Can ... can't ... shouldn't

There have been a few newsy stories that caught my eye today.

There's the schoolgirl whose popular blog about her school dinners has been stopped by the local council. The BBC's Rory C-J reckons it's just a publicity stunt and the council explain that they have now stopped photographs being taken in the school canteen. [Later: they've changed their collective mind now!]

What I find interesting about this story, apart from the delightful blog itself, is that it looks as if 'the management' (fans of Hale and Pace should do the accent here of course) only got worried when the mainstream media picked up on the story.

The Register reports on a statement by Sarah Lamb of the group Girl Geek Dinners saying that sexism in TV shows such as The IT Crowd is preventing women from thinking about a career in IT. Reg reporter Anna Leach refers to Ms Lamb as a Girl Geek Dinner lady (you can see why this comes second in the list can't you?) but funny as that is I applaud any attempt to get girls interested in any kind of science or technology. (I once had a bit of a row during a BBC appointment board with the Editor of Blue Peter about this.)

Mind you: turning it off and on again does fix most problems with digital technology. Buffers get clogged, memory overflows, civilisations rise and fall. You know the sort of thing. And you did watch The IT Crowd didn't you?

Which brings us untidily to the subject of browsers. Once upon a time you had to buy them ... my first even came in a box! For the first edition of our book we needed to put a browser on the accompanying CD-ROM (which was built like a web site) and only Microsoft were willing to waive any licence fee. So I do have a bit of a soft spot for Internet Explorer ... up to it's final majestic Mac implementation of IE 5.5.

Since then we all know that it's been a bit of a pain, especially when it ruled the browsing roost. It was famously quirky (including a quirks mode) and had an unsympathetic approach to standards in the any colour as long as it's black style pioneered by Henry Ford.

I've tended to do web builds that worked about the same across the main browsers, but then I don't do nothin' fancy. The acres of conditional CSS that's needed to cope with browsers these days seems crazy. I could almost believe it's a kind of reverse taxation, where the cost burden is shifted from the browser writers to the web designers.

'Enough!' I hear you cry. Or at least I hear the cry from Australia. The online retailer Kogan.com has now implemented an IE7 tax of 0.1% for every month since IE7 was launched (now standing at 6.8%). Since they sell things like televisions this could be no small thing. Their web site even calls it an Internet Explorer Tax and points out that "you or your system administrator has been in a coma for over 5 years". The tax, says the site, is to recoup some of the cost of coping with IE7's quirks: apparently this was as much time as Chrome, Safari and Firefox combined but for only 3% of the customers.

Do you think you could sell that one to your clients?

Business cases and social media

It's been hard enough to make business cases for the other forms of interactive projects we're engaged in, but the move into social media has made it harder – why?

Well, yes, we're dealing with what have been called intangible benefits and traditionally these soft issues have not formed a core part of the business case mix. However as interactive technology has become more individual more mobile and more location sensitive, personal preference personal recommendations and personal opinions have more clout on the bottom line. We know this but how can we be convincing when making a case or pitch for a new social media project?

I imagine some of you are saying that it doesn't seem to matter as clients are just falling over themselves to get a presence in the social media market because they realise it is influential beyond expectation. But if you don't work with them to define what they expect from your offering for a time and cost, they may well have inflated expectations and you'll disappoint them. Now, disappointing clients is not a good option and certainly militates against return business, as we know.

Immerse yourself a little in some ideas from people trying to convince their own organisations to use social media. These people know they have to present strong business cases in terms that management will accept. Katy Cowan in Getting buy-in of social media, 11th January 2011, gives good tips for people trying to influence their companies that should make sense to you too. Jon Jackson, The Business Case for Social Media – stop being so analytical, 29th December 2010 gives equally sound advice despite riling against people that try to over-analyse the benefits. Don't miss Daniel's comment on this blog because whoever he is, he probably gives the best tips!

If you are having problems inside your own interactive company or section, why not get your lot to invest in the Social Media and Online PR Business Case, econsultancy Report, January 2010. It might be a little dated now in this fast-moving field and look expensive at £250 for 14 pages, but they have an offer of getting total access to all 350 reports for a year for £50 more. Maybe your management would accept this spend as an investment in training for employees? Keeping abreast of your field is Continuing Professional Development (CPD) after all.