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Preah Vihear temple to reopen

Robert | December 21, 2010 | Cambodia

The capo says Preah Vihear will reopen after New Year.

The Preah Vihear ruins on the Thai-Cambodian border will be opened after the New Year and Thailand should also open its side of the border so people can visit the ancient temple, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told visiting Thai army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha in Phom Penh on Tuesday.

… “Since we are neighbours and cannot move away from each other, we should cooperate and stay together in peace.

“Thailand and Cambodia are like a tongue and teeth which must be in contact.  It is not right that the teeth must be removed if the tongue is bitten,” the Cambodian prime minister said to Gen Prayuth.

The man certainly has a way with words.

Photos from outer space

Robert | December 20, 2010 | trivia

AOL has a flashy little full-screen slide show of photos taken by the Hubble telescope. Gorgeous stuff.

Normally, I would have never even seen something like this, because I use Firefox with Flash Block installed. But recently I switched to Rockmelt, which is the new Chrome-based browser from Marc Andreessen, and I haven’t got around to installing any extensions.

For now, though, I think I am okay without Flash Block.

Clients from hell

Robert | December 15, 2010 | Web Design

Wednesday’s site of the day: clientsfromhell.net.

It’s true. We all have our moments, designers and clients alike. Clients tend to want “unprofessional” solutions, like flying text and cutesy animated gifs, while designers often suggest overly elaborate answers to simple design challenges.

But in reading through Clients From Hell, it’s surprising that none of those anecdotes come anywhere close to the horror stories I’ve heard from clients about designers. Those tales are truly stunning.

One recent example: A friend in Thailand last year hired an expat-run Web design shop to build his company’s e-commerce site. After months — months! — of delays, the site still doesn’t work. And the company now wants to bill additional hours to “fix” the problems.

Holy Mackerel!

Or how about designers that go AWOL a week before launch date. Or call their clients vulgar names and insult them to their face.

Yet still there is no http://webdesignersfromhell.net/.

Have you had any particularly egregious run-ins with Web designers?

I can build the Web site, as long as you promise not to ask for flying text.

Profit-driven menu design

Robert | December 11, 2010 | Graphic design, Web Design

The average restaurant could probably boost its profits by 20 to 30 percent through better menu design. Maybe even more.

The objective of menu design, of course, is to steer diners away from low-profit dishes and toward higher earning ones. Even if you’re not a restaurant owner — or a menu creator — it’s easy to understand how smart design choices can boost the bottom line.

Good and bad design is not just limited to restaurant menus, however. Smart creative is no less important when it comes to logos, business cards or Web site designs. But in instances of the latter, good and bad design choices are not always as easy to quantify. Their effects, however, are no less profound.

Anatomy of a restaurant menu: the good, the bad and the profitable.

Why your site sucks

Robert | December 10, 2010 | Web Design

Chris Lake at E Consultancy offers up a stellar list of 25 Web design tragedies. With verve! Some obvious ones:

1. Autosound

2. Popups

Some less obvious:

8. Poor scent trails. Hey, I just want my questions answered, ok? If I can’t find things easily and quickly then I will look elsewhere. Your job is to help people to sniff out the information they need. This is where optimisation and testing comes in.

9. Key information is AWOL. I visited the Hoxton Hotel website recently to find out how much it costs to stay there. After a couple of minutes of hunting around I realised that there were no details on room rates (well, I couldn’t find any). It’s bizarre. Just for the record, there is no way I will click a ‘Book A Room’ button just to see how much a hotel room costs. I’ll just book with The Zetter instead. Make sure the basics are all in place.

And my personal favorite, Number 11!

11. Too much flashing, scrolling shit. If I’m browsing the internet then it’s usually a good sign that I’m not in a nightclub, which is the only environment where I personally tolerate lots of flashing lights. Yes, it can grab the attention, but not in a good way. It smacks of desperation and attention seeking, and is incredibly annoying. There is one notable exception to this rule, which is so crazy and personality-driven that it’s hard to dislike!

If you have a Web site, and you are serious about its success, you should read the whole list.

Closely.

Twice.

Because not only is it funny and well-written, it will save you a stack of cash.

Just Launched: TelcoTech

Robert | December 4, 2010 | Just Launched

TelcoTech, a Cambodian telecommunications company, is among several projects to wrap up recently. According to the company Web site, “Telcotech is the sole Cambodian member of the Asia American Gateway, a 20,000km network of high bandwidth submarine cable that connects the US to South East Asia, and various other major fiber networks – extending our connectivity around the globe.”

Robo-journalism: software as sports writer

Robert | November 29, 2010 | Tech News

As some of you may or may not know, I freelance for the Phnom Penh Post sports section on occasion. So this story in today’s New York Times resonates for more reasons than one.

ONLY human writers can distill a heap of sports statistics into a compelling story. Or so we human writers like to think.

StatSheet, a Durham, N.C., company that serves up sports statistics in monster-size portions, thinks otherwise. The company, with nine employees, is working to endow software with the ability to turn game statistics into articles about college basketball games.

Now, no one is yet suggesting that such software-generated stories will begin appearing in your local newspaper anytime soon. The market for this stuff is believed to be smaller universities that want coverage of their sports programs but cannot afford it. So this robo-copy will likely — hopefully — never make it further than the school Web site.

But.

Such efficiency seems part of a larger, worldwide business trend that demands more of everything for a lot less money. In the newspaper model, that often means more wire stories and less editing, among other peculiarities. And automating sports stories — or any stories, for that matter — would certainly dovetail with the greater cost-cutting ideals that currently grip the industry.

Sure, even the best algorithm will never be able to cover breaking news, or write an editorial piece. At best, a computer will just manage to lash together a few statistics into a game brief. Or perhaps stack some economic numbers together for a business wrap. But to a publisher trying to stop the balance-sheet bleeding, that will one day look like column inches on the cheap. And the temptation will likely be far too much to withstand.