Puffbox

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

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  • Microsoft's enlightened blogging policy

    Many thanks to Microsoftie Mark Harrison for pointing to these simple instructions on applying unofficial new themes to Windows XP. I’ve tried a few out over the course of the day, and most (if not all?) contain the odd bug. But life is definitely a lot prettier as a result. (I strongly recommend GuiAirB1, by the way.)

    Mark’s a lucky man. Most employers would invite you into the boss’s office for a chat if you suggested downloading an unlocked (ie ‘hacked’) version of a software component.

    I know from my own time at Microsoft that the company takes a very relaxed – or, perhaps more fairly, a very lax – attitude to blogging. Before I worked there, I assumed someone at executive level had taken an enlightened decision to back blogging. But having spoken to Betsy Aoki, one of the leading bloggers at Redmond, I discovered it was more of an organic thing which nobody bothered to stop. And now, it’s far too late to do so.

  • RSS primer for your line manager

    I was asked to write a short introductory text to explain why the addition of RSS feeds to my current employer’s website was such a big event. Something which described the technique rather than the technology, and put it in a context which a UK Civil Service manager would understand.

    I’m taking the risk of offering my completed draft to the blogosphere, for anyone’s comments (which I reserve the right to ignore totally). Please note, this article will probably get published and forgotten, so I’ve avoided any references which might become outdated in the next year or so. Plus, I know I’ve skipped over some technicalities (eg. Gmail offers Atom feeds, not strictly RSS). But the article isn’t intended for people who know there’s a difference. 😉

    (more…)

  • Upbeat assessment of government efficiency efforts

    The National Audit Office has published a review of ‘Progress in improving government efficiency‘, following the Gershon review and its call for billions of pounds of savings. It actually puts a surprisingly positive spin on the whole matter:

    The National Audit Office found that many efficiency projects are making good progress towards achieving efficiency gains and that in many respects departments are managing their efficiency programmes well, particularly through effective senior management focus and some high calibre project management.

    ‘Reported gains of £4.7 billion should not be regarded as final,’ it warns, suggesting the picture might be even rosier. Equally of course, since such figures are rarely more than educated guesses, it could all be rubbish. So you won’t be at all surprised to hear the CBI’s cynical response:

    The survey findings show that 90 per cent of firms believe the government will fail in its quest to switch spending from the back office to the frontline… The number saying they are not at all confident has risen sharply, with 56 per cent expressing this view compared with 37 per cent last year.

    Of course, you have to remember that it’s in the CBI’s selfish interests to cast doubt on government’s ability to deliver improvements. Outsourcing means more work for its members. But it’s hard to argue with Neil Bentley’s assertion that the civil service ‘needs the injection of new professional skills and a more rigorous and challenging system of performance management.’ More on that another time.

  • Bin your corporate web plan; just get a blog

    I’m having a crisis of confidence as regards corporate IT. Every time I hear a timeframe of six months, or a budget in six or even seven digits, I cringe. The words ‘functional spec’ send shivers up my spine. Even the smallest things seem to take days.

    Conventional wisdom says CMS projects are inherently B-I-G deals. They just aren’t. What’s a blog, if not a Content Management System? Words go in, pages come out. Presentation is separated from content. Authors get a nice authoring interface. What more is there?

    I can have a CMS / blog up and running at WordPress.com in a matter of minutes – and people are doing so in their hundreds, every day. If I was feeling really eager, I might download WordPress and install it on my own server, for extra control and reassurance. Still only a day’s work, and a fairly relaxed day at that. I’d be posting new material that very evening, and showing up on the search engines within a few days.

    What more do I get from the project that takes six months on paper, almost certainly longer in reality, and costs an eyewatering amount? Granted, my blog site probably won’t do everything I want. But I’ve seen it too many times… you get to the end of the big project, and guess what? You still don’t get exactly what you wanted. But you’re six months older and significantly poorer.

    If there’s a better example of the law of diminishing returns, I can’t think of it.

  • Making the most of a widescreen desktop

    Since last November, I’ve been the proud owner of a widescreen PC monitor, running at 1280×768 pixels. (Purely because of a posting on HotUKDeals alerting me to its bargain price, I might add.) The extra space may not sound much, but it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

    I’ve grown to love Desktop Sidebar, which permanently occupies the far right of my screen, showing me RSS feeds, data from Outlook, the weather forecast, system info, etc etc. I used to use it on a standard 1024×768 monitor, but I found it took up too much screen space. It’s a great way to use the extra 256 pixels.

    It’s fantastic for the sort of information you always want in your field of vision. For example, I have an RSS panel for the latest top news headlines from the BBC. (You could use it as your primary RSS reader, but I personally prefer a tailored tool for my full RSS reading list.) I also use it for my Outlook tasks; they’re there as a permanent, nagging reminder – and it ensures nothing gets forgotten.

    After some flip-flopping, it’s now been confirmed that Windows Vista will have a sidebar. For ordinary users, it could well turn out to be the product’s ‘killer’ feature, and I was amazed when I read suggestions (of questionable accuracy) that it was being dropped from the plans. Google’s sidebar, available as part of their Desktop Search product, isn’t bad, and the latest version has some interesting peer-to-peer ideas.

  • Westminster move on e-petitions

    Good luck to Tory MP Grant Shapps with his Early Day Motion to have Parliament recognise online petitions. Details of the motion will appear on the Parliament database in due course; there’s quite a nice interview with him about it on silicon.com in the meantime. Fair play to the Scottish Parliament, by the way, who are way ahead on this.

    Update: you can see the full wording (all 57 of them) of the motion here, and keep track of other MPs who add their name to it too.

  • Brilliant email idea from Eudora

    The word ‘Eudora’ came up in conversation this morning. Ten years ago it was the leading email application. Then came Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, Gmail… etc etc. I hadn’t heard anything about Eudora in a-g-e-s, so I thought I’d check their website and see if they were still going.

    They are – and they’ve got one absolutely killer feature in their latest version. We can all think of instances where we wish we’d had this:

    BossWatch will alert you to the presence of email addresses that are designated based on your personal communication preferences. These addresses can be designated by name or domain. The magenta Send button text and underlined name in the Recipient field will alert you of the clients address in the reply list.

    Sadly, I don’t think this will mark Eudora’s return from the grave. Outlook Express is dead, but there will be a Windows Mail (and most interestingly, a Windows Calendar) built into Windows Vista.

  • Intellectual spam

    I’ve always been conscientious about (un)ticking the box that says ‘we want to share your details with carefully selected spammers’. So – fortunately – I don’t tend to see very much spam, and if anything, even less since I switched to Gmail as my main email service.

    Last week I got hit with a handful of messages, all following a similar format – and hence, presumably, part of the same virus. Full marks to the author, for such creative subject lines, and unusually ambitious grammar!

    • These more economically pricestickered curatives are right available.
    • Swapping to these health products shop has been an easy arrangement for heaps of customers.
    • I really can’t find out a convincing reason not to do this.

    and my personal favourite…

    • I am sick of paying outrageous price tags for your mitigating products. What is your opinion?

  • links for 2006-02-13

  • RSS built into new Sony Ericsson phones

    Further evidence of RSS’s move into the mainstream today, from an unexpected source. Sony Ericsson has announced that its new 3G mobile phone, the K610, will have an RSS reader on board. The guys at Tech Digest got their hands on one during the big 3GSM conference in Barcelona, but weren’t able to find out too much about its RSS capabilities.

    Sony Ericsson’s T610 was the phone everybody seemed to have at one point, and the naming of this new model can’t be a coincidence. Tech Digest reckons ‘this is solid mid market 3G fare and should do well for the company. I expect it will be grabbed by most UK networks.’ That means a very, very large number of people are going to have an RSS reader in their pocket, although they may not realise it.

    Tech Digest also points out there’s an RSS reader in Sony Ericsson’s new ‘Blackberry killer’, the M600 – although as this bills itself as more of a ‘smartphone’, that’s more to be expected. If anything, it makes the appearance of the software in the ‘mass market’ product all the more interesting.