Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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  • 11 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    Twitter by SMS? Beware international charges

    A word of warning for any Twitter users in the UK who want to update their status via SMS text message. I set this up for the first time last month, and just received my first mobile phone bill since doing so. It came as a bit of a surprise to see that, on my network (3) at least, the messages are not included within my contract allowance – and were charged at 25p each!

    The itemised bill shows the number (07624801423) as belonging to Manx Telecom, and hence it would seem, is counted as an ‘international’ message. According to some reports I’ve seen, other networks may be similarly affected. There is a mention of SMS charges on the Twitter site, but it certainly doesn’t indicate clearly that UK users – who, crucially, will not be using an international dialling code – are charged at international rates.

  • 10 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    Puffbox's NewsMap goes global

    A public thank-you to the numerous people who have been in touch regarding possible download or purchase of the Puffbox NewsMap app. Jeff Jarvis mentioned it on his blog on Friday, and since then we’ve had a steady flow of people looking at our ‘about’ page, and feeling like they’d like to know more. It’s genuinely flattering (as is being mentioned in the same post as Mr Holovaty).

    The app was never really intended to ‘go global’, but it’s becoming obvious that there’s a demand for something like this. We’ll need a little while to fine-tune what we’ve done, and make it easier to install and set up on systems we aren’t already familiar with. Plus we’ll need to think about nasty things like licensing and commercials. We’re also experimenting with a potential new ‘polygon creator’ feature… but we’re not necessarily sure it’s a useful addition. (Would you want it? If so, let me know.)

    By the way, if you’re interested in the app and you haven’t seen the explanatory page on Puffbox.com, have a look. It’s got a new visual showing the page in Puffbox branding, and showing the ‘sidebar’ functionality which Sky (so far) haven’t implemented.

  • 7 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    At last! a proper blog for BBC's Betsan

    It took a few weeks, but Wales has its minority administration, the Assembly has its first Minister… and the BBC’s Welsh political correspondent, Betsan Powys is finally granted permission to have a proper blog, having plugged away at the Election 07 blog for much longer than she must have expected.

    A word too, incidentally, for Vaughan Roderick – who is bashing out several politically themed postings per day, and in Cymraeg too. Vaughan, in case you didn’t know, is Golygydd Materion Cymreig. So that completes the set of BBC regional political editors. Who’s next?

  • 7 Jun 2007
    e-government

    Mayo/Steinberg's Power Of Information review

    Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo’s report on The Power Of Information was finally published this morning (press release, PDF) – and it’s proposing a major shift in the mindset of the typical Whitehall ministry, and the typical civil servant:

    The report recommends a strategy in which government welcomes and engages with users and operators of user-generated sites in pursuit of common social and economic objectives; (and) supplies innovators that are re-using government-held information with the information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens.

    Although you always knew what it was likely to come up with, a few specific things jump out from its fifteen recommendations. Further rationalisation of government websites, based this time on what’s available in the private sector, not just the public sector. The formation of a ‘data mashing laboratory’. A ‘suggestion box’ for information people to request the information they actually want. Effectively allowing civil servants to participate in online forums in an official capacity. But potentially most radical of all:

    ‘an independent review of the costs and benefits of the current trading fund charging model for the re-use of public sector information, including the role of the five largest trading funds (Ordnance Survey, the Met Office, the UK Hydrographic Office, HM Land Registry and Companies House), the balance of direct versus downstream economic revenue, and the impact on the quality of public sector information.’

    Whilst I haven’t had time to digest it fully, the report seems more of a philosophical case for better information exchange, than a list of specific actions. It lists things that people need to think about, and proposes timetables and frameworks for doing that thinking. But there aren’t many direct statements that ‘government should do X’.

    The key statements, in my first reading, are those right at the end, in paras 141-143. There is a need for government to be more open. There will typically be short-term costs, but there will often be long-term benefits. And we’ll need an arse-kicker-in-chief to make the change happen. I couldn’t agree more.

    A couple of extra thoughts spring immediately to mind. There are several references early in the report to the power of postcodes, and I expected to see a conclusion endorsing them as a national information asset. The argument you always hear from geographers is that postcodes can’t be trusted 100%: in my view, they are now the de facto standard, so we’d better find a way to make them 100% trustworthy (and that may mean liberating them from Royal Mail ownership). There’s actually a wider point about geography to be made at some point, but not here.

    The other is the impact of web services, which only get a single passing mention (presumably to stop it becoming too techy). I met Tom a week or two back, and we talked about the example of diplomatic staff not being permitted to engage on travel website discussion forums. Tom correctly raised the matter of Foreign Office travel advice notices, which the FCO refuses to let other sites carry (under explicit threat of prosecution). I was probably the person who made that decision, back in 1995 – a very different context. We couldn’t let other websites ‘copy and paste’ the text off our website, in case they missed an important update. There’s no reason now why the text couldn’t be pulled into travel agents’ sites via web service, on the fly, guaranteeing its up-to-date-ness.

    Web services didn’t exist then, but they do now. And I increasingly believe that web services are the key to all this. I can almost imagine a policy which says ‘scrap government websites, just build web services.’

  • 7 Jun 2007
    e-government

    What people want from Directgov

    A new Directgov survey reveals what people say they want from online government services. A few of them seem sensible, and more importantly, do-able: it would be a huge boost for Directgov’s credibility if they were to make substantial progress on some of these, in double-quick time. (Text-messaging parents if their kids don’t show up at school ought to be a doddle, surely?)

    Others, frankly, are sci-fi… making me wonder whether this was a ‘serious’ survey, or a cheap ‘get some news coverage’ PR stunt. But most disturbing of all, some are already available online – I’m specifically thinking of the #1 desire for motorists ‘in the future’, the ability to renew car tax online. Here’s a hint: try searching Google for ‘renew car tax online’. There’s even a ‘sponsored link’ at the top of the page, telling you where to go. And guess which bright orange government website it points you to.

  • 6 Jun 2007
    e-government

    Cameron backs Parliamentary petition proposal

    Well, this would be interesting. One of the proposals in the Ken Clarke’s Conservative Democracy Task Force report (PDF) is to guarantee a debate in Parliament (well, Westminster Hall anyway) if enough people sign a petition. It’s a proposal which has won immediate favour with David Cameron:

    Promising to examine the proposals in detail before deciding which will be included in the Party’s election manifesto, he commented: “I would like to see a system whereby, if enough people sign an online petition in favour of a particular motion, then a debate is held in Parliament, followed by a vote – so that the public know what their elected representatives actually think about the issues that matter to them.”

    There’s also a reference to ‘full-blooded entry into on-line activities’, in the context of radio and TV coverage. Perhaps with that in mind, half an hour’s video from the report’s launch is available on YouTube.

    I don’t entirely buy into their notion of ”interspersing clips from speeches in the Chamber or from Select Committees with round-table discussion and a suitably monitored chatroom’; for me, a better ‘on demand’ video function for Select Committees would be a great start. So much great stuff from great people, generally much more enlightening than any confrontational Commons debate, and we never even know it’s there, never mind getting round to hunting it down.

  • 6 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    BBC adds pseudo-trackbacks to blog template

    There’s a new feature in the sidebar of Nick Robinson’s BBC blog: a list of ‘Blogs linking here’. It’s quite a nice feature, with a couple of extracts from particular blogs (selected and extracted manually), plus links off to Google Search and Technorati searches.

    I’ve done something similar with a couple of projects recently (see here), using this as a proxy to Trackbacks (which are questionable at the best of times). Comment Is Free does likewise, with links to preconstructed Technorati searches for every article it posts… just click the green Technorati logo. It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to pull in the Technorati search results via RSS, and display them automatically on the page… but that becomes a huge risk.

  • 6 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    Telegraph launches RSS-reading site for novices

    I confess, I wasn’t expecting this: the Daily Telegraph has just unveiled its own RSS-reading website, an extension of the existing My Telegraph blogging platform. Shane writes:

    First of all we’ve chosen the feeds for our readers. Purists will argue that this goes against the spirit of RSS, which is about choosing whatever you want. However, while the first half of My Telegraph, community, was about bringing blogs to people who had never tried them before, so the second half, personalisation, is about bringing news feeds to novices.

    By limiting choice, we’ve taken most of the hard work out of setting up an RSS reader. My Telegraph members can choose from more than 100 feeds in eight categories and the site will automatically remember their preferences for the next visit.

    The next release of the site will add a customisable category, with fifteen empty slots for any feed you like. We’re holding it back to let people get used to the feed reading concept first.

    Not sure if/when I’ll get time to play with this – besides, I’m definitely a purist on this one. But I tell you what: selling solutions based on RSS to large corporate clients just got an awful lot easier.

  • 5 Jun 2007
    Uncategorised

    Puffbox web app nails murder suspect

    Policemanโ€™s helmet with new Puffbox-inspired badgeLess than a week ago, Puffbox handed over our map-mashup tool for journalists to Sky News. Sky went live with it on Monday, as part of their Crime Uncovered week. Today:

    One of Britain’s most wanted men has been arrested after being featured on the Sky News website. Police had been hunting the 62-year-old man in connection with the murder of a woman in Cannock, Staffordshire. Detectives said that the arrest came from people looking at our interactive map, which forms part of our Crime Uncovered section.

    You don’t mess with Puffbox. Guess we’d better add ‘crimebusting’ to our list of consultancy services. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  • 5 Jun 2007
    e-government

    Miliband guest-blogs at the Telegraph

    David Miliband continues to extend his influence across the web: during his trip to the US this week, he’s going to be writing a ‘daily log’ for the new ‘Earth’ section of the Telegraph website. Not the first time he’s done this: last year he fed content (via audio) from a UN conference in Kenya. Definitely an interesting approach: making use of existing platforms with larger audiences, rather than attempting to build up his own. Precisely the matter being reviewed by Tom Steinberg for the Cabinet Office, with publication (supposedly) imminent.

    The Telegraph’s Earth section itself is really well put together… plenty of substantial content, although it does bear the mark of the Business Development Manager. There’s heavy promotion for its sponsors, without whom I wonder if this would have existed. And they really need to check its cross-browser compatibility: the ‘water efficiency calculator’ on the section home page is yer basic Flash, but it no like Firefox.

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