You’re ready to gain the skills and experience needed to advance your career – and we have a rare software engineering opportunity for you.

As a Python Software Engineer, your product responsibility goes hand in hand with backend development and front end skills in our Guildford-based team. We are partners to high profile brands, building world-class digital marketing and reporting solutions, through proprietary software.

A market leading app needs the latest technologies and the best people. As a key part of our Technical Team you’ll be responsible for product modules and the platform, learn from the best minds in the industry, in an ambitious yet relaxed (“non-City”) environment.

Role/Responsibilities

• Expand and support the company products using software development skills
• Responsible for back-end development with a mix of front-end
• Write, test and debug features as well as integrate to third party web services
• Coordinate user requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Learn best practice design, documentation, implementation, security, and optimisation
• Support marketing leading SEO reporting products;

Skills/Experience

• Proficient in writing effective and scalable code using Python3 and the Django framework
• Experience with relational DBMS / PostgreSQL
• Experience in technologies such as RabbitMQ, Celery, and AWS
• Experience with front-end technologies (Javascript, CSS and HTML)
• Good understanding of event driven architectures
• Understand event driven architectures and API integration services inc. Google, Facebook, Salesforce
• Strong communication skills in written English, organisational and time management, and a sense of humour.

You/Us

You have energy and passion, 3 to 5 years of experience, and desire to be a key part of our team, that will nurture learning and growth and provide strong opportunities to progress. Likely from a Computer Science, Engineering or relevant background.

We take our work seriously but not ourselves. We work for global brands, but have fun working in a close team. We care about and give back to our local community and charities.

We partner with high profile brands and build their world-class digital marketing and reporting solutions. An expert yet relaxed environment, we’re proud of our small company culture with big company ambition.

Package: Competitive salary + bonus + pension + 25 days holiday + Surrey lifestyle

Location: Surrey Technology Centre, Guildford, Surrey GU2, hybrid but more office than home (please note, NB so will suit someone local).

Please no agencies, thanks.

Apply now to: jobs@cressive.com, Ref: SE2304

Please email a CV highlighting, with examples, your match to the role and skills. We’ll consider applicants as they apply, so don’t delay. Cressive DX is committed to equal opportunity for all, and collect personal data as per GDPR privacy.

Related: Web Developer Surrey, Front End Developer Guildford, Web Developer jobs in Guildford, DevOps jobs in Surrey

The post Software Engineer for MarTech (Django, Python, AWS), in Surrey appeared first on Cressive DX.

As part of our Tech Team you’ll be trained in the latest technologies and our products, and learn from some of the best minds in the industry, in an ambitious yet relaxed environment.

Role/Responsibilities

• Expand as well as support the company product using software development skills
• Writing, testing and debugging features as well as integrating to third party web services
• Responsible for and support both front-end and back-end development on a global scale
• Coordinate with internal teams to understand user requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Learn best practice design, documentation, implementation, security, and optimisation
• Support marketing leading SEO and SEO reporting products;

Skills/Experience

• Proficient in writing effective and scalable code using Python3 and the Django framework
• Experience in databases and SQL, as well as back-end technologies inc. RabbitMQ, Celery, AWS
• Experience with front-end technologies (Javascript, CSS and HTML)
• Good understanding of event driven architectures
• An understanding of API integration services inc. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce
• Strong communication skills in written English, organisational and time management, and a sense of humour.

You/Us

You have energy and passion, 1 to 5 years of experience, an outstanding individual, you will be a key part of our team that will nurture your learning and growth, providing strong opportunities to progress.

We partner with high profile brands and build their world-class digital marketing and reporting solutions, through proprietary software. We provide extensive training in fast changing digital marketing.

From a Computer Science, Engineering or relevant background, you will fulfil your potential as together we pioneer digital marketing performance reporting.

An expert yet relaxed environment, we’re proud of our small company culture with big company ambition. Yet we are kind and caring, evidenced by our sponsoring local charities.

Package: Competitive salary + Bonus + Pension + Share options + 25 days of holiday + Surrey lifestyle

Location: Surrey Technology Centre, Guildford, Surrey GU2, but primarily from Home

Apply now to: jobs@cressive.com

Ref: FSDT2303

Please email a CV highlighting, with examples, your match to the role and skills. We’ll consider applicants as they apply, so don’t delay. Cressive is committed to equal opportunity for all, and collect personal data as per GDPR privacy.

Related: Web Developer Surrey, Front End Developer Guildford, Web Developer jobs in Guildford, Web Developer jobs in Surrey

No agencies please, thanks.

The post Full Stack Developer in MarTech, Guildford appeared first on Cressive DX.

On March 15th 1985, Symbolics.com was registered – one more link for them here.

The next couple of years will be interesting:

Will the proliferation of top-level extensions dilute the recognition, power and value of the .com?

Or will the increasing fragmentation of online assets add to the .com’s singular authority?…

The post Happy 28th Birthday Domain Names! appeared first on Cressive DX.

Any Client, using a Request For Proposal (RFP) process to find and procure services, will benefit from understanding the problems with RFPs and how to mitigate them. Getting good service is all about finding the right match, and Suppliers too need to heed the warning signs in RFPs when things aren’t right – and when it’s best to avoid clients. Whether you are Client- or Supplier-side of a RFP, learn from the mistakes of FIFA’s (The Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Football World Cup bidding process for 2018 and 2022. Read on, there’s no need to scratch your head.

As the Director of Services for a professional (online marketing) services firm, I regularly receive and respond to RFPs: a structured procurement process run by a customer, to compare the relative benefits and risks of suppliers’ proposals as to how they can meet the customer’s requirements. The RFP allows for a Supplier to address a Client’s set of requirements, at a stated cost, and highlight features of their offering (beyond that in an Invitation To Tender, ITT).

RFP Lessons for Clients

(Having worked ‘Client-side’ for many years too) I can stress first the importance of simple scoring of individual criteria (in terms of ‘met/not met/exceeded’). Evaluation can get very complex very quickly otherwise. As the Client you can solicit the best responses by being very clear also on the weighting of criteria (e.g. ‘offering 50%’, ‘provider 20%’, ‘price 30%’). The more accountable you are as an organisation, to management and shareholders, the important this is to justify your evaluation of rival bids and ultimate selection – obvious, right?

Not so to FIFA in concluding their RFP for the 2018 and 2022 Football World Cups. FIFA can, and should, be criticised for a lack of transparency and ensuing mystery over its requirements. England’s World Cup bid was declared as best technical, economic, and social bid, backed by a knock-out presentation, delivered by senior level commitment. But they didn’t win. So what other factors were there? What requirements were asked for, but not met? As the Client if you are not clear on this, you won’t be clear on who is the best provider.

If there are other politically motivated, and other unstated, ‘desires’ then don’t use a RFP process. FIFA will be an all time classic example of this. It is their prerogative (with insufficient accountability unfortunately), but let’s all hope FIFA get what they really want – whatever that is.

So ‘RFP for RFP sake’ is costly and inefficient for Clients, and if it is merely for public show you then you might end up showing the public you’re best avoided. The selections of Russia and Qatar, for 2018 and 2022 respectively, the two bids with the largest budgets and the lowest marks in FIFA’s technical assessment raises serious questions over FIFA’s processes. The unnatural dependency of the 2 events led to even more bargaining politics, and more decisions of non-substance.

Your RFP will not be a one-off (a “game of two-halves”?), so be careful not to taint any future bid process, or scar any potential future bidders – why would England bother to bid again if the “best bid” fails? For the generally recognised best bid to go out in the first round of FIFA voting was a waste of everyone’s time and money: wildly inefficient, and even insulting. England’s narrow avoidance of “nil-point” puts FIFA in same class as the annual joke that is the Eurovision song contest.

The longer the RFP the longer the time it takes – how fast do you want results? But more importantly serve yourself better by sending the right signals. Even if you are accountable to only yourselves, you are making choices about your own subsequent performance. Be objective.

A Client won’t always know what they need, and it might be different from what they think they want. In my experience, the better matches have come through informal approaches, where it has been made clear we are compared informally, and where the online marketing manager has sufficient expertise and experience to take this into account. Ask your peers: the same professional services have been sought and found before, so why let your RFP reinvent the wheel.

Oh, and if a Supplier’s senior management show up and/or the project team, take this as a good sign of a Supplier’s commitment to the project.

Lastly, structured comparisons of vendors allows you to learn an awful lot about the subject and form an eclectic approach. You may not get the best proposal out of vendors by taking this approach.

RFP Lessons for Suppliers

As Suppliers, be wary of this: show enough to get the business, but don’t give too much away; it will benefit your ‘lost client’ directly and their alternate provider indirectly. To this end, as a supplier you may have more success from responses that address the specifics, but ALSO change the rules and answer different questions – the art of the dialogue is having the confidence to do this, and still explaining who you are, what you offer, and the way you work – and that you are charging a cost-effective price.

Once part of the RFP process you will get a sense of how objective it is. Be sure to take into account facts about the Client’s judgment, and any precedent of irrational decisions in face of simple evidence. FIFA’s denial of the need for goal line technology being a good example. Judge where you are in the process: difficult if the profound lack of influence over the selectors isn’t helped because they lied to you, as by FIFA to the England bid team – use this to your advantage, to better understand the customer. Do you want to work with them?

With FIFA, the writing was on the wall: repeated news articles regarding proven, and alleged, corruption by FIFA officials. If the bad press about members wasn’t true, then logic says they would have nothing to hide, and ignore it, as professionals. Instead FIFA have given more credence to the questioning light of the media, by turning their backs on it – and may well find it looking over their shoulder with more scrutiny in the future.

So as a Supplier expect there to be other factors not specified in the RFP. Usually it is the people side of it – good old fashioned ‘who knows who’.

Lessons for FIFA?

As an Englishman yes I am very disappointed the English bid was not chosen, but don’t believe I am being a sore loser. An objective assessment of the facts, if one was available, might show that the process wasn’t a nonsense from a Suppliers perspective – and the selection of Qatar for 2022 shouldn’t be a surprise from everyone elses.

Even Barack Obama has been left wondering how Qatar would be chosen over the US.

FIFA adopted an inefficient process, but it has to follow a RFP. Though, to then choose options of lower quality, because they think they are helping spread and grow the sport, is either visionary or inept. At best their decisions are charitable and not worried about commercial maximisation – well, of the sport at least. Both FIFA and RFPs will be here for a long time yet, but arm yourself with these lessons and know how to be the best of out them – well, at least RFPs.

The lessons here for those on both sides of an RFP are know (1) how the RFP can alter and determine what you get offered, (2) expect what the RFP can’t or doesn’t state, and (3) what you are getting yourself into, and whether you want to.

Be careful not to score any own goals.

The post FIFA and RIP to RFPs appeared first on Cressive DX.

There are authority sites you want to get links from. There are authority sites that, even if you can’t get the dreamed-of link, you should watch and monitor very carefully, and learn from. Here’s an example of both.

In a change to the ‘normal’ BBC new page format of:

{title, image, bold intro para, text (no links), bold subheaders, side links}

This is a new format page with in-copy links too. Making the news page:

{title, image, bold intro line, text (with links, i.e. in-copy links), no subheaders, side links}

The embedded links were to other related BBC news stories only (so calm your link-ninjas down). The page template then being more like the self-confessed ‘blog’ sections of the BBC (whose in-copy links do often go ‘outside the BBC’ to other sites).

The only examples of this ‘non-standard’ BBC news page (I’ve found) are in the Middle East section, so it could just be a renegade regional journalist that hasn’t read the internally published guidelines.

Whatever the driver, this illustrates cracks in the wall with the increasing pressure between’ traditional journalism’ and ‘citizen journalism’, and how main-stream journalism adapts to online.

Let us know examples you find.

The post BBC goes blog? appeared first on Cressive DX.

Serious problems in the .eu registration process result in 25% fraud

Summary.eu

25% of the first million .eu applications were fraudulent – minimum. Fundamental design flaws in the registration process, together with numerous practical errors of implementation, leave the EU with an allocation of its flagship .eu domain address of which it can be truly embarrassed. More than 20 identifiable problems, including loop holes that have been exploited and left unchecked, riddled the process. Not only were these predictable and solvable but will even create in the future issues of disputed ownership. The key failings are highlighted by shocking examples.

Introduction.eu

Proposed in 1999 and approved by ICANN as the new Internet address for the European Union (EU), the .eu top level domain has taken 6 years to become a reality. A population of 500 million plus Internet-hungry EU residents awaits; as the EU grows the .eu name will be an expanding piece of virtual real estate.

The .eu is a top level domain (TLD), and one of currently only three regional level domains (the others being .asia, and .cat for Catalonia). Time will reveal its importance relative to ‘the master’ (.com), though its position hierarchically superior to country level domains (.co.uk, etc) provides it with huge potential. The value of domain names has increased with the value of Internet commerce, and high expected values have driven the incentive to seek advantage in securing domains.

Objectives.eu

The European Commission set clear goals to firstly promote commerce in the EU with the introduction of a new TLD, and secondly allocate names fairly by rewarding existing entitlement with preference, i.e. stop cybersquatting.

The design to achieve these goals allowed one central registry (EURid) to coordinate the release and supply domain names to accredited registrars for marketing and retailing. Initially a number of names were reserved before the public phases commenced, being deemed worthy of outright protection, for instance all ISO country codes (e.g. uk.eu). Then in phases registrars would send in applications on behalf of applicants (you and me) to the central authority for evaluation by PWC.

Rights.eu

First ‘Sunrise 1’ allowed those with prior rights based on trademark or geography to apply, followed by ‘Sunrise 2’ for ‘lesser’ prior rights of unregistered trademarks or of company name, family name, or titles of art. Prior rights defined as EU national or EU international legal rights.

These staggered phases were only open to EU residents and applications were considered on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis and, according to validation guidelines, the first application meeting requirements accepted. Any dispute over acceptance or rejection possible in an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process. 19 million EU businesses were able, in theory exclusively, to apply according to pre-entitlement before a ‘landrush’ at which point any EU resident could apply.

Issues.eu

EURid provides visibility to a list of blocked/reserved names, but these were inconsistently applied. For instance Portugal reserved algarve.eu while monaco.eu was available. The .eu is inherently more restricted than .com – meaning P&G with pg.com had no possibility of obtaining the blocked pg.eu, for example.

More importantly prior rights differ fundamentally by country in the EU and this undermines the entire prior rights method: the disparity illustrated by ‘carrentals’ which is not possible to be trademarked in the UK due to its lack of distinctiveness, but however can be in more lenient EU patent offices – and this is exactly what happened, with a trademark from Malta, dated just before the .eu application, used to apply for carrentals.eu.

Such was the ease of this activity, a massive number of trademarks were ‘bought’ just before Sunrise I began with the express purpose of attaining prior rights. 23% of the 350,000 Sunrise applications were bought – allowable in the design of the registration process but by any reasonable definition unethical. A trademark dated 8 days before Sunrise 1 was lodged with the Netherlands patent office for “mon & aco”, which for the cost of €150 secured the fate of monaco.eu.

Fraud.eu

Lack of registrar integrity leads on to the next major problems: starting with registrars making their own applications for names, clearly a conflict of interest when they should be acting only on behalf of third party applicants.

Even more worrying was the absence of checks in registrar accreditation – in the last few weeks of Sunrise the number of registrars ballooned – with over 400 last minute ‘phantom registrars’ signing up (the main criteria was a €10,000 fee), taking the number up to 1500. Dishonest registrars created aliases to improve their chances of successful applications (highlighted by one honest registrar), making 27% of the 700,000 first-day landrush applications a cheat and a sham.

The bogus registrars sought to exploit the failure of the ‘first-come first-served’ principle for applications: these were queued up by registrars for system communication at a pre-set time when EURid ‘opened the doors’ on the first day of each phase. As first-come first-served really meant ‘fastest machine won’, it was tilted in favour of those making disproportionately high numbers of applications.

The natural consequence to real applicants of this was to make multiple applications, at multiple cost, to reduce the risk of being beaten – amazon made 22 separate applications in their ultimately successful bid to secure amazon.eu .

Practical errors litter the remainder of the process, including unclear decisions of acceptance, abuse of other validation criteria, and whois.eu system crashes, etc.

Examples.eu

Some examples of who got their names, who didn’t, and what’s been going on:

• Brands successful: amazon, google, ebay, yahoo, internetexplorer, hp*
• Brands unsuccessful: partypoker, pokerstars, avis, hertz, rowntrees, delta, norton, clio*, firefox*
• Geography unsuccessful: Chamonix, Monaco*, Tenerife*
• Most applications: 281 for sex.eu (even before landrush) of which 32 separate applications claimed a trademark on the word from 11 different countries
• Real organisation buying a trademark as didn’t have real one: HP (for hp.eu)

(*not yet confirmed at time of writing but highly probable)

Virtually all unreserved two letter names (e.g. zi.eu) were applied for using bought trademarks. All 10 subheadings of this article were snapped up using purpose-bought trademarks (fraud.eu being a particularly nice touch) by two players, who together bought 1150 trademarks from the Benelux patent office just for .eu applications.

At the Benelux patent office alone we identified 50 organisations as trademark buyers of over 4000 (average of 80 each) in the last 2 months of 2005, days before Sunrise I: in doing so they spent €2 million on trademarks and applications.

Scenarios.eu

Prior rights were intended to protect brands, owners relying on existing trademarks. Where a bought trademark secured a branded term and beat (first-come first-served remember) a real trademark, this defeats one of the original goals. But the .eu process allowed this to happen, and any subsequent ADR (at a minimum cost of €2000) will unlikely overrule the main process, assuming it was valid according to the initial criteria. And although the .eu process legitimises this activity there could be legal challenges post-release – it is not clear at this time how WIPO will rule over PWC, but precedent will likely rule in favour of the original trademark holder. If so this will confirm the failings of the .eu design.

Perhaps Rowntrees (rowntrees.eu was caught by a profiteer and now for sale on eBay for €7,500) didn’t bother with Sunrise on the understanding they can gain ownership of the domain later due to duality of trademark and domain. This would make a mockery of the .eu process. Now is a good time to be in the legal services business (contact cressive for our recommended legal partner).

A bought trademark on a generic keyword is more contentious as whom does it hurt if no one else had prior rights anyway? Well it does stop the landrush for anyone else, means pre-release spend is inefficient (on trademarks and applications rather than business investment), and due to its organised nature puts names into the hands of a small number of players giving them oligopoly power over resale values.

Take ‘maps’ for example, one of the most commonly used words in search engines. The importance of generic keywords used in search engines means holders of those domains gain significant access over Internet traffic, and inflate prices in the secondary market for domain name reselling: maps.eu will be worth a lot of money.

Sedo.com predicts that fifty percent of the .eu domains registered during the landrush will be made available for resale: within a week there were 90,000 .eu names already available for resale on its domain auction site.

So: you’ve bought a trademark and secured your .eu name with high resale value, but why place it on an auction site and wait when you could contact directly others who also applied for the same name? – the EURid interface provides details for all those who made Sunrise applications, facilitating the resale of .eu names! The legal notice there prohibiting this re-engineering will no doubt put off those who have successfully exploited every other failing of the registration process.

Learning.eu

There are practical solutions to these key problems. A trademark should be a necessary but not a sufficient condition of prior right. Requiring that a trademark be older than the age of announcement would stop purpose-buying (declined in the .eu process, adopted in the .mobi process). Using other TLDs would be reasonable proof of existing web operations under a name (e.g. .co.uk , .de, .fr, etc).

Rather than constructing a first-past-the-post situation out of the control of applicants, groups of applications could be considered comparatively, perhaps those applying on the first day. (Using the date an application was received by a registrar wouldn’t work if they can’t be trusted.) And the method of accreditation should be extended with higher standards, with checks of authenticity beyond ability to pay.

ICANN has proposed an online auction for the intended release of single letter .com domains (e.g. a.com). This is a financially efficient method of valuing names, with a more developed primary market, making the secondary market less important. (Some registrars in the .eu process ran their own auctions to allocate names in the secondary market.)

A consortium of experts should be employed to collectively improve the design and implementation of releases: representatives from a leading domain company like Sedo, domain experts like cressive, registrars more involved, and a major search engine like Google for their keyword and Internet knowledge.

Conclusions.eu

The release of the new domain name will ultimately boost EU commerce but failings have made the process inequitable and inefficient. Whilst entrepreneurial spirit and opportunism should be applauded, those in charge of domain name release should act and look as though they really are. A eulogy this is not. The EU failed the .eu .

All of us, anyone and everyone who uses the Internet should care about this. ICANN and those involved in the administration of the Internet will care. You’ll care if you applied for your .eu name and missed out.

Maybe you got your name and now need to know what to do with it to maximise its value, monetise your new traffic effectively, and manage it? You should incorporate it into your overall domain strategy and online marketing strategy.

And if you want to plan how to best take advantage of future domain name releases and prepare to exploit the process as much as it allows, then use our expertise to approach it, talk to cressive and we can help.

For more examples of .eu registration victims, and to report your own .eu scandal, visit www.cressive.com . © 2006 cressive ltd

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