Posts from November 2007

Occasionally, people take the time to comment on this blog which is always welcome.

However, the vast majority of comments however are not so thinly veiled advertisements by spammers. Unfortunately, due to recent problems with Spam Karma, I have had to revert to Akismet to block this torrent of pharmaceutical, financial, pornographic and vacuum cleaner spam.

This means I have a few more comments held in moderation for judgement. The family convene every night with a cup of Horlicks to sit in judgement on the assorted comments. Norma kindly takes the minutes and Norman Junior twitters the whole event (live).

The 'Comment Approval Board' recently approved a comment from a heavy metal fan. We took care to follow Akismet's advice and checked the link which purported that 'Heavy Metal is our life'.

Approving this was not an easy choice but hey, this is a broad church and everyone is welcome.

When I subsequently happened to scan the SezWho profile of the author (a man with the unusual name of 'HeavyGod'), I found to my horror, that he (or a program) had left the identical comment on multiple blogs.

'Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :)) new useful posts from you! Good luck and successes in blogging!'

The clues were all there. Commenting on a recent post sandwiched between other valid comments, a gmail address, the double use of 'really', the smiley, the compliment that I naively fell for. Hook, line and sinker.

I had been tricked. By a heavy metal fan. Oh the eternal shame.

After a detailed, comprehensive root and branch inspection, the English FA have discovered that the organisation bears no resemblance to a national Football Association and is, in fact, a Christmas tree - a mid-range Norwegian pine (non-drop) to be precise.

MS Explorer is listing badly. Passengers have been advised to disembark and board Mozilla Firefox instead.

Croatia may have beaten England twice twice in the qualifying campaign but never mind. At least the marvellous Ing-er-land fans booed their national anthem to motivate their players and the singer improvised an amusing change to the verse.

Applications for annual leave during the summer of 2008 are now open again and overtime is no longer required for policemen and riot squads in Austria and Switzerland.

Last night at approximately 18:12, I turned right onto the A4 (Great West Road) heading in an easterly direction towards Chiswick when I noticed a white police van behind me with flashing headlights and blue light spinning.

The police van pulled out to overtake me, then suddenly pulled back into my lane and pulled up to a halt to assist a broken down vehicle which had hazard lights on and was stationary in the nearside lane.

I now had to pull out to overtake the police van. The driver of the police van kindly wound down his window and waved me on my way of an apology for cutting me up with no warning.

Then I noticed a two car shunt on the other carriageway that was causing havoc with Westbound traffic on one of London's main routes out of the city.

Thankfully, the eastbound A4 was virtually clear so I carried on. I remarked to Norma-Jean how brilliant it was for the kindly policeman to stop and help out the driver of broken down vehicle on a dark, cold night. I told her the Metropolitan Police do a superb job under difficult conditions and should be praised not continually criticised.

Then I saw the same police van screaming up behind me with the blue and white lights flashing.

With the innocence of youth, Norma Jean asked: 'Dad - he's not flashing at us, is he ?'

I reassured my young daughter 'Oh no - he has just noticed the accident of the other side and is trying to get there as quick as he can so he needs to get to the next roundabout to turn around. Either that or they're late for their tea.'

Only he wasn't attending the accident on the other carriageway. He was pulling me over. My heart sank.

I told Norma the Metropolitan Police were a corrupt organisation, filled with officious police officers, convicting innocent people, while letting guilty criminals roam free and the Met Police are always picking on innocent, law abiding drivers and she should never, ever trust them.

Time for quick thinking. I turn the radio off (Kiss FM - Norma Jeane's choice not mine) and ask Norma Jeane to wind the window down as we prepare for an encounter with the Metropolitan Police.

And so it begins...

'Good evening, Sir'

'Listen mate, enough of the pleasantries. I'm in a hurry. What the hell have you stopped me for ? Shouldn't you be out catching murderers ?'

No, no, only joking. 'Good evening officer.'

'I don't know if you're aware, Sir but I have stopped you because you just jumped a red traffic light back there.'

'What do you mean ? It was amber and I was stuck in no-man's land so I had to proceed. Anyway, this is London not a country village.'

No, no, only joking. 'Yes I know, officer. I'm really sorry about that.'

'There were three vehicles that jumped the red light. Every single one of you illegally jumped the red light and not one of you noticed the police van sitting behind you waiting patiently at the red light.'

'Yeah well - if that underpowered transit had got any acceleration, you could have come through behind us too.'

No, no, only joking. 'Yes I know, officer, I'm really sorry.'

'...and when I attempted to stop you, you then proceeded to drive away.'

'Yes I know, officer, I'm really sorry. I genuinely thought you were attending to that two car shunt back there.'

'Yes. Well I wasn't. It's just a good job you stopped this time. Barry wanted to activate the loudspeaker system and I'm sure you, or your lovely daughter, wouldn't have wanted that, would you, Sir ?'

'Yes I know, officer, I'm really sorry.'

'Listen to me, Sir. We have already had three deaths on the roads in London tonight so we are just asking people to drive carefully.'

'I see officer. I will certainly drive more carefully now.'

'OK. I've warned the other two drivers so now I am warning you. Please drive carefully, Sir. Good-night.'

And with that, the flashing lights were turned off, Barry sighed with disappointment and he departed, content to let me off with a warning.

Which was just as well as I am currently on six penalty points for two separate speeding offences both incurred in Watford.

Understandable really though. You're so relieved to get away from that awful town, you do tend to put your foot down.

I subscribe to multiple blogs (163 to be precise) and Google Reader makes tracking all of those sites trivial. Readers keyboard shortcuts mean scanning for new content and reading blog articles is also easy and quick.

Occasionally, I also leave comments on a much smaller subset of those blogs in addition to blogs I may encounter but may not necessarily subscribe to.

After posting your comment, it is imperative to be able to follow any subsequent discussions in case someone violently (dis)agrees with you or simply to hear other people's viewpoint on the same subject.

So how do you track all those insightful, witty comments you have contributed during your travels on the blogosphere ? How do you monitor all those interesting conversations, heated discussions and outright flame wars that you haven't necessarily contributed to but are still interested in ?

The primeval solution is to bookmark and subsequently revisit every single blog article you have commented on and, err, scan for any new comments. However, this isn't a very efficient solution and you may find you have no time left for reading the blogs (or holding down the day job) let alone leaving comments.

Another possibility is to subscribe to the comments feed for all the blogs you comment on. However, this may be overkill as you may only be interested in certain articles of interest or articles where you posted a comment.

For example, some articles on popular, high volume blogs (Scoble, ProBlogger) may receive over a hundred comments but I am only interested in tracking comments on a relatively small number of posts.

Some blogs offer 'Subscribe to comments via email' but this is not universally available.

A deluxe version would enable me to track follow-ups to my specific comments on blog platforms that support threaded comments.

My main requirements for comment tracking are:

• Easy, quick way to track comments on a blog. Fully automatic if possible and certainly not more than one click.
• Ability to select comment threads to be monitored.
• Ability to stop tracking conversations.
• Must be able to track all blog platforms.
• Automatic notification when comments updated.
• Ability to check for updates manually.
• Visual indicator for threads with updated content.
• Must support RSS feeds to track comment threads.
• RSS feed must include the context (blog, date, comment text and author)

The main three comment tracking services are:

• co.Comment
• commentful
• co.mments

[SezWho, Disqus and IntenseDebate offer similar services but require installation of plug-ins on the server to be truly universal so are excluded but you may find these tools are of interest.]

Installation¶

All three sites require (free) registration and use a Firefox bookmarklet to track comment threads. No additional plug-ins are required on the server.

Usage¶

Each site has a home page displaying tracked conversations.

commentful provides a dashboard displaying all conversations of interest. Threads with unread comments are highlighted in bold. Only the number of comments is shown and to read the actual comment, you need to click through to the original site. This is less than ideal as for sites with lots of comments, you have to waste time scanning for the recent updates.

co.mments has a excellent, simple, uncluttered summary page displaying the tracked threads with new content clearly displayed. You can read the additional comments simply by expanding the thread. The context including the blog name, the date and time and the author of the new comments are displayed.

One (minor) problem is that threads are listed in reverse chronological order so recent threads with no updates appear above older threads with active conversations.

The coComment 'My Conversations' page is a little more complicated. Comments may be viewed by expanding the appropriate comment thread and the author is shown although the date and time are not included.

coComment seemed a little slower to pick up new content than both commentful and co.mments.

Both commentful and co.mments allowed a 'Check' button to force a poll for new comments which is a feature coComment doesn't support.

coComment added a lot of social and community features in version 2.0. It is fair to say that these Web 2.0 features were not universally welcomed by the existing user base.

coComment allows you to examine comment threads tracked by 'neighbours' (people who presumably are tracking similar conversations' and you can subscribe to other users' tracked threads. Personally, I don't have a need for this feature but I can see how it would be useful for discovering new, relevant blogs of interest. However, your Web 2.0 mileage may vary.

Intriguingly, I have one stalker - sorry follower - on coComment but am I able to click to discover his/her profile ? No. Maybe this is the dawn of anti-social networking.

coComment also has a sidebar view to displays conversations with the original blog displayed alongside but the interface is a little busy for my liking.

Tracking comments¶

All three comment tracking services use a Firefox/IE bookmarklet to add a blog post to be tracked. commentful and co.comments display the confirmation message and helpfully disappear. Unfortunately, the coComment window persists and has to be explicitly closed Breaching the one click rule).

Notification¶

coComment provides a Firefox plugin that provides automatic notification in the browser. However, the current version (0.2.3.6) proved unreliable for me using Firefox 2.0.0.8 on Windows XP. In fact, I actually had to explicitly disable the coComment extension in order to add conversations using the bookmarklet. In addition, the plugin broke some Google Analytics functionality.

commentful also installs a Firefox notifier (1.7.3) that turns Amber when new comments are available. Clicking on the notifier icon opens a window containing the Watchlist. The notifier only updates every 15 mins so once you have read all new comments, confusingly the notifier doesn't immediately revert to Green (no new comments).

Thankfully, co.comments doesn't include a fancy comments notifier. Probably just as well.

RSS¶

Of course, checking a Web page to check on the status of blogs you have commented on is pretty tiresome. Even with the help of a notifier application. What intelligent, lazy people really want is an RSS feed that tells them when important changes have occurred.

All three services offer RSS feeds for the monitored conversations.

Like the Watchlist, the RSS feed from commentful just contains the blog title together with number of new comments. You have to visit the site to view the newly added comments. This rather defeats the purpose of the RSS feed because ideally, you want to be able to view as much content as possible from within Google Reader. The only time you might visit the site would be to participate in the conversation (i.e. someone said you were an idiot).

The co.mments RSS feed contains everything needed for context (author, blog, comment, date).

coComment offers the usual separate RSS feed containing updates on all tracked conversations although the author appears to be 'unknown' most of the time. I presume this is 'unknown' to the coComment system because the author details are supplied on the actual comment.

CoComment does have a additional feature which is useful. coComment provides a second RSS feed purely contains the individual comments you have posted. This is very useful if you are intending to add all your words of wisdom to a lifestream style page (Tumblr, FriendFeed).

Conclusions¶

commentful is basic but does the job and will save you time if you merely want to be automatically notified when new comments have been added to a blog post. However, you do have to visit the site to identify and read the new content.

coComment is the most feature rich and potentially powerful tool but the complexity of the interfaces and wealth of social networking features are slightly overwhelming for my simple requirements. However I will use the RSS Comment Author feed to track my own comments. Once I've worked out why it has stopped working.

co.mments - simple and functional. The RSS feed contains precisely the information I need and is updated quickly. This is the tool I am now using (via RSS) to monitor all comment threads of interest.

I dont know whether Ask have changed their agency but I think this advert is a marked improvement on the previous campaign.

Imagine you were a tourist looking to visit London, which site would you choose ?

Just installed SezWho on this blog. At least, it imported all existing comments (unlike Disqus). I would like to change the red colour to blend in with the theme but haven't worked out how.

Now just rate each other nicely or you will be sent to bed without any tea and the plug-in will be removed. Any feedback, just shout or comment.

Another interesting service but, again, the problem is that it needs to be installed on the majority of blogs/wikis/forums in the world to be truly useful. I think marketeers call it 'traction'. Pity the support email supplied is totally broken but still.

What a blessed shame SezWho doesn't currently support Blogger which means this superlative comment couldn't add 5 stars to my embryonic profile.

I am still in shock at not being shortlisted for the Best UK Blog but I decided to swallow my pride and enjoy a few hours enjoying the high quality content of the 10 finalists:

• Ian Dale's Diary - A tagline of 'Commentary, analysis and gossip from the heart of Westminster' completely turned me off and I closed the Firefox tab before I was subjected to any more torture.
• Guy Fawkes - Hoping for top tips to blow up the Houses of Parliament but just got more politics. Yawn.
• Neil Clark - The winner apparently. Anti-war hack with a lot of posts urging readers to vote for him.
• EU Referendum - Simply couldn't summon up the enthusiasm to click through.
• Pub Philosopher - Promising title but yet more (right wing) politics. May as well buy the Daily Mail.
• The Devil's Kitchen - Considered outpourings on the wit and wisdom of David Cameron. No thanks.
• Baggage Reclaim - Much better. A blog recording amusing anecdotes from an anonymous baggage handler at LHR. Oh no - wait a minute - it's just a blog about dating and 'relationships'.
• Nourishing Obscurity - Promising title but this excerpt completely lost me: 'I see that the current crop of parents lost their moral compass long ago and this is the first generation to grow up "moral-code-lite".
• Bright Meadow - Soft porn alert 'She loved how the amber glinted off his bones'. I daren't read any more. Particularly as I am on a formal warning from my employer.
• Kickette - At last. A discerning blog all about football. Only this one is about celebrity footballers (Fat Frank), their tiresome girlfriends and pictures of Ronaldo with his shirt off.

I was so depressed that I decided to ~~kill myself~~ compile my own list of the definitive, real, undisputed 'Top 10 UK (and Irish) blogs' in strict alphabetic order:

• BlogStorm - Internet Marketing/SEO but, refreshingly, from a UK blogger.
• Caroline Middlebrook - a lady who took the brave step of quitting her IT job in favour of blogging.
• Donncha - WordPress employee #2 and aspiring photographer.
• Doug Burns - Scottish DBA with wicked sense of humour.
• Modern Life is Rubbish - Quality not quantity.
• Pete Ashton - Brummie blogger with varied mixture of music, photos and tech with no signposts or self-importance. Pure blogging.
• Random Acts of Reality - I help people read books. This guy saves people's lives for £10 an hour. Deserves first prize for the blog name alone.
• Tim Hall - Oracle DBA, film critic and Karate Kid. Another Brummie.
• Tom Raftery - Irish slant on IT, tech and all that Web 2.0 stuff.
• Who Ate All The Pies - Genuinely funny football blog.

I decided to save Oracle Corporation lots of money by not attending Oracle Open World in San Francisco. Initially, my manager spent a lot of time trying to dissuade me but as soon as he uttered the words Billy Joel and Prince, I immediately volunteered for some billable work in Sunderland to help pay for Doug's complimentary red sleeping bags.

Doug Burns, Tim Hall and John Scott seem to have a real problem conquering jet lag while Mark Rittman just does 'the British thing and goes down the pub'. While I don't travel to the States that often, I did attend a Microsoft training course in Seattle last year. As I don't sleep on planes, I do recall being quite tired when we disembarked and slightly annoyed when my colleague volunteered to navigate and let me concentrate on driving.

However, after checking into the hotel, having a walk around the lovely harbour and getting something to eat, I remember feeling pretty good. In fact, after a couple of drinks, I was ready put my Amex card behind the bar but my colleague insisted on dragging me back to my bedroom screaming 'But we must go to bed at 22:09'

Anyway to OOW; Oracle Apps Lab launched Oracle Mix which is a version of an internal Oracle networking site (which I am ashamed to admit I only discovered recently) and there is a short discussion about Oracle's gradual adoption of such networking and community tools. I must say I preferred the name 'Connect' to 'Mix' but still, if anyone wants to link up, you know where to find me.

Andrew Clarke has a typically British and impartial review on Larry Ellison's opening keynote while Eddie Awad has recorded some fun micro-interviews with Oracle staff and bloggers alike. Interesting to put a face and voice to people I only know from their Internet presence.

The other announcement thus far of note is Oracle VM. Virtualisation is a strong growth area (I meet lots of Siebel customers deploying or planning to use VM) and this is an obvious market for Oracle to enter to complement Enterprise Linux.

Norman - Your next post will be in the style of Micro-Blogging...

Monday - NSCR. Plaintive request from a customer to truncate a Siebel intersection table. Siebels official stance on the use of any direct SQL to modify data in Siebel base tables is well documented. However, for reasons that are too lengthy and tedious to divulge here, this particular request was approved. Mainly because they deposited £2500 into my offshore account.

Tuesday - Team Meeting at BVP. Interesting to hear what my counterparts on eBusiness Suite do. Ate here. Not as dire as the reviews suggested. Few beers in the interests of team morale.

Wednesday - Try (and fail) to avoid being dispatched abroad on my birthday. Cristiano Ronaldo keeps going till the very last minute and gets his reward. A lesson to us all.

Thursday - Early start. Sleep downstairs on the sofa bed. Wake up 3 hours early. Fly to Amsterdam. Mundane Production Health Check for Siebel 7.7 on SQL Server. Set up various monitoring tools (perfmon, OM logging and Profiler) to identify low hanging fruit. There wasn't any. Staying close to Schipol (good), far away from the city (bad).

Back to hotel. Tired. Process email while thinking about lyrics to 'Sappy' and listening to 'Low' on a tight loop.

London - 5 November 2007

The football world was left reeling after Norman Brightside was fired last night. The long serving manager of Whiteside Wanderers was summarily dismissed when the club released a terse statement on their website.

'36 points. That's rubbish. You're fired.'

After a pre-season of great promise, big money transfers and high expectations from fans, Whiteside Wanderers have endured a poor start to the season and are positioned second from bottom after a string of inconsistent performances and bad results.

Brightside defended his record: 'Don't look at me. Look at the players. They just haven't performed. The team has continually been wracked by injuries (Scholes, Rooney), suspensions (Ronaldo, Carsson) and loss of form (Berbatov).'

The Chairman offered a slightly different view: 'The manager's lost it. He has made some bizarre selections (Noble, McShefferey). His stubborn refusal to even contemplate the purchase of a Liverpool or Manchester City player was the last straw. I negotiated a deal with Liverpool to get Gerrard for £56 million but he refused. The man is a stubborn idiot and is living in a fantasy world.'

Brightside was left fuming at claims he had 'lost the dressing room'. 'That's absolutely absurd. The dressing room is on the right just after the toilets. I can find it with my eyes shut.'

Brightside was coy about his plans for the future and refused to confirm or deny rumours of a £7.50 pay-off. The tabloid press are convinced he will team up with Sammy Lee and take over at managerless Stevenage, a Subbuteo team languishing in the Ryman Premier League.

'Some think Stevenage would be a retrograde step but there's great potential there. Besides, Sammy wants to go somewhere where the players look up to him.'