Author: Nick Booth

23rd August 2009

Stuff I've seen August 22nd through August 23rd

These are my links for August 22nd through August 23rd:

http://libreapps.com/blogotics/ – Blog-o-tics is an innovative new service brought to you by a group of young, politically minded developers. The project was conceived as part of the “Young Rewired State” Hack Day, an attempt to use government data to create web applications. Blogotics uses information about the bills being passed through the UK parliament and analyses their standing in the blogosphere. Blogotics uses innovative code to analyse the positive or negative nature of blogs and subsequently show a certain blogs popularity.
Killing Hope – You’re Just Making it Worse | Benjamin Ellis – “When will you learn?” “You’re just making things worse!”
Cheo, 3Dom and Stokes Croft – An Apology! « Bristol graffiti – Bristol Council apologises fo getting something wrong!
BBC – dot.life: The new tech start-up – US government – These include an app called StumbleSafely that uses crime data to help people get home safely after a night on the tiles and Carpool Mashup Matchmaker to help people find carpools.
Blog What I Made » iFreeThePostcode – “iFreeThePostcode is an iPhone app to make submitting postcodes to freethepostcode.org really easy. You can download it from the iTunes app store or just search on the app store for “iFreeThePostcode”.”

22nd August 2009

Links from August 19th to August 22nd

These are my links for August 19th through August 22nd:

Ernest Marples: the first month – Harry Metcalfe – “Scores of people have sent us messages of support. I’ve even been hugged.”
Open Plaques – “Open Plaques is a service that aims to find and provide data about all the ‘plaques’ (often blue and round) that can be found across the UK.”
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Open Plaques: open data about UK heritage sites –
Together we are LOUDER – Louder.org.uk will be the new online home for campaigners across England. The site combines a cutting-edge social networking platform, established multimedia toolkits and a hub for online advocacy resources
Power in People’s Hands: Learning from the World’s Best Public Services – Bit late but thanks to Dave Harte: “This report presents the findings of a Strategy Unit study of leading edge innovations in world-wide public services, which involved interviewing 50 academics, public servants and other experts from around the world. The report highlights more than 30 case studies from 15 countries. It emphasises that innovation and productivity come from forging stronger relationships with citizens and finds the most successful services have five distinguishing characteristics:”
Communitybuilders fund will open in September – Third Sector – “The Communitybuilders fund will provide loans and grants to help community-based organisations in England that boost interest in local democracy and improve community cohesion.”
FutureGov » Features » Using web 2.0 to safeguard children: an invitation to a round table discussion – “we are looking to bring together multi-disciplinary group of senior managers and practitioners from childrens social services, teachers, police and health workers with social web technologist, public service designer, funders – or even just people who have a personal passion for this area – to help us design and run a small Safeguarding 2.0 pilot.”

18th August 2009

Stuff I've seen from August 16th to August 18th

These are my links for August 16th through to August 18th:

Lancashire County Council – Homepage – “Welcome to our new website. To find what you are looking for, use the search box below. If you are interested in the featured campaign, follow the link in the right-hand box.” Neat – I think I like it.
Centro consultation on local rail routes – new stations for Kings Heath? – “We are now seeking your views on this draft. These will help shape the final document.” Not like this you’re not. There are better ways to do online consultation.
Go forth and play! « Talk About Local (alpha) – Google and hyperlocal tools: “I don’t know who you are or what you want to do, but chances are a few of these powerful tools will help you do it really easily – and, of course, for free.”
Young Rewired State « Emma Mulqueeny – Emma Mulqueeny is excited: “nearly 70 people aged between 15-18 years have registered (way more than we had dared hope for, and more signing up – even though we have closed the list)” and rightly so
Illegal downloading – P2P – filesharing – UK government plans tough new laws | Tom Watson MP – Tom Watson writes a fine piece on the proposal to criminlise file shares in the UK. “It is clear that the big corporations are gearing up for an online struggle. Enforcement is central to their strategy. Expect to see hordes of bedsit bloggers and home alone music fans in the courts for copyright misdemeanours over the next few years.Just as the newspaper industry looks set to embark on a collective global impersonation of Ned Ludd, there is an irony that forward thinking players in the music market might be finding some solutions. We’re at a stage where attempts to bring all-you-can-eat digital services to music fans might just be about to pay off. Civil servants might better serve the nation if they were to establish what conditions drive these Internet success stories.”

16th August 2009

Paid for newspaper content, blogs and search.

Tom Harris, MP is musing about how newspapers charging for online content will effect bloggers:

a staple of political blogging is the external link to a news site. Guido has his “Seen Elsewhere” widget and almost all of the PoliticsHome homepage is links to features and news articles in the dailies.

What happens after all these newspapers start restricting access to paying customers? Will bloggers have to assume their readers are subscribers to the external sites we link to? Those who regularly include links in their Twitter feeds, or who regularly follow such links, will face the same problem. As will those who rely on Google Media Alerts to flag up news articles on specific subjects.

Tom’s thinking of this as a potential problems for the bloggers. However his last sentence above shows how much of a problem it is for the newspapers. If the system they use makes people reluctant to link to their website, then surely the newspapers site will be less likely to show up in search.

Other newspapers writing freely and openly about the subject will get the links, as will other blogs, as will people like politicians who’ll be saying their own things on their own sites. The New York Time’s David Carr hinted that people will be bookmarking new news sites, but the links problem is surely even more fundamental. It is the start of a spiral of decline, isn’t it?

Of course Murdoch and his team may have had a uniquely brilliant new thought about this and the paid for content problem. A cunningly brilliant idea that hasn’t yet occurred to the tens of thousands of people who’ve been worrying about this for many, many years.

If they have then that is content I would pay to read. Once.