puffbox

Signs of life on the left

There are growing signs of life on the left of the blogosphere. An article a few days ago in the Independent (now displayed inexplicably as a photo gallery?) describes the 'dramatic impact' of Sunny Hundal's Liberal Conspiracy site, launched late last year. (See, I told you.) We've had the sale of LabourHome to the New [...] read on »

Two new LibDem websites (Clegg on WordPress!)

What are political party websites actually for? We'll see which way the wind is blowing over the next couple of weeks: the LibDems unveiled a new party site earlier this week, ahead of their conference in Bournemouth; and they've just opened they're on the verge of launching a new site for leader Nick Clegg too. [...] read on »

COI’s contradictory rules on browsers

Timely, given the release of Google Chrome, and the reopening of the Browser Wars: COI has just issued a consultation document, five months in gestation, on browser standards for public sector websites. Its 15 pages can essentially be boiled down to the following, based on an intriguing 2% rule of thumb: 17. Browsers used by 2% [...] read on »

Speaking at ScotWeb2

Alex Stobart at the Scottish Executive Government is putting together 'an informal, bar camp style event allowing participants to listen, network and share experiences with those who have designed and are managing Web 2 services': and he's seen fit to invite me up to speak at it. ScotWeb2 is a one-day event being held at Edinburgh [...] read on »

Full launch for Met crime maps

Wednesday saw the formal launch of London's crime maps, which first appeared in beta only a couple of weeks back. Don't call it '1.0' though: the source code declares it's actually 'beta 1.02'. As before, it shows areas colour-coded for the rates of 'burglary, robbery and vehicle crime', based on comparisons with 'the average'. Yes, that's [...] read on »

The Ministerial blog you don’t know about

I'd like to wish a happy first birthday to Margaret Hodge's DCMS Diary. I thought I knew of every Ministerial blog out there, but a client mentioned this one to me earlier this week, and I was amazed to see it had been going so long. (Hodge only arrived at DCMS at the end of [...] read on »

No extensions, no Chrome

It was the usual mix of excitement and fear as I downloaded Google Chrome last night: the former to see what Google would do when it had total control of the browsing experience, the latter in case it rendered any of my designs horribly. To be honest, there wasn't much to report on either front. Let's [...] read on »

Selling free software

Presenting, in the blue corner, Google's announcement of its forthcoming Chrome browser - by the medium of the comic book. And in the red corner, Mr Stephen Fry's armchair chat on the subject of GNU, the movement to create a completely free operating system. Both are trying to do something quite peculiar: they want to give [...] read on »

Should HMG support IE6?

I'm on the brink of starting another coding project - a blogging initiative on behalf of another central government department, which I won't name just yet. And I know how it's going to turn out, because it always turns out the same. Many a true word, as they say, spoken in jest. But the reality is, [...] read on »

MySociety completes crowd-sourced video markup

Congratulations (hardly for the first time, of course) to the MySociety crew: in less than two months, it looks like their community of volunteers has completed the work to timestamp the 42,019 video clips supplied to They Work For You by BBC Parliament, covering the entire 2007-8 parliamentary session. Hero status is rightly accorded to [...] read on »