Puffbox

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

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    'Linking here' lists with Google feed API

    Time for some tech talk. A few weeks back, I wrote about Google’s new AJAX Feed API. Having played with it last week on behalf of a client, and having liked what I saw, I decided to implement it myself.

    If you’re reading this on the puffbox.com website itself, you might see a list in the sidebar headed ‘Who’s linking here?’. (If not, see here for an example.) It’s something I introduced a while back, powered by feeds from Google’s Blogsearch engine, and processed using the excellent SimplePie. But I’ve now switched over to doing it client-side, through the Google API.

    Once the blog post finishes loading, the Javascript calls in the RSS feed (actually, it’s Atom format) from Google. If it finds any blogs linking to that specific post, it writes a title into one previously empty DIV, and a disclaimer into another. In between, it generates up to 10 <LI> list items, each active as a link to the linking blog.

    If you want to see how it’s done, and copy the idea for yourself, a quick glance at the page’s source code will reveal how straightforward it was. (You’ll need your own API key, obviously.)

    Why go client-side? It’s less effort for the server to process; and it doesn’t build up a mass of cached feeds. It should also be marginally more secure on paper, which is important to some clients. And whilst the function is dependent on Javascript being available, it’s dead easy to offer a ‘noscript’ alternative – a link to a pre-formatted Google search query. It’s nowhere near as slick, but it ensures the information is still available to those without Javascript, so it passes accessibility requirements (W3C guidelines, checkpoints 6.3 and 11.4).

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    Another Downing St travel-blog

    Gordon Brown’s off to Japan for at the weekend, to hang out with the other G8 heads of government. So it’s time to crank out another Puffbox production for 10 Downing Street: the now-familiar mash-up of a travel-blog, Twitter stream and Flickr photo set.

    As with previous trips to the US and Brussels, it’s based primarily around WordPress, with data pulled in from the third-party services via RSS. Once again I’m using SimplePie to handle the RSS processing; although if I’d had more time this week, I’d probably have tried out Google’s new AJAX Feed API, to do it all on the client-side. I’ve done some preliminary trials with the service, and it seems very useful indeed.

    This will probably be the last such travel-blog to be done in this form, for reasons which will very soon become apparent. But these set-piece microsites have served their purpose – providing an excellent excuse to expose the Number10 team to WordPress, and the possibilities of lightweight content management.

    Update – the site got a nice mention in Monday’s Washington Post. ‘British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is stealing the G-8 show online. No. 10 Downing Street is blogging the summit in Toyako, throwing up an integrated social media site to follow “our man in Japan,” with Twitter and Flickr feeds to boot. Downingstreet, “the official twitter channel for the Prime Minister’s Office based at 10 Downing Street,” has more than 3,000 followers, and is part of the prime minister’s ongoing Web-savvy operation.’ Best press No10 has had in ages… ๐Ÿ™‚

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    Here are your winners

    It took a couple of days, but the list of winners from this week’s New Statesman awards has finally emerged. As predicted, MySociety didn’t go home empty-handed, with recognition for their FOI site, What Do They Know? And it’s good to see Patient Opinion getting recognition in the Community Activism category – their approach to patient feedback, and how it can help improve NHS services, is not going unnoticed.

    But it’s a shock to see the BBC taking home the Democracy In Action trophy for a campaign around Radio 4’s You and Yours, which (frankly) really isn’t that great, and doesn’t demonstrate any obvious connection with democracy. Quite simply, that award should have gone to Unlock Democracy for their magnificent Vote Match site, based round the London mayoral election. You was robbed, guys.

    Next up in awards season are the UK Catalyst Awards, which have now posted their shortlist. There’s an immediately obvious resemblance in the lists of nominees, but a few you probably won’t have seen before, which are worth a look at least.

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    DWP's 'what's new' policy

    It’s coming to something when the editorial policy of a single page on a government department’s website is the subject of a parliamentary question.

    Naturally, the Tories’ shadow secretary of state for Work & Pensions has a particularly keen interest in new additions to the DWP site’s What’s New page. The top of said page says it ‘lists all the latest additions to the site.’

    Except that’s not quite the case, as the answer to Grayling’s PQ reveals: ‘The Department does not include every new addition to the website as this would make the “What’s new” section too long and unusable.’ So it’s not all the latest additions, then.

    It’s a perfectly good idea to apply some kind of editorial criteria to what does or doesn’t get included on the list. But don’t then say ‘all’ at the top of the page. Call it a ‘highlights’ list or something.

    But in fact, is there an audience for a page – or more likely, a feed – of all new content? In the last few days, marketing guru Seth Godin referenced a Robert Scoble point about the pointlessness of popularity, noting: “how many” is not nearly as valuable as “who”.

    So sure, only a total pensions geek might be interested in knowing everything added to your site. But if you can find a way to automate it, isn’t that pensions geek precisely who you should be talking to? Or indeed, concentrating on?

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    Mash! Mash! Mash!

    The latest move from Tom Watson’s Power Of Information Taskforce, effectively a big BBC Backstage-style government mashup competition, is a master stroke.

    The Power of Information Taskforce want to hear your ideas on how to reuse, represent, mashup or combine the information the government holds to make it useful. … We will take the best ideas from the community commenting on the website and put them to a judging panel selected by the Taskforce. … We are offering up to ยฃ20,000 to take your ideas forward with a development team. … winners by the end of the second week in October.’

    Having worked with several of the data suppliers listed, I’m delighted they managed to get agreement to expose their data – although I guess the backing of a Minister who actually understands it all can’t have done any harm. It’s especially inspiring to see the Office for National Statistics joining the effort, with the release of an API for its disappointing Neighbourhood Statistics. Here’s hoping the Community can do a better job on interface design and results presentation.

    The site has been built in Typepad – so it’s a very high-profile example of a ‘blog which isn’t a blog’. We like that. Users’ ideas are submitted via an entry form (hosted on a hastily-registered third-party domain), and if accepted, appear as blog posts with comments enabled. A great way to manage the discussion.

    Plus, although there’s little reflection on it, the title of the initiative – Show Us A Better Way – implies an acceptance that government doesn’t know best. Having dealt with enough data managers and statisticians in my time, I can tell you, that would be a huge step forward.

    Tom Loosemore‘s fingerprints are all over this. Great work, Tom.

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    Lammy's lessons from Obama

    Labour MP David Lammy’s speech to the Fabian Society on Monday wasn’t the first to say ‘we need to learn lessons from the Obama campaign’, and it won’t be the last. But it’s a well-constructued speech, and well worth a read.

    He notes the eventual success of two ‘outsider’ candidates, prepared to take risks – on policy, on debate, and in campaigning. And there’s some interesting reflection on the online element:

    It has put together a web strategy premised on connecting activists and supporters to one another, not just pushing out tightly controlled messages from campaign HQ. Suddenly in the US the web is being used to connect people with politics again โ€“ at a time when people are using it to circumvent politics in the UK. And the huge lesson for us is that the technology is neither particularly complicated, nor especially expensive or labour-intensive to run.

    Timely remarks, of course, given the supposedly perilous state of Labour finances. But he’s absolutely right: the tools are cheap, often free, and easy. It’s not whether you can do it, it’s what you do with it. It’s also quite interesting to see him talking in terms of a ‘fightback’. It’s often said that campaigning is easier when you’re in opposition: by pre-emptively accepting defeat, could that kickstart Labour’s online efforts?

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    Guido-Tom Watson consensus on gov jobs?

    One senses there’s not a lot of love between Guido Fawkes and Tom Watson. So it’s all the more remarkable that, within a few days, they’ve effectively reached an identical conclusion on the need for a better approach to public sector job advertising.

    A week ago, Tom wrote a blog post noting the lack of a consistent approach on publishing job vacancies. I was one of several people to respond by noting that (in theory at least) there is actually a central website for all job vacancies already. Mind you, if only us insiders know, then it may as well not exist. Questions like this don’t get asked without a reason, so hopefully it’s the start of something significant.

    Now this morning, Guido Fawkes has published details of his plan to bankrupt the Guardian, part of which is this:

    One of the first thing the Tories should do in power is set up www.jobs.gov.uk. All available public sector positions would be listed there free of charge, this would save hundreds of millions in advertising costs for the taxpayer and deprive the Guardian of a critical revenue stream.

    Aw, isn’t it sweet? Next thing you know, they’ll be playing football between the trenches. ๐Ÿ™‚

    The central website has been around since 2003 (at least), and in 2004 I was talking to them about the idea of ‘saved searches’ as RSS feeds. Departments could enter their results into the central database, then power a ‘current vacancies’ list on their own corporate website using the RSS feed. At the time, I only knew of one website offering such a service (Wired): it would have been cutting-edge. Now it’s a feature of many websites – TheyWorkForYou, BBC – and the RSS-processing part is almost embarrassingly easy. That’s before we get on to things like plotting vacancies on Google Maps…

    Perhaps it’s an idea whose time has finally come. With the existing site basically unchanged in 5 years, it’s easy to justify a refresh. There are plenty of recruitment sites out there, from which to draw inspiration. There will be benefits in terms of customer service, staff efficiency, and defining best practice. We need concrete examples to show Whitehall that yes, it can be done.

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    Hansard back to 1880s

    One of those ‘hidden gem’ websites: Hansard 1804-2004, which currently features the text of parliamentary business back to 1885. It’s not absolutely comprehensive, and the scanning isn’t error-free, but it’s amazing to have all this data at your fingertips. It’s very interesting to note how the site’s been set up:

    SkunkThis site has been sponsored by Parliament in order to test and demonstrate user interfaces for historic data, certain functionality and for other exploratory work. … The time and resources used to generate this site have been and continue to be paid for by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. This site is not part of the official Parliament site, nor is it intended to become part of the official site in its current form. This site is supported only on a best efforts basis.

    I couldn’t resist searching for ‘internet’, to see when the term made its debut on the floor of the Commons. The site quotes a 1919 reference to ‘mortgage internet’, but I guess that’s a scanning oopsie; there are several 1960s references which are also clearly dated wrongly. But the first proper reference seems to have been from Emma Nicholson (now an MEP), in February 1990, talking about computer hacking. You can tell it’s old-school, because it’s spelt INTERNET out in capitals. There’s also a 1974 reference to the theft of ‘a Ford Transit van loaded with Internet radio sets valued at ยฃ2,750’ – but it can’t be, can it?

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    Live video for Darzi's NHS Review

    This afternoon sees the effective conclusion of Lord Darzi’s year-long (ish) review of the National Health Service, under the Our NHS Our Future banner. I did a quick reskin of the associated website back in May, and we’ve gone a few steps further to mark the big finale.

    Inspired by comments from Tom Steinberg back in January, regarding the HMRC website on tax deadline day, I decided to rework the homepage to raise all the Review documentation right to the very top. A big friendly header immediately grabs your attention, and says yes, you’re in the right place. There’s a live video feed from the launch conference, embedded directly in the homepage using Flash. We’re hoping to keep the as-live video available ‘on demand’ for a few days, whilst we cut an edited highlights package. Previous homepage content isn’t lost, but gets bumped well down the page.

    The live video feed came together remarkably quickly – the idea was first floated on Thursday afternoon, and here I am on Monday, watching it on my desktop. See? It can be done.

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    Puffbox sponsors WordCamp UK

    I’m proud to announce that Puffbox is sponsoring the inaugural WordCamp UK, bringing about 100 devotees of WordPress to Birmingham for a weekend of code and conversation.

    The event takes place on 19-20 July, at the (apparently very classy) Studio conference centre in the centre of Britain’s nominally second city. The programme covers everything from a beginner’s guide to a hardcore code surgery. We’ll also be joined by Sam from Automattic Inc, the company behind WordPress.

    I’m down to lead a session called ‘WordPress is not a blog’, where I’ll talk about my work, and how I’ve managed to take WordPress right to the heart of government. It’ll be one of the less technical sessions of the weekend; I’ll be looking at how the bloggers’ approach can translate to the stuffiest corporate environments, and how I think we’re entering a post-blogging world. None of which will come as the slightest surprise to regular readers.

    It’s maybe unusual for a one-man company to sponsor a fairly large conference like this. But virtually everything Puffbox does at the moment is WordPress-based. It’s the content management platform I always dreamed of… and it’s free of charge. It’s time I gave something back.

    Besides, it’s in Puffbox’s interests for this gathering to take place. It’ll be an enjoyable weekend of unashamed geekery. I’m hoping to meet some interesting people, learn some interesting things, and help create a support infrastructure for WordPress in the UK. A T-shirt with a big W on the front would be a bonus.

    I’m also really excited at being back in central Birmingham for the first time since I graduated 14 years ago. Gulp.