I just installed the new Firefox 3.0 and it is indeed very fast. I still need to get used to the changes but this is nothing new when you use new software.
What I am more excited is that the website which has been for a long time my homepage, BahaiPrayers.org, has been redesigned in a most beautiful — and standard-compliant — way. It is truly a joy to look at, not just to read it, and I highly recommend it to anyone whose eyes, or soul, are sorely desperate for spiritual beauty!
P.S. I just installed a new WordPress theme as well. Let’s see if this will motivate me to blog more.
A beautiful new web site has been launched during the Festival of Ridvan by the Baha’i International Community. In addition, a newly revamped news web site has been launched at news.bahai.org. Here is a direct quote from the press release:
HAIFA, Israel — The Bahá’í World News Service has launched a new Web site that includes an expanded home page and a section designed to meet the needs of journalists. The address remains the same – www.news.bahai.org.
The section for media representatives includes brief descriptions of the Bahá’í Faith and its beliefs and history; a list of Houses of Worship; a style guide with spellings and definitions of names and terms; photos for downloading; and contact information.
All the pages for BWNS news, features, photos, slide shows, and video have been redesigned.
The makeover is the first stage in a plan to redo all the sections on www.bahai.org, the international Web site of the Bahá’í Faith. The new home page for that site also appears today.
Also, nine countries have been added to a page that provides links to Web sites and contact information for many of the national Bahá’í communities around the world. The goal is to have a link for every country.
All the Web sites are maintained by the Bahá’í International Community’s Office of Public Information at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa.
Job well done to the Office of Public Information Internet team!
The Baha’i World Center has launched a new website dedicated to the life of Baha’u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith. I am grateful for having had the honor of playing a tiny role in this project — mainly by assisting the very capable web team of the Baha’i International Community with the website’s search engine optimization — and humbled by the beautiful work the whole team has put together.
What is unique about this site is that it presents in a very artistic yet search engine friendly way a rich photographic journey through the life of the most current messenger of God, and offers to the viewers a wealth of images of artifacts and writings of Baha’u'llah.
Great job to Brian Kurzius and the whole team, and my deep gratitude for having been allowed to play a small part in this exciting project.
I just read a fascinating article in the Financial Times, “The hidden beauty of numbers”. Three websites dedicated to data visualization are profiled:
IBM’s “Many Eyes” project is a data visualization website which enables users to load, visualize and discuss numbers.
Swivel is another site allowing people to share and display data. See an example of a Swivel chart based on data of the box office sales for the first four Harry Potter movies:
And now the really amazing stuff: Gapminder, software developed by a Swedish professor helps make statistics almost playful by mashing data and presenting it through animated bubblecharts.
Last week I attended a wonderfully informative meeting of the Web Managers Roundtable organized by Julie Perlmutter and hosted by the World Bank. The two presenters were:
- Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, Communications Officer at the External Affairs office of the World Bank
- John H. Bell, Managing Director and Executive Creative Director at the 360° Digital Influence division of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Here are several of the ideas on developing a social media strategy, adopted from the Ogilvy presentation by John Bell (who also blogs about the World Bank’s take on social media):
Ideas for using online visibility and search
- Search Visibility – Increase the probability that people who research your company or related issues find what you want them to find, including helping your target audience to make the connection between risk factors/symptoms and your company’s public health campaign.
- Multimedia Visibility – Use existing visual or audio assets to promote word of mouth, mobilize allies and improve search engine results
- Content Syndication – Distribute your content via trusted web sites to improve search engine results
Ideas on information sharing
- Internal Blog – Share information between offices for to allow for a quick response when a crisis arises. Share information and materials among and between stakeholders.
- Wiki – Engage a coalition or a community to work toward a common goal.
Ideas for building an Engagement Toolbox
- How to monitor cgm
- How to create an influencer audit
- How to do an online visibility audit
- How to create an engagement plan
- How to create commenting guidelines
- How to create corporate blogging guidelines
- How to reach out to bloggers
- How to manage a crisis
- How to launch a blog
- How to use del.icio.us
- How to publish & publicize multimedia
I am finally getting around to post on my blog after a busy period of time. I had mentioned earlier that my team is in the process of intranet overhaul. I was in contact with Jane McConnell about her worldwide intranet study. She is in the process of preparing the 2007 questionnaire now and it will posted be on line for three months from the beginning of June to the end of August in order to be available for people in different countries before and after holidays. The results will be published the first week of October, exactly one year after the 2006 results were released.
In 2006 Jane had 101 organisations participate from around the world; she is hoping to reach at least 150 if not 200 in 2007. In the meantime, if you have not downloaded the 2006 Summary report, you can do so at this link.
If you have any comments or suggestions for additional topics you would like to see covered, let Jane know.
The Financial Times today posted in their Digital Business section an article summarizing the findings of a new comparative study of how the websites of the 60 biggest corporations — 20 from North America, 20 from Europe, and 20 from the rest of the world — rank in terms of serving its main constituents and overall accomplishing what a website is supposed to accomplish. The surprise is in the composition of the winning list, the FT Bowen Craggs Index:
“Of the top ten companies in the rankings, eight are European based; just two come from the US.”
As a European living in the U.S., I welcome such studies which should encourage us all to learn from each other, regardless of where we come from. The Silicon Valley is not the whole world, and that is a good thing.
As my team is preparing to launch out company’s intranet overhaul, I am reading through some interesting and informative articles and blogs:
I just received an email inviting me to participate in a self-evaluation of my email marketing savvy. The problem with the message was that the links that was supposed to lead me to the online questionnaire was disabled by my Outlook email client:
Whose fault it was? My Outlook was being proactive in creating a safe environment by disabling links that might lead to an unsafe site (whatever the criteria for this is). Outlook did give me the option of enabling the embedded links by clicking on the top of the tool bar. I enabled the embedded link by making that extra click simply because I decided to use this annoyance for a topic of this post. However, it is very unlikely that I would do that otherwise for a message from a sender I am not familiar with.
Which brings me to the point of email marketing effectiveness and its link with web usability. An email is effective only if it engages the reader and sends them to a website for an action. If I am not compelled to go visit the website, the email did not achieve its goal. If the design of the email prevents me from visiting the target website, it has nobody else to blame for its failure. The email should make it not only compelling for me to click on that link but easy as well. Adding a simple text/HTML link would have solved the problem easily.
I am sure Alterian are very experienced marketers. But everybody can learn and we never stop learning. Taking the time to test their own email campaigns would probably teach Alterian a lesson or two about email marketing effectivenes.
I am pleased to announce that the One World Baha’i School website has been redesigned and launched on the WordPress platform. I am very greatful for the highly flexible WordPress theme from Semiologic and the help from numerous fellow web developers. The new site should enable to school managing staff to post and edit content independently in a user-friendly and search-engine friendly manner.
For those in the Northern Virginia area, seeking spiritual education for children and adults alike, I could not recommend a better place than the One World Baha’i School!
