Puffbox.com

Adventures in government, politics and open source. Mostly WordPress-related.

Simon Dickson, principal consultant at Puffbox, has been blogging about e-government, online politics, and WordPress since 2005. Some important people read it.

Archive for September 2010

New Open Government licence

30 September 2010 5 , ,

youarefreeWay back in January, I noted OPSI's commitment to replace the Click-Use Licence with something closely resembling the Creative Commons 'by' licence. Following its early introduction on data.gov.uk, it's now been formally launched  - and already, departments are altering their terms & conditions to reflect it. Officially named the Open Government Licence, it states in [...] read on »

WordPress as bug-tracker

29 September 2010 1

gallery1We're heading into the final furlong on one of the biggest projects Puffbox has ever been involved in. All being well, we should be able to talk about it in a week or so. Trust me, it's significant. The stakes with this job are higher than most; so I wanted to take testing and bug-tracking [...] read on »

Stott announces retirement

22 September 2010 0

Appropriately enough, Andrew Stott has announced his retirement from the position of Director of Digital Engagement via Twitter. He'll be leaving in December, to be replaced* by Katie Davis - who recently returned to the Cabinet Office following a three-year stint as Executive Director of Strategy for the Identity and Passport Service. In her previous [...] read on »

DFID’s blogs feed new Guardian site

14 September 2010 0 , ,

Guardian global development siteWith the kind assistance of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (I think he used to be big in computing or something), the Guardian has launched a new (sub)site dedicated to global development. And quite remarkably, it features regular contributions by UK civil servants. In fact, it's feeding (literally) off the DFID Bloggers site, built [...] read on »

RSS is dead, long live RSS

13 September 2010 4

As a long-time user of Bloglines, it's been pretty clear that the veteran online RSS reader was suffering from a lack of love lately. More often than not, when you hit the URL, you got an error message: two or three refreshes each time wasn't unusual. The 'beta' version of its next incarnation showed no [...] read on »

A ‘WordCamp’ for Whitehall

6 September 2010 5 ,

grey-lI'm putting together an all-day seminar for civil servants already working with WordPress, or seriously considering it. But I'm afraid if you weren't quick to register, it's too late: all the places went within 25 hours. read on »

Back in business

3 September 2010 1

Thanks, everyone for going easy during the month of August. I haven't said much about why I took the time off, and don't propose to: trying to maintain a distance between my private and professional lives. But one word of advice: don't, under any circumstances, ask me if I enjoyed my 'holiday'. Totally the wrong [...] read on »

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