Archive for May 2011
Microsoft thanks WordPress for dropping IE6 support
As I noted here a while back, there could be bad news on the way for government people running WordPress sites: the next release of WordPress, version 3.2, will discontinue support for Internet Explorer version 6. Here's how the new WP dashboard will look, courtesy of Automattic's Jane Wells: Ouch. Now, Microsoft has published its [...] read on »
WordCamp UK tickets now on sale
Tickets have just gone on sale for this summer's UK WordCamp, to be hosted by the University of Portsmouth in mid-July. If you fancy coming along for two jam-packed days of chat, code and creativity, and you fancy saving yourself a few quid, head over to the site and buy your tickets before 3 June [...] read on »
Guardian man is government’s new digital director
It's now been confirmed that the new (£142k pa) Executive Director Digital, filling the post currently held by Chris Chant on an interim basis, and advertised back in April, is to be Mike Bracken - digital director at The Guardian until last week. read on »
BIS gets a blog
A fairly soft launch today for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills's new corporate blog: built by Steph Gray (obviously), using WordPress (naturally). Taking a quick whizz round the Cabinet table, the departments now running formal, properly-designated corporate 'blogs' are: FCO (using Roller) MOD (Typepad) BIS (WordPress) DECC (WordPress) Health (WordPress) DFID (WordPress) and [...] read on »
Top Of The Blogs (says Wikio)
I discovered something rather disturbing in my website referrer data this afternoon; according to the otherwise reputable Wikio, puffbox.com is now ranked in the top 50 of UK technology blogs, and has been since last November. In fact, it's been as high as no31 in previous months. This either means the site is much more [...] read on »
Skunkworks® building new e-petitions system
Well done to Richard Parsons at edemocracyblog for extracting (via FOI) the proposal submitted by Directgov to the newly created government 'skunkworks' for building the new government e-petitions system. The project's objective is 'to allow UK citizens to submit petitions to Government, and particularly to be able to petition for parliamentary debates on any subject [...] read on »
Beth Noveck ‘recruited’ to lead on open source policy making
From George Osborne's speech this morning at the Google Zeitgeist conference: We want to remain at the cutting edge of open source policy making. So I’m pleased to be able to tell you that we have just recruited Beth Noveck, who used to work at the White House running President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, to [...] read on »
Alphagov ‘real deal’ (with added local) to go live ‘in about a year’
Some interesting comments from (interim) government digital chief Chris Chant, speaking at the SOCITM spring conference this morning: (Alphagov) is not perfect and it could be significantly different when we go live with the real deal, which will probably be in about a year... We want to make clear the infrastructure we put in place [...] read on »
Ten things Alphagov gets right
Late on Tuesday night, the password protection was lifted from http://alpha.gov.uk - and the most eagerly anticipated web project ever produced by government, arguably the only eagerly anticipated web project ever produced by government, was finally revealed. And it's... well, it's quite a shock to the system. Or rather, 'The System'? It's important to recognise [...] read on »
New look for WordPress admin side: bad news for IE6 users
WordPress takes the 'open' in 'open source' very seriously: discussion of functionality and design changes happens in public, and it's always possible to download and play around with the next version in its current form. Development work on version 3.2 (set for release at the end of June) is approaching completion, with a couple of [...] read on »