Category Archives: Main Page

Goodbye Wired for Health

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Wired for Health, the website I worked on for over four years is officially offline in the format designed by Abacus emedia. A new site (congratulations to ICE Ltd for winning the contract has arisen in its place) is available.

Before I forget we won the 2004 International Visual Communications Association (IVCA), Biz Net Awards  Web Accessibility award, sponsored by Nomensa, along with John Lewis!

I guess it didn’t happen by accident, what with Cynthia working on the new look Wired for Health, and the e-newsletter delivering sustained improvements in visitors in 2004 leading up the awards in December 2004:

Sharp rise in people using Wired for Health

The number of people using the Wired for Health website has increased significantly over the last year, according to latest web statistics. The number of visitor sessions (people logging on for up to 30 minutes at a time) averaged around 20,000 a month in the six months from June to December last year. But since January numbers have jumped by 10,000 a month, averaging over 30,000 visits in the eight months up to and including August. Mind, Body & Soul and Lifebytes both averaged around 25,000 a month last year, and Galaxy-H around 18,000 a month. However best performer of all is the Welltown website which last year and this has notched up over 30,000 visitors a month.

England 1 Brazil 1 – where’s the ‘field sense’?

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Yeah, it was a draw. Yawn.

Ah weel, something intelligent for you anyhow on why learning to play footie in the streets makes sporting sense (from current Wired Magazine, Wayne Gretzky-Style ‘Field Sense’ May Be Teachable):

“Learning these skills [field sense] is difficult, however — particularly for older players with established habits. So Farrow is also thinking about how young athletes can develop field sense before their coaches make them believe it’s impossible to acquire. To figure that out, he recently began interviewing elite players about their early life in sports. One factor is backyard games, or what Farrow calls unstructured play. Playing soccer with 30 other kids in a dusty village plot turns out to foster the kind of flexible thinking and acute spatial attention that pays off in high-level competition.

“We should be modeling our programs on that,” Farrow says emphatically. “And what do we do instead? We put children in regimented, very structured programs, where their perceptual abilities are corralled and limited.” Farrow recently made a poster of Wayne Gretzky and gave it to several AIS coaches. The Great One, he points out, spent thousands of hours scrimmaging with friends and neighbors on the homemade rink behind his family’s house.”