The Blackbox

Solr Explorer is a great free tool to use and help you quickly and easily see what is in your Solr index. I struggled with this for a few hours before working out the problem – google didn’t turn up this solution either!

If you’re seeing “Could not load solr core (‘yourcore’): The JSON request failed or timed out” when trying to load a solr core in Solr Explorer, I found that the documentation for Solr Explorer wasn’t quite correct. The config I was using was as follows:


<solr-core name="blackbox">
<server baseUrl="http://localhost:8983/solr">
<select-uri>/select</select-uri>
<luke-uri>/luke</luke-uri>
</server>
<search>
<default-query>*:*</default-query>
</search>


The select-uri and luke-uri are what it defaults to if you don’t include them. I found I had to add the path to the core in order to correct the error:


<solr-core name="meon">
<server baseUrl="http://localhost:8983/solr">
<select-uri>/<strong>blackbox/</strong>select</select-uri>
<luke-uri>/<strong>blackbox/admin/</strong>luke</luke-uri>
</server>
<search>
<default-query>*:*</default-query>
</search>


You should then be able to select the solr core and get in without seeing the “Could not load solr core (‘yourcore’): The JSON request failed or timed out” error any longer.

What is Multivariate Testing or MVT?
Multivariate testing is a method of testing multiple combinations of content and call to actions on a website and measuring the results. It provides factual data on what people on a website prefer in terms of layout, call to actions and other content.

Why would I do this – I know what is best?
Do you really? Everyone thinks they are a web expert these days, and there are absolutely some people who live for usability on websites, but every site is different. Customers will react based on the branding, layout, whether they’ve just been paid, what they are looking for – the list goes on. MVT allows you to test different variations and use the one which people on your site use the most.

OK, so how do I get started?
Google Website Optimizer is one of the easiest ways to get started. The experiment wizard gives you instructions on how to install the javascript required, and you then create variations which Google will serve and track the success rate of the original, and the various combinations.

This is all great, but can you give me an example?
That I can. The biggest success I’ve seen to date, is changing a simple button to say “View” instead of “Book”. This increased the numbers of clicks on that button by just under 50% – something which I was amazed at – but the figures say it all!

Key points for MVT

• Don’t start with too many variations, especially on low traffic pages
• A negative result isn’t bad – it shows you’re currently using the better combination – but try another different one
• MVT is constant – don’t stop with the first success story, try and improve on it further
• Allows you to base decisions on fact instead of assumption, and remove problems like design by committee

I’ll touch on this again at a later date and come up with some examples of how I’ve been using it.

The UK launch date for the Apple iPad has been delayed from March to the end of April. Is it going to be worth getting one? The jury is still out I think. Could be a nice replacement for the Macbook around the house though.

Recently been working on a proof of concept for using memcached to solve some of the challenges we face with our legacy system.

I’ve gone down the route of using Coolstack to get it all up and running as it’s very simple to maintain.

I’m currently experimenting with spymemcached as a Java client for communicating with the memcached server. It’s all looking good!

I recently attempted to get media from my PC playing through my Xbox 360, to use it as a media centre, but quickly found that the Media Centre Extender on Windows Media Centre Edition and Vista, wasn’t allowing me to play DivX or Xvid encoded video clips.

As it turns out, you can’t actually do it through the Media Centre Extender, but you can get them to play through the Videos Share bit instead (a quick update is needed from Xbox Live – it should trigger when you first try to download the player). It’s obviously not as pretty as the Media Centre Extender, but it works perfectly well and that’s the most important thing.

I’m lead to believe that the reason for this is that the Xbox team have put support for playing these codecs in via their dash, but MCE doesn’t use any of this, as it is written by it’s own team as they are completely separate products.

Is it going to get fixed in the future? Apparantly not. Best start saving for a proper media centre pc!

Posted a couple of weeks ago, is this “Shopping online for blind people” article on the BBC News Technology pages. As per usual, the BBC’s technology team have done some excellent research to use in this article.

The first site we see, confuse.com (not to be confused with confused.com – hah), is shown as a price comparison site….. which it blatantly isn’t. It’s an ad site, which has the same standard layout as all other ad sites, and if you click on any of the supposed comparison links, all you see is a page of adverts. Excellent work BBC.