Blogging

New Zealand Gov blog

The New Zealand State Services Commission has started a blog – you can find it here. In their words:

We’re aiming to build thought leadership around significant work programmes, including Authentication, Strategy and Policy and Web Standards, as well as providing a best practice example of how to effectively manage social media as part of public sector communications. Other agencies ask us for guidance in setting up their own blogs – what better way to help them than to give a clear demonstration of how we do it, and the policies behind our thinking? We’d like to look at how the public and the Government can interact better through the use of new technologies. We’re interested in issues around identity, privacy, accessibility, intellectual property, e-government guidelines and Web 2.0. If you have thoughts or feelings in this area, you’re our target audience, whether you work for the government or not.

They have some interesting posts up already, including one on gov ICT strategy in the current unsettled financial situation:

Long term fiscal pressures need long term investment and expenditure responses. In New Zealand government ICT we have a unique window of opportunity in the next 2-5 years arising from the replacement of “legacy” transaction processing systems implemented in the 1990s. We can redesign systems and re-engineer business processes across agencies to meet the expectations of the information age.

And this on government officials and Wikipedia:

Superficially, Te Ara, an encyclopaedia run by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, seems to be a competitor of Wikipedia: they offer the same service. However, unlike consumers of shoes or cars, consumers of information need not (and seldom do) choose one or the other: their produce is complementary and their relationship is mutually beneficial. Wikipedia relies on sites like Te Ara as references for their content, and Te Ara relies on sites like Wikipedia linking to Te Ara as a resource, in turn directing traffic there.

Good stuff and well worth subscribing. Wouldn’t it be good to have an agenda setting ‘official’ blog for government at all levels in the UK?

Found via the Connected Republic.

Rewriting the rules

John Naughton‘s Observer column on ten years of blogging is a delightful read:

This openness to immediate criticism and/or rebuttal is another revolutionary aspect of blogging. What we are seeing, wrote Clay Shirky some years ago (available online at http://bit.ly/fkxik), is nothing less than the ‘mass amateurisation of publishing’. What’s happening is a radical shift from the old ecosystem in which publications (newspapers, magazines and books) are filtered and edited before being published, into a world in which anything can be (and is) published.

All that remains is for English departments in universities to start studying blogging styles, for example the way in which accomplished online writers use hyperlinks. If you read the work of established bloggers or contributors to slick online publications such as Salon or Slate what you see is a move from having hyperlinks clumsily embedded in a document to the use of links to provide an ironic counterpoint to the main line of the piece. It’s all very, er, postmodern. But what do you expect? It is 2008.

5 Blogger tools for Mac

Whilst technically all you need is a blog and a browser to start blogging, there are some other bits of software you can use that make your life a little easier.

Here’s a list of options for Mac users:

1. Skitch

Easily my number one choice, this is a phenomenally useful tool, which I don’t think is available on any other platform.

Skitch is simply a tool that lets you take snapshots of what is on your screen. Sounds pretty unremarkable, but Skitch does some cool stuff:

  • It lets you copy just a small portion of the screen by selecting with a cross-hair
  • It lets you do some simple editing within the application, so you don’t have to load up a ‘proper’ graphics package
  • You can save your image by just dragging it onto the desktop
  • You can post it straight to your Flickr account, a skitch hosted page or your own web host via FTP with a click of a button

For getting image snapshots quickly onto the web, it’s brilliant. And free.

2. Transmit

Transmit is a solid, well performing Mac FTP client. Why use one? Well, if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, say, you need to upload plugins, themes and that kind of thing to your web host. And when it comes to upgrade time, having a solid FTP client is good for the blood pressure!

Transmit costs a few pennies, but is jolly reliable and so worth the investment.

3. NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire is a desktop based RSS aggregator. I used this for a long while before being won over by the advantages of Google Reader. Others still swear by this though, especially now it has its own iPhone app.

4. MarsEdit

I rather bemoaned the state of the Mac desktop blogging client in a recent post, but since then I have been giving MarsEdit another go. The main issue for me is the lack of a rich text editor, which is good for speed but not awfully user friendly.

Again, it costs a couple of quid but is worth giving a go, especially if you use NetNewsWire with which it integrates rather well.

5. TextWrangler

Sometimes you just need to edit text, and don’t want to mess about. TextWrangler comes from the same people that make the legendary Mac text editor BBedit, which is rather pricey but feature rich. TextWrangler is BBedit’s freebie little brother, and let’s you load up text, html, php or css files and edit them to your heart’s content.

What are your favourite blogging tools? Would anyone like to see a Windows version of this list?

Twitter too little, blog too much?

Twitter is quite a nice way into online publishing. It’s quick and easy to both contribute to, listen to others and expand your network of readers.

However, I can imagine that, for quite lot of people, just using Twitter could rapidly get pretty limiting. It would be like only communicating with text messages, and never using email.

However, starting a blog can be a big ask. They are easy enough to get up and running but can consume hours of tweaking the way it looks, or the way certain things work. Then there is the ‘pressure’ of producing regular posts, which can seriously put people off!

Twitwall might just be the answer for these people. It is an extension of Twitter, using its API to enable people to write longer posts, post video or photos on your Twitwall, which pings your twitter feed each time you publish.

This video helps explain a little about how TwitWall works:

For someone like me, who uses Twitter already, and also has a blog, there isn’t much use for Twitwall. But for those who are comfortable with Twitter, but not quite sure about jumping into the blogosphere, it could be perfect.

DFID starts blogging

DFID have launched a new blogging platform, with various members of the department who are based abroad telling their stories through a group blog.

The site looks beautiful, which is perhaps to be expected when you consider that it was put together by arch government wordpresser Simon Dickson. Simon writes about the site:

I can’t say how pleased I am with the results. I’ve been collaborating with a couple of new contacts – my near-neighbour Tony Parsons on the design side, and Simon Wheatley (who I met at WordCamp) on the technical stuff that was beyond me. Both have been truly brilliant. And I have to say, the DFID guys have been fabulous too – giving me all the freedom I could ask for. It’s been a perfect combination, and I think it shows in the site.

It’s not just about the tech side though. Shane McCracken has been working with DFID to provide training to the bloggers, in collaboration with Griff Wigley. I helped out too, taking a bit of time out to show the DIFD web team in London how the WordPress administration interface works. This combination of training and support, should mean the quality of the content will match that of the site. Top marks to DFID for identifying and committing resource to this side of things.

Shane writes:

We’re very lucky in that our blogging volunteers are superb writers with extremely interesting lives and situations with enormous scope for great photography. They are going to provide a fine insight into the work that DFID do and the effect they have on the people of the countries in which and with which they work.

The coaching programme has had its challenges. As you can imagine the budget to fly us to Tanzania was not made available, so coaching is happening online is the same manner as we did with CivicSurf. The DFID bloggers are in full-time positions working seven days a week and in time zones and work patterns that don’t necessarily coincide with our 9 – 5 UK life. Thankfully Griff, who has been leading the coaching, works flexible hours.

Finally, Owen Barder, who used to work at DFID, notes approvingly:

DfID has a very good reputation abroad, but hardly anybody in the UK knows anything about it, or appreciates how much DfID contributes to positive perceptions of Britain. I hope this blog will help tell the story in a very direct and personal way.

Good work, all.

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