Alex Harries's diary

I've been skyving from work again, and while I was catching up on some blogs I should read more often but don't, I spotted on Derivadow.com - a blog written by one of the tech bods involved in the BBC's new media projects, e.g. the iPlayer - a post about Flickr's new Places application, which basically gives each place on earth it's own homepage listing photos which have been "Geo-tagged" in that location.

The interesting part for me, apart from a very random camel, was how Derivadow gets so excited about URLs and making good, easy-to-remember web addresses which make sense.

This is something I've been working on for the last couple of days with our new JobShop application to make sure we can maximise the site's ease of navigation, and to make sure we can get the most out of Google's search index of UPSU.net, all of which is really important if the UPSU JobShop is going to remain a primary choice for students seeking work during their degrees in the face of all of the competition out there.

... I was going to give an example of some of the URLs, but even I have limits to how geeky I'm prepared to be... 

As a student looking for a job, I wanted three things: I wanted a job which paid a decent wage and wasn't so mind-numbingly dull that I wanted to throw myself off a tall building, I wanted to be able to easily and quickly find jobs of the aforementioned type without breaking too much of a sweat, and I wanted it now, if not sooner.

In redesigning the JobShop website - in fact, in completely re-writing the JobShop application from the ground up - we can focus on making sure students who haven't already got an account on UPSU.net can see what vacancies we have, find out whether it's the right job for them (even if it is "just a part-time job to get you through Uni"), and to make sure that searching for these vacancies is as simple and intuitive as possible. In other words, we have the opportunity to make the JobShop as attractive and easy a service as possible for students to use.

The UPSU JobShop has one thing going for it which few if any other job agencies can offer, and that's the fact that companies can advertise their vacancies for free, and don't have to pay anything to the Union (although there are a number of eagle-eyed checks in place to make sure the companies are all above board) - the JobShop is a completely free service for employers and students alike, and is without doubt one of the most valuable services the Union can offer to any student.

For that reason, if nothing else, it's really important that the end product - the new JobShop application - really makes the most of what the JobShop can offer, and does a great job of showing off all the opportunities available.

... which worries me a bit, since I'm the numpty doing the coding! No pressure or anything, then... ;o)

/al 

If you're in the market for something interesting to read, you could definitely do worse than take a look at University College London SU's PI Magazine, which has a fascinating piece by one of its student journalists on their take on student "apathy" at their Union. The article makes some very interesting, very eloquent points which apply, I suspect, to a vast majority of the students' unions across the country.

Go read it now :o)

Christmas tip #344 is brought to you in association with Araldite:

• Wrapping Christmas presents with birthday paper (even if it's turned inside-out) and using superglue because you don't have any sellotape is neither big, nor clever. Especially when it's 3a.m. on Christmas morning.

Oops... ;o)

Happy Christmas everyone! /al 

UPSU.net has been a bit poorly today, being down for almost 6 hours earlier today, and then being taken offline at periodic intervals while we try to work out what broke it in the first place:

Since this is very much my area of responsibility, I'm going to have to put my new book and Christmas home cookin' to one side and work until this is fixed. So much for being on holiday!

A big thank you goes out to Clive, our hosting chap, who's also given up his Sunday relaxation in exchange for many hours chained to a keyboard trying to work out what's been going on. 

I apologise if you've been inconvenienced by these problems we've been experiencing today, and hope you'll bear with us while we work to fix them.

This is rather cool if you're a total geek like me. What makes this even cooler is that this is exactly what I need for the statistical reporting tools in the new JobShop website I'm about to start work on.

Awesome timing - happy crimbo to me :o)