Dave

Dave

Free as in Beer

Since I started Free as in Beer, I’ve come across a few of apps which have become essential: Evernote Zulupad Launchy If anyone who reads this blog has some favourite freebies, let me know! Tags: freeasinbeer

Google Groups as Community Platform?

I mentioned Ning a few posts ago, and in the comments Steve Dale pondered whether it could be used to power a virtual community of practice – ie, would it work as a knowledge sharing and collaboration tool? I thought…

Contactify

Contactify is a great little service which gets around the old problem of putting your email address on a web page. How it works is this: you register and provide your details, and Contactify provides you with a URL which…

Using Google’s Apps

Conducted by Rajen Sheth, manager of Google’s enterprise products, this video runs for nearly 18 minutes and covers everything from the personalized start page to the collaboration tools in apps like Google Docs and Spreadsheets. There’s also a heavy focus…

MySpace Party

…but not at MyHouse, thankfully. The BBC reports: A 17-year-old girl has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage in connection with a house party which left a family home wrecked. About 200 youngsters damaged Alan and Elaine Bell’s home…

WriteWith – truly collaborative writing

Mike Arrington writes about WriteWith, a collaborative writing authoring platform which combines wikis, forums and ajax document editing. Once you have finished writing, the document can be exported to MS Office or Openoffice.org format, or even published to a blog.…

The Power of Information

The Cabinet Office are launching a review into how social media can improve public engagement and empowerment: Minister for the Cabinet Office Hilary Armstrong wants Government to harness the phenomenon of internet advice sharing sites and empower people with information…

Blogpolitic

Oliver Kamm in The Guardian: In its paucity of coverage and predictability of conclusions, the blogosphere provides a parody of democratic deliberation. But it gets worse. Politics, wrote the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is a conversation, not an argument. The conversation…

Bloggers’ Code of Conduct

Tim O’Reilly has posted a draft of a bloggers’ code of conduct. Let’s have a look at it. We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We…

Blogging tip #1 – Read more blogs

So, the first bit of advice I gave was to read more blogs. How exactly can you do that? The joy of RSS The great thing about blogs is that they produce RSS feeds. And the great thing about RSS…

I hate Blogger

I wanted to set up a free blogging account for a little project I’ve been wanting to start for a while and I thought I would give the all new Blogger a go. I wish I hadn’t. I must have…

Gaim now Pidgin

Paul Stamatiou points out that Gaim, the open source and multi-protocol instant messaging client, is now going to be known as ‘Pidgin’. Sigh.

A Wiki for your Desktop

My last post was about some of the benefits that wikis can have for an organisation. Of course, one of the issues with wikis is the fact that you have to get the agreement of your IT department for them to…

5 ways wikis will work

As every day goes by, I am becoming a bigger fan of the wiki form. It’s not ideal in every scenario, but I really believe that every organisation should have at least one. Here’s five ways local gov can use…

10 Tips for Startup Blogs

Here’s a list of good stuff you can do when starting out with a blog. I’ll follow this post up in the future tackling each of them in a little more detail. If you would like to discuss starting a…