puffbox

BNP’s shocking WordPress-powered website

Late last year, I noted that the British National Party's website was (by some degree) the most popular among UK political parties - and got dissed by the Telegraph for not linking to it. I wrote at the time that the site wasn't exactly up to much, and I don't have reason to visit it [...] read on »

Why Parliament doesn’t like YouTube

LibDem MP Jo Swinson raised the subject of parliamentary video clips going on YouTube, during questions to the Leader of the House last week. You can see it below. Helen Goodman's response is enlightening: video material isn't allowed to be hosted on a site where it can be searched or downloaded 'to ensure that it is [...] read on »

Embed RSS feeds via Google

RSS is my answer to everything. So simple, so straightforward, so flexible. Yet, as I've mentioned here before, I'm amazed how few government web sites - especially new ones - offer feeds. The number using RSS feeds to pull content in, of course, is even smaller. A few months back, I asked readers how many [...] read on »

CoverItLive adds branding options

Hosted live-blogging service CoverItLive, by far the best way to liveblog, always came with a catch. You could set it up, and drop it into your website, in minutes... but it was very obviously a rather crude embedding of 'someone else's service'. Their logo, their font, not yours. But not any more. Effective today, there's an [...] read on »

New Comment Is Free adds ‘blog of comments’

A big day for the Guardian today, as the new community-enabled Comment Is Free makes its debut. Site editor Georgina Henry describes the various mechanical and presentational changes, but one in particular catches my eye. Each user of the site now has a personal profile page... featuring an 'instant archive' of all the comments they've added [...] read on »

BBC’s new /topics pages

See, this is what you can do when you've got lots of information, all properly tagged and structured. The BBC's new /topics pages are entirely automated, and pull together content from across their online offerings - iPlayer, the News site, weather, /programmes - into a nicely presented 'everything we know about X' page. A modest [...] read on »

On the political parties’ sites…

Looking at the political parties' websites, I've found a few surprising features - and not necessarily pleasant surprises. SNP and DUP people, I'm looking at you here. read on »

The best we can do?

Nominations have closed for this, the tenth year of the New Statesman new media awards. So the winners of the five trophies are (theoretically) listed somewhere on this page. You might find a few gems you didn't previously know about, but overall, I instinctively find the list a bit depressing. Most nominees have only received a [...] read on »

Meet the mainstream

Just to draw your attention to the latest website traffic numbers published by Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale. Now I've no desire to stir up previous arguments about statistical validity, certainly not here. But I do note Guido 's observation that his blog is now more popular than ITN, and Iain Dale attracts more traffic [...] read on »

BBC’s lessons for management blogs

The BBC's Jem Stone adds an interesting perspective on the success (so far) of the BBC's management / editorial blogs, in a comment on ex-BBC man Alfred Hermida's blog. There are very valuable lessons here for many similar 'transparency through blogging' initiatives, not least in government and politics: We’ve found that [engagement with readers' feedback] is [...] read on »