Nur Ahmad Furlong

Blog

  • I won twice in constructive criticism blog commenting

    I’m ecstatic at the moment after receiving word from 2 online commenting competitions that I’ve been nominated as a winner. Woohoo!

    Firstly on www.adii.co.za I’ve won a copy of adii’s new premium magazine style wordpress theme which is one of the best magazine style themes I’ve come across so far. The competition entailed commenting on some preliminary designs and giving adii some constructive criticism on how he could improve certain areas. So myself and another person were tied first place and have both been awarded a copy of this excellent Premium News theme. I’m hoping to use this theme which I’m going to modify graphically for my www.one-project.org site.

    The second prize i was just notified of is from Cerebra.co.za “South Africa’s leading dedicated social and mobile media company” who ran a comments competition toget some constructive criticism on their website which was recently redesigned. Guess what, I’ve won an iPod Nano Woohoo!!! I’ve wanted one of these for ages but just couldn’t afford to spend money on some thing like this. Thanks cerebra, you guys rock.

    I’m gonna try to track down my comments which won me these 2 cool prizes and post them here for your viewing pleasure.

    Constructive Criticism

    The name of the game is constructive criticism and in many cases your viewers are the best source of advice for what you may be doing right or wrong as they’re the people you’re trying to please. Many times there are things we miss because we are caught seeing things from only our own perspective so asking others is a great way to get good feedback. The trick however is to know what is good feedback and what is not. The way these 2 competitions were structured is they rewarded readers for the best, most constructive feedback and because of this incentive the comments were purposely written to be as thoughtful as possible.

    It gives me some great insight into my first competition I’ve just launched last night in my Logo Design Q & A section. The basic principle is, you need something others have and you reward them for giving it to you, their clicks, their feedback, their thoughts are valuable to them so if they’re not getting anything from giving these to you they won’t offer what is valuable to them.

    Commenting is one of the areas of web 2.0 which has really changed the dynamic completely. If you don’t get it right you could be in for some heavy criticism, if you don’t allow comments you’re cutting off an important aspect of your interaction with your site visitors, but get the recipe right and your site could experience phenomenal growth and popularity. A plugin release recently by Web Addi(CT)s rewards readers for commenting by displaying commenters names in a commenters cloud with the names weighted according to number of comments. It’s an interesting way to stimulate a mutually beneficial relationship between blogger & commenter.

    Engage your readers and the general community and you’ll have valuable partners and business supporters by default.

  • Allowing more customization would take facebook to the next level

    I’ve had a love hate relationship with facebook since I started using it. I deleted my facebook account twice due to being irritated by a few people sending application invitations and a few other random reasons. Each time I deleted my account, I realized what I was missing out on in terms of staying in touch with certain people and the endless networking and collaborative opportunities facebook offers, so I’m back once again.

    The news of the facebook developer’s garage which recently(30-10-07) took place in Cape Town has made me think a little further about the possibilities which lie in the facebook platform and community. All these plugins and extensions, linking up with other online applications and services and people developing any and every type of functionality imaginable, most of which I think is a bunch of nonsense though others seem to be making use of it from vampire bites to fluffy gifts etc.

    An area where I think facebook should allow more play and developers should be focusing their attention is customization. Now I know the blue bar at the top and the standard layout has become somewhat familiar and that’s fine for most, but I think it’s about time we were allowed to play a bit with our personal spaces, brand them, colour them, change layout a little more and give them a bit more of a stamp of individuality. It should make no difference to the owners of facebook, as long a their ad spaces are maintained in their places what the rest of the thing looks like.

    I’d go out there as saying that this could be one of the most significant changes that could be included into the platform. I mean, it’s about us, about the individuals, their uniqueness. If i had even half the development skills needed to get stuck in on this area I’d dive in, any takers?

    What do you guys think?

  • Think you can escape the web revolution? – Shift Happens!

    Attending the “Web 2.0 Explosion” sessions hosted by Jamaal from Jayz internet solutions gave me a fresh boost of enthusiasm about what I do and refreshed my memory about quite a few web concepts which I have packed into a few boxes at the back of my mind somewhere. Even though I have been following developments in the web 2.0 space for some time now and feel I have a pretty good understanding of the technologies and methodologies having it all presented in a clear, step by step fashion was a good way to connect a few more dots and broaden the picture.

    I especially loved the videos which we were shown explaining some key web 2.0 concepts. I’ve seen this one before but mixed in with the rest of what we focussed on Yesterday it had a much greater impact and I just have to share this with those of you who may not have seen this yet.

    [youtube 3mxbLd9r4Sc Shift Happens on You Tube]

    Now, think about the impact this is going to have on you, your career, your business or organisation, your family and your relationships in only the next 2 – 5 years. We can’t afford to hide anymore. Fear of technology is something you just have to get over unless you’re prepared to be cut off from a huge percentage of the worlds population. Developments are going digital and any strategy which does not include some aspect of these developments could be missing an essential ingredient to its success.

  • I am experiencing the power of Patriotism

    Sitting in an internet Cafe in long street right now and I can tell you the energy is building up towards something very powerful. People have come to the city in their masses, offices have been abandoned and even I who decided to try to dodge this whole drama find myself in the midst of a Country overwhelmed by the emotion of the Boks winning the Rugby World Cup 2007.

    I’ve thought about this many times and tried to analyze whether this type of emotional fascination with high profile sporting events is healthy or not and whether it truely has the power to bring about good in Society. One thing is for sure, no-one seems to be bothered with any negativity at this moment. People of all kinds are standing on the streets next to each other cheering, blowing those irritating sports horns and having a fun time together. Work is not something anyone seems to be bothered about at all.

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  • Lessons I have learnt going from 0 – 1000 in 1 month

    I’m so excited about the progress of my humble little site and though in many people’s eyes my few achievements might seem minuscule, I’m over the moon at the results I have achieved in a very short space of time that I had to share it with you.

    First things first lets go to the numbers. Using the wp-stats plugin has been so much fun for me being able to see where all my visitors are coming from and what they’re up to when they visit my site. I went from a personal blog with not much direction and little idea of what I was trying to achieve to 1000 visitors in one month.

    Nomad-one WordPress visitor statistics September - October 2007

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  • What your logo should & should not be doing

    Have you ever turned up at an event inappropriately dressed, maybe too casual, too formal, you wore 2 different coloured socks? How about waking up for one of the most important events of your life with a huge zit on your forehead? I’m sure you’ve had that experience where someone tells you they’re sure they’ve seen you somewhere before or that you have a familiar face, or you’ve met someone before but just can’t remember what they look like.

    Make sure your company looks the part

    These little life experiences teach us alot about appearances, how we value them and the impact they have on the decisions we make. Your company or organisation is no different. Ever attend a corporate function or business meeting and all you had were those cheaply printed business cards without a logo and just your companies name written in comic sans font? Every company has its zit moment, the moment when it is not dressed appropriately, when it’s presentation is less than what it should be or gives the wrong impression. Many companies are forgotten because they have not made a memorable impact on those they interact with. It’s like those great television commercials who’s brands you just can’t remember.

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