An online notebook
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An online notebook
WordPress is a great bit of software, and by far the easiest way to get up and running with it is to use the usually free hosted version at WordPress.com. It’s even easier to get started than ever, with Learn…
To probably misquote Stephen Fry: “Was there ever a smartphone that I didn’t buy?” As I posted a little while ago, I’m pretty happy with the Nexus One. Android is a nice, feature rich, open operating system, and the hardware…
In what looks like a pretty interesting collaboration between what was the LGA Group and YouGov, YouChoose is an online budget simulator that: encourages members of the public to consider where council budget cuts should fall, where efficiencies might be…
I had a good time up in Scotland last week, and enjoyed putting together and delivering my talk at the Learning Pool event we ran – which saw a great turnout. My discussion focused on the use of technology in…
Steph has a great post about crowdsourcing in government: It’s human nature to want to work on your own projects, rather than those imposed upon you. It’s human nature to want to earn recognition, intellectual satisfaction and a good living…
I’ve just registered to do some proper studying – for the first time since I left university in 2001. It’s through the Open University, and the qualification is a BSc (Honours) Technology. I’m entirely self taught when it comes to…
Here’s a nice little video we have produced to help people understand the benefits of the Learning Pool learning management system – what we call the DLE. It’s a cloud-based implementation of the open source Moodle platform, with some added…
One of my favourite bits of technology porn is Shawn Blanc’s series on sweet Mac setups. It basically just gives dorks like me an opportunity to drool over other people’s kit. But there’s another purpose to this, which is that…
Nice post from BIS’ Neil Williams on deciding up on a commenting system for the department’s website. Go read the whole thing, but he summarises: So what have we learned? People blogging about what they are up to is dead…
Two strangely related things happened last week. The second one was Dominic Campbell‘s post, “Exciting times” in which he describes the progress he has made over the last few years, and how odd – and amazing – the whole thing…
Steph provides an update on the AVdebate project (cross-posted from Helpful Technology). Six weeks ago, Dave kicked off a little project which he described as follows: I’m rather interested in the referendum that we are going get get next May in…
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to. MindQuilt – "MindQuilt is an enterprise knowledge management platform with intelligent question and answer matchmaking and gaming achievement dynamics." Tiny Tiny RSS – Host your own Google Reader clone. Challenge.gov…
My good friend Steph Gray is organising a fab little event to get public sector types and existing online communities of interest together to see how they can work together. It’s a great idea for an event and should be…
Paul McElvaney, Director at Learning Pool, posts an update on how the company is faring with Google’s suite of enterprise tools for email, calendaring etc. Learning Pool moved its corporate systems like email, calendaring and document storage into a Google…
I’m thrashing around with a post about consultation, engagement and crowdsourcing and why efforts in this direction haven’t been massively successful for governments – whether in the UK or elsewhere. I’ll get it into a fit state to publish one…
Some great stuff recently from Public Strategiest. Firstly, on records management in the digital age: Finding things again remains a challenge: Rosenberg’s argument about entropy and Lapping’s about the need to manage not just current formats but obsolete ones and…
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to. Civic Commons code-sharing initiative bids to reduce government IT costs – "Around the United States, city governments have created a multitude of software. Unfortunately, most of the time the code…
An important part of the tech architecture of open government is use of the cloud. Here’s a nice presentation from Michael Coté explaining what cloud computing is, why it matters and what some of the issues are. What's up with…
Interesting ebook report from The Network for Post-Bureaucratic Age: Better for Less Update: Mick provides his views on the report: Rather than auditing ICT, what we need in reality is a proposal, by some authors with an understanding of what…
A while ago, I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about anonymity online, and why it sucked. This was in the wake of the ‘Civil Serf‘ (remember her?) kerfuffle, when a blogger working in government said some…