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This is my last week at the Mail & Guardian Online, as of next week I will be managing the social media portfolio at Vodacom, the biggest South African mobile communications network.

During my 18-month stay at the M&G we have done some exciting work in the social media space - Amatomu.com, Amagama.com, News In Photos, The Guide, JobConnection, Thought Leader, Tech Leader, Sports Leader and the new M&G news site that went live to the public this week, as well as seven mobile sites and several internal projects like campus Times and the Teacher. I will be leaving something behind that I am very proud of and a platform I know will grow with the company for years to come. I was glad to be able to contribute to the innovative spirit of the company and I feel I have grown, personally and professionally as a result.

The M&G is currently looking for a replacement for me, so if you’re interested let me know by emailing me vincent [at] vincentmaher.com

Looking forward, my primary motivation for joining Vodacom is that I believe that mobile media is at a point the Web was in 1994, ready to explode. I want to continue being innovative and I think the birth of the 7th mass medium is a place I want to be. It will also mean that I will get exposure to some of the newest technologies, publishing formats and user trends.

At the same time, my colleague Matthew Buckland is also leaving and will be taking up a new position at 24.com. Working with Matthew has been incredibly rewarding, he is a great guy and one of the best business and strategic people in the online industry. I will miss working with him, as will everyone else in the company, but such is life and the M&G Online will continue to thrive because it is based on solid business principles - ultimately all of us are replaceable.

Matt and I would like to invite all our friends and colleagues to join us at Capital in Rosebank [cnr 7th and Keyes] at 5PM on Friday to celebrate our time at the M&G and to say farewell. No need to RSVP, just show up.

Since the first day of planning, there was no doubt in any of our minds that we would be rebuilding the site from the ground up on a completely new set of technologies intended to do something quite different to our old site. The old site and CMS was a patch-work of code written by various developers at MWeb over the past 5 years, and the database was similarly messy, so there was no intention of trying to make it work with the new site.

The project scope and order of production was roughly this:

1. Redesign the front end
2. Design a new strategy for ad formats
3. Design a new CMS
4. Develop a new data structure that will be suitable for the very dynamic aspects of the site like real-time visualisation and lots of semantic tagging
5. Develop the CMS based on the editorial team’s current and future needs
6. Develop the site front-end
7. Migrate the existing data and archive into the new database
8. Contextually integrate the advertising engine
9. Negotiate with our advertisers to support the new advertising formats
10. Clean up the archive data manually
11. Hydrate the archive data with semantic data using Calais and some internal metadata
12. Integrate national-level mapping for navigation
13. Integrate city-level mapping using Google Maps
14. Integrate contextually-relevant external news sources using Google News
15. Integrate contextually relevant blog posts using Google blog search
16. Create new e-commerce partner site templates
17. Rebuild the newsletter system
18. Create smooth transitions between old data feed modules that were done in ASP.NET and the new ones
19. Integrate the swarm for real-time visualisation
20. Create the CMS dashboard showing real-time graphing of interactivity on the site
21. Migrate the old redirect system to a new system that does the same thing so the newspaper can mention short urls
22. Stress test the application server
23. Stress test the database
24. Soft launch the site to readers going to our old arts server and to those users who decide to click on the massive link we put on the top of the site
25. Optimise the database queries based on actual load
26. Optimise the caching strategy based on a blend of editorial currency and server load
27. Redirect the old site to the new site, monitor performance and continue optimisation under heavy load.

Aside from the web site UI design and project planning, which took 3 months of revisiting, the rest of the items on this list were done between 17 May and 22 June. Obviously because of the tight timeframe there were a lot of lessons learned on the fly and, to some extent, the story of this redevelopment is a great success story for the open-source community but also for close relationships between our business, editorial and technical teams.

The process we underwent to plan what we wanted and how it would be implemented was done primarily using the site look and feel process. I designed the front template, section template and article template based on a series of meetings with Matthew Buckland, the GM. In these meetings the primary concern was integration of news and Web 2 features into a news structure. Once the first set of designs were ready, Riaan Wolmarans, the editor joined the team and worked with me to get the layout and structure of the content right.

At the end of the process, the three templates were designed precisely as they would look on the screen, down to the line spacing in blurbs and the placement of the widgets, using real content. These templates acted as a blueprint when we started site construction. Take note, not a single line of text was written into a technical spec, the front-end was the spec and the CMS and site were built backwards from there.

Now that we’re over usual paranoias about going live, I’ll have some time to discuss some of the more interesting decisions/experiences, so keep coming back.

Firstly I must apologise for tweeting the Amatomu server migration rather than blogging it [twitter]. Secondly, it was a poor judgment call on my part to try doing the migration on a long weekend while trying to make the M&G redevelopment deadline.

What happened was this - for a long time Amatomu has been working our servers at rackspace too hard. Over the past month we have had all manner of problems with our Leader blogs because Amatomu just doesn’t let up on the database. It does 175 m million transactions a month, roughly.

Two weeks ago Afrihost offered to help us isolate Amatomu from our other products by supplying us servers for the site hosted locally. Gian and his team did the deal very fast and they did a good job of setting things up for us. So late last week I disabled the Amatomu logging for a few hours and then asked my developers to move the site off Rackspace. This happened painfully slowly because of the size of the database file and a few stupid things like me accidentally restarting Apache on the Rackspace machine just as the download got to 85% and so on. We were tired from the M&G stuff going on and not entirely focussed on what we were doing.

Then, once things were set up on the server, we were messing around with the cron processes and did something that crashed the server or, at least, dropped it off the network. That was late Friday night and we didn’t have the energy to try fix it before the M&G site was done. By that stage though, the DNS change request had gone through.

All in all the downtime was caused by bad planning and I apologise for that. The site is back up, it is logging and things should look normal again by the end of the week. A special thanks must go out to Afrihost for helping us out with this problem and we’re looking forward to a good partnership with them.

We also have a big Amatomu-related announcement coming next week so keep your eyes open for that on Bizcommunity.

Okay so let’s be honest, no-one in their right mind will believe that we rebuilt the Mail & Guardian Online web site in 4 weeks, so I may as well tow the company line and say it was years in the planning. Of course it was but, on the other hand, 4 weeks ago all we had was 2 page designs as JPGs so make of that what you will.

During the last two weeks I calculated that I worked 156 hours, which is close to double the average working week of 8 hours a day and as I write this I feel more than just exhausted. We overshot our deadline by 26 minutes today when we put the first public release of our new web site live at http://ww2.mg.co.za, but the extra 26 minutes were well spent.

The site exists by sheer force of will on the part of our entire development and editorial teams and here’s how I survived:

1. Knowing full well what was in store I sent my wife Daniella and son Michael to Cape Town for a holiday
2. 2 weeks of Woolwoorths dinners, frozen
3. A thorough supply of whiskey and gin as a contingency
4. A daily routine consisting of the following:
   1. Wake up at 6:45 AM, shower and say hello to my cats
   2. Get to work at 8:18 AM
   3. Work until 18:45
   4. Drive home, pump the German techno and Schranz, eat a dinner, run a hot bath
   5. Get back to the office at 2ohoo
   6. Work until o2:oo
   7. Drive home, read a book for 3o minutes, pass out and repeat for 14 days

So now that the pressure is slightly diminished I have slightly more time to think about what we did and why and I’ll be taking the time to write it all up in a series of blog posts. Some of the topics I’ll be discussing are: agenda setting and typography, tagging and post-modern news structure, citizen journalism, semantics and the structure of news knowledge, PHP frameworks and RAD, AJAX frameworks and RAD, mapping, CMS development and the workflow patterns in a newsroom, big vs small in terms of operational scale and attitude and the asceticisism of unrealistic deadlines achieved through self-sacrifice.

Expect the first post tomorrow and, in the mean time, check out the new site and its news swarm.

A few weeks ago I got tired of listening in on people engaging in random public chatter so I set a target of twenty people to follow. It’s not that I have anything against using Twitter as IRC, its just that trying to keep track of what was happening became too frustrating. To add to that, on the odd occasion when I really feel like tweeting, the service is either having technical problems or my clients can’t connect.

So I ended up with twenty people I follow and then I got to see half of an IRC channel because I wasn’t following the other people involved in these conversations.

Then the breakthrough happened - Nic Haralambous took up the desk next to me and he started feeding me the daily highlights, so I could finally stop following everyone and go back to basics - Twitter became just a presence announcement system.

But then Matthew Buckland decided to play a game of chicken with me by telling me he didn’t think I had the guts to leave Twitter completely, so I did, today at 16:11 SAST. It feels great.

Colin Daniels, Justin Hartman and Gregor Rohrig, the crack team called Avusa iLab have produced the goods. There were a few of us waiting for their first release and it happened today in the form of a brand new and slick multimedia aggregator/portal for video, podcasts and photos produced by the team at The Times.

For those unaware, iLab is Avusa’s new incubator and development shop created to spearhead social media innovation in the company.

Check out some of the great content and marvel at their ability to make Wordpress bend to their will. Very impressive, congrats guys!

There is an ongoing debate in both academia and the media industry about the meaning of the term multimedia. The distinction is subtle so I will illustrate with examples. On the one hand there are those who argue that there is a distinction between multi- and multiple- media, by pointing out that putting some video next to some text does not equate to proper multimedia in terms of both presentation and user-experience. The true multimedia, by this definition, is something more than the sum of its parts AND something that has a form of its own that is recognisable. In other words, true multimedia is a different type of story-telling that fuses different types of media into a new cohesive form.

This is a point worth considering, because the reality is that the only dramatically new form of storytelling to emerge as a result of new media is the video/computer game. There are of course other new hybrids forms like blogging, like podcasting, like videocasting, like geo-tagged microblogging, like folksonomical aggregation and so on. Each of these are variations of audio or video representations of real people or things involved in some or other activity, or text. The computer game is a representation of a simulation, which is a dramatic shift from anything we have experienced before and has been made possible exclusively by the technology available to us. The only equatable experience, historically, would be a kind of impromptu theatrical production where the audience can join or leave the cast of performers during the actual show.

With this in mind, the ideal of multimedia as a fusion of different and distinct media forms available to us today seems idealistic. In the news and journalism practice, there are two paths to multimedia production that stand out and that influence the way journalists perceive this distinction. The first group have reached multimedia in a way that bypassed the web. This group were impatient in the early days of the Web and embraced the CD-Rom format for multimedia storytelling. The interfaces were rich combinations of video, audio, 3D artistry and text, though text was not the emphasis. To an extent, this is the closest we have yet come to that ideal of multimedia. The second group came via the Web, with a focus primarily on text and photos. They followed the development of FutureSplash, which later become Macromedia Flash and now Adobe Flash, with eagerness because the scriptable environment and video capabilities finally meant that creative storytellers could break out of the constraints of HTML and the lowest common denominator capabilities of the browser.

But as it so often happens in life, those who were impatient and adopted technology early have found themselves needing to reinvent themselves and their conception of the work they do. Those who prefer the rich user experience now have to come to terms with the fact that broadband and the advent of Web 2 has changed the way people consume news online. Users now have the capacity to view videos of the size that previously could only be delivered sensibly via a disc and accessed locally.

User Experience Dissonance

An even greater challenge to the CD/Rich media approach is that the user experience was subtly but fundamentally different. The user would site down in front of a computer, purposefully insert the disc and focus all her attention on the story unfolding on her screen. Generally the multimedia application would run in full-screen mode and block out all other interaction with the computer until that experience is terminated by the user. The navigation was also different from the rest of the Operating System and took creative and sometimes challenging forms. The historical timeline, the grouping of content in chapters or logical topics units, parts of which must be consumed in a linear fashion, especially video clips.

To an extent this was a weakness of the form - that functionally the user was required to constantly modulate her interaction from active to passive. It was, however, possible because the experience was exclusive of other work for its duration.

As these types of multimedia have migrated to the Web, the experience becomes more complicated. Users are faced with an interface which requires exclusive attention but now embedded inside the browser which, in turn, is embedded in the Operating System UI. Within the browser alone, there maybe be multiple tabs, IM windows and work competing for attention.

Expecting a user to devote their full attention to this embedded interface and to modulate between active and passive viewing modes creates user experience dissonance. What they are being asked to do conflicts with the way they are already interacting with environment surrounding it and this creates a sense of discomfort and disappointment.

Massively Multiple Media (M3)

Some news organisations have already embraced this form of storytelling for a variety of reasons ranging from cultural to financial but, regardless of the reasons, there has been a shift away from attempts to live up to the ideal of multimedia as a new form of storytelling and an embrace of multiple media. Consider the publication of special reports - these might involve a series of text stories, photographs, audio, downloadable documents and video. Their presentation is such that they are grouped either by media types of by logical topical units but their navigation is done using conventions already familiar to someone using the web and there is no attempt at fusion between these forms.

In turn, this type of presentation allows users to interact with a story in the same way they do with other types of online content. They can access elements of the story asynchronously and in the order they prefer. It may not be convenient to watch a video at work but the text and photos are convenient. It may not make sense to watch the video embedded inside the page but it may be convenient to download it and watch it on an ipod later, when the time can be devoted to a passive mode of interaction.

Part of the consequence of the explosion of User Generate Content, particularly blogging, has been that audiences have gradually begun to accept the responsibility previously only in the hands of editors: that of ordering and making sense of large volumes of disparate content.

It would make sense then to allow users to do more of this kind of interaction with a story. Here’s an example: a news organisation is covering the war in Iraq and wants to do a special report. It doesn’t have reporters on the ground, at least not permanantly, so it buys text video and photos from news agencies who do have reporters on the scene. They compile this into a page that links to a series of photos, some stories and some video, and them write a synopsis of the collection, and they publish it.

While all of this seems perfectly normal, they are missing out on a major opportunity and that is to aggregate massive amounts of UGC. Youtube has many videos that explore almost all aspects of Iraqi life, often told by Iraqis themselves. Flickr has photos, there are Iraqi blogs and many more different types of content that can be linked to from this special report. Enough to make this special report a valuable resource to someone doing research or interested in the topic. That would be Massively Multiple Media - the news story as a social media aggregator.

There are two counter-arguments to this that I want to address briefly. The first would be reticence on the part of a news organisation to endorse content they don not necessarily trust. This is solved in the following way - make the best attempt to select content on the basis of your internal standards and if there is none that fit your criteria then don’t do it. Secondly, by linking to external resources you are merely brining this content to the attention of your audience, not endorsing it. Maybe include a note warning your readers that you’re sending them away from the site and that the organisation does necessarily endorse the views encountered at the destination.

The second counter-argument is copyright and ownership. In most cases this type of content is published in such a way that the mechanism exists for you to use it without claiming it is your own and, in fact, most creators will be more than happy to get links and recognition from a major news organisation. If you really want to be thorough, send an email saying you want to link to a photo and use a thumbnail - most of the time you will get a positive response and open up a new relationship with someone that might be useful down the line.

So to sum up: Massively Multiple Media is the aggregation of external sources of media into your own for the purpose of enhancing the user experience and being transparent about the existence of other available resources. It provides an experience cohesive with the Web user experience and will contribute significantly to a relationship of trust with your audience. It does feel like I am stating the obvious and I am very aware that many news organisations already do this, so I would really appreciate some feedback on this idea.

I was just watching a CNN special report about British heavy metal band Iron Maiden and, being an old fan, I took a look at their web site.

I am not a metalhead anymore, I was from 13 - 17 years old and I still love the music so I got pretty excited when I saw that the band have released their entire new album, called Somewhere Back In Time, as a free download.

The album has 13 tracks recorded from 198o to 1989 including some of the greats like Number of the Beast, Aces High and Can I Play With Madness, which are DRM protected so you can listen to them 3 times and then buy the album as MP3s, on CD or on vinyl. With all the debate around how recording artists are going to make their money, this is a shining example of a multi-medium approach that ultimately promotes one thing - live performances. I am a fan again.

As Nic just announced on his blog, he will be joining our team as the business manager for mobile and recruitment in two weeks time.

We are all very excited to bring someone with Nic’s insight into the online media industry onto our team and are looking forward to his energy and enthusiasm. Nic and I worked together on our ill-fated Flamebait podcast last year and, if that’s anything to go by, crazy fun times are in store for us.

It also means that the M&G Online will be investing more time in developing its mobile properties and readership. As it is, we develop a mobile version of every site we launch and they have proven relatively successful, especially for people who want to get their dose of Thought Leader during traffic jams.

Nic is also influential in the social media space in South Africa, was a founder of the technology blog Nudjit and SA Rocks, and has a keen sense for trends in our space. Nic will be blogging about his work and his time at the M&G Online so watch his blog for updates and impressions.

The Thought Leader concept is expanding over the next few months and the first incarnation is Tech Leader. Tech Leader is an edited group blog aimed at thinkers in the South African technology industry. It will have the same editorial values as Thought Leader and offer insightful analysis on issues ranging from consumer technology to e-governance, open-source and industry best-practices.

The goal of the site is to aggregate quality comment about technology and to create a hub for ideas and critique that will become a valuable resource. Because it is be a communal platform, we expect that the level of discussion will make it an invaluable knowledge resource for readers trying to make sense of the disruptive chaos that technologists have to deal with every day.

The site already has more than thirty contributors and will be launched officially early next week. If you are, or know of, someone who would like to contribute, please send an email to vincent at mg.co.za