A couple of months ago Alex Hardy bought some advertising on this site promoting his simpleContact products. They're custom-contact forms with a focus on usability and he's just released simpleContact Pro 2.0.

Contact forms are a crucial element of most websites; whether it's a commercial venture or just a simple blog, the ability for people to contact you is pretty important. What Alex has done in building simpleContact is provide a PHP/MySQL solution for a very common problem.

What is simpleContact
Alex defines simpleContact Pro as the ;quot;complete solution for anyone whose time is too valuable to remake the basics every time. A snap to install and the job is done;quot;. It allows you to create a custom contact form and capture both correspondence and mailing list opt-ins.

Why simpleContact is seemingly a good idea
For bloggers it's important to ensure that you're capturing proper correspondence because responding to the right people can open doors for you and at the very least show that you're a real person. This makes it more likely for that visitor to return. For commercial ventures every single piece of correspondence could lead to a sale, so it's absolutely crucial that you capture their question in a professional manner. SimpleContact also allows you to capture opt-ins which means you can (with good conscience) add these users to a mailing list.

Installation
Once you've purchased simpleContact Pro (for only $25 I might add) installation is a fairly typical process for a PHP/MySQL application. You have to create a database for it (easily done through whatever control-panel your host uses) and enter the credentials into a configuration script. Once you've done this you can load any of the pages and it'll self-install (like Wordpress does). If you can install Wordpress you can install simpleContact.

Creating custom forms
There's a very simple configuration page for creating your form, allowing you to add/remove items until you have a form that matches your requirements. You can have a form stripped back to the basics (first name, last name and email address) or you can create a fairly complicated data-capture form. Most of the form fields are covered here, so you can create checkboxes, radio buttons, HTML areas, email address fields, mailing-list opt-ins... All with relevent validation in place to help ensure the quality of information you receive.

Integrating your custom form
Unfortunately there's not a lot of guidance when you want to integrate your form into your existing site; therefore I'd recommend Alex to offer more help and support to users as to how they integrated their newly created custom form into their existing website. Most users will want their contact form placed on their own site, branded and styled as part of their online presence and currently there doesn't appear to be much advice on this.

Having had a look through the code the contact.php script that holds the custom form has relative paths to included PHP scripts, so you can't simply drag the script to where you need it without modifying the paths. Your best options as far as integration are either moving the file and modifying the paths to the PHP files it requires (easily seen from the code), or simply calling the contact form in to your website through an iFrame. As always I wouldn't recommend using an iFrame - and maybe I've missed the point - but I couldn't see any detailed instructions for users to get their form integrated.

Custom form use and mailing list opt-in
The form created by simpleContact works nicely, I filled out some test data and submitted it. True enough the form keeps a record of the correspondence but it emails you to let you know too. You can also add email addresses to this announce list should you want more than one person to be made aware - which is a nice feature.

Auto responders and double opt-in
One of the nicest features about simpleContact is the ability to set up an auto-responder so that all correspondence is replied to with a personalised automated message. You can also use this as a double-opt-in for the mailing list, meaning that users have to click a confirmation link within the email before they're verified as being on the list. These are nice touches that you won't find on most comparable products.

Mailing list
While simpleContact doesn't offer you the ability to broadcast to your mailing list, it does offer you the mechanism to allow users to subscribe to it (through conventional single opt-in or enhanced double opt-ins). The functionality integrated into simpleContact is the ability to export your mailing list users in CSV format - which is pretty convenient because almost every email marketing application allows you to import subscribers as CSV. So it may not be an email marketing application but it does set you up nicely to port your data across.

Improvements
I apologise to Alex for being too overwhelmingly busy when the beta was out to put forward my comments but I do have a few items that I think could be improved in simpleContact Pro. Firstly it seems a little unusual to have first-name and last-name as compulsary fields on every form when simply ;quot;name;quot; would have done, but that's probably just personal preference. Secondly I'm not sure what level of validation is used on data capture, because there isn't a captcha integrated into the custom generated form, so it's possible (as with all Internet forms) that spam-bots might abuse your installation. A sensible extension might be to integrate Akismet (or even a super-simple maths based captcha: ;quot;what is 2+2?;quot; for example).

Conclusion
For $25 you can't go far wrong with simpleContact Pro. Alex also has a Lite version which is free but that's obviously less advanced. Fortunately you can try the Lite version and upgrade to Pro at a later date - which seems to be a fairly painless process. I'm pretty impressed with the level of customisation available with the form builder; I've used some hurrendous CMS plugins that aspired to similar things and all of them fell short.

SimpleContact works well and the only real hole the level of documentation explaining how to integrate your form into your current website. A captcha system might be an idea too, but if you need a more comprehensive contact form manager/builder for your website, I thoroughly recommend giving simpleContact a try (in either Lite or Pro flavour). Visit Alex Hardy's website for more information and downloads.

One of the most crucial things with Google Adsense (as with any network) is to track your performance. If you're not keeping an eye on things then you can be missing out on hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars.

Google Adsense allows you to put each ad-code you create into different channels - this allows you to monitor the performance of each one individually. This is important for several reasons:

1. See which items are getting clicked
Adsense pays out more on the first ad-unit you have on the page, so if your most clicked unit is not the first - it's probably worth removing any that appear before it (if only for a test). You could see your earnings increase by 3-5 times.

2. See which items are getting clicked but aren't earning you much and can't be improved
If you've read step 1 and you have a unit that's attracting clicks but not actually generating much income, it's maybe time to try another network in it's place. It's possible for you to have two well performing Adsense panels on a page, but the first panel can generate 90% of overall earnings. Therefore replacing it with an alternatively incentivised scheme could work out more rewarding.

3. See which items are entirely unloved
If you've got an ad placement that isn't receiving any clicks then it's best to remove it - you'll probably find your other adverts' performance improves too. Having ads on the page that aren't earning you money is negatively affecting your aesthetics without the monetary payoff. Always try to cut the dead wood.

The trick is to always keep mixing things up, ensuring that your ad placements are converting well without being overly invasive. Use channels within Google Adsense to keep tabs on which items are performing well, using the above tips you just might be able to double or even triple your earnings.

Children of the Internet, put down your drinks, put iTunes on mute and pay good attention. The ;quot;big players;quot; of the blogging world have suddenly discovered LightBox and a company called Aweber have turned it into a bundled package of evil.

For those who don't know what LightBox is; it was a Javascript enhanced piece of website layout that allows a new layer to overlay the entire visible page thus taking user focus to the item in question. This was originally used for images (see the original LightBox implementation) but people soon used similar effects for other things. I use it a lot in my work as a web developer - in fact a site we recently launched (Nido Student Living) has the effect when you click ;quot;Where Next;quot; in the header.

It's great for enhancing a specific call to action or enriching user experience for media. However, upon visiting John Chow's site today I was greeted with this blatent disregard for the user:



The reasons this makes me upset
1. It's a popup, these are invasive and show a lack of respect for the user
2. John's site loads pretty slowly, so the site essentially loads and then it leaps out at you
3. In Firefox (as well as Opera, maybe more too) you can't actually see the close button, as the layer is incorrectly sized so all you see is scroll bars and the form

So as a user it's on a par with people installing popup advertising on their website, something I find unforgivable.
As a web developer it's poorly implemented and looks sore. As an accessibility enthusiast (it's part of my job, obviously) it's appalling because this layer appears without any clear way of getting rid of it. In Opera the scroll bars refused to work while the page continued to load - something that takes a long time on John's advertising-rich site.

So please bloggers, I emplore you to ignore the quotes that John and Darren (Rowse) have about how well it increases subscription numbers. It's evil for aesthetics, usability, accessibility and reader confidence. It's so bad that if I was visiting an unfamiliar site and it popped up, I'd close the browser tab and never return.

Don't alienate thousands of potential readers just for an extra couple of subscribers - it isn't worth it.

Around a year ago I broke my marvelous XDA Orbit PDA-phone mid-contract and had to negotiate a new phone out of my network. They agreed to send me a Nokia N95 3G phone for the remainder of my contract which was a welcome twist, as I'd not owned a Nokia for many years (having gone through two PDA-phones).

The advantage of the Nokia is that if you've used one before (and almost everyone has) then you can pick them up. Their O/S is always stable and the controls remain consistent across almost all of their devices and that makes them a sensible purchase. Nokia seldom do ;quot;bad;quot; phones, but they don't always make ;quot;good;quot; ones. The N73 was an appalling device, crashing every time you dared try to take a picture... So I was curious to see how the N95 would fair.

Not touchscreen
The last two devices I owned were both touchscreen, so to use one that wasn't was a welcome break. Writing a text message by hand using a stylus is pretty cool but ultimately very annoying - certainly not something you can achieve on an underground train. Nokias use the keypad and predictive text - something I'd not used since I was 18 (5 years ago now). It's easy to use and pretty intuitive.

Screen
The screen is actually pretty decent, more than enough for watching video on your own, although the definition isn't as high as an iPod touch or the iPhone. The colours are pretty clear and video translates well (more on that later).

Photo and Video
The camera on the device is excellent and comfortably the best on any phone I've encountered. The claim is 5-megapixels which shouldn't be listened to - the device won't take a picture comparable to an entry-level 5mp camera, but it's comfortably better than the entry level cameras of yester-year. Video taken from the device isn't bad and certainly sufficient for user-generated video sites such as Youtube, but I wouldn't consider using it as my only means of recording an event.

Media Support and Playback
Encoding video files for the N95 is a pain but once you've found the right combination of resolution, bit-rate and audio-rate the N95 is an excellent phone for media. Sliding the phone in the opposite direction to the keypad presents a new set of keys:



This allows for easy media control and the video is played back in widescreen, which is also great.

Internet and connectivity
The Internet on Nokia devices sucks. It's WAP on the most part which is the teletext of the mobile world; we want proper mobile browsers (like Opera) and decent connection speeds. The Internet is almost unusable on the N95, but that comes from someone who has spent the past 4 years on touchscreen PDA-phones. I expect full web browsing rather than this diluted version that appears on most mobile phones.

GPS and Nokia Maps
My biggest complaint with the N95 is from the claim that it has a ;quot;GPS;quot; device. It does, but it's awful. My XDA Orbit had an excellent GPS receiver internal to the device which allowed for swift global positioning and the prospect of having integrated satelite navigation software loaded on the phone. The Nokia N95 claims to have this but really doesn't. The GPS receiver is so weak that unless you're sitting outside, stationary for 20 minutes you have little-to-no chance of locating yourself. Which is a big problem, because you'll typically want to locate yourself in a timely fashion.

Secondly, Nokia Maps is possibly the worst application posing as a navigation assistant ever created. In default format it relies on the painfully slow Internet connection provided by the N95 to download maps on demand, which is time consuming, expensive and relies on the GPS receiver to actually locate you - which it won't. I never saw the navigational aspect of the Nokia Maps application.

I once spent an hour on a train between Cambridge and London staring at the Nokia Maps application waiting for the GPS receiver to locate me and for my location to be displayed on screen. It didn't. Not once. My XDA could be a little slow in locating me and take up to 3 minutes. The Nokia had over an hour and still failed.

Conclusion
The N95 is an excellent phone provided you want it purely for it's features as a phone, camera and media playback device. If you're after a more ;quot;rich;quot; experience with the Internet then it's a bad choice because so many other devices handle Internet connectivity much better. With things like the iPhone on the market, it has cast a divide down the mobile phone market; phones that are designed to be phones, and phones that are designed to handle the Internet. The N95 is the former, but it's probably the best one on the market.

Overall - an excellent phone with great firmware, a great operating system and easy interface. It just doesn't have good GPS and Internet and these are two things that will become increasingly crucial over the next year or two.