puffbox

Civil servants cleared to blog

Not before time, the official Civil Service guidance on 'participation online' has been published - and whilst it's not quite the upbeat, positive encouragement that I was lobbying for, it does at least make clear that (a) you're allowed to do it, and (b) you should say you're a civil servant (where that's relevant). Brevity has [...] read on »

Power Taskforce’s ideas on crime maps

The Home Office is confirming that it'll press ahead with online crime mapping, as recommended by today's Casey Report on Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime. Even better, the Power Of Information taskforce - specifically Will Perrin and Tom Loosemore, in apparent association with designers Schulze and Webb - have posted a few concepts showing not only [...] read on »

Cameron goes direct

The Tories' latest engagement initiative, Cameron Direct takes its 'town hall meeting' roadshow to a Plymouth primary school tonight. The event will be broadcast live, and then 'on demand', in video via the UK-based SelfCast.com. It also looks like they'll be liveblogging the event through, guess what, CoverItLive. I'm not entirely sure it's worth doing [...] read on »

Dodgy start to David Davis campaign

The website for David Davis's campaign to get re-elected - on an identical platform? - in Haltemprice and Howden is now live at www.daviddavisforfreedom.com. I suggested last week that if his (wider) campaign was to be truly successful, he'd need 'some kind of politics 2.0 initiative': and so far, there's not much sign of it. The [...] read on »

Does anyone ever ’share this’?

On a couple of design jobs lately, clients have been very eager to have 'sharing' buttons on their pages. You know the sort of thing... one-click functions to submit a page to the reader's Delicious, digg or Facebook friends. I get the feeling it's purely because they've seen it on other sites, and think they [...] read on »

BBC blog feeds go full-text

Credit where it's due. By popular demand - and contrary to the implication of Jem Stone's piece, I can't claim to have started it  - the BBC has switched from sending (very short) summaries in the RSS feeds from its various blogs, to sending the full text of the blog postings in question. 'Sorry that [...] read on »

Big test for single-issue politics

Like everyone else, I'm trying to make sense of David Davis's decision to resign his Commons seat, and fight a by-election to win it back. He says he's trying to start a national debate on 'one of the most fundamental issues of our day.' But when it comes to the vote, assuming he wins, he'll [...] read on »

Power of Information taskforce blog

It's a relief that the Power of Information taskforce, announced by Tom Watson a couple of months back, has launched a blog. Although apparently running since April, it's only had a handful of postings... and its about page still lacks some basic information, like who exactly is in it. The initial posts include many references [...] read on »

Puffbox’s onepolitics site relaunched

A few months back, I built and launched onepolitics: an automated website which pulled together the latest blog postings from the 'proper' political commentators. It wasn't ever meant to be a mass-audience website: I built it for myself, but if anyone else wanted to use it, they were welcome. As I wrote at the time: I’m [...] read on »

New Today programme site’s post-match interviews

There's a new look to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme's website. Gone is the bizarre Soviet styling, to be replaced by something a bit more blue and funky. Stalinist to Cameron-esque? It would be churlish to note the coincidental synchronisation with the swing of the opinion polls at the moment. A couple of additions seem [...] read on »