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Welcome to the Weblog, which gets updated whenever I have time. Here I talk about whatever takes my fancy…

Thursday 7th August

Total Recall, or The Running Man: Schwarzenegger has declared his intention to run for governor of California to replace Democrat Gray Davis. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Schwarzenegger’s stunning announcement, combined with Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s decision Wednesday to stay out of the race, turned the already chaotic recall on its head. Democrats who just days ago backed Davis are now looking at other options including past and current elected officials. Republicans who had been planning to challenge the governor are rethinking their plans.

“With Arnold Schwarzenegger in, it’s going to become an instant circus,” said Barbara O’Connor, a communications professor at California State University at Sacramento. “Anyone who says they know what’s going to happen now is crazy.”

Arnie made his announcement, which is apparently “stunning” despite the fact it was almost as expected as the announcement of our last general election, on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show last night. If I’m right, UK viewers with digital TV should be able to see this tonight (should they want to) on ftn at 10pm.

Wednesday 6th August

The ultimate horror: Blake’s 7 (which famously didn’t always have Blake and rarely had seven) is returning. The driving force behind this resurrection is Paul Darrow, who played Avon (his approach, if you never saw it, was barely one notch down from the evil landlord in a Victorian melodrama). Quite how they will get around the slaughter of the entire crew of the Liberator at the end of the last episode I don’t know. In fact, come to think of it they weren’t even the crew of the Liberator any more — that had gone west at the end of the penultimate series.

Darrow certainly has an interesting take on the series’s qualities:

The programme had such a gritty and dramatic style that was every bit as great an influence on the genre as the original Star Trek.

I’m sorry, I can’t type any more for laughing….

Domain names matter. Ideally, your site’s domain name would be the same or close to your name or the name of your company (and some thought should be given to getting variants of the name: cf. whitehouse.org — do take a look at that one, it will bring a smile to your face — and whitehouse.com, oh, and we mustn’t forget whitehouse.gov); failing that — and, because of the demand, the chances are high you won’t be lucky enough to get your first choice — it should at least reflect what you do. An excellent example of a domain name which in no way reflects the nature of the site it belongs to was noted in Web Pages That Suck:

There’s a site on the Internet called analtech.com. You’re probably thinking “proctology equipment” or something much worse.

That’s putting it mildly. However, Analtech has nothing to do with any orifices: they make plates for thin layer chromatography. You can see what they were thinking: analytical + technology = analtech. That’s not what goes through your mind on first seeing the name, though. As Flanders and Willis say, The name just doesn’t describe what the company does.

That’s a comment which could also apply to the domain name of a power company, which has been causing much hilarity recently. At least they have the defence of not being native English-speakers so they can’t be expected to look out for double meanings in a foreign tongue. [The site seems to have vanished to be replaced by an “under construction” notice recently.] In fact, the company in question was not a power company; they seemed to deal in things like car batteries and radiators, to judge from the brief glimpse I once got of their pages.

Sometimes, though, an apparently inappropriate domain name may not be chosen in error. Web Pages That Suck also made mention of the web site of Morrison & Foerster. This law firm’s web presence can be found at the URL http://www.mofo.com; I imagine that there’s no need for me to explain what mofo is an American slang abbreviation for?

If you look at MoFo’s web site, they give this light-hearted explanation:

People make fun of our nickname, but we’ve been known as “MoFo” in the legal community for almost 30 years. Legend has it that a group of young partners selected “MoFo” as the firm’s cable address in the early 70’s as a small joke on their more senior and serious colleagues. Marshall Small, who was managing partner at the time, says he approved the nickname…. “The issue we had was if we knew it had this other implication,” said Small, now senior counsel. “Some people at the firm claim we didn’t know. But at the time I was aware there was a possible downside to it. When I approved it, I was motivated by the same spirit as King Edward III when he adopted the Order of the Garter with the French motto honni [sic] soit qui mal y pense….”

Light-hearted, but perhaps just a little disingenuous. I can’t help thinking that Web Pages That Suck may be closer to the whole truth:

When I mentioned my problem with this name on WebPagesThatSuck.com, I received a lot of email explaining the choice. Basically, the law firm knows what it means, and they’re proud of their name because they want to have the image of a law firm you don’t want to mess with.

The firm’s abbreviation has been mentioned on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show and used in Trivial Pursuit. Clearly, they know what they are doing. I’m not so sure the same can be said of anker-systems.com.

Now, here’s a funny thing. When I was preparing the above entry, I did some rummaging on the Web. Frankly, I was hoping I could find the Web Pages That Suck quotes online so that I didn’t have to type them in and refer to a book (not the best resource for online readers). I came across something interesting. First of all, though, read these snippets from pages 196 to 198 of Web Pages That Suck:

Your domain name is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. The domain name webpagesthatsuck.com tells the world that this site is about all that is bad about Web design. The domain name culinary.com tells the world the site is about cooking. And microsoft.com says you’re visiting the Web site of the most powerful sofware company in the world. Your domain name is your identity on the Internet. The Internet address http://lsnt7.lightspeed.net/~cwms doesn’t tell you squat — actually, it tells you less than squat. You would have no idea that this URL hosts a site that was just born to be on the Internet — the Civil War Music Store….

Note that the Civil War Music Store has clearly learned the lesson: its domain name is now civilwarmusicstore.com. Apart from the URL change, though, the site is the only one I have come across which remains almost identical to the screenshot in Web Pages That Suck (which was published seven years ago!). Next snippet:

Let’s clear up a little misconception. For some reason, people seem to think that www.webpagesthatsuck.com is the domain name. Not true.

The www part is actually the name of the machine where the domain is stored (in this case, the machine set aside as the World Wide Web server). It can be called anything, though the tradition is to name the server for its function. For example, the Civil War Music Store is located on a server called lsnt7, which originally stood for “Lightspeed NT Server number 7.” The domain name for WebPagesThatSuck.com is webpagesthatsuck.com.

And this one will be familiar in part:

There’s a site on the Internet called analtech.com. You’re probably thinking “proctology equipment” or something much worse. Actually, this site … has given me a whole new perspective on “precoated plates and equipment for sample preparation and Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC).” The name just doesn’t describe what the company does.

One of the reasons for the success of WebPagesThatSuck.com is that the URL matches the name of the site — http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com — and, as we know, it’s a clever and humorous name that’s easy to remember. Actually, the truth is, I should really have called it “Web Pages That Have Something Wrong With Them But Generally Are OK,” but the URL would have been www.webpagesthathavesomethingwrongwiththembutgenerallyareok.com. First, it’s not as clever or as funny. Second, it exceeds the number of characters allowed for a domain name — 22. Actually, there are 26 characters allowed, but they count .com as four characters, so it’s really 22.

Here’s a final quote from the book:

The most important marketing tool you have was discussed in Chapter 3, “Content is King.” I can’t stress strongly enough how important it is for your site to have content that will make people want to visit and, more importantly, come back to your site.

Lots of people complain: “I can’t get listed by Yahoo!” or “I can’t get listed in XYZ.” Well, Yahoo! listed WebPagesThatSuck.com two days after it was submitted and with a pair of sunglasses signifying it was a cool site and one of the picks of the week. It wasn’t listed because the Web design was electrifying — it was because the site had significant content.

Content is king. Content is everything. Content will get you listed in search engines, directories, and magazines faster than any other marketing technique. There’s nothing more important.

Let’s just take a little pause for nostalgia over the pre-Google days when Yahoo! was the be all and end all of getting your site noticed. Ahhhh.

OK, that’s long enough.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I have quoted eight paragraphs from a book published in 1996 (not that its advice is outdated — yes, the emphasis on Yahoo! is behind the times and the Netscape screenshots are quaint, but most of the points made are still very valid today). Well, when I was looking for the Morrison & Foerster quotation at Web Pages That Suck I came across a page on another site. Here are some excerpts, presented without comment:

The domain name is one of the most important parts of any marketing plan. One’s domain name is one’s identity on the ’Net. The domain name culinary.com tells the world the site is about cooking. The Internet address http://lsnt7.lightspeed.net/~cwms doesn’t tell visitors squat. They would have no idea that this URL hosts the Civil War Music Store site.

Next

Let’s clear up a misconception. For some reason, people seem to think that www.mattiemacgregor.com is the domain name for Mattie MacGregor’s Professional Credentials. It isn’t.

The www part is actually the name of the machine where the domain is stored (in this case, the machine set aside as the World Wide Web server). It can be called anything, though the tradition is to name the server for its function. For instance, the Civil War Music Store is located on a server called lsnt7, which originally stood for “Lightspeed NT Server No. 7.” The domain name for Mattie MacGregor’s Professional Credentials is mattiemacgregor.com.

And also:

There’s a site on the ’Net called analtech.com. You’re probably thinking proctology equipment or something much worse. The site actually gives a perspective on pre-coated plates and equipment for sample preparation and thin layer chromatography (TLC). The name, however, doesn’t describe what the company does.

One of the reasons for the success of Web Pages That Suck is that the URL matches the name of the site — www.webpagesthatsuck.com. It’s a clever name that’s easy to remember. Vincent Flanders should have called it “Web Pages That Have Something Wrong With Them But Generally Are Okay,” but the domain name would have been webpagesthathavesomethingwrongwiththembutgenerallyareokay.com. First, it’s not as clever. Second, it exceed the number of characters allowed for a domain name — 22. (Actually, there are 26 characters allowed, but .com, .net, and .org count as four letters, so it’s really 22.)

Finally, from another page in “Mattie MacGregor: Web Site Design Seminars”:

The most important marketing tools the designer has were discussed earlier in content definition and content development. It can’t be stressed strongly enough how important it is for a site to have content that will make people want to visit and, more importantly, return to the site.

Many designers complain: “I can’t get listed by Yahoo!” or “I can’t get listed in a particular directory.” Web Pages That Suck was listed two days after it was submitted and with a pair of sunglasses signifying it was a cool site. It was also one of the picks of the week. It wasn’t listed because the Web design was electrifying — it was because the site had significant content.

Content is extremely important. Content will get sites listed in search engines, directories, and magazines faster than any other marketing technique. Nothing is more important.

As my English teacher used to say, “Compare and contrast….”

While I was putting these entries together, the “Mattie MacGregor: Web Site Design Pages” have vanished. So have other pages with the same content at ewebarchitecture.com. Another version, Genesis Web Design Seminars, still seems to be up and running, though (see the page on domain names, the page on marketing content, marketing methods…). All of these pages have (or had), by the way, notices stating they were copyright Mattie MacGregor; the dates given for the copyright varies, being 1998–2003 on one site, 2000–2003 on another, and plain 2003 on the third.

The other sites’ pages may have been taken down, but you can still check out the content for yourself at Google’s cache — see this page, for example, and this one.

Now, I’m not, as I said, making any comment about this, and I’m absolutely not accusing Mattie MacGregor of anything; I’m simply putting the facts in front of you, and I’m sure you won’t leap to assumptions, will you? Just as I won’t leap to the assumption that the disappearance of some of her pages is anything to do with the email I sent Vincent Flanders….

The European Commission has given Microsoft a “last warning”: it must open its server interfaces and either unbundle Media Player from Windows or ship competing players with the OS. The Register ponders how the Beast might respond:

The company could argue, ask for more time, produce more piles of paper, it could wriggle about implementation, with a view to converting the remedies into something harmlessly DoJ-ish, or it could do both. It could even (the nuclear option?) talk up the brutality of the European proposals, compare and contrast with the US, and start hollering about free trade. And complaining about having to do a ‘special’ version of Windows for Europe looks a potentially promising line to take.