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The Rise of Digital Platforms
Great short-ish summary of the rise of aggregating platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon from the ever-insightful Ben Thompson:
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave
Creating better software with agile, devops, etc
There’s loads of great digital transformation nuggets in here, from Coté.
LINK: “Chat is Google’s next big fix for Android’s messaging mess”
A top-tier Android phone can cost upwards of a thousand dollars, and for that money, you’ll get some amazing features. It will have a stellar screen, top-flight camera, gobs of storage, and an absolutely atrocious texting experience. Original:
LINK: “The Right Way to Build an Online Community”
These products have come to be called ‘social media,’ but that’s not what Flickr was. Flickr was an online community. The reason they started calling it social media is because you can sell media. You can sell column inches, you…
LINK: “Smart London Camp 2018”
Yesterday [Rob Miller] joined a large group of people whose idea of the best way to spend a beautiful sunny Saturday was to gather together in London’s City Hall and discuss ideas for ways that London can get the most…
LINK: “Do you need a blockchain?”
Blockchain technology is set to have a profound impact on a wide variety of industries, ranging from capital markets to the music business. While some use cases may seem obvious, the technology is still surrounded by its fair share of hype and…
LINK: “Introducing the three C’s of Responsible Technology”
More than ever, we are aware of the need for better practices to address key challenges and tensions between technology and society. Doteveryone has been working on making the consumer tech industry more responsible and accountable to society for over…
LINK: “Defining digital standards for the NHS”
With the particular needs of healthcare users and NHS having a strong, trusted brand, we’re noticing more and more that we need to go beyond the GDS standard and define our own universal method. Original:
LINK: “Can government stop losing its mind?”
Can government remember? Is it condemned to repeat mistakes? Or does it remember too much and so see too many reasons why anything new is bound to fail? Original:
LINK: “The wellsprings of UK digital reform part 1 – the backstory”
While there are some great pockets of work taking place to deliver better public services, the UK government’s overall attempts at technology-enabled, or “e-government” or “digital”, reform appear to be struggling to achieve and sustain the benefits promised at the…
Implementing digital civic infrastructure
I’ve banged on about this before, but then that’s because I think it is pretty important. To quickly recap – digital civic infrastructure is an idea I have been thinking about for some time as a means through which local…
LINK: “Service patterns could be big! (actually .. small)”
There’s a knotty systemic and cost problem with local authorities and other public service organisations delivering essentially the same core services in different parts of the country. We all recognise that we are often doing the same thing, but we…
LINK: “From USENET to Facebook: The second time as farce”
Facebook repeats the pattern of USENET, this time as farce. As a no-holds-barred Wild West sort of social network, USENET was filled with everything we rightly complain about today. Original:
LINK: “Blogging is most certainly not dead”
Social media is as compelling as ever, but people are increasingly souring on the surveillance state Skinner boxes like Facebook and Twitter. Decentralized media like blogs and newsletters are looking better and better these days… Original:
LINK: “OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world — then it all went wrong”
By the time OLPC officially launched in 2007, the “green machine” — once a breakout star of the 21st-century educational technology scene — was a symbol of tech industry hubris, a one-size-fits-all American solution to complex global problems. But more…
Six themes for a good local government digital strategy
I recently went through the rather painful process of applying for a senior digital transformation role in local government and not getting it. I might write in more detail at some point about it all, but right now I am…
LINK: “Broken words and why they matter”
Digital – as a word – is broken. We have slapped it onto the front of two many old world applications in an attempt to normalise and ‘make safe’ new concepts that at this point saying something is digital is…
LINK: “#LocalDigitalSkills – making digital inclusion happen, together”
… we want there to be Local Digital Skills Partnerships all over the country. Original:
LINK: “Kick-off for the essex.gov.uk project”
To help us understand the ‘as is’ in more detail we’ve gathered insights from available data and call centre staff, tested how easy it is for users to find things on the site and identified some key gaps in understanding…
LINK: “10 steps for digital success [from] Hertfordshire County Council”
You want people to use your digital service. You want best value for money when you buy or build new digital services. Here are 10 steps to success. Original: