, themes and trends are popular, in order to incorporate them, where relevant, into an article.
Content Seeding – With publications looking at the audience traffic an article receives as a measure of success (as well as looking at traditional elements such as whether it is well written, accuracy, relevancy and how current the information is), the writer needs to take on some of the responsibility for promoting that article and extending its reach. That means seeding links to content to relevant locations where the links will bring in additional traffic. Also, think about whether the piece you are writing will appeal to the audience of the popular social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon and Reddit. We want readers to submit your content to these services, and it is in the interests of the writer as well for readers to do this.
Stickiness – This is one of the biggest issues affecting any online publication. A reader has arrived at the site to read a specific article, now how do you keep them there to read more than just the single piece that brought them there? The most effective way of doing this is for the writer to cross link to other relevant content on the site. If you are writing about, for example, the Microsoft Yahoo takeover saga, reference and link back to previous relevant articles that publication has published on the same subject, especially if you wrote them as well.
Comment Generation – Your piece needs to spark debate among readers. It needs to encourage them to post comments, engage and debate other readers on that site. The conversation should not end with your final paragraph, but should stimulate the reader to participate in the conversation, add knowledge and share alternative viewpoints.
Multi-skilling – Online journalism is about more than just writing, it is about providing complete coverage in the most appropriate media form, and doing it in as timely fashion as possible. You are covering an event for a publication; you need to consider visual elements as well as written. Think about how you can incorporate video, audio and images into the piece to maximise the effectiveness of the piece. Waiting for images to be sent over from a company or PR agency may be counterproductive to publishing a timely and informative piece, so be prepared to take your own photos, shoot your own video and record audio content for inclusion in a podcast. You don’t need thousands of pounds of equipment to create audio or visual material that is suitable for publication.
Following a huge amount of work by my editorial team and the Dennis web team, the new look IT PRO web site went live this morning.
The new look site represents an important stage in the progression of IT PRO, and will allow us to do a great deal more in terms of how we produce coverage what format we publish our content in.
There are one or two small kinks that we are working out, so if you find anything that looks like it might be a bug, please let me know.
I’ve written a blog post over at IT PRO about Herman Hollerith, one of the founders of IBM and the man who pioneered modern data entry computing
Please take a look.
Coca Cola is DOS Compatible in Spain
Originally uploaded by Ewan Spence.
Just finished a Skype chat with Ewan Spence, who is over in Spain at a media conference. Our VoIP call was interrupted by Ewan cracking up, when he spotted this DOS reference on the bottle of Coke we was chugging.
Yes, it’s a geek joke - and it’s a funny one!
Ok, probably makes no difference to you, but I want one, and now I have one:
Assuming the technology doesn’t let us down, IT PRO (more precisely - me) will be live blogging the Steve Jobs keynote.
I’ll be using CoverItLive for this particular challenge, which will also be a first, so fingers crossed.
Assuming we can get a working 3G signal and the CoverItLive platform doesn’t let us down, you’ll be able to read the important details as they happen on the IT PRO web site.
This year I’ve decided to split things into two posts - one for here and one for my IT PRO blog. For the personal blog I’m doing my resolutions, for the work blog I’ll be doing my technology predictions for 2008.
I should add at this stage that I am hopeless at sticking to such resolutions, but it remains important to at least try. You never know, this might be the year that one sticks!
Chris Green’s 2008 New Year Resolutions
1) Blog more - both my blogs (this one and the IT PRO blog) have been suffering a bit of late. I’m not losing interest in blogging, quite the opposite in fact, it is just a problem with spare time, and not having any. I need to blog here and at IT PRO more than once a week each. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more time this year as things continue to settle down at work and hopefully at home. Also, now that we have completed the migration of the IT PRO blogs away from the abysmal system we launched with and onto Wordpress, using it will be a lot more practical and pleasant.
2) List stuff on eBay - before anyone gets the wrong idea I’m referring to my own possessions, not anything I’ve ever received as a press gift of review item. I’ve become overloaded with junk again, and I need to do a massive eBay selloff to get some space back in the house. That means getting rid of things like obsolete computer equipment and software I’ve bought and subsequently replaced with other kit (for example I have a pile of CRT monitors I desperately need to get rid of), DVDs I no longer watch, obsolete DVD players and Freeview boxes, plus anything else I’m not using any more that is occupying space and cluttering the house up.
3) Pay down my credit cards - they are way too high and need sorting, sharpish. Item 2 will go some way to helping.
4) Get some exercise - I’ve spent the last 18 months driving a desk and I’m really feeling the worse for it. I have not been travelling to the extent I usually do over the course of a normal year, and believe it or not, all that time usually spent out at conferences, running around airports and generally working in the field does do some good in terms of keeping you healthier than normal (you don’t eat as much, you eat at regular times and you get some upper and lower body exercise from all the walking, running and luggage carrying). I’m not talking about getting back into the insane shape I was in at school and university (it would be nice, but is ultimately unnecessary), but I do need to be more active, and I’ll feel better as a result. That means less time in the car and more walking, getting back to the gym more often, dusting off the golf clubs now and again, and maybe laying off the Coke - maybe!
5) Write more - not just blogs but do more journalism in general, I need to write much more than I did in 2007, more news and especially more features and reviews. I am going to set myself a target of writing at least one review and one feature a month as a minimum, and see where it goes from there.
6) Podcasting - need to do the podcasting more regularly, and start doing some of the video stuff I’ve been threatening to do for a while.
7) Summer Party - For the last three years I’ve been talking about holding a summer bash at the house for family and friends, this year it will actually happen. Now I’ve said that we had better have the weather to make it happen.
8 ) Redecorate the conservatory - it’s a mess, I hate the colour and the roof needs some work to stop it leaking - again. All stuff I need to do this year and the sooner the better so that the conservatory can be used come the summer, as right now it is not somewhere I’d like to be, let alone entertain guests.
Nothing sinister, just having one of those weeks where I am very unsettled.
Part of it is to do with last weekend’s office move. I’m in new surroundings - OK, it’s just another two floors up in the same office building I’ve been in since I joined Dennis, but it is still a bit weird (since I’ve been there we’ve steadily worked our way up above sea level - we started on the ground, then the third, we are now on the fifth. Next move will probably be to the water tower on the roof 
Ultimately its a good thing that we’ve moved - it will be better for productivity, we have more space, we are now working in the same space as our colleagues on the other Dennis technology magazines (a really good thing), and its about a thousand times quieter and a more professional working environment for my team.
There’s also a lot going on within the team itself - lots of change (for the better), new faces, new job roles and new ideas for the coming year. All really positive things, all things I’ve wanted to happen, but as you might expect these are things that introduce an element of uncertainty and thus anguish into the mix.
And that’s why, for the fourth night in a row, its past 2am and I’m wide awake, buzzing with energy and ideas, with no sign of being able to sleep. Even my trusty Melatonin isn’t able to knock me out (and I’ve smuggled enough of it back from the US to open my own branch of GNC).
As I write this, I’m re-watching the Top Gear Polar Special as there’s nothing else on. Yes, over 300 channels and there is nothing worthy of watching.
My next blog post here is going to be about the 3 Skypephone. I’ve been playing with one of these for the last couple of weeks, and now feel ready to convey my thoughts and pass judgement on it. Basically it’s brilliant, and is without doubt the unexpected gadget hit of this Christmas. While I love my iPhone, if you can’t justify £270 for the handset and £35-£55 a month to the bandits at O2 for something loosely resembling service, then £49 and a minimum of a tenner a month in top-up gets you one of the nicest phones I have used since I got my beloved RAZR V3. If you get it on a contract, ANY contract with 3, then the handset is free (contracts start at £12 a month). The Skype deal is simple. Whether you are a pay-as-you-pimp or contract user, you get effectively unmetered Skype-to-Skype voice calling and IM messaging (it’s 4,000 minutes and 10,000 IM messages a month, which even I would struggle to max-out in a month and still hold down a job).
The coverage area and quality of 3’s service has improved a lot since I last went near them (just under a year after launch, when I bought a phone and then sent it back as I was so dismayed by the quality of the phone service and the customer service). Sadly, 3’s front line telephone customer service is still very poor (though I’ve experienced worse - it’s called T-Mobile), but the actual mobile service has definitely moved up a notch. So much so I bought (note, bought with my own money, not blagged) a USB 3G modem and service contract from 3, and I can’t speak highly enough of it - I even get a HSDPA connection for the entire overground part of my tube journey to and from work. The same quality of signal and calling service applies to the Skypephone. I’ve had only two brief instances when it couldn’t get a 3G signal, and had to step down to a 2G roaming signal. The rest of the time - fast, reliable, all-you-can-eat Skype goodness.
I’ll post pictures and something similar to a balanced review in my next posting, but for now, keep £49 on standby, or if you go to Carphone Shed, you can buy two for £85 - a bargain!
Phones are a bit of a thing for me at the moment. I’ve been doing a fair amount of radio and TV talking about emerging technologies for 2008 and Christmas gadget gift advice, and all of it has been dominated by talk of phones. I’m in desperate need of a new phone as I do need to carry two phones (one being the mobile number that’s on my business cards, the other being the number that only family and a few close friends have - thus ensuring they can always get hold of me even when I don’t want to be disturbed by calls on the work mobile). I currently have the iPhone, I adore the iPhone and I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen if and when the time comes that Apple asks for it back (the phrase “from my cold dead hands” has been banded around a few times of late).
So either way, one phone is going to have to be an iPhone, or maybe Le iPhone. The iPhone is a must, having integrated into my everyday life more quickly than even my first BlackBerry. The other phone is still in play. I did have a Motorola Q9H for a while, which was a great bit of kit, but it broke (it was a pre-release sample to be fair). Trying to buy a replacement is not easy, hardly anyone sells it and those that do want the national debt of Zimbabwe for one.
I am also very drawn to the Samsung SGH-i320. It’s not a new phone, but it is cheap, and has a surprisingly nice QWERTY keypad. It’s Windows Mobile-based, which is not good, but Motorola managed to build a Windows Mobile phone that isn’t shit, so hopefully Samsung has managed to do the same. The Skypephone is definitely being bought no matter what, just cos its soooo cool and nice to use.
I’ve also added a new plug-in to this blog. I’ve enabled the Twit This plug-in, to make it easier for other Twitter users and me to tweet about posts on this blog.
Also, I’m finally beginning to warm to Windows Vista, it’s only taken a year! I have one live machine at home running Vista (the rest of our Windows machines are running XP and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future), a laptop from a well-known games console-making electronics giant that was allegedly built for Vista and shipped with it pre installed. Unfortunately it took a ridiculous amount of work and time to actually get it to work reliably and to interact properly with all the built-in hardware in the laptop. Most end users would have smashed it to pieces in frustration months ago. Hopefully the release shortly of Service Pack 1 will address many of the well-documented shortcomings of this OS.
Better still, buy a Mac, along with a copy of Leopard and save yourself nine months of pain.
I’m playing a lot with video, with a view to turning my hand from audio podcasting to video podcast production. It is a lot of fun, and I’ve found a good use for my otherwise obsolete but excellent quality Samsung/Medion Hi-8 camcorder, adding nothing more than a £6 USB video capture dongle I bought on eBay. I’m particularly taken by Ustream.tv and Seesmic.
Finally, I’m watching a lot of video podcasts, thanks to the recent gift of a 8GB iPod Nano (which is a lot smaller and lighter to carry than my 60GB video iPod). Chris Green hereby gives the seal of approval to the following video podcasts:
Ultimately - I need a rest - a proper rest - and maybe a few good bottles of wine, some good home cooking, a working Macbook again and some quality time with my friends and my DVD collection.
Oh, and a trip to Vegas would also go down well - need to sort something out there, I’m missing Vegas almost as much as I miss San Francisco.
Yay - we’ve finally deployed our new blogging platform on IT PRO. Which means I have a new work blog:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/chrisg/
As before, I’ll still be blogging here and won’t be blogging any less, but I’ll be blogging there more than I used to.
I’m still in the process of moving all my old posts from the last 18 months across from the old system to the new one (which is based on the multi user version of Wordpress), so my blog is a little empty right now, there’s only my three most recent posts, including a new one I made today about Motorola boss Ed Zander quitting. But I’ll soon fix that.
As with all new web developments, there are still a few tiny niggles to be found and fixed, so if you find anything that doesn’t work like you would expect, or doesn’t work at all, please let me know.
more than just another IT news website, IT PRO differentiates itself by providing 100% business and enterprise news, reviews and group tests, as well as allowing IT professionals to participate in the exchange of knowledge and first-hand experience
An annual horror film festival in London’s Leicester Suqare. This year’s event takes place from August 24-27 2007 at the Odeon West End cinema on the south side of the Square
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