<head>s up: Singularity Web Conference becomes <head>
<head>line news: the Singularity Web Conference is now <head>™.
So you don't think that we're out of our <head>s for <head>ing in such a radically new direction just two months before the conference, know that we didn't take the decision lightly.
You see, we came <head> to <head> with a company called Singularity Limited when their lawyers sent us a letter stating that they had registered Singularity as a trademark for, among other things, conferences. Although it doesn't appear that Singularity Limited currently runs any conferences, we decided to keep our <head>s and proactively change the name of the conference to <head> off a potentially lengthy, complicated, and costly legal conversation.
Once we took the decision to change the name at the end of last week, we launched <head> first into a rebranding effort and made great <head>way, completing the process in just over two days.
We're <head> over heels in love with our new name and our new look (Alvin was especially ecstatic when he saw the new site) and we hope that you will be too.
In the midst of all these changes, we thought that a little stability would be good to have so we're keeping one thing the same: the price. We're extending the early-bird discount until the end of September, so tell your friends — blog, vlog, tweet — and let the world know that tickets can still be had for $99.
And just how are preparations for the conference itself coming along? It's full steam a<head> at conference <head>quarters, with daily announcements of excellent new sessions from our stellar line-up of over seventy speakers.
<head> over to our newly-redesigned web-site to check out our new look and get your ticket today to attend this seminal global web conference for just $99.
The <head>s up: Singularity Web Conference becomes <head> article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
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Erwin Verdonk
William from Lagos
Kevin Schmidt
Clarkson
Louis Muloka
Florian
The new design is very nice
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:31 pmAndrew Odri
I like the new name, very cool. However, it has to be said, that was a pretty painful read with the overabundance of puns and all
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:41 pmAral
@Florian, thanks so much
@Andrew: Thanks, man! And it’s all on purpose, you know
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 amsenocular
Some name. I’m already seeing headlines like “Singularity Web Conference becomes Conference” …D’oh!
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 amRonny
I like the new name better
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:38 amNew style on the site looks pretty alive too. Pretty good.
Happy to hear you guys didn’t run into too much trouble concerning the trademarks etc.
Good luck with the upcoming schedule. It will no doubt be a busy time from now on
Keep up the good work.
Jim Hayes
Oh Man, that’s sooooooooo not standards compliant…
, surely? or <head/> perhaps? Nightmare!
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 amJim Hayes
I thought that might happen…
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:51 amIllias
Samuel L. Jackson says: Say one more time, I dare you I double dare you!
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 amIllias
^^^^ Oh HTML Snafu! I meant to write
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:20 amSamuel L. Jackson says: Say HEAD one more time, I dare you I double dare you!
FlashBookmarks
Ouch “Over Quota”, this Google App Engine application is temporarily over its head serving quota.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:36 amStefan Richter
yeah I just saw the quota message too.
BTW when I went to the new site (via a different link that someone sent me) I thought: why does this conference look exactly like Singularity, same date and speakers and all..?
Bought my ticket. Shame about the legal trouble. Must be a PR nightmare.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 amMichiel van der Ros
You’re not afraid of ski- and tennis gear manufacturer?
)
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am(I suppose they don’t do conferences
Ben Darlow
Less than head greater than. Great name for a conference!
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 amIain
Love your new design - but surely including angle brackets in your name is a recipe for disaster?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 amIain
Having just been over to the site and had an over-quota message on every page, I don’t think I’ll be using google app engine for anything. How much traffic can you even be getting? I think even my £25 a year web hosting would stand up better.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 amLee McColl Sylvester
If they’re not actively doing conferences *yet*, you could have gone the route of squating and carried on as normal. However, it was probably a wise move all the same. I just hope another conferencing company called Head doesn’t start knocking on your door
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 amfirdosh tangri
sounds gooooddd !!!
cheers
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pmFirdosh
Michiel van der Ros
“head” is also not very search engine friendly, though when adding the word “conference” it ranks #1.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pmNumber two however is “HEAD”, a 10th edition conference by the High Energy Astrophysics Division… But I suppose you realized that before you changed the name?
Aral
Hey guys, thanks so much for your words of support and encouragement.
@Ronny: Yep, it’s definitely going getting busier and busier (and it was crazy busy to start out with!)
@Jim: Donno, seems like HTML 4 is kicking XHTML’s butt — not that I want to get into that debate
@Illias: LOL!
Remember it’s ampersand lt semi-colon head ampersand gt semi-colon — the name definitely poses some unique challenges but I love it 
@FlashBookmarks, @Iain: We had an over quota issue after making the new design live (see my next blog post). It also coincided with a maintenance on Google so I don’t know what has caused it. The site is back up now, Google’s engineers are keeping an eye on things, and we’re working together to get to the bottom of it.
<head> is one of the first commercial applications on Google App Engine and GAE is still very young. It’s to be expected that we run into technical issues. I’m happy that we’re working on fixing them. That said, the quota system as it stands is broken and needs to be fixed at a much more fundamental level.
@Michiel van der Ros: Nope, they don’t do conferences and we don’t do ski-ware so it’s all good. Re: SEO, I’m happy the head conference comes up #1
@Lee McColl Sylvester: I really didn’t want any trouble. It was two days of hard work to redesign the site but (a) I love the new name, (b) I love the new design and it just _feels_ better.
I wanted to change the name next year anyway — this just really moved things up. Going to keep this energy up for the next two months to make sure that we deliver a great new conference.
@Ben Darlow, Firdosh Tangri: Thanks, guys — so happy with all the positive comments on the name change and the new design
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:48 pmKevo
Are you going to make t-shirts? I want a <head> t-shirt.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:31 pmAral
@Kevo: T-shirts are on the to-do list
September 4th, 2008 at 10:41 pmDavid Arno
I think the new name is truly awful. I’m at a loss to understand what led Aral and co to think it a good choice of name.
Despite that, I suggested the boss take a look at the site to see if he thought it worth buying tickets. He viewed the site with IE 7. The site crashed IE 7. He was less than impressed and is now reluctant to buy tickets. I can’t say I blame him.
Come on Aral, what are you playing at? Surely you tested your web site using IE, didn’t you? You may not like it, and its incompatibility with standards and the other browsers is annoying, but it’s still used by 80+% of the web audience.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:42 amAral
Hi David,
Sorry to hear that you don’t like the new name. Thankfully, the overwhelming response we’ve had to the name has been very positive.
I’ll look into the IE issue. It was a two-day redesign and it’s possible that there may be issues under IE.
In the meanwhile, a standards-compliant browser like Firefox or Safari should work fine.
We’ll look into the issue and implement the necessary hacks for it to work on non-standards compliant browsers as soon as possible.
While you are right that IE enjoys a very large share of the _consumer_ market, the statistics for _web developers_, who are our target audience is very different. The statistics for the Singularity/<head> web site, for example are entirely opposite with Firefox and Safari making up 80% (actual 79.40% according to Google Analytics) of the browsers and all versions of IE accounting for under 15% (actual 14.59%). So, in our case, my priority is getting the site working with 80% of browsers in our target audience and then tackling the rest.
Finally, remember, web developers don’t let friends use IE
September 7th, 2008 at 9:01 pmAral
@David Arno: Please check the site again in IE, it should work.
It appears that IE does not like a combination of floats and CSS expressions. It is quite alarming that you can crash a browser with CSS alone but, alas, this is IE.
I’ve implemented fixes which mean that the content should at least be accessible under IE. Since IE does not support fixed positioning in CSS, you will not get the same experience (that’s impossible to implement). I will see what other improvements we can make to the IE version in the coming days.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pmDavid Arno
I’ve checked it against IE 7 and IE 8 beta 2. It now works in IE 7 (though as you say, due to IE being a dog’s dinner of a browser, it doesn’t look as good as it does in FireFox or Chrome). Sadly it is now broken in IE 8 beta 2 though. Of course, in theory, that is easily fixed with the near-infamous <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ /> tag (which needs to appear straight after the <head> tag otherwise it won’t work apparently).
September 9th, 2008 at 7:00 amAral
Hi David,
Thanks for taking the time to test it out and report back
I’ll look into why it’s not displaying in IE8. For the time being, it may be easiest to go with the http-equiv header as you suggest!
September 11th, 2008 at 10:48 pm