Category: Miscellaneous

Links – Twitter job loss, Googlewatt, play, NHS and Jade Goody, flashswap and flashlit pull content!

The cautionary tale of how not to use twitter to tell folk you don’t like the job you’ve just been offered.  “Use your brains. The internet is a very public place. More so even than the water cooler. Exercise the same common sense and decorum you would in “real life” social situations.”

Participo on the home energy monitoring software Googlewatt: “Ambient data management, and visualisation at a personal level, along with the massive aggregation of zillions of households, plays right into Google’s core strengths…a lot like the really interesting Google Flu Tracking initiative that uses their search data to detect trends in search terms that predict early outbreaks.

The NHS has had the wisdom to spend some money with google for the search term Jade Goody – it point people to the site which encourages take of of the jab which can protect against cervical cancer.
Tessy at Thriving Too has this quick post about a whole resource of tools for what she calls purposeful play:   “An amazing resource for learning through games has been created by James Neill. Neill is a lecturer at the Centre for Applied Psychology at the University of Canberra (Australia). His highly valuable collection of Games and Activities is one of the very best I have seen.”

Flashswap was a huge success, with loads of professional and hobby photographers swapping prints to support the campaign for a Birmingham Photospace.

Screen West Midlands on it’s first joint funding with 4iP – yoosk.com

Museum 2.0 reviews have 2004 project to get people to find their own content in museums: “Which brings us back to Sweden. In 2004, the firm Smart Studio created a unique flashlight-based interpretative interface for exploration of a historic blast furnace site in the old Swedish steel town of Avesta. The site itself has no interpretative material–no labels or obvious media elements. But each visitor is given a special flashlight, used both to illuminate the space (for general exploration) and to activate interpretative experiences include light projection, sound, and occasional physical experiences (i.e. smoke and heat). There are indicated hotspots in the site which activate interpretative material when the flashlights light on them. Smart Studio launched with two layers of content in the hotspots–educational (how the blast furnace works, explanation of certain elements and history) and poetic (imagistic stories from the perspective of steel workers, based on historical content). Visitors can walk through the blast furnace site and receive none of the interpretative material if they choose, or they can use their flashlights to activate content.”

It’s great to see how Birmingham’s Jubilee Debt Campaign groups has begun to get guest authors for the blog they set up through the social media surgeries.

Links: Mission Impossible, Drift and Steve Jobs.

Neil Williams with a refreshing take on the new Digital Engagment Tsar’s job description: “So no pressure then. It’s truly a cracking job ad, targeting the challenges faced by government’s digital pioneers with a laser-like precision.”

Drift. Nikki Pugh walk’s Digbeth to discover that GPS is a bit cronky: “As I walked, I noticed that the device in my right hand was consistently giving me more erratic readings for my position than the one in my left hand. At one point I left them both next to each other on a wall for a few minutes so that when I could tell if it was my body disrupting the signal, or if it was because the device in my right hand was closer to the buildings I was walking past.”

Melanie Hayes clarifies how 4iP ought not be as clear cut as critics (see comments here) argue: “I don’t want to encourage a box-ticking approach to submitting ideas to 4iP; we want ideas that reflect the spirit of our investment criteria not simply a list that tells us what you think we want to hear.  Such an approach would never succeed anyway because it ignores the more intangible element of our process which is the exercise of professional judgement by a team that has been purposefully selected because of their diverse range of views, skills and expertise.”

Anecdote on the power of hobbies for building communities.  “I noticed an animated discussion between two of the engineers talking about their love for motor bikes. They’d worked out they both had an interest in German classics and one was describing a fuel tank issue he was having. You could see that there was trust and respect in the conversation and this trust and respect was at least partially developed while discussing their hobby.”

Steve Jobs Logs Off?   Jack Schofield reporting claims that Steve Jobs is not online. He adds a very useful reminder for any of us online: “I suggest you heed the immortal words of Shirdi Sai Baba: “Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?”

Links: Downing Tweet, Potlatch, Play.

Charles Leadbeater on the Digital Britain report. “To succeed, according to Perez’s theory, the government’s plans for broadband would only succeed if they also bring about a massive change in consumer habits and lifestyles, which new businesses can make a profit from. When her theory is boiled down it turns into three questions about the government’s plans set out in Digital
Britain. Will the technology really deliver? Will enough consumers want it and create new demand with it? Can businesses innovate to supply new services that a mass of consumers want which will be profitable?”  (hat tip Dave Briggs)
Downing Street Hits a 100,000 Twitter followers: Simon at Puffbox says: “The fact it may not be here tomorrow shouldn’t stop us exploiting it while it’s there. 100,000 people have signed up – actively, voluntarily – to hear from the heart of UK government. Now they’re actually listening, what should we be saying to them?”

OOGL:   “Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, he issued a memo on transparency directing his top officials to develop plans for an Open Government Directive to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration. The Sunlight Foundation has created this page in order to add a public element to the crafting of this Open Government Directive that is itself transparent, participatory, and collaborative”

Jon Hickman asking questions of 4iP (and getting answers) “One might say that the shine has come off, and some people have become critical of what seemed originally to be a good idea.  So what has gone wrong?”

A revamp in Prospect.

Potlatch on Play:  “I have a new metaphor for the next stage of post-industrial capitalism: the play-ground. Where play happens, but there is also an audience.* So how does our playground society produce economic value? Well, of course it produces value for those at play, who enjoy the scurrying around, socialising and innovating. But how might it produce business value? Most of the time, it will still be via the monitoring, watching, evaluating. What play produces is mostly of little interest to our corporate parents. Except, consider the exception. Parents still retain and cherish the paintings that their small children produce, and stick them up on their walls. Childish play still has its totemic products that are valued and endure. This, then, is the metaphor for user-generated innovation in the eyes of corporations: the innocent, messy artwork produced at playtime, that can be held up as proof that things aren’t all top-down”.

Every Voice Counts West Midlands:  “Empowerment is the result of strategic and practical actions – such as engagement, participation and partnership working – that increases the capacity of people to influence the decisions that affect their lives. A National Empowerment Partnership has been created to support and inform the Government in achieving this vision across the English regions.” Umh.

Links: A Call to Farms, meaningless involvement, Doodle for Google, Obama on internet transparency and LINKS

David Barrie writes this wonderful post about alternative US Midwestern culture, social media, government and social inclusion.

“A Call to Farms is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. It’s a series of essays linked to a journey that a group of people took in 2008 through Illinois and Wisconsin in search of the Radical Midwest: places, people, community groups, artists, social activists who offer alternatives to “business as usual” in the land of corn and greed. (You’ll find the project blog here; and the Midwest Draft Flickr pool here.”

Is Local Always Better? asks Rob Greenland, as he considers the Conservative’s new take on Local Government:

“If a decision is taken in a way that makes it difficult for you to have a meaningful involvement, it doesn’t matter whether that decision is taken 2 miles or 200 miles from your house.  I think a more fundamental rethink of how we make decisions about local priorities is required.   I don’t have the solution, but a celebrity mayor and a few more bureaucrats moving in down the road won’t solve things on their own.”

My earlier quick thinking was the proposals are not local enough.

Google Doodle

Doodle for Google: Above Dan Rowe’s take on his community in Cornwall:

G: A surfer on a wave. O: The cornish flag. O: An ice cream. G: King Arthur’s sword in the stone. L: A cornish tin mine chimney. E: A man eating a traditional cornish pasty”

Hat tip Steel&Stevens and Lauren.

Watch this (courtesy of Paul Canning)

[youtube]o5t8GdxFYBU[/youtube]

and always remember what Billt says.