Daniel Hardy

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Apparently sometime back Google quietly started offering a hosted service for people who wish to use their services but do so under their own domain name. This entry level plan which includes several great applications is free.

For this amazing price you get chat services, email, calendar, docs and more. The great part is that it is all based off your domain! No more yourname@gmail.com. Instead it will be you@yourdomain.com.

To get started visit Google Apps For Your Domain select the business one and sign up for a free “Standard Account”.  Be warned it does take a bit of work to get it all up an running.  You will be required to change your domains MX records and create a couple of CNAMEs for ease of access.  The great part is that Google will figure out what regestrar your domain is with and give you detailed instructions for just them.

Overall it can all be setup in a couple of min.

Ubuntu recently released a new website that allows users to submit and vote on various ideas for the future of the OS.

To join the community I decided I would submit something I have wanted for along time, “Ubuntu Lite”. Read more about it at Ubuntu Brainstorm idea#412: Ubuntu Lite and while you are there be sure to give it a vote

I recently wrote a post discussing the strange behavior of Live.com.  It appears that the search results for “Daniel Hardy” have changed again at live.com.  They have returned to there original state.

This really makes me wish I would have taken a screen shot.

One difficult aspect of overhauling an application is the loss of a preexisting mental model held by users.  This is to say that users have developed an idea of where items are located and how they generally look and act.   Often a major overhaul will cause these things to change a great deal.

Form the users perspective, one day they log out from an application they may love or hate and the next day the log in to a completely new application.  Sure the data may all be the same and the end goal of the application will probably remain the same but for the user this is effectively a completely new application they must now learn.

There are several ways that an organization can bridge this gap and make the transition a little smoother.  One way that I have recently seen and is quite simple, is just placing a notice on your screen announcing the upcoming changes.  This should link some final comps of the upcoming look and feel.  If you have a bit more time you can do what google did and offer the user both interfaces during a trial period.  This method allows the user to become familar with the new interface while having the ability to fall back on the trusted version should the need arise.  The danger with this is many users will never try the new version.

No matter what method you divise it is important to start building the expectation of change.  This will give the users a chance to prepare.  If done correctly it can also create a bit of buzz as users discuss what is to come.

“In an announcement on the Ubuntu mailing list today, Mark Shuttleworth outlined plans for Ubuntu 8.10, the next major version after Hardy Heron. Intrepid Ibex is tentatively scheduled for release in October.” - arstechnica.com

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Today I was educating myself on a new format for creating slide shows called “S5“.  It is an open format that can create slide shows using XHTML/CSS and Javascript.  These shows can intern be run in any modern browser making them truly platform independent.  For the most part the standard is extremely well thought out and holds a great deal of promise.

In my research I found a great tool that will convert a RSS feed into a S5 presentation.   Give it a shot and see how flexible this format really is.

In writing my last article about the various search engines I came across a fun site called Ubuntu Popularity Content.    This site shows the number of downloads and installs for every package in the Ubuntu repository.  It is certainly an interesting look at what people are using and if you are an Ubuntu users I suggest you take a look, maybe you will find a great new package.

I just discovered a great way to watch the election results come in while hearing what other techies are thinking.  If you are reading this after Super Tuesday I suggest you book mark the link and take a look at it in November.

See what I am talking about over at Google Maps

When I started this blog I paid careful attention to my search rankings at the big three search engines (google, yahoo, and live.com) for the term “Daniel Hardy”. Shortly after its inception I was able to snag the #1 slot at Live.com, #3 slot at yahoo.com and #4 slot at google.com. Today the picture has changed a bit with the most interesting jump coming from Live.com.

It appears that I am no longer listed at Live.com. I am not sure how this works as my rankings on the other two have increased to #1 at yahoo and #2 at google. The conspiracy theorist in me (while small) thinks that perhaps all the discussions of Ubuntu are at the root of this decline. More likely this is a great demonstration of what a difference there is between these search providers.

Personally I find this difference to be extremely valuable. It is like a second opinion or another perspective on a given topic. Unfortunately one of these companies may soon be broken apart and melted into one of the other two. Hopefully this will not be the case but it is a tough world and Google is a monster of a competitor.