Matthew Lang

Last weekend our son came home with the school quarterly bulletin. As always we familiarised ourselves with everything that was coming up in the next few months, asked him what events he would like to go to and made sure there was nothing else that needed our attention. One last thing caught me wife's eye though as she read through the bulletin. The school are looking for volunteers to help re-vamp their school website.

The next day I phoned the school to let them know I would be willing to help out. I got a call back a few minutes later with a date and time to speak to the assistant head teacher at the school who will be handling the website. All good so far.

The school's website is okay as an information portal but it definitely falls short in terms of how it looks. Well, when the site says that the school kids contribute to the look and content of the site, you're not exactly going to be expecting something that wins web design awards. Looking at other web sites in the area, and it's clear that the school web site isn't a primary concern for some schools. There is more an emphasis on getting the school children involved and that's not a bad thing.

Today's school children though are far different in terms of technology exposure than school children have been in the past. In the last ten years, mobile technology has become so engrained in day to day life that homes often have two or more mobile devices with kids often having their own tablet or even smartphone.

It got me wondering about the approach to take in getting the school children involved in the new school website. Is it better for them to know how to edit and update web pages by hand or will the kids be more interested in maintaining the school website through something like Wordpress?

I might be jumping the gun here a bit, but I've been keeping a list of questions like this to ask at my meeting with the school this week.

The main good thing to come out of this though is the chance to do something for an organisation in my local community. Yes, I'll be doing the work for the school for free but with our oldest already a pupil there and our youngest due to start there in a few years, the chance to contribute something to their school can't be a bad thing.

I'm back on Twitter.

After weighing up the options, I'm probably better being an active member of at least one social network rather than none at all. Working for yourself is great, but the lack of office banter can make for very quiet days.

Fancy following me? I'm @matthewlang.

The entire kingdom of Westeros created in Minecraft. Amazing.

via kottke.org

Curtis McHale knows how to be effective during his work day. No further proof is needed than the man himself. Curtis manages to fit so much into a single week.

I've been keeping this site going for a few years now, and while my main form of sharing content is through the RSS feed for this site, I do also share content through Buffer. It's ability to schedule posts for the networks I'm on is what made me sign up. I also use a separate domain for all my shortened links for each post and it starts to look a little more branded.

Why do we share our content in this way though? I can't speak for the mass collective of netizens, but here's why I share links through Buffer.

1. To Be Seen

People share their content in this way as a marketing tool, they want to be seen. And so do I. Being self-employed means that I need to keep my name out there.

While my recently published content doesn't strongly tie in with my freelance career, I do like to think that what I publish is valuable to others and may lead to new clients and contacts.

2. To Suit The Reader

Not everyone uses RSS to subscribe to content. For many, social networks are their first point of call when it comes to finding new content. This is the main reason why I share my content in this way. RSS is often seen as a more techie solution for subscribing to content which is why some people prefer to get their news from their preferred social network.

3. To Pay It Forward

Some things are just too good to keep to yourself and that's why I'm starting to share more links on Buffer. For the content that I find valuable and worth reading, I'm going to start sharing on Buffer. They might not make my blog in the form of a link post, but sharing these links in other places means that the original authors of the content get noticed.

That's the main reasons why I share the content that I do. Largely it's about having an active presence on the Internet and letting potential new clients and contacts know that, "I'm here!".

This is a personal site though and unsuitable for the kind of content that would get me noticed by new clients. For that I need a separate site with more focused content on Rails, Ruby and other web development topics. This is in the pipeline and I'm hoping to have something up and running by the summer.

For the last month I've been pouring over mountain bike websites and magazines in the hope that I can pick up a decent bike at a reasonable price.

In the distant past this was a no-brainer. I would head to my local bike shop and ask about some recommendations. The advice was always balanced towards the models they had in the store or could order in. To be fair most local bike shops carry a fair range of mountain bikes, and if these were the only ones on offer then you can always find something that will suit your needs. Things are changing though with the introduction of Internet based bike companies. These small companies offer better specced bikes for less than the majority of bikes that are available in your local bike shop. They do this by selling directly to the customer, cutting out both the distributor and the local bike shop.

On-one have been a favourite of mine for a while. Their initial line of singlespeed steel hardtails were sold direct to customers from their website. Within a few months they were a success. Today they now carry a bigger range of bikes and frames for all different types of riders.

Bird are another mountain bike company that have recently surfaced using the same business model. With just one hardtail frame and full-suspension frame in their product line, they offer a number of build options for each frame according to the customer's budget.

Both of these companies aim to do one thing. Save money on the amount you pay for the bike by selling to you directly.

The business model is great for customers. They end up saving money on a similarly built bike offered in their local bike shop or they can get more bang for their buck by spending the same amount at the online retailer than they would at their local bike shop. Ask most people where they would probably buy their bike and I'm willing to bet that most would pick the online retailer. This is bad news for local bike shops though. Bikes are big ticket items, and if the trend towards buying from online retailers gains momentum, it would

I'm still on the fence about it. The Bird Zero is great value for money in terms of its specification. The other bike I'm considering, a Whyte 901, is distributed through bike stores and while it carries a higher price tag than the Bird Zero, it's not too far off my budget for a new bike. Both bikes match my preferred riding style, so there's no problem there. At this price level, £200 more for a bike isn't going to break the bank, but it does mean that I'm supporting a local bike shop. On the other hand, buying from an online retailer means saving a bit more money. I am swaying towards buying a store bought bike, but the decision isn't final yet.

In the early days of the Internet, hosting your own website was reserved for those in the know, but over time it's become easy for anyone to build and host a website. With it though, comes that initial question. Do you use a hosted service or roll your own solution?

Over the years I tried lots of different hosted services. When I first started blogging a few years ago, I jumped from Tumblr to Posterous to Github Pages and then finally settled on Octopress. In recent weeks I've once again been assessing if Octopress is sufficient for my needs. It's got me thinking about the decision to use a hosted service like Wordpress or to use my own version of Octopress that has served me well over the last year.

The Hosted Service

The benefits of using a hosted service are immediately clear. Sign up and your done. As soon as that form is submitted you're ready to go. It's hard not to argue with this instant benefit. For most people this is the only way. Maybe they're not willing to delve into servers and software or perhaps it's a time issue.

For a smaller group of people though, they have the knowledge to roll their own solution, so what makes them chose a service?

I choose services based on a number of factors but mostly it's the benefit I can get from being able to use them on a day to day basis.

Services like Todoist and Trello take the pain out of my task and project management by allowing me to move between devices without having to synchronise data between them. There's a number of other minor benefits but the big benefits is accessibility.

I don't run my own servers as I know it would take up too much of my time to learn how to configure these correctly and ensure they are secure and running smoothly so I look towards services like Cloud 66 and Heroku to ensure my clients sites run without any major impact.

These are just a couple of examples of how hosted services are beneficial but there are drawbacks.

One of the big issues I have with hosted services is my ability to get my data in and out of that service. It's probably the one single feature of any hosted service that ultimately makea me sign up or not. As a hosted service I respect that my data must be located elsewhere for that service to be effective, but I must be able to import my data and extract it in a simple way. This is still a issue with some services, but it is getting better. Sadly though, the services themselves decide on the format of the data and with so many out there, getting them to all agree on the one format is never going to happen.

The Custom Solution

The benefit of a custom solution is just that. It's your own solution.

Hosted services offer a product or service pre-boxed and used by hundreds of people, but they can only be made to fit your needs to a certain point. What usually happens then is you have a service that fits your needs most of the time, just not all of the time.

This is where custom solutions excel. They are solutions tailored specificically to your own requirements. The drawback though is that such solutions need maintanance, and in my experience, a little more effort to ensure they run smoothly.

So what about my blog then? Well as nice as a hosted service would be, I do prefer to have that element of control over how it looks and what it does. Yes, I might have to jump through a few more hoops to publish content, but it gives me more control in that process. I think I'll be staying with the custom solution for the moment.