Helen Lederer's New Website

Helen came to me wanting to freshen up her website and find a way to archive the wealth of material she has amassed over the 'twenty-seven and a half years' she's spent in show business.

We had lots of fun looking at various web designs that she liked but we knew it was important to have a clear brand that will help her market her services as well as providing bite-sized chunks of entertainment for her fan base.

Here it is: http://helenlederer.co.uk/

Pitt Layfield Associates helps Helen Lederer with her website, blog and social media.

PowerPoint Purgatory

Be warned! This is all a bit geeky...

I am being driven to distraction by a PowerPoint problem. So I thought I'd document my attempts at solving it in case it can save time for anyone with a similar nightmare.

I have a MS Access database on a network and I use PowerPoint to diplay various statistics from the database on a large screen.

The PowerPoint display is controlled by macros that run morning and afternoon to gather the latest data to display.

All was running smoothly until I introduced an Excel graph onto one of the slides. Although the Access reports output as .snp snapshots were successfully updating on a daily basis, the Excel graph - despite being set to update links automatically - was not.

It seems after much searching, that the only way to get the graph to update was to load the PowerPoint .ppt file and update the links, then re-save to .pps format.

I didn't want my users to have to do all this manually every day particularly because there are two presentations - one for the morning and one for the afternoon. So I created a button in the Access database to load a control PowerPoint containing a single slide with an Action button. The button calls a macro that opens each presentation (.ppt files), updates the links and then saves them as show (.pps files).

Nice one! or so I thought. BUT when I loaded the control presentation as a show the action button didn't work. This was true whether I loaded it as a .pps file or loaded the .ppt with the /s command line switch.

Messy as it seemed, the best thing I could come up with was to load the .ppt, instruct the user to 'View Show' then click the button. It worked.

BUT! oh no, I hear you sigh. Not more buts.

I have now found that although the graph is updating nicely with this bit of daily manual intervention, the snapshot reports now run off the screen and the dates in the reports don't update, though we think the data does. I don't yet fully understand what's going on but it might be because my user who is doing the daily updating is using 2007 whereas the display screen is using 2003.

So, here I go again. Another problem to solve...

New Media Writing Prize

Anna's web design skills will be on display at Poole Literary Festival at the end of October where her O2 Tales digital fiction piece has be short listed for the New Media Writing Prize.

O2 Tales was created by Anna using a combination of html and JavaScript with links to Facebook and Twitter using their own APIs. The sound track was created using Audacity and happyworm's jPlayer. The pictures.... well that is of course the very high tech use of some coloured pencils abandoned by her children.

HOTBOOK

The HOTBOOK is an exciting digital literature project for 11 to 14 year olds.

It makes a nice change to be designing a system in a colour scheme other than grey, blue and white which seems to have become a standard of the noughties. What is the future going to look like? The HOTBOOK went through almost as many clothes changes as Doctor Who before the if:book team finally settled on the fantastic outfit it is currently sporting. Take a look at the Bookfutures blog for a preview.

The stick-on buttons were as difficult to manipulate as the cheap alternative to sellotape I still forget not to buy at Christmas, but the result is quirky, especially when they do a spooky disappearing act leaving odd bits of sticky tape behind.

Thanks must go to Queensbridge School in Birmingham for helping me test the system and I look forward to testing it in other schools in the next two weeks. To register interest go to the if:book website.

The Future is Simple

'Simplicity is when someone takes care of the details.'

- from an interesting article posted in Facebook this morning: http://informationarchitects.jp/whats-next-in-web-design/.

The really important bit everyone forgets...

Someone sent me a link to this today with a nice summary as follows:

[Three] concerns must shape our strategy for gaining acceptance of any new technology.

- First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable).

- Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy.

- Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business.

This "Three-E Strategy," if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.

From Tom Haymes, 2008, The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol 31, no. 4 (October - December 2008)

I have been saying this for years! Often the part of the system that is most neglected (and budget squeezed) is the very part that explains how exactly a system can make life easier for the users. Users are far too often told they must use something or else. Not often enough does someone stop to explain the benefits they can get too!

The people part of any computer system is the most important part. Get the people bit right and the data quality will follow.

CreativeCoffee Club Leicester

Pitt Layfield Associates is delighted to be working with Narrative Laboratory (NLab) on a short social research project looking at CreativeCoffee Club Leicester.

NLab's CreativeCoffee Club Leicester has been running for about eighteen months, meeting alternate Wednesdays during term-time. Since the Club started there have been some dramatic changes in the global economic situation, and an explosion of local and national networks and social media tools.

The survey will examine current provision and inform the planning of future activity.