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When you’ve worked hard on an email campaign, you want to know how well it did. Depending on your CRM/email service, you probably have a plethora of statistics to consider: send rate, open rate, click-through rate, hard fails, soft fails… the list is either fantastic or overwhelming, depending on your point of view. While it’s great to have lots of data, it’s only useful if you know what to look at; you typically want to pull some meaningful, simplified picture out of this vast amount of information. Many people like to treat one metric as the end-all, be-all of email success: the open rate.

The open rate is a simple concept with a convoluted behind-the-scenes life. The idea is to count how many people open your email once they receive it. Simple enough. After all, they can’t read your content and take action for your organization if they don’t open the email. So open rate should be pretty important, right?

Not so fast. (more…)

Is the internet running out of domain names? Well, not really, but it could be argued that we’re running out of easily remembered and typed names. The combination of lower entry costs for even the smallest businesses to get online with the proliferation of microsites and redirects has led to a need for new real estate. The first wave of this was an attempt to make more use out of shared suffixes like .us, .info, and, of course, .tv (which provides a significant portion of the GNP of the nation of Tuvalu), but these never really caught on - people have been trained to look for the .com to identify something as a web site.

So ICANN is trying something new: custom top level domains. In about a year, they’ll be opening up the auction block for companies and organizations to set up their own top level domain. So if apple.com is already taken by the computer magnate, a business that sells the fruit could make a bid on the .apple suffix, allowing them to create easy to remember addresses like red.apple. ICANN has indicated that in the initial rush for top level domains, they’re going to stop speculators by taking intellectual property into account. And because top level domains can host an infinate number of domains within them, fruit.apple and iphone.apple can coexist peacefully.

Should your non-profit be considering a purchase of one of these new top level domains when they open up? Not immediately - ICANN is saying that the registration fee will be between $100,000 and $500,000, and no matter how unrecognizable your current URL is, it’s probably not the best use of your web dollars to switch. Look for these costs to go down in time - someone will likely sweep through the buy most of common names that are hard to trademark (.international, .foundation, and .association come to mind) and will be selling space there at a much lower rate.

Unfortunately, even companies that move on to their own top-level domains are unlikely to relinquish control over their current holdings, so those domains that they’re keeping from you probably won’t open up - they’re just too cheap to hold on to. But it remains to be seen if this new convention will catch on - how long did it take before people could start dropping the www from their domain name in publications?

Editor’s note: Periodically, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. With the release of Firefox 3 burning up the internets (no pun intended), we though we’d ask: Have you installed Firefox 3? Why or why not??

Kristin, Project Manager: No. Because I’d rather have everyone else troubleshoot the bugs for me…

Amy, Functional Consultant: I haven’t upgraded yet.  Mostly because my computer has been acting up lately and I don’t want to change anything that’s not currently broken :)  However, Mark was showing off some of the extremely cool new FF features in the functional team meeting this morning and I may have to go ahead anyway.

Tim, Functional Consultant: I’ve upgraded to Firefox 3 at home, but not yet at work.  At home, it’s all about being a user and I think Firefox offers a much better user experience than any other browser, and that Firefox 3 is a better experience than the previous version.  A huge item for me is that version 3 plugged some pretty egregious and long-standing memory problems.  Pretty much every improvement Mark mentioned in his earlier post is a compelling reason to switch.  The main reason that I’ve yet to upgrade at work is that there are several addons that are not yet compatible with version 3 (and now that I take a minute to check in on my favorite addon, “Google Browser Sync,” I see that it is no longer available for download.  Ouch!).  Oh well…back to the drawing board.

I guess I’ll install version 3 now.  Though I’ll run both versions instead of doing a complete upgrading since the page rendering and CSS support is slightly different in each.

Kesah, Client Manager: Although I have checked out Firefox 3, I’m not yet using it.  I usually hold out after a major software release so that I can avoid the initial bugs.  Also, from what I’ve heard not all the extensions are compatible with the new version yet.

Michael, Principal Consultant: It’s been on my list to do, but time to do it has held me back. Reading Mark’s review just moved it up on my priority list.

Joanna, Production Specialist: At home, I was automatically upgraded to Firefox 3 beta when I upgraded to the newest version of Ubuntu Linux.  That was a couple months ago.  Most of my plug-ins didn’t work in FF3 at the time, much to my dismay.  I think the plug-in situation has improved now, but I’m still holding off on upgrading at work until I’m convinced that my favorite tools will work.

Taylor, Software Engineer: I have it downloaded and installed but I have not been using it because all the extensions that I love so much aren’t all compatible with it yet, but I expect/hope they will in the coming weeks.

Lynn, Principal Consultant: I prefer to wait until others have helped the software provider work out all the kinks (or at least until the kinks have been identified so I can decide whether it matters to me or not).

Adebo, Software Engineer: Yes I upgraded to the new FF3.  I am an early adopter of software and technology in general, with consideration given to cost, so it was only natural to get the newest version.

Erika, Operations Manager: I haven’t updated yet.  I tend to hold off on updates like this until others have boldly gone before me and tested the waters.  If it ain’t broke, don’t update it, is my policy.  Firefox 2 seems to be working just fine for me at the moment.

Kate, Administrative Assistant: At home, yes, because I’m married to a techie who takes care of such things. Here, no, because Firefox 3 hasn’t knocked my socks off to the point that I want to be bothered upgrading it at work yet. If I’m pleased with it after playing around with it at home, I’ll likely make the switch here as well.

Elizabeth, Senior Consultant: Yes, because FB told me to. The only new software I automatically avoid like the plague is produced by a company that rhymes with Plicrosoft.

Miro, Software Engineer: I was running v2 at home (on Linux). Left it open over night. Next morning, it’s using up all the remaining memory on the machine, and it took me 5 minutes to even shut the thing down.

Memory leaks anyone? I’m waiting for the l33t users to do it first. I dare them.

Mark, Functional Consultant: I’ve upgraded at work, but not at home.

I made the switch fairly quickly mainly b/c Firefox is one of the few open source projects that has such a large community and great momentum behind it, that being an early adopter of a new version involves low risk. Also, I had tired of the memory problems that I was experiencing in version 2 (though those could have had more to do with add-ons than the core itself).

The new features also sounded enticing, and I have already found them to be a step forward in browsing.

Jeff, Principal Consultant: No time to do it yet.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: As an IE aficionado, I just don’t use Firefox enough to upgrade yet. I’m sure I’ll move up eventually, but the only feature Firefox could add that could make me switch would be for Microsoft to set it as their new default browser for home users.

Have you upgraded yet? Leave your thoughts in the comments. If you’ve a web developer, Tim found some instructions to install both versions at once:

I found this very helpful article outlining how to install FF3 using a different profile from your existing FF2 install.  It will also allow you to run them simultaneously.  There is one piece missing in the instructions where you need to specify a different install directory and shortcut group name.  I chose Firefox3 (duh).

http://www.kensavage.com/index.php/archives/firefox3-and-firefox2/

Google’s new offering allows the talented python web developer to create and deploy a web application on it’s cloud of web servers. Although it’s currently in limited release, thousands of developers have signed on and there are numerous widgets and web applications that are up and running as of now.

Google’s App Engine allows anyone to “run [their] web applications on Google’s infrastructure.” The application environment lets first time users deploy their application on a free sub-domain on “appspot.com” or lets them use their own domain if they prefer. The cost to start is free and each account gets “500MB of storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for 5 million page views a month.”

To begin with, all applications must be written in Python as the base language and Google provides the popular code libraries as well as it’s own custom libraries that let developers talk to it’s Accounts and other custom systems. While in development, Developers can download a local web server environment to build and test their applications.

All that said and done, what does it really offer? Anyone can write Python web applications and build a scalable web farm (with the help of services like Amazon Cloud et. al). Google offers it’s Data Objects or entities which provide an easy framework for modeling, querying, and modifying data without having to write layers upon layers of code. This Data Objects API is reminiscent of the ActiveRecord design pattern in Ruby on Rails, and the LINQ system in .NET. Instead of “SQL”, however developers are directed to adapt their data skills to use “GQL” or Google Query Language. The datastore is very powerful because it’s simple, scalable, and does not have too steep of a learning curve.

There are other services, and they aren’t “revolutionary” but rather packaged nicely. Using built in API, any application can access remote websites using URL Fetch, send messages using Mail, manipulate Images, and utilize a scalable data caches using Memcache. Memcache is a caching solution that can scale across numerous servers. Part of Facebook’s scaling success is due to the fact that they use Memcache to store cached copies of data so that the database server isn’t taxed with the millions of “read only” queries. Having a “proper” memcache implementation readily available is as important in my opinion to the scalable “GQL Datastore” itself.

So now that you know what Google App Engine is, let’s take a look at some of the interesting and useful applications people have built.

TodoListr - A simple but useful example todo list application.

PlainLists - Another todo list application but follows David Allen’s GTD “contextual” task idea. 

MyTextFile - Very easy to use AJAX text editor which saves all revisions.

If you logged in to see, these aren’t going to be gaining traction of millions of users. They are proofs of concepts of basic functionality such as Single Signon using the Google Account’s API and data storage and retrieval based on Google’s DataStore API.

I’ve been playing for a few days now on the new version of Firefox that just came out (version 3.0), and with it there are some new features I’ve been enjoying. Also, I’ve noticed the increased performance and smaller memory footprint that has been touted, in comparison to earlier versions.

Feature-wise, I like the new keyhole concept for moving backwards and forwards. An arrow on right, gives me quick access to the last pages I’ve viewed in that window or tab.

I like the quick bookmarking feature in the address bar too. One click on the star bookmarks the page and categorizes it as “unsorted.” Two clicks brings up the bookmark management dialogue box, and you can quickly file it wherever need be. No more having to go into the bookmark manager, find something you’ve bookmarked and then assign it.

There are also added capabilities for tagging your bookmarks, so you can quickly add a tag or choose from an existing one to more quickly find your tagged content later. Handy smart folders now pull up recent tags, recent bookmarks and most visited sites, making the bookmarking features in Firefox more in line with what social networking sites are doing. Great help for those who are used to relying on the bookmarking within the browser. However, most savvy users who are adept at using these types of features have probably moved their regular bookmarking over to Delicious, Digg or other social bookmarking site. Not sure if this would be enough to bring them back to using Firefox bookmarks.

Another improvement in the browsing controls is the ability to start typing into the address box any term that may be in a URL or title of a page you’ve visited. Firefox will quickly bring back in a drop-down any matches from your browsing history. This is a nice time-saving feature for when you can’t quite remember a full URL, but may know part of it or part of a page title.

A smart change in password management is that Firefox waits until after you’ve logged in now to ask if you want it to save your password. This is helpful to those of us who often “fat finger” a password and inadvertently tell Firefox to remember a wrong password.

One small feature that is great for us web developers is the ability to choose what you’re zooming. View > Zoom has an option to zoom only text (by default you’re zooming the whole page just like IE now). This empowers the user more to customize their preferred browsing experience per their display and tastes.

Another nice one is the File > Send Link feature. This feature spawns an email in your default email application, which can be a client on your machine or a web based application! For instance I was able to define Yahoo Mail as my default email app and have Firefox spawn a new email in clicking this feature. In Outlook, it also pre-populated the subject line with the pages title and the body with the link. A great idea, as there is no reason that users should have to rely on Web developers to continually build this feature into sites (Email this Page). It makes so much sense for the browser to have this capability built in - just like the ability to create a print version.

Security features which I have yet had the chance to explore much are also a step forward. Firefox can deliver one-click information about the site you are on now when you click in the icon. It also warns you more noticeably when security certificates don’t match and when you land on a suspicious malware and phishing sites.

Finally, a major new feature with Firefox is its ability to run Web applications offline. As I haven’t seen a demo yet or found confirmation in other reviews, I’m not sure yet if it can also synch back up when the user reconnects online. Likely, this is the direction Mozilla is going with this - similar to Adobe Air.

So what’s missing?

I was surprised that there isn’t mouse gesturing built into the browser. This has been available for awhile as an add-on, but I would have thought that Mozilla would have folded it into the core browser. Still waiting for the mouse gesture add-on to be updated to work with the new version so I can have this time saving feature back.

Also auto form completion. At this point, I would like to be able to store the basics in my profile (name, address, email) and have the browser complete a form for me with one click. There are add-ons to do this, but this feels like a feature I want as part of the core - like remembering passwords.

Finally, I was kind of expecting Firefox to do more with RSS support. The Live Bookmarks are workable but I find managing them to be somewhat clumsy. Perhaps the thinking is that advanced users will continue migrating towards web-based aggregators like NetVibes, BlogLines or Google Reader, and that working more on the browsers ability to handle these is not time well spent. I guess there are always add-ons to take care of this one as well.

All in all I like the new Firefox. I’m also looking forward to how the final version of IE 8 and Apple’s next version of Safari stack up.

To download a copy of Firefox version 3.0 visit: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Editor’s note: Periodically, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week, we thought we’d ask: How will you be volunteering this summer?

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: I’ll be going door to door and phone banking for the Obama campaign. Here’s to Virginia as a swing state!

Kristin, Project Manager: I will be participating in the Ocean Conservancy coastal cleanup in September.

Erika, Operations Manager: I will be volunteering for Quotidian Theatre Company, a local non-profit professional theater company, where all Board members are unpaid volunteers.

Elizabeth, Senior Consultant: I’m stepping up from chair-elect to chair of the Greater Washington Network’s CAE Action Team, continuing as part of the Greater Washington Network’s leadership council, and continuing as a member of ASAE’s Membership Section Council. I’m also proctoring the social media lab as a resource on wikis at the ASAE annual meeting. Finally, I’m serving as a judge for ASBO’s (the Association of School Business Officials International) Eagle awards.

Jeff, Principal Consultant: I’m the president of my neighborhood civic association. While this might not typically count as volunteering when folks are asked about this, in this case, we are a very active community so the effort is substantial. Trying to work the District government to come up with a plan to re-use the neighborhood elementary school building/grounds that the government just closed is a huge effort. So, I’ll spend my summer wrangling with the Mayor, his various deputies and agency heads, and our great councilmember to get commitments to what we’ve asked for and then to ensure they are honored. Fun!

Andy, Project Manager: I will be helping to generate attention and interest in the Power of One Solar Car Project. Right now, they are attempting to set the world distance record for a solar car by driving from Buffalo, NY to Inuvik, Northwest Territory (Canada) and back – a roundtrip distance of 10,000 miles.

I’m not sure if it’s a new feature or a function of Beaconfire’s Facebook Page reaching over 40 fans, but as I was posting an event earlier today, I noticed that updates can now be targeted to certain segments. While the system is currently relatively rudimentary, allowing only targeting based on geography, gender, and age, we’ll hopefully see something soon with the robustness of social ads (which we’ve discussed targeting here and here).

The true value of Facebook as a company is the data it holds. Hopefully we’ll see additional ways that users can leverage that data in more meaningful ways - imagine some of the ways you could make use of this kind of message segmentation:

• A nonpartisan non-profit could send one message to liberal supporters and another to conservatives, with two separate pitches for why they should donate
• You could send fans with more than two hundred friends a pitch to “Tell a Friend” while you send the rest a fundraising appeal
• If you have a large pool of celebrity talent, you could leverage that talent based on members’ other fan affiliations

These are all functions of integrating your messaging in with social networking - most members would never give this much information to an organization on its own, but will gladly share it with Facebook. It’s this ability to microtarget that will give socnets a competitive advantage over email in the next ten years, as they become more robust and full-featured.

In any case, while it may be just another example of how Facebook is akin to Calvinball, it’s a change that’s certainly in both users’ and organizations’ favor.

For the second year, American Express is running an online program that gathers input from card members on who they should give $2.5 million in funding to.  Over the next 4 months, with the help of a Web site and online tools, they will solicit project ideas and collect votes on which 5 projects will receive the funding.  It was really easy to participate last year and I’m looking forward to again this year.  Check it out at www.membersproject.com

The AP caused quite a stir over the weekend by demanding that a blogger remove even small quotes from AP articles, according to this Times story^*:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

While it seems to have backed off from the stance that pretty much any use online shouldn’t be covered by fair use, AP has indicated that they want to define specific rules on pulling quotes from AP stories.

I suspect that this is an effort that is ill-thought out and doomed to failure (not to mention backlash) - to learn why, read below the fold…

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If  only getting to a site’s homepage was as simple as clicking your heels.

Typically I spend the days clicking away on my computer in the Beaconfire offices high above Arlington.  However, this past week my colleague Mark and I wrapped up a series of usability testing sessions for one of our esteemed clients.  It was a fascinating couple days.  During the testing sessions, we forayed into a health system  and found ourselves meeting with people who spend their days saving lives.  It was humbling, certainly, and also quite informative.  We discovered what happens in the Apheresis lab.  We repeatedly heard that you would not go to a cardiologist to have coronary artery bypass surgery; you’d see a cardiac surgeon for that.  Good things to know.

And, we discovered that some of what we techies have come to consider usability standards don’t seem to actually have cemented themselves as standards yet.  One of the most significant discoveries is that the use of a logo in the upper-left corner as the primary avenue to return to a site’s homepage is not yet a universally known convention. 

In the process of our low-fidelity prototype testing, we started each task on the prototype’s homepage.  Once the users completed the first task – helping Cousin Louisa find where she could have an MRI and what she needed to know to prepare for the procedure – users were told to return to the homepage to start the next task.  How did users get back home?

1. They clicked the “Back” arrow on the browser.
2. They clicked the “HOME” icon on the browser. 
3. They asked us how to get back home.

What did users not do?  They did not click on the logo to return to the homepage.  Nor did they seem to notice the “HOME” link in the breadcrumb trail at the top of each page.

Okay, okay, okay.  I’m exaggerating.  Of the 15 people we tested with, two people clicked the logo in the upper-left hand corner to return to the homepage.  And, of the same 15, two others found the breadcrumbs and clicked those.  Eleven people used the browser “Back” arrow to get to the homepage after each of the six tasks we presented.  Many of them mentioned that they expected to see “a box that says Home at the top” of the primary navigation items.  Others suggested that it could live somewhere at the top of the page above the search.  Either way, they wanted an explicit navigation item that said HOME outside of the body content.

Our testing sessions provided a lot of rich data that will inform our work on this project and others going forward.  While we may think getting people home is just a matter of clicking the logo (once, not three times in this case) it seems that, for now, we still need to provide an explicit nav item that will get folks there.