Puffbox

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

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  • Origami: has Microsoft blown its big chance?

    If anyone was expecting a big announcement regarding Microsoft’s already mythical ‘Origami Project‘ today, you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. Another spooky chillout Flash video, lots of vague statements about ‘I am everywhere you are.’ And: ‘come back next week’.

    After the rather underwhelming Apple announcement earlier in the week, I really thought this was the Microsoft marketing machine finally getting it. Were we really going to see Redmond out-cool Cupertino? For a while there, it looked like it. Origami is getting lots of nice buzz around it; then suddenly Apple trips up. What an opportunity. And I think they’ve blown it.

    The aim of the campaign has – of course – been to build buzz. Well, maybe I’m just reading the right blogs and news sources (even the BBC), but I think the buzz is cranked up to the max. If it were me, I’d have tried to redraw the plans overnight, in the light of Apple’s apparent slip. Get the product out there ASAP. Or at least, say something tangible. I have a nasty feeling that, by next week, we’ll all be sick of the waiting. You can only buzz for so long.

    Once again, you’re left wondering how Microsoft can excel on the blogging side (Scoble, Channel 9, MSDN), and misjudge its conventional marketing every time. Dinosaurs, for example. Product naming, for another… I mean, come on, Windows Live Local? The ‘Microsoft redesigns the iPod box‘ video is funny, until you learn (according to Joe Wilcox) that it was produced by someone inside Microsoft. I agree with Joe that self-parody is a good thing, but only up to a point. If everyone recognises there’s a problem here, and nobody is fixing it, that’s not good.

    UPDATE: actually, I think it’s actually worse. If you look at the source code of the page at www.origamiproject.com, you see an HTML comment: Origami Project: the Mobile PC running Windows XP. The tone of the report on, for example, the Register hints at disappointment – ‘oh, it’s only a new XP device.’ It’s hard to imagine Microsoft putting substantial effort into adding major new functionality to an operating system it’s about to retire. This could be one big disappointment: and then all this hype generation will seem less than clever.

  • Functionality up, usability down

    The big annual report by local government’s Society of IT Management says the rate of improvement in local government websites is slowing – and most interestingly, ‘increases in functionality may be being offset by reductions in usability.’ SOCITM’s press release lists a host of conclusions from its 2006 study, most of which seem reasonable. But it’s disappointing if we’re having to spell out basic concepts like the need for ‘proper performance measurement systems’ to IT managers.

  • Is my child's teacher a paedophile dot-gov dot-uk

    Is Whitehall really looking at an ‘instant’ ‘online’ service to check if a prospective employee is barred from working with children or vulnerable adults? That’s certainly what’s being promised by the Department for Education and Skills in its Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill.

    (Disclosure: yes, I’m currently doing work for DfES – but nothing to do with this. Not yet anyway.)

    An integrated vetting and barring system, bringing together all the various lists and giving ownership to an independent body, can’t be a bad thing. And it’s encouraging from an e-government perspective to see explicit plans for ‘a ‘real-time’ instant check of whether a prospective employee is barred with secure online access rather than the current paper-based process.’

    But it’s a very big step if the resulting list of barred individuals is to be made widely accessible. ‘Domestic employers such as parents (will be able) to check whether private tutors, nannies, music teachers and care workers are barred,’ the Department explains. I’m intrigued by the practicalities of this – surely the potential audience, by that definition, is so big that it may as well be a completely open system?

    Privacy advocates will have plenty to say about that; but I think it’s pretty clear from recent history that rational discussion goes out the window when it comes to discussing child welfare. Perhaps a completely open vetting system is inevitable. Perhaps this is effectively it.

  • Press releases: back to basics

    Tom Foremski’s diatribe against Silicon Valley press releases comes on the day I helped critique some briefing material on a major government announcement. Many of his points struck a timely chord.

    Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes… Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Businesswire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists. This madness has to end. It is wasted time and effort by hundreds of thousands of professionals.

    Press officers need to change their view of their role. It’s no longer about pushing out what the boardroom wants to say; quite the opposite. These days, it has to be about bringing the media perspective into the organisation. And that starts with taking press releases back to first principles – giving journalists what they need.

    Newspapers will never reprint verbatim a lump of woolly, meaningless management-speak. What reporters need are hard facts rather than vague concepts, real statistics rather than unqualified assertions, (decent) quotes – anything that can support them in writing their story. Note, by the way: not your story. Their story… which, as Tom notes, they were always going to write anyway. (I’m not sure the world is ready for Tom’s full-disclosure ‘tagging’ concept, but he has the right ideas.)

    Why? Because these days, it’s so much easier and quicker to get to the truth. A quick keyword search across an inch-thick document will yield, in seconds, the statement you were trying to bury on page 142. And the stressed journalist is hardly going to be nice about your woolly press release after they spend hours chasing the facts you chose not to include.

  • Abilon is my choice for RSS novices

    I spent most of Monday playing with different RSS readers. As mentioned here earlier, I was looking for a freeware tool suitable for absolute novices. In the end, the winner was a tool I used myself in years gone by.

    Abilon has a lot going for it. It has the standard Outlook-style three-panel presentation, with the nice extra option of three vertical panels. Even better for me, it has a ‘newspaper’ view which presents all feed items on a single scrolling page – more familiar to web-literate novices. It has pop-up alerts in the bottom right corner of the screen. It has some nice advanced functionality, like a blogging tool and feed ‘filters’.

    It’s only a few hundred K to download, and as PortableFreeware.com points out, it doesn’t actually need to be installed in the C:Program Files folder, nor does it store its settings in the user profile. So you can install it in its own folder, and then copy that folder from PC to PC. In other words, a customised installation. Perfect.

    So where’s the catch? For no obvious reason, the product’s owners seem to have disappeared. Abilon.org is now a ‘free parking’ page. The original domain, activerefresh.com has disappeared completely. If Abilon has been abandoned by its creator, it’s a real shame. It’s by far the neatest RSS package I could find. You can still download it from PCWorld.com, but naturally, there’s a caveat.

  • Google Pages: why?

    I managed to get access to the Google Pages website at the weekend, and wasted a few moments building a quick page or two. I’m not even going to quote the address to see my efforts; it’s just not worth it. Suffice to say, I’m bitterly disappointed: it doesn’t seem to be much more than PowerPoint-style authoring brought to the web.

    Why is Google bothering with this, when it already owns a brilliant webpage creation tool in Blogger? Honestly, the more time goes on, the more I see blogging platforms as the solution to big organisations’ CMS headaches. There must be a hidden agenda, surely.

    Coincidentally (or perhaps not), I’ve just found references today to a ‘web 2.0’ site called Thumbstacks which – surprise surprise – puts PowerPoint-style presentations on the web. I really wonder why we’re pursuing this, when the guru of graphic presentation, Edward Tufte thinks PowerPoint is evil. Rather than emulating PowerPoint on the web, we should be looking to reinvent it.

  • Stable structures spell success

    Dave Winer is right about Dion Hinchcliffe being right. The main reason why RSS is taking off is that it’s so simple. ‘For RSS to be successful for us, stability and dependability are essential features,’ Dion writes. I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say –ย as Dion does –ย that if we can maintain this stability, ‘having an RSS feed on everything gives us a world where just about anything is possible.’

    Which is why I get terrified by things like the UK government’s attempt at a huge, use-is-mandatory subject taxonomy. The Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) follows on from the Government Category List, which didn’t exactly take the world by storm. Release of a second version is due in April – yes, April 2006 – and there will be ‘regular updating’. In other words, the goalposts will be continuously moving. How people are meant to ‘tag’ their material appropriately with an ever-changing taxonomy is beyond me.

  • links for 2006-02-27

  • Windows Vista brings pen computing to the masses

    Delighted to see that Media Center and Tablet PC functionality will be part of the mainstream versions of Windows Vista, as opposed to separate editions (confirmed in a press release at the weekend). I used to have a Tablet PC whilst working at Microsoft, and I became quite enamoured of it. I have to say though, most people – even inside Microsoft – only used their Tablet as an ordinary laptop.

    ‘Tablet’ computing is definitely the way to go, especially if you’re in the creative business. I picked up a Trust wireless tablet (with mouse too) for just over ยฃ20 at Tesco’s a few weeks ago, and after a short period of adaptation, I love it to bits. The key was remembering that (ordinary) Windows XP includes an option to replace double clicks with a single click. Open up Windows Explorer, click on ‘Tools’ then ‘Folder options’ – and click on ‘Single-click to open an item’. It makes all the difference. (I also find it helpful to switch on underlining when I hover over a link.)

    Once you’ve used a pen, you’ll wonder why we ever had the mouse in the first place.

  • links for 2006-02-24

    • Mashups go mainstream: Nike uses Google Maps to create a runners’ route planner. OK, so it’s a shameless copy of gmap-pedometer.com – but you have to hand it to Nike’s RunLondon campaign. An exemplary PR campaign: and a great day out. I’ll be back in ’06.