Dan’s Posterous

Dan’s Posterous

Dan Williams  //  Name: Dan Williams

Location: Guildford, Surrey, UK

Born and raised in Somerset, I am a Computing student at Plymouth University currently on a year's placement at Allianz in Guildford. I enjoy football, technology, film and really want to go travelling next summer!!

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Sep 29 / 10:32am

My Allianz Article: Intranet's New Google Search

 

This is article I wrote for the Allianz graduate newsletter. I was quite pleased with it so thought it would be a nice thing to add to my Posterous.

As some may have noticed Allianz Intranet’s search facility is now powered by Google and Best in Class talked to Paul Towner to get an insight into the benefits, challenges and technology involved.

Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine on the Internet and after valuable feedback from the Business Intranet Group, which highlighted the previous search system’s errors it is now available for all Allianz employees. It is currently live on the Retail section of the Intranet if anyone wishes to test it out.

Google indexes all documents on the Intranet, so that with a few keywords finding a needle in a haystack doesn’t seem so difficult. The way in which Google provides results to searches is the query processor. It has several parts, including the search box, the engine that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results themselves. It will be important for everyone to add as many metatags and keywords to their intranet pages as possible to make the querying more efficient. Combine this with fast processors and the results are quick and useful. The busy Googlebots will be trawling their way through the Intranet and will try and pick up as many keywords as possible using query words such as URL’s and titles, etc. 

One of the benefits of having Google on the Intranet is that it is extremely similar to searching on the Internet so the familiar tools such as advanced and quick search are readily available (Check out BIC’s Tips for some useful search terms!)  Also, Google is so widely used almost everyone will be familiar with its interface. The system is already growing in size and thanks to our busy developers telling it where to crawl for information, there are over 20,000 pages fully indexed. It is hoped that by later this summer even more will be and the search facility will be accessible via the homepage.

Another huge benefit is the Google console allows us to run reports which show us the most popular searched phrases. This will enable us to see areas in which we need to improve the general intranet navigation and also see what information everyone is pursuing.

The biggest challenge which the developers have come across is that the Allianz Intranet wasn’t built with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in mind. SEO is the process of ranking links in search results so to improve the quality of this it’s strongly encouraged for all publishers of content to complete some housekeeping such as deleting old versions of documents and pages. Paul hopes that working on sponsored links (similar to the Internet version of Google) could be implemented into the Intranet, but that will be for future development.

The addition of Google to the Intranet seems to be welcome and productive and a big thanks to Paul for talking with us. Remember to clean up after yourself and perform housekeeping to keep the searching clean.

Go on, Google yourself on the Intranet!

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Sep 11 / 9:36am

9/11 - Where were you?

Even though it was an incredible eight years a go today I can remember exactly where I was and what I did when I heard about the planes crash into the twin towers. I was just starting my second year of secondary school and was the tender age of 12, it was a usual school day - I would stare out of a window, flick my ruler against the table and generally not pay much attention. At the time I lived very close to my school (about five minutes walk actually) and everyday I would come home, get changed and go over to my grandparents to pick up my dog who for some reason would be over there... quite bizarre but I literally can't remember how he got there... Anyway, I came home and after weeks of having to go over to my grandparents it would take me longer and longer to get changed. I turned on the TV where this live feed was being displayed instead of the nauseating crap I used to watch. I found this incredibly odd and continued to watch and couldn't fully comprehend what was going on and at the time I assumed it was a horrific accident but obviously I was mistaken.

After probably half an hour I dragged myself away from the TV and made the arduous twenty minute walk to my grandparents where I would carry out the same laborious series of events I would do every other week day. This day however was somewhat different, my grandfather answered the door and the first thing he said to me was.... "You haven't seen any of them planes flyin' about have ya!?"

I don't mean to make light of the situation because it was a horrific act of terrorism and many people tragically died. I just have always remembered that day and my grandfathers typical whimsical attitude on life because it seemed fairly safe to say that Al Qaeda wouldn't attempt a terrorist attack on a chavy little town in Somerset. We watched the news for hours after that and it was absolutely astonishing to watch and was a truly sad day indeed.
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Aug 10 / 10:06am

Crouch: Mixed Feelings

It was the year 2000, there were flying cars and everyone lived on Mars. Oh no wait!... that's the year 3000 my mistake, however there was one alien around starting to make a name for himself in the undignified frame of a young Peter Crouch. After a heated discussion with a friend of my dad (who was  a QPR fan) I decided that Crouch was awful and Spurs were better off without him - how that came back to horrifically punch me in the face.

I remember saying at the tender age of 12, Crouch is just a lanky **** and complete waste of space (just kidding) but there was some truth there, I mean he did OK at QPR because he was a completely new kind of player and the fact he scored goals shows that he does have some talent but at times a lot of his goals have just bounced off his head without him actually aware of it.

I have said for years now all Crouch has to do is hit the gym add some muscle and he could be a fantastic player because the height is an obvious massive bonus and if he had the physicality of Drogba combined with his already decent footwork he would be a force to be reckoned with. However he has never done this, it seems odd with the facilities available and the managers he has had no one has ever asked him to try it but I am only assuming.

I would also like to briefly touch on Crouch's over-rated international record because it is always the first excuse anyone has for him when he is playing like a retarded giraffe. I remember back in 2006 when he scored a hat trick against Jamaica which gave him a international record which appeared to be impressive but when one looks at the countries these goals have come against Crouch becomes a flat track bully which he kind of is in the Premiership. Lesser defenders don't know what to do with him but when a Terry or Vidic comes up against him he doesn't looks half as effective which leads me to think have Spurs just essentially signed Alfonso Alves!?

Let's fast forward to Crouch at present, admittedly after being the saviour of both Southampton and Portsmouth he has now gone full circle and is back at White Hart Lane where he is just one of four. If he doesn't perform from the get go then the same will happen to him at Spurs as it did at Liverpool and in a World Cup year could be devastating for a 28 year old but fair play it is a risk that could and hopefully will work out. Everyone goes on about how well Crouch and Defoe played at Portsmouth but I never really saw it, maybe I missed something but I don't remember them looking like a Keane and Berbatov which still hurts.... 
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