puffbox

‘It’s getting easier, isn’t it?’

There was a sudden chill in the air when I uttered those words in a client meeting this week. We’re planning another high-profile WordPress-based website, with ‘mashing’ of RSS feeds from third-party sites like YouTube and Flickr a prominent ingredient. In practice, that means the site’s photo galleries and video streaming have been ‘contracted out’ to [...] read on »

Blears backs wider use of online petitions

Writing on Comment Is Free, Hazel Blears reckons Labour’s problem is that it has become distanced from its voters. ‘The problem is the powerlessness within the system for the majority of people,’ she writes. ‘People feel that their views disappear into a black hole, without the slightest echo.’ Hazel’s solution is ‘a healthy dose of direct [...] read on »

‘Our NHS’ reskinned

One of my favourite projects over the last year has been Our NHS, Our Future - the website for Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS. With the review entering its final stages, we’ve taken the opportunity to give the site a lick of paint, and reworked the homepage. Reflecting the local focus of the review, the [...] read on »

MPs condemn lack of usage data

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published its latest report on ‘Government on the Internet: Progress in delivering information and services online‘ a few weeks back. Much of it was pretty predictable: we know we don’t have an exact figure for the number of websites, we know we aren’t always brilliant on accessibility, and [...] read on »

Irrational(ised) Business Link

I’ve just received an invite to attend a Free Business Advice Open Day, hosted by HMRC with the support and active participation of Business Link. Their glossy leaflet includes a URL on the front cover: www.businessadviceday.gov.uk. You can probably guess where I’m going with this. In November 2005, the Transformational Government strategy declared: For customer information, self-service [...] read on »

Puffbox.com technical problems

Apologies to anyone trying to access this website over the course of Thursday. Due to a slight misunderstanding with my ISP, the site was taken (briefly) offline. Thankfully, it’s all steadily resolving itself. But if you were trying to get a comment through to the website, or trying to email me since Wednesday evening, please [...] read on »

UK media endorses ‘presidential’ politics

There’s a very interesting revelation in Sky election expert Michael Thrasher’s analysis of last week’s election results. He notes the fact that Sky’s calculation of gains and losses was very different to the BBC’s: a question of how they both chose to handle boundary and allegiance changes. (An ugly consequence of the UK’s ever-changing geography, [...] read on »

More Gov live blogging

There’s no doubt what the hot trend in blogging is: real time, thanks largely (or perhaps solely?) to the superb CoverItLive application/service. And following the apparent success of the Progressive Governance Summit last month, we’ll be seeing another e-government example today. More than 80 MDs, CEOs, chairmen and Presidents from big-name global companies, plus a few [...] read on »

Long Term Support for WordPress

Oops. I wrote this piece yesterday, wishing that WordPress offered Long Term Support for occasional releases, along the lines of Ubuntu. I then get a comment from Mr WordPress himself, Matt Mullenweg, telling me that there actually is a long-term supported release. Here it is for the record… The official policy from Team WordPress about software [...] read on »

Liveblogging the election results

Interesting to note some of the attempts to ‘live blog’ the election results last week - with Guido Fawkes, Slugger O’Toole and ConservativeHome all using CoverItLive’s fantastic liveblogging ‘app’. Needless to say, there’s significant variation in the tone of each site’s usage. Of course, it’s ironic to note both having a pop at Gordon Brown’s leadership [...] read on »