A story on the website of BBC News itself… ‘BBC used to entice cyber victims’. But, er, it doesn’t do that any more? 🙂
Month: March 2006
Raise your aspirations
Most people don’t know what they want until they see it. And in government, where projects are big and lead-times are long, that’s a problem.
I’m currently working with plans for a major new government website, building on an award-winning successor. It seeks to address a professional, and generally a communicative audience numbering many, many thousands. There are a couple of relatively smart tricks, like a personal homepage with various forms of saved ‘bookmark’. But it all feels a bit ‘web 1.0’, if you know what I mean.
This new site is going to cost a lot of money, so it has to have a long shelf-life: let’s say five years. Give it a year at the start to bed in, and a year at the end to grow old gracefully. So ideally, the functional specification needs to think ‘what will users be expecting a year (or more likely, two years) from now?’
To me, it’s crying out for a ‘web 2.0’ solution. The audience in question is likely to be very receptive to a community-driven site. I can imagine them sharing outputs of their work with others; reviewing products and facilities; recommending good web resources; offering their opinions on controversial issues; all that good stuff. It could, and probably would, be groundbreaking. But unless the project leader lives in the ‘visionary’ segment of Geoffrey Moore‘s technology adoption curve, the specification will only reflect what is already in the mainstream today.
It’s an opportunity I’ll be sorry to miss, if that’s what ultimately happens. But my bigger worry is for the position three years from now. As we watch ‘a new high-tech wave‘ approaching the shoreline, I worry that it’s going to be a lot of money for something that will look very dated very quickly.
Govt websites aren't perfectly coded
I get really tired of stories like this. Tired of people running mechanical validators against a host of websites to see which ones trigger an automated ‘fail’ flag. Tired of reporters trying to make it into a big deal, without any real qualification of how big a ‘fail’ we’re talking about – would one unclosed XHTML tag condemn the site as a ‘failure’? But most of all, tired of e-government pros not realising that this is going to keep happening, and taking action to avoid it. This is 2006, is it not?
Myspace: good, bad, ugly
The Myspace phenomenon continues, with a staggering 66 million people in ‘my network’ – and apparently, a quarter of a million new members a day. I’ve taken a bit of time to find my way around it, and I’m actually amazed by the depth of the music coverage. Yes, you’ve got profiles for the Arctic Monkeys and James Blunt. But you’ve also got grown-up acts like Coldplay, Gorillaz and the Flaming Lips. Oh, and the likes of Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash. It’s almost at the stage where any musical act you can think of has a representation, and a taster of their music. Myspace as the musical Wikipedia, anyone?
The design (or lack thereof) is still doing my head in. No getting away from it; it’s an ugly site, with a criminal lack of easy customisation options. It seriously needs some Ajax magic dust sprinkling over it. It’s hard to believe there’s not a single RSS feed in there. And if they think the kids won’t find a way to turn the streamed audio into MP3s, they’re kidding themselves.
But it works. And it works because it’s a repository for the stuff you want to know about bands. A bit of (high quality) audio, release news, tour dates. And a chance to get your name up there alongside theirs. News International is probably right; it does have the potential to be ‘iTunes 2.0’.
Is there a better photo blog?
Simon Waldman is right… the addition of a photoblog by the Guardian’s star photographer Dan Chung is a real gem, and probably the most consistently strong feature of their new Comment Is Free editorial/blog thing. It’s particularly good to get his insight as a snapper into how things like photocalls work… for example, HM Treasury’s press office would do well to read his assessment of last week’s Budget set-piece. My only criticism is that it seems a bit petty not to include the pictures themselves in the RSS feed. If they’re looking to monetise it, shouldn’t they at least be charging Canon for all that lovely product placement?
Google has the UK sewn up
I knew Google was the dominant search engine in the UK, but I didn’t realise it was quite so dramatically ahead. WebSideStory reckons Google has a UK market share of (near enough) 75 per cent, with Yahoo topping the list of also-rans on just 9.3 per cent. So if you’re doing any SEO work, there’s really only one engine worth worrying about.
Directgov changes ownership
I can't decide what to make of Directgov's move from the Cabinet Office to COI, as announced this morning. It seems odd to give control of the state's flagship e-government project to an arms-length body; and in strict terms of ministerial responsibility, it could be seen as downgrading the project's importance, with COI's Chief Executive being 'line managed' by the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
At the risk of oversimplifying, COI's main role is as government's middleman in the world of communication. They do a lot on behalf of other government departments, but haven't done a lot off their own bat. Taking ownership of Directgov is a big step in that regard. But on the other hand, if someone came to you for a job interview, having worked for all the big names in the field at various points in the past five to ten years, they would make an ideal candidate.
Perhaps COI's greatest asset here is who they aren't, rather than who they are. I wrote before about Directgov as a clean slate; this is probably just a further step down that same road.
Whiteboards, scribbles and DIY video
One of my favourite web projects of the last few years has been Channel 9, also known as Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble‘s day job. They take a camcorder round the various project teams at Microsoft, and get the inside scoop from the guys who do the actual work. Guess what? They’re normal guys who are really knowledgeable, and really passionate about what they do. And suddenly, it’s hard to hate Microsoft. A goofy home video effort is proving more effective than the company’s megabucks marketing efforts.
But this offering from IT publisher ZDNet takes the DIY video thing a step further. ‘At the whiteboard‘ is – guess what? – somebody explaining a topic in a few minutes by drawing on a whiteboard. Granted, you might get two cameras, and a little bit of editing… but it’s the same basic point-and-shoot, zero-production-value ethic. And it works rather well.
Don’t underestimate the power of scribbling. Some of the most effective presentations I’ve ever given were during my time at Microsoft, when I had access to a Tablet PC. The ability to scribble on top of PowerPoint slides, like on a whiteboard, is a huge advance. I’ve had similar success with a more primitive method, beaming slides on to a whiteboard.
Why can't blogs do 'hard news'?
The Daily Telegraph web team‘s blog is worth an occasional visit. It isn’t as ‘high-concept’ as, say, Simon Waldman from the Guardian – but they make some interesting points, and it’s good of them to list their top-rated stories each week.
But I’m going to take issue with a comment made there, earlier this week by the site’s production editor Ian Douglas.
The more informal blogging tone doesn’t really suit hard news, though.
I disagree. I can’t think of a better example than the 7 July bombings in London, when the Guardian’s news blog became the best source of information (such as it was) in the immediate aftermath. It doesn’t seem to have been archived, but the live commentary by the blogger/s there was excellent. They weren’t afraid to admit to their own uncertainty, and they did their best to keep the updates coming. It was just what we needed.
If blogs are about brand engagement, why shouldn’t they work in the ‘hard news’ field? Take the example of Sky News, where I used to work. Sky’s brand is about ‘being part of our gang’, as opposed to the BBC’s more patrician tone. So why not have a blog of the latest BREAKING NEWS snaps through the day, plus a summary of the newsroom gossip and banter? Journalism remains an aspirational profession, and it makes sense to capitalise on that.
If the ‘old school’ news business is series about embracing blogging, it has to be more than simply forcing the same old content into a presentation template with permalinks.
More Google innovation: data charts
Great presentation of data is something I’m surprised we don’t see more of. So full marks to Google (again!) for doing something smart with it, on its new Google Finance site.
For any share price, say Microsoft, you get an instant graph of the last couple of days, with the important news stories flagged on top. You get a nice zoom effect when you choose a different timeframe, either clicking the presets or dragging the boundaries – and keeping up the example of its mapping app, you can drag the chart left and right. (I’m particularly impressed by the way the Y-axis regenerates.) Look for some other nice tricks, like the hover effects on ‘related stories’ and ‘management’.
It’s all driven by Flash, rather than Ajax, but I doubt many people will notice, and fewer still will care. Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny reckons they could have done ‘a ton of stuff… to really blow people away’, but this will do me for now. 🙂