The superbly awesome Irish Web Awards are happening on October 10th at the lovely Radisson SAS on Golden Lane, Dubln 2. They’re on Twitter n all!
Although I’ll probably be murdered, thanks @IrishWebAwards for re-introducing me to someone awesome at #iwa08 that I now love lots like Jelly Tots.
It’s gonna rock 
Ooh look, nominations now open at http://awards.ie/webawards/nominations/
X Communications (the lovely place I work) is trying to get a nice snappy URL sorted for the company Facebook page. We’ve got 65 of the 100 fans needed to be eligible so if you think you might like to help us on our way click here, log in & become a fan.
If you’re choosey about who you fan or just wonder who X Communications/X Comms are, here’s a bit about what we do…
X Communications designs & builds websites, primarily on the Kentico content management system. They’ve been doing it for nearly 15 years from Dublin city centre and have picked up a few lovely awards along the way – check it out!
Some of our latest work can be seen on the funky McDonald’s Ireland homepage (featuring some cool parallax motion effects done with JavaScript and PNGs), the new EU Matters website, the 2009 Shoreditch Festival website and the new website for the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII).
If you want to find out a bit more about the projects, check out our blog. If you’re on Twitter, why not come say hi to us @xcommunications or drop us an email to info {at} xcomms.ie
Last night I decided to investigate just how bad the SEO was on my blog. I threw in my full name to see what’s what and here’s what came back:
No, it’s not me, it’s another Stephanie Francis with some pink hair. She’s at Anderson University in the USA, is 5ft 7 and likes to play golf.
Random.
Today I got to see my name in ink in the Irish Times Innovation supplement courtesy of an article titled ‘Lost Property’ by former print designer & now journalist Jason Walsh. You can read the article here on the Irish Times website or soak it up in the form of a PDF of the printed article. Jason approached me about the article about 2 weeks ago and in anticipation of giving my thoughts and reflections on the Fine Gael website fiasco, I had a look back at the website to see if things had changed. It appears to be more or less the same as when I last visited some time around the beginning of May.
I still maintain that the site is not fit for purpose but obviously, they have chosen to stick with it and try to make the best of it. There are a few important issues that should be addressed in my opinion, however:
1. Information Architecture: Finding your way around the site is currently a nightmare. There is a reliance on swapping content in and out of the same container on a single page that sits approximately 600px down the from the address bar. It is quite possibly out of the view of many visitors & many will miss the fact that the content they seek has loaded at all. At the very least a comprehensive search facility should be integrated to allow visitors to pinpoint information they need accurately and efficiently. Failing that, a detailed sitemap (if possible to generate based on the frame-like nature of the website) should be generated dynamically and links provided to it.
2. Remove or fix broken links: The ‘Help’ link on the main navigation appears to be an empty link along with the RSS link in the footer. While the ‘Register to Vote’ link in the main menu is faded out, it still appears as a menu item. Leaving it visible on the menu although inactive might be optomism on the part of FG looking to the possibility of a general election sooner rather than later but it is misleading to users and should be removed.
3. Multi-lingual content: What appears to be the Fine Gael ‘mission statement’ appears only in Irish (as far as I can see) – where is the English version? The ‘Polski’ version of the website appears to be one long page of a variety of information translated into Polish instead of the entire site being translated, something easy to achieve with a HTML website. At the very least, all content should be available as Gaeilge and more information available in other languages such as Polish, Chinese etc. Check out the brand new EU Matters website for an example of how it should & can be done.
If you’d rather keep up with all things FG via other online means, they’re on Twitter at @FineGaelIreland and Facebook and YouTube although things in the YouTube department seem to have dried up since the election fun all died down.
Want to know what heck the ‘FG website fiasco’ is/was? Here’s the story. Got any comments, thoughts or queries on the new EU Matters website launched by my colleagues at X Communications during the week? Drop them a tweet at @xcommunications or leave a comment below.
I’ve had a fantastic week that starts and ends with the Street Performance World Championships. I’m volunteering at the Dublin leg this weekend so hopefully see you around Merrion Square at some stage – no doubt it’s going to be as much if not more fun than Cork!
Monday was a trip to the Olympia to see DCU Drama Soc’s production of Rent. I had never seen the musical before & I was gobsmacked by the performance of the guys n gals on stage. A really tough production to pull off & they did a fab job of it. It’s running till Saturday.
Tuesday was a trip to the Transformers 2 premiere with the Culch.ie gang. There’s a whole mixture of reviews and reactions over there to it! I loved the first one which it doesn’t live up to, but then again what sequel does? Boo factor: long, scattered & possibly weak plot, some dodgy humour. Win factor: CGI is beautiful, loads of machine action and again, it looks amazing.
During the days, I was working on some exciting web projects at X Comms some of which will be going live next week all going well – whoop! Will post links when they’re up and away.
I went to a talk about M.E. (or CFS if you’re so inclined) and learned a heck of a lot about something I was pretty ignorant to. Had forgotten how complicated the human body is to boot
My mum passed all her college exams, my little sister got herself a summer job & my dad is back to being himself after a nasty bug. I’m loving hanging out with this crazy mofo and having a fantastic time with my brand new friend Toro
It’s awesome to be alive