2009 – Page 2 – Puffbox

24 Nov 2009

e-government

foreignoffice, jimmyleach

Jimmy Leach returns to Whitehall

News from the Foreign Office: they’ve selected Jimmy Leach, former head of digital at 10 Downing Street, currently ‘Editorial Director for Digital’ at The Independent, for the recently-advertised position of FCO’s Head of Digital Engagement. He’s due to start in February.

It’ll be great to have him back: as I’ve written previously, I think he effectively kickstarted the wave of innovation around third-party services like YouTube, not to mention the e-petitions site, and did so without ever actually relaunching the No10 website.
24 Nov 2009

politics

bnp, buddypress, social, socialnetworking, wordpress

BNP's BuddyPress-based social network

The Conservatives won plaudits for the MyConservatives social networking platform they launched at their annual conference; and now the LibDems are slowly getting their own Act together (ho ho). Labourspace remains a bit of a joke. But one UK political party has been quietly developing its own social network for a few months now, with a membership now well in excess of 4,000 – and impressive open-source technology to boot. It’s the BNP.

There was some amusement across the political divide a couple of weeks back, when the BNP unveiled a new website design bearing more than a mild resemblance to BarackObama.com. But I haven’t seen any reference to the addition (or perhaps more accurately, the increased visibility) of its social networking functions based on BuddyPress, the free WordPress add-on often described as ‘Facebook in a box’.

To date, the site has attracted 4370 members – not necessarily party members, as it’s an option (defaulting to ‘no’) on the sign-up form. And as its RSS feed shows, it’s a fairly busy site. Once you’ve joined, you can sign up to any of the 225 groups which attract your interest, many of which have memberships in the hundreds. You can fill out your member profile, as site admin Simon Bennett has done. And just like Facebook, you can look at his friends, the groups he’s joined, and what else he’s been up to on the site. (There’s also a live chat widget on the profile page, if you want to watch site members conversing in real time.)

Looking beyond their politics, if you can, it’s impressive stuff. The BNP’s web activity has long been cited as several times more popular than the other mainstream parties; and if you put any faith in Alexa rankings, it still leaves them for dead. Indeed, Alexa currently ranks the BNP’s site as the 753rd most popular in the UK. There are many possible reasons for this – the BNP’s lack of mainstream media exposure, the inclusion of those social functions within the main party site, possibly also deliberate efforts by party members to boost their rankings. But that doesn’t take away from the achievement.

The fact is, they’re building and nurturing an active online following, which will inevitably help them mobilise – and raise money – come the election. If the mainstream parties could boast such statistics, we’d be talking about a new media revolution in politics.
23 Nov 2009

e-government

codeofeverand, games, transport

Government gets into games business

The Department for Transport launched an online multiplayer fantasy roleplaying game last week, with the apparent aim of teaching kids to look left and right before crossing the road. Or at least, having played Code of Everand for a little while today, that’s about the only road safety message I’ve been able to find in it.

Basically, it’s a familiar tale of wandering around, building up experience points and currency. Except that to get around the world, you need to cross over the ‘spirit channels’ – requiring you to look left and right, and deploy magical weaponry to defeat the scary monsters which zoom past you. Once you’ve zapped the monsters, you can only cross the road channel when you’ve looked left and right again.

The press release quotes evidence that ‘computer games can help children develop essential skills such as logical thinking, planning ahead and cooperation’. And according to road safety minister Paul Clark, ‘by communicating with children through a medium they already enjoy using we hope to improve their understanding of the importance of safe road behaviour.’

Now I accept, I’m not the target audience here. I don’t enjoy these kinds of games; and since the campaign seems to be aimed at 10-12 year olds, I’m a bit outside the target age range. So whilst it seems a bit tedious and mechanical to me, I’m sure there’s more to it if you’re into that sort of thing.

However… Edge Online reveals a few extra details which the press release doesn’t:

Code Of Everand is the result of over two years of work with the Department For Transport by [US-based] Area/Code principals and designers Frank Lantz and Kevin Slavin, not only because of its size and ambition, but also because of the complexities of developing it for a government body. The project, after all, has gone through several incarnations and has been on the brink of cancellation twice.

And Simon Williams of DfT’s media agency Carat admits:

Kevin and myself are pretty much the only constants on this project – I don’t think any of the original clients are left. It’s been difficult – and nearly cancelled twice – because of logistics, budgets and stuff. … I guess we don’t really know what to expect, and I suppose we’re not really sure how to measure it, so we’ve been doing a merry tour around the academic institutions in the country to find a consortium to evaluate it.

Inevitably, you’re left wondering how much it has all cost, and how they’re going to measure its success. Williams says ‘certainly less than they would spend on a normal decent sized TV campaign’, but there’s no figure quoted.

I imagine an opposition PQ is already in draft.
18 Nov 2009

e-government, technology

microsites, stephgray

Microsites make perfect

Steph Gray drew my attention to a piece highlighting the downside of microsites, and offered a nicely balanced view of the pros and cons. But whilst I admit to a commercial interest here, he missed one strong reason in favour of allowing at least the occasional microsite.

I know it flies in the face of web rationalisation; but the only way to get better at building websites is to build websites.

I’m unquestionably better at this job than I was when I started a couple of years ago. I learn something with every new project, and every fresh set of client requirements. I always consciously try to add something new and innovative – for me, or for government, or for WordPress – into every build. If it works, I’ll do it again next time; if not, I’ll certainly be wiser for trying.

If you adhere to the ‘only one website per government department’ rule, that would mean your team is only building one website every 3-5 years, or maybe even more. No opportunity to practice or experiment in between monster projects; and the experience of ‘last time’ will, in all likelihood, be irrelevant. Any mistakes you make, you’ll be stuck with for the v-e-r-y long term.
18 Nov 2009

technology

bbc, iplayer, video, virgin

BBC iPlayer back on Wii: a tipping point?

The BBC’s new iPlayer ‘app’ for the Wii is now available for download: and it has the potential to do amazing things to UK viewing habits.

Thus far, if you wanted to watch iPlayer via your Nintendo Wii (and your wireless broadband connection), there was a web-based interface, not dissimilar to iplayer/bigscreen – which was fine, but not without its issues. Like for example, if you wanted to watch full-screen – which, of course, you would – you had to do a manual zoom-in on the playback window, and even then, it wasn’t quite right. Then came the upgrade to the Wii’s web browser… and iPlayer broke, for some reason.

Instead, there’s now a free iPlayer ‘channel’ available for download from the console’s Wii Shop. The interface is much the same: which, to be honest, is a bit disappointing. I can appreciate the desire to maintain consistency across all broadcast platforms, but the Wii could surely do a lot more than others. But it works fine, so no real complaints.

The TV playback? Fantastic. Better image quality than before (I think): not as good as a Sky Digital signal, but certainly good enough. Seems more reliable playback too. And yes, hurrah, proper full-screen viewing.

Of course, the Wii version falls a bit behind the Virgin Media cable version, which already boasts HD-quality. But it’s worth noting how big a success iPlayer has been on cable; Virgin credited its arrival as being ‘a real tipping point in consumer understanding of on-demand’. I wonder if the same can happen with the Wii (and other games consoles) as platforms for delivering online content?
18 Nov 2009

politics

libdems, myconservatives, ning

LibDems' Ning-based social network

When the new LibDems website was launched a week or so ago, there was also mention of ‘a new social action network site called ACT’, which promised the ability to ‘join groups, organise events, watch videos, talk politics and join in campaigns… to mobilize an online community that reaches beyond the boundaries of formal party membership’.

It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to find the site, at act.libdems.org.uk: and it turns out, it’s just a Ning site with paid-for options to use your own domain name, remove any mention of Ning, and hide third-party adverts.

Here’s the video intro to what it can do:

It’s certainly a cost-effective solution: those ‘pro’ options are costing them £33/month at a guess, and make for a pretty rich social network. Ning also implements the OpenSocial protocols, so in theory there are ways to access and play with the underlying data – although they don’t make it easy, at first glance. So although it’s the cheap option, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad one.

But they may hit problems due to the inability to really customise the platform. Where you’d love to offer dropdown lists, for example a list of Westminster constituencies for event locations, all you get is a free text field for location: and searching isn’t all that clever, so you’ll need a lot of discipline to ensure consistent tagging.

Of course, it looks like what it is: a generic Ning site with a few LibDem logos stuck on it. So in that sense, it doesn’t measure up to the Tories’ custom-built MyConservatives.com. But if the site connects people, and those people go out and do things, it will have served its purpose, for a tiny amount of money.
17 Nov 2009

company

lynnefeatherstone

Lynne Featherstone redesign pays off

My friend / colleague / client Mark Pack gave a presentation at last week’s Social Media 09 conference on ‘Liberal Democrats and social media’: in fact, it was a case study on the work we did to relaunch Lynne Featherstone’s website. Although they don’t make much sense in isolation (nor should they), here they are for the record:

(I wasn’t present to hear Iain Dale declare the site ‘one of the best political websites [he’d] ever seen’, but I am assured it’s an accurate transcription – from his opening remarks at a LibDem Conference fringe meeting, I’m told.)

Mark’s analysis yields one interesting result for anyone in political social media: despite being exactly the same mechanism, and often identical content, there’s a marked preference for ‘blog’ content as opposed to the more conventional ‘news releases’. Mark has crunched the numbers, but actually, it’s obvious from even the briefest glance: the blog posts get comments, the news releases (almost) never do.

But here’s my favourite fact about the relaunch. One of Lynne’s core campaigning messages is how she stands up to the Labour-dominated Haringey council. And if you search Google for ‘haringey council’, Lynne’s automated ‘issue page’ (with its far-from-flattering meta description) is result no5 behind the council itself (twice), Directgov and Wikipedia. I’m quite pleased with that; they probably aren’t.
17 Nov 2009

e-government

maps, ordnancesurvey, postcodes

Ordnance Survey data 'will' be freed

It’s quite amusing to compare and contrast the announcements from DCLG and Ordnance Survey today, regarding boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information. DCLG’s press release proudly declares:

The Prime Minister and Communities Secretary John Denham will today announce that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from next year, as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve transparency. Speaking at a seminar on Smarter Government in Downing Street … the Prime Minister will set out how the Government and Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency, will open up its data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information. The Government will consult on proposals to make data from Ordnance Survey freely available so it can be used for digital innovation and to support democratic accountability.

See that? Lots of definite statements, of how they will do this, will do that. Well, hold your horses. Ordnance Survey’s rather brief press release is slightly more defensive, and markedly less excitable:

The Prime Minister has today announced that the public and others will have greater access to a range [of?] Ordnance Survey data from next year, as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve efficiency and transparency. The detail of this is still being worked through and a formal consultation period will begin in December to look at how these changes will be implemented.

So whilst DCLG see it as a chance to crowdsource some cool stuff, OS frame it purely in fairly boring accountant-bureaucrat terms. Hmm.

Of course it’s welcome news, but there’s a long, long way to go yet – and not much time to do it. With a general election on the horizon, boundaries absolutely must be freed – as quickly as possible, and in formats which will be most useful to the digital innovators. (Basically, that means dead easy integration with Google Maps.)

Oh, and let’s not get carried away about ‘postcode areas’. They aren’t Ordnance Survey’s to free, are they?
13 Nov 2009

politics

jedward, labourparty, xfactor

Labour's cheap X-Factor dig

If the many series of Have I Got News For You have taught us anything, it’s that if a joke is topical, it doesn’t actually have to be funny.

With that in mind, here’s Labour’s latest online campaigning masterstroke. A badly Photoshopped picture of the two senior Opposition politicians, mocked up to look like John and Edward off the X-Factor, slapped on a page on their website. No attempt to make a deeper political point; just a stupid joke. Childish, amateur, pathetic. But it made me smile. And now I’m writing about it here.

It’s worked.
11 Nov 2009

e-government, politics, technology

bis, generalelection, sitecore

Time marches on

It’s been formally announced that BIS (the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) is to move its corporate website over to Sitecore by March next year. Of course, it’ll be a shame to see them moving away from WordPress for the ‘shop window’: but I can say with some certainty that there will still be plenty of WordPress-based activity after the move. 😉

But that March launch date? As you may have noticed, there’s going to have to be a general election in the first half of next year. There are local elections scheduled for 6 May, making it the obvious date to pick for a national poll; although it could be as late as 3 June, and there have been rumours of a date as early as 25 March.

Check your calendars, folks: we’re now into territory where the election date is a factor in even medium-sized web projects. The Cabinet Office’s election guidance isn’t specific about website redesigns, but the thrust of all their advice is to reduce communication activity to a bare minimum during the ‘purdah’ period immediately before polling day. So in the admittedly unlikely event of them calling the election for March, the BIS Sitecore site might have to be mothballed until after Election Day – even if it’s bang on schedule. And then you’re into awkward questions as to whether the behemothic BIS would survive in its current form. It might never see the light of day..?