Matt Bee Blog

Outlook 2010 – still not helping anyone

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

So here’s the great news that Outlook 2010 is in beta development. Here’s the not so great news. They are still planning on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails, just as in Outlook 2007.

Goodbye styles and background images, hello tables (my old friend) and broken emails.

There may be all sorts of reasons behind the move, be it a reaction to Microsoft not being allowed to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows 7 or the official Microsoft view that using Word offers the most powerful email composition tools for Outlook users. This is flawed by tha fact that recipients will require Outlook to view the emails properly, and with only 7% of the market this punishes Outlook users in my opinion. I see no reason why a corporation such as Microsoft can’t allocate the resources to create an email client that provides powerful authoring and rendering of emails, using email standards.

The Email Standards Project, Campaign Monitor (I love you guys!) and Newism have initiated a campaign, http://fixoutlook.org/, to try and highlight the problems to Microsoft, so lets all hope they listen.

Alternatively the sooner I get away from having to worry about building HTML emails, the better.

Addition: the Microsoft response

Microsoft have provided a response to the campaign on their MSDN blog which expands on a number of points I raised. In the comments I pointed out that HTML is not an email standard, and Microsoft correctly state “There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability“. This is my view too but of course it doesn’t make my day job any easier.

I agree that many using Word to compose rich emails will find that the easiest and most powerful method – but it still relies on the recipient using a client expecting Word formatted HTML.

Finally, if Microsoft would please prove to me that “Word has always done a great job of displaying the HTML which is commonly found in e-mails around the world” I’d appreciate it, because I think that is absolute bollocks and my professional experience backs that up.

Pyrenees training 2009

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

The past four days have been awesome, since I have been cycle/triathlon training with Richard from work, Gaunty who we swim with and his mate Nick.

The Pyrenees are beautiful and while we knew we were in for a tough time with a few big hills, no one really expected to be staying at the bottom of a hors catégorie climb in Col du Tourmalet. Round the corner was the Col d’Aspin too which has featuredin Le Tour de France 66 times. So the climbing was awesome, tough, beautiful, painful, challenging, sweaty and required a lot of determination. Read more of this entry

FOWD 2009

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Future of Web Design over with for another year then and I have to say my first conference was an overwhelming success. Started well, with meeting @boagworld, @stanton, @ryanhavoc, @mikestickler, @anna_debenham, @nofont, @BHardcastle and @dkirk (twitter usernames of course) in the Prince of Teck at Earl’s Court, unfortunately had to bail to finish the current Virgin Insider build, but alas it was still fun. Except the getting stick for not having an iPhone, however after the next couple of days I definitely want one. I just upgraded on Orange. Bugger.

Molly Holzschlag on stage at FOWD 2009 - Flickr image from user: vectorfunk

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Slash, sponsorship and .net

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

It has been a fun few weeks! Last week I went to see Velvet Revolver, the super group made up of members from Stone Temple Pilots, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Wasted Youth, and afterwards in the private bar met Slash and Scott Weiland. Both seemed bloody nice chaps, although Weiland appeared to be the only person in the UK allowed to smoke indoors at the gig. Now that’s power.

I was extremely disappointed that while writing this I found that Velvet Revolver have parted company with Scott Weiland, Slash citing his “increasingly erratic behaviour” as the reason! Well I never!

Slash was a bloody nice chap too. And my f**king God was he good on guitar! Unbelievable in fact.

The Friday after the gig was my first sponsorship deadline, which I just about reached, with the rest on its way. Great news – I am definitely cycling to Amsterdam and Brussels in June then!! Hoorah! Speaking of which I did my first training ride on Saturday – only 20 miles, but it’s a start. This weekend I will do 40 miles and then the following weekend I will try all the way to Deal to see mother and Grandad!

The final update is possibly the best bit – for me anyway. Up there with meeting Slash! I was in .net magazine! Now it was only readers sites, but the site Griff designed for www.challengebee.org, that I built over a couple of nights a few months ago is one of the sites featured on page 18. Nice screen shot, blurb that I wrote and picture of me and the Griff. I am proud! Next up is writing a decent article for the mag, which I am sure I could do!! I’ll scan and upload to this post asap! Probably tomorrow!

Quick Response Codes (QR codes)

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Today I went to the Technology for Marketing and Advertising show with little expectations, however I ended up in the Mobile Internet seminar. This is where I found that QR codes (which I had briefly investigated last week for a work pitch) are already usable and being used in the real world (although they are old news in Japan and China I hear – they are even on McDonalds wrappers there).

The above is an example code – use it and I’ll know when you do because it is a text message to me, telling me how modest (awesome) I am. All automated.

The programmes I installed to test the QR codes on my Windows Mobile Orange SPV E650 (aka the HTC S710) were the i-nigma reader and the Quickmark reader both of which work really well if the QR is large enough (anything over an inch in print was fine – screen worked better but that defeats the object!).

The QR code can include all manner of information – popular uses I have seen include sending direct to mobile web pages, auto dialling phone numbers, short texts and even full sms messages with number and message! If you want your own QR codes you can create them for non-commercial use on the kaywa web site. hey also have an excellent reader on there, just one not compatible with my phone at time of writing.

So I will be pushing for these codes to be used more in my line of work and looking out for them and using them when I see them. Apparently current uses include on “Lost” posters, on the labels of England shirts and The Sun ran a piece on QR codes when they printed a code in the tabloid back in December.

Now I’m off to make QR code t-shirts – and you won’t know what they say unless you’re as cool as me and my phone!QR code