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.
-
Can No10's new web enthusiasm survive transition?
I hear that we could be seeing more Prime Ministerial activity on YouTube in the next couple of weeks, following the disappointing Party-led efforts. With government business largely on hold for the local elections, and with the staff presumably in limbo ahead of The Great Transition, I’m told the web team at Downing Street is working quietly on its own YouTube channel, to launch in the next few weeks. Things like ‘blogs’ and ‘wikis’ are reportedly on the horizon, too.
There’s a real buzz around No10’s web activity, sparked principally by the e-petitions system. Having worked in several large Whitehall departments, where progress was agonisingly slow, I’m jealous. Downing Street is small, powerful and answerable to no-one (other than the electorate). If Tony Blair approves your idea, there really isn’t anyone who can overrule that. This means they can be more ambitious, more daring. And e-government is all the better for it.
(As an aside, I hear that a remarkable number of petitions are ‘incorrect’ – protesting about something that isn’t actually there to protest about. Of the ‘five most popular open petitions’ currently listed on the site, three are materially inaccurate. So whilst 63,000 people are demanding that the government should ‘change the current student loan interest repayment, to deduct payments monthly not annually’ – apparently, it already is deducted monthly, and always was. Rather than kill the petition, they’re leaving it active… but adding a note to the top, explaining the situation. I guess if you still sign your name, you’re effectively saying that you need a further explanation – and indeed, your emailed response will come in due course.)
But of course, there’s no avoiding the shadow of Blair’s likely successor in all this. Gordon Brown has, in the recent past, been described as a deluded control freak, a Stalinist who feels ‘serious discussion about priorities… is just not worth it and they will get what I decide.’ Doesn’t sound promising, does it? As Blair’s people follow him out the door, to be replaced by Brown’s people, will this sudden enthusiasm for online engagement survive?
Downing Street doesn’t actually do anything for the citizens; but at risk of stating the obvious, it sets the tone for the many departments and agencies who do have front-line activity. No Whitehall department would ever have built the e-petitions site, for example – but now it’s a reality, and they have to deal with it (and the two-way communication it generates). A Prime Minister’s Office which really gets all this is an asset for the whole public sector. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
-
Sneak preview of Telegraph's reader blogs
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.
-
Wikipedia as search engine
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.
-
Video in the French election
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.
-
Personalised TV news
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.
-
Blair finally on YouTube – ouch
[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?ย 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?
-
Where's Tony Blair's YouTube chat?
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.
-
One-click citizen journalism
I’ve only recently (re)discovered Shozu, the photo uploading program for your mobile phone. It’s a fantastic little application, which can upload to a load of different media-sharing sites… I’m using it exclusively for Flickr, but it also supports Blogger, Picasa, Spaces, YouTube, etc etc. Uploading is generally a one-click task, and the media-browsing capability (on my Nokia Series 60 smartphone) is at least as good as the built-in media Gallery.
Why mention it? Because among the pre-configured uploading services are CNN and BBC News. This is a free piece of software which makes it a one-click task to deliver your ‘citizen journalism’ efforts, in still and moving pictures. When it comes to witness reporting, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
-
Stop marketing, start enthusing
Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff writes about ‘the best email marketing he ever got‘, from a villa rental company. The most interesting part for me:
As Nikki Hooton, who wrote this email, told me, “The interesting thing is that we actually tried a much more “professional” looking format with a very nice visual element… but we discovered that people treated it like a mass mailer you might get from Amazon.com or another huge company. When we just use plain text and a photo or two, people consider it much more personal.”
(Of course, seeing the email pasted into Josh’s blog, you don’t see exactly how it came through in his email inbox – but it’s easy to guess.)
I’m increasingly convinced that we’re moving into a post-marketing world. This was a personal communication from someone who loves the holiday business, and makes an emotional connection with potential clients on that basis. It’s her enthusiasm stirring my enthusiasm. (That’s why a lot of successful blogs are successful: because it’s a raw outlet for people’s genuine passion.)