Category: Miscellaneous

Links from December 15th

Jules & Jim | DensityDesign | Communication Design & Complexity

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 15th from 02:21 to 03:00:

  • David Barrie: Love diagrams – “What followed was a sequence of graphics that map the course of human relations in the film – cutely assuming that love relationships are “dynamic” (don’t stop reading) and ignore scuzzy soap and socks left on the floor.” Original here.
  • Theatre Pledge 2010 « Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company – Stan’s Cafe theatre pledge encourages people to make a commitment to support local theatre, bring new people to new experiences. What might you choose to create a pledge for?
  • Official Google Enterprise Blog: Why the City of Los Angeles chose Google – “Google Apps will save the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city’s IT budget.” via @davebriggs.
  • Ethical Xmas? | Birmingham Conservation Trust – My favourite Birmingham charity on how you can support it with your Christmas Shopping
  • Christmas Fun at Stanhope Hall Highgate « Highgate,Digbeth and St Andrews – Andy Sheppard, neighbourhod manager, shows that praise is a key quality to deploy in blogging a community: “Father Christmas made a special visit to Stanhope Hall and presented all the children with an early Christmas Present. Special thanks for both events are due to Monica Lee Community Worker and the ladies of Stanhope Hall Womens Group who worked incredibly hard to ensure the success of both events. Special thanks are also due to Eddie Howard and Highgate Housing Liaison Board for their support for both events.”
  • Hyperlocal news: profits a long way off | Media | guardian.co.uk – “2010 will not be the year of hyperlocal—these are the foothills, the beginnings of localised online publishing. But the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers—and advertisers—will shift to new outlets. Whether anyone will be making a real living from it—as a mainstream publisher or a start-up—seems unlikely in the near future… ” via @daveharte.

Stuff I've seen December 4th through to December 6th

These are my links for December 4th through December 6th:

  • Measuring digital engagement – Digigov – "Recently, I’ve been working with colleagues in COI on this problem and we’ve come up with three common measures that appear to work across all digital engagement or social media tools:

    1. Number of relationships
    2. Number of user-generated content items
    3. Number of referrals/recommendations"

  • Listening to you – "Residents in Longton and Meir are invited to meet their local police commander next week, and a new billboard will leave them in no doubt of where and when to find him. A 20ft by 10ft billboard has been sited on Weston Road in Meir (near The Broadway) inviting people to come and speak to the local commander. " via @Mike_rawlins
  • Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Networked Journalism: Challenges To NGOs and Mainstream Media – What a relief: "In a recent Polis private seminar with a major international NGO and a global news organisation, the head of the news media’s international division said that he now accepted that they had to work together to report the world:

    “We may have, if we are lucky, one stringer in a particular country. You may well have a dozen people there who know it well. It makes sense for us to use your resources to cover a story or issue.”

    All media organisations are now opening themselves up to gathering material from the public – including NGOs. And NGOs are now expecting their humanitarian staff to act more like journalists. "

  • Freedom to Lead | John’s Idea – "In Leicestershire 92 council staff spend their time keeping government up to date on 3,000 performance indicators at a cost of £7 million a year. The need to reduce these costs, and shift the emphasis of performance reporting from central government to local people, sit at the heart of the LGA campaign Freedom to Lead."
  • CivicSurf » “That’s not a blog. Blogs are boring with lots of text” – Hear, hear: "

    What struck me last night, and not for the first time, was that people still have this ingrained view of what a blog is. When I showed the cake site to one lady she blurted out, “That’s not a blog! A blog is boring with lots of text.” WordPress.com still promotes itself to bloggers and offers:

    “Express yourself. Start a blog.”

    It’s a website that is easy to update and optimised for search engines. End of. Let’s not label it with something that puts people off.

Things I've spotted December 4th from 22:11 to 22:41

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 4th from 22:11 to 22:41:

  • The challenge of pledges | Created in Birmingham – Pledges to support local theatre/culture. Could they be adapted to strengthen local community?

    "# Attend 12 theatre shows in the next 12 months, 4 by West Midlands writers/artists/companies you haven’t seen before, 1 in a West Midlands Venue you’ve never been to before.
    # Take 12 people who have never been, rarely go, or don’t ‘do’ Independent Theatre to a show. Share transport.
    # Host a meal/party for 8 people 4 of which you barely know.
    # Write 12 comments/reviews/blog entries about theatre on other people’s sites.
    # Attend 1 mid*point or return to the next Open Space event."

  • Another day, another report « Chief Inspector Mark Payne’s Blog – How did it stop being like this? "In West Midlands Police we have been one of the pilot forces for ‘community resolutions’. This effectively allows officers to use their judgement to make decisions at the scene of some lower level crimes, and together with the victim agree on a suitable remedy. So if a gang of kids break your window, you can ask them to apologise and pay for it, rather than enter into the criminal justice system. So far we have carried out 8000 of these types of resolutions, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Police officers are allowed to use their professional judgement (or common sense as it is more commonly known,) based on the full circumstances of the case, not on narrow performance objectives."
  • Idiot English: Vorsprung durch Biscuit – This is blogging to warm the cockles of my heart: "My wife likes Bahlsen's Choco Leibniz biscuits, so we often have some in the pantry. But their presence weighs heavy on my pedantic mind. There it is, in my home, the yellow box with its (in)famous slogan:
    More chocolate than a biscuit
    Eh? It should be "More chocolate than biscuit"! (They're about two-thirds choc.) I can only imagine that this slogan was the victim of hypercorrection in the seminar room"
  • A quick start guide to Twitter – "The guide takes absolute beginners to Twitter right from the start – explaining what Twitter is, and how to sign up – right through to replying, retweeting, hashtagging and using tools to measure success." Dave Briggs knows his stuff – and he can be funny.
  • Pulitzer or community – daddy or chips? | Joanna Geary – "It reminded me of a hypothetical situation someone put to me the other day:

    You are the editor of a newspaper. You are allowed to employ one more person. You can choose either a writer that has won a Pulitzer prize or a writer that has built an online community of 40,000 highly committed readers and contributors. Which do you choose?

    I know nothing is ever that clear cut, of course. This is a real “daddy or chips” question. Yet, I guess how you answer it gives a good indication of how you think we should train our journalists of the future."

    I'd choose both.

  • Thriving too: Making Openness Work – The 'Open100' competition is a celebration of the power of openness and mass collaboration. You can be part of the competition by nominating the company you think is the best open innovator. The competition will be open until 12th February while the winners will be announced on 24thFebruary. The winners are those who will be included in the list of the world's top 100 open companies
  • Official Google Research Blog: Automatic Captioning in YouTube – Google experimenting wiht automatically captioning video: "The auto alignment features is available for all new video uploads, however the scope is limited to English material. The auto captioning feature is initially rolled out to a set of educational partners only. Although this is very limited in scope, the early launch makes the results of the system available to the viewers of this material instantly and it allows us to gauge early feedback which can aid in improving the features. We will release automatic captions more widely as quickly as possible." via @pigsonthewing

Stuff I've seen December 1st through to December 3rd

These are my links for December 1st through December 3rd:

  • Thinking Big – the cabinet office use Bebo to harness ideas. – “In total we received over 12,000 votes across all polls in reply to questions on how to improve schools, concepts of identity and whether Britain ought to have a death penalty.”The polls, in turn, drove young people to want to contribute more on a serious debatable topic. Rather than giving a simple yes or no answer they commented to explain their opinions and provide new ideas. In total the Bebo profile page had 6,798 comments while the Big Think teaser video that was added to the Bebo homepage was viewed 1,592,643 times.
  • Greenversations Convey the Message: How Social Media Helps Us Serve you Better – “A human voice can help connect with the public’s emotional response during a crisis.” via @futuregov
  • Delib’s Local Authority Audit | Delib Blog – “Here is a general report on our findings with an overview of online consultation pages in local authorities and top tips we have formulated from our research . Individual authorities have been sent their own audits – which we hope will prove useful in finding opportunities to improve their online public consultation and engagement.”
  • Talk About Local » Government data on the ground, making a difference – The challenge for John Denham’s Department is to get local authority held data published and then stimulate creativity in truly local applications of national and local data sets. There are some simple and cheap ways – a competition with small prizes for good ideas, run a hack day with say the LGA or Dave Briggs.