Puffbox

One of my current jobs is writing for BT’s Broadband Office blog, with an item or two each day about how small businesses can make best use of the internet. It’s a group effort, and I tend to cover the non-BT angle: things like website development, SEO, recommended blogs and freeware.

With all the effort going into online video at the moment, I wanted to experiment with some ‘point and shoot’ interviewing, following the example of Robert Scoble and Microsoft’s Channel 9. I got an invite to BT’s business showcase in Covent Garden last week, and interviewed a few of the exhibitors. The first example is now online: a short chat with Ivan Croxford, who’s the man behind BT’s new ‘social network’ for businesses, Tradespace.

It’s very amateur, and very rough. The picture is shaky, and the sound isn’t always great.  In my defence, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and was filmed on a mobile phone (albeit a fairly new one). On that basis, I’m actually really pleased with the results. I’m convinced that this approach to communication is a winner: Ivan is a nice guy, with obvious passion for what he’s doing. No copywriter could capture that.

I’d love you to have a look and tell me what you think of it. I’m hoping to persuade BT to let me do some more of this; and yes, next time, I might even bring some proper kit.

I’m quite impressed by the daily SNP-TV video broadcasts being put together by the Scottish National Party. Its presentation is clearly trying to mimic the ‘mainstream’ (national) news channels, with a presenter in the studio, reading her ‘autocue’, and a ticker along the bottom. And I don’t think it handles that inherent contradiction, treating itself as TV (nominally neutral) whilst pushing a particular party position (not at all neutral). A much more conventional approach than, say, Webcameron – but reasonably successful.

I also note that Labour’s Ed Balls has done his own ‘your questions via YouTube’ broadcast: with the sleeves rolled up, and a chatty, cheeky style, it’s just so much better than the staged Tony Blair interview of last week. Perhaps they’re learning. It’s a shame the audio’s slightly out of sync (although nowhere near as bad as this recent John Reid piece). The LibDem video stuff, sadly, is dominated by Ming Campbell, who comes across as a kindly – if somewhat manic – grandad. Patronising rather than engaging, I’m afraid.

You might have seen in the press that Gordon Ramsay is to front a new ad campaign for BT Business (a client of mine). It’s a brave choice at first glance, but having spent yesterday attending an invitation-only exhibition of their business services, it makes good sense.

The message behind the campaign is ‘do what you do best’ – and leave the rest to us. It’s a sober reminder to those of us in this business that whilst we love ‘flexibility’ and ‘possibilities’, most people don’t feel a need for it, and could find it an obstacle.

Take, for example, their new BT Web Clicks service. You pay a fixed price, and BT guarantees to bring a fixed number of visitors to your website using search engine advertising (ie Google). My immediate reaction was ‘why? Surely the great thing about Google ads is the fact that you can edit your ad’s text, tinker with your bids and budgets, etc etc?’ But the product manager made a convincing case that most ordinary small businesses don’t have time for all that, and probably aren’t all that interested anyway.

It’s a mark of Google’s success that businesses want to be in there… but they don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to do it for themselves. ‘Pay X, get Y, and leave the how? to us’ is a very simple proposition – it’s basically what Yellow Pages or the local paper does. Businesses are used to it.

Same goes for the BT Workspace document sharing and collaboration product. If it sounds like SharePoint, that’s because it is SharePoint. But they’ve made a deliberate decision to remove large chunks of the customisation ability. Why? Because users don’t want to be faced with a blank screen and/or a list of options. They want to log in and go. Sure, they might be able to tweak a particular template to their exact needs… but is it really worth it to them? BT seems to be betting that ‘plug and play’ is what businesses are looking for – and they make a convincing case.

I’ll say more about the BT Tradespace product later, as it merits a piece in itself. But to continue this train of thought… it isn’t the best blogging tool out there, it isn’t the best photo sharing site, and it isn’t the best mapping service. But it’s more than adequate at all of these things… and it’s all done for you. Yes you could mash up your own hybrid site with APIs, plugins, a bit of PHP, a bit of Javascript, and so on. But again, in the real world, would you?

It’s all too easy for those of us in the web business to forget that flexibility is a double-edged sword. We love it, because we have the knowledge and energy to use that flexibility. It’s digital DIY, if you will. But a lot of people – possibly even the majority – find flexibility an obstacle. They would rather someone told them what they need, and probably did it for them too. And BT wants to be that ‘someone’.

I know it’s neither big nor clever… but this tiny fraction of Google Maps made me laugh. Don’t click if you’re going to be offended by profanity.

Over at the Telegraph, Shane Richmond has a sneak preview of the forthcoming ‘My Telegraph’ feature. A few immediate thoughts… It’s very pretty indeed. I think it (more or less) delivers on my ‘blog of comments’ concept, with a good bit more besides. Very interesting to see the MyBlogLog-style ‘network’ element.

Although it’s certainly an interesting idea, the one part I’m not convinced about (yet) is the Agreement Index. I was quite surprised to see the extent to which the ‘hardcore’ users (based on the sample who attended the recent Open House event) were classic ‘Telegraph people’. I’m not really expecting this site to be a hot-bed of debate – which is both its strength and its weakness. I’ll be surprised if most blogs don’t rate around the 60-70% mark for Agreement. If you don’t fit the mould of a ‘Telegraph person’, I just don’t think you’ll want to blog here.

Incidentally, in case you miss it – Shane reveals a little extra in one of the comments: ‘Photo rights can be notoriously tricky online but what happens if you blog for a publisher who already owns the rights to lots of photos?’ I’m very glad to see this… but as I wrote over a year ago, I expected it to come first from the world of sport, which controls its photo rights even more strictly. There are potentially huge implications to this.

A new report from the Pew Institute (PDF) tries to pin down why Wikipedia is so popular: the sheer volume of material, sheer convenience and search engine friendliness. Actually, I’d add another reason, which is driving a growing proportion of my visits to the site: Wikipedia as pseudo-search engine. If I’m looking for the primary source for something – be it the official site for something or other, or the primary reference document – it’s invariably included among the Wikipedia page’s external links. With people wising up to SEO at differing paces, I’m occasionally having trouble finding that primary source among the first few pages of Google results. Wikipedia rarely disappoints.

Seeing what our own premier is making of online video, I thought I’d glance at what les candidats en France were up to. And blimey – Nicolas Sarkozy really digs the 2.0 thing.

His campaign slogan – ‘together everything becomes possible’ – is, of course, tailor-made for the whole collaborative online thing, but even so, it’s quite startling to see him embrace it quite so fervently. Streaming Flash video all over his homepage, in a collection of structured ‘channels’. Prominent RSS buttons for new videos and new news items. A Digg-style ‘debat-sarkozy‘ microsite, built using French blogging platform dotclear, where he (or his team) will answer the most popular question of the day.

Over on the left, if you can find its unguessable URL (www.desirsdavenir.org) – Segolene Royal does a much more conventional web treatment. The bit they’re probably most proud of is the Flash-based ‘piliers’ (‘pillars’) manifesto, with her ‘seven pledges’ leading to some surprisingly long, rather heavyweight video clips. There’s plenty of video throughout the site (maybe too much), but it lacks the Sarkozy site’s sense of structure.

The one element that’s missing? YouTube. Sego is streaming her stuff from French equivalent dailymotion.com; Sarko’s looks like it’s a home-brew affair. Search YouTube for either candidate by name, and you’ll find plenty of material – most of it stuff they’d probably rather you didn’t see.

Arguably (and there are often arguments), Dave Winer invented blogs. And web services. And RSS. And podcasting. There can’t have been many more influential people in the recent history of the internet. Sometimes he delivers a solution which survives; other times, he plants a seed which grows into something different. His blog, for example, doesn’t include some of the elements we’ve come to expect from ‘a blog’ – but it’s still recognisably the same notion.

So when Dave goes to the trouble of mocking up a concept for TV news of the future, it’s worth taking notice. He describes a scenario we all know too well: ‘yes, I’ve heard that news story already, I’m bored of it… can we move on, please.’ Some will want all the background, others will just want to know the top line, others won’t care in the slightest.

His visual is pretty rough, and I don’t really see it working in practice – but the mechanism he describes is certainly interesting. A big story breaks; it gets its own ‘subject tag’; and all viewers get subscribed to it automatically. When you get bored of it, you unsubscribe, and you don’t see any more about it. Presumably unless it’s a big development, in which case the cycle begins again. (Dave’s mockup also hints at some more generic subject areas: and of course he’s right, it would have to be a combination.)

It’s a while since I worked closely with online video… and I’m not sure how valid this is, now that Flash rules that territory. But in the old days, to fire off a video stream, you first had to click through a ‘playlist’ file. So to set up a RealPlayer media stream, you pointed to a .RAM file, which pointed in turn to a .RA file. I’m pretty sure Windows Media files worked in the same way, with ASX files pointing to ASF media. Few people ever used this properly; each media file had its own single-item playlist. But the potential was there (in theory at least) to generate those playlists on the fly.

This playlist concept seems to have been forgotten. I don’t even know if it’s still built into the software protocols. But it would seem that the concept is primed for a comeback.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=Sb3kZLzH3FA]

I’m not sure what’s going on with the dates, but YouTube seems to think this video was posted on ‘April 23’, ‘7 hours ago’. Where I’m sitting, in southern England, it’s 9am on April 24. Referring to the comments I made some moments ago, that doesn’t add up.

So what’s the deal with that mock TV studio set? I said before that they didn’t seem to get it; now I’m convinced they don’t. ‘Doing things differently’ is not about doing a decades-old broadcast format (studio interview), but pushing it out via a new distribution mechanism (internet). Labour HQ worked out how to win the old game; and they did it so well. I saw Alastair Campbell up close a few times, and what a master he is. But – arguably because politics worked out the media in the 1990s – the game changed.

The irony is that Tony Blair is a genuinely magnificent communicator. I’ve spoken to him, one-to-one, and came away feeling charmed, engaged, connected. So what logic is there in forcing him behind two lines of defence: an interviewer, and such an ugly desk?  He does his best, as does host John O’Farrell. But it’s a million miles away from the rough-but-genuine experience of Webcameron.

And then there’s the political point about an unpopular Prime Minister, reportedly a few days away from resigning, leading this venture into new online territory. Why? Why am I listening to Yesterday’s Man, telling me about the last ten years, when I want to hear about the next ten? And preferably, from someone who’s going to be around then?

I’ve had a long and busy day, and I want to be in bed. But on 14 April, in a video posted on YouTube, Tony Blair announced that on 23 April, ie today, he would be answering questions from members of the public, posted on the party’s YouTube pages. On 21 April – that’s Saturday just gone, John O’Farrell – who is/was to be the intermediary for the interview – confirmed that ‘on Monday, on this site’ he would be interviewing the Prime Minister.

Well, Monday runs out in a couple of hours… and I’m not seeing any sign of it. Time is running out, Prime Minister. Ooh, that’s ironic. If you do need a fix of Blair video, the pm.gov.uk site has today posted a ‘recorded message of support’ for UN road safety awareness week. Night night, everyone.