Site Stuff

Hello world!

Well, this is the first post on the new LGNewMedia site. The site is in continual development to try and get everything tied in and a reasonably common theme across the board.

So, what’s LGNewMedia all about? Well, we aim to spread the word about new, or social, media and the benefits it can have for the local government sector in the UK. The site is made up of four main sections:

  • This blog, which aims to provide useful information and news about new media and local government
  • A forum, where like-minded folk can get together and chat
  • A wiki, where community projects can be organised
  • LGSearch, a local government focussed search engine

And these are the sorts of new media tools that local councils should be using to develop their internal and external communication strategies, as well as increasing the levels of collaboration and cooperation between officers.

Another key aim of this site is to promote the use of open source tools wherever possible. For example, this site runs on WordPress, phpBB and PMWiki – all of which are freely available open source packages. The total running costs of this site are probably in the region of £30 a year. The initial work of setting up the site took about 2 hours. The point is, there is no resource based argument against new media projects. They are cheap, and they are quick.

I’ll post more as the site develops. In the meantime, do have a poke around and if you would like to get involved, just let me know!

More on Google/JotSpot

Ben, in the comments, wrote:

But they already have Google Notebook (http://www.google.com/notebook) which I always thought of as a WYSIWYG wiki.

JotSpot certainly fits in with their suite of web services though.

I think the last point is the key. I don’t think the Googleised version of JotSpot (Gspot?) will be intended as a service to the everyday web user in the way that, say, the toolbar, desktop search and notes are. Instead, it will be the glue that sticks all their ‘enterprise’ (by which I mean services a small to medium business could use) services together – Docs, Spreadsheet, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Blogger, Base, Page Creator.

What Google is currently lacking with all the services above is a common platform, or a base, from which they can all be launched. For instance, they really need to sort out a single Google ‘drive’ where all files, whether blogger posts, Gmail attachments, docs, spreadhseets, Picasa photos or whatever, are stored under a user name. JotSpot could act very well as a file manager for all of this as well as providing the collaborative space to link them all together with multiple users, with shared files across a certain group, for example.

So, you could have a small business with a number of home based employees, each with certain access to certain files, along with a wiki-based intranet (effectively) which would act as a communication tool as well as a base for project management and the like. All files could be accessible to all employees wherever they are based, wherever they log in.

And that would be pretty cool. Of course, companies like Zoho are already providing something very similar. But they don’t have the Google brand to break through in the way an integrated Google system could.

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Google Spreadsheets

After the purchase of Writely giving them onine word processing, it appears that Google will shortly be offering a spreadsheet too.

These, with Gmail and Calendar effectively provide a free to use Google Office suite. For home users with a swift broadband connection and no objection to using Google, why would they bother with anything else?

How to be Good

Yep, I am giving you all a chance to do something that will make you better people. You’d be fools/really unpleasant not to take it!

The future Mrs Dave is to take part in Race for Life this year, raising money for research into breast cancer. Being the web-savvy individual that she is, she has a web site set up to take sponsors. If you would like to make some sort of contribution to her total, please visit the sponsorship site and do the honours.

Cheers!

Coincidence

Today, I have been doing some work on a side blogging project that I have been thinking about for a while. I’d got the remit of the blog sorted, a name, decided (as usual) on WordPress and on the K2 theme. Everything sorted. So, I went to my webhosts domain registry page, and looked up the URL I wanted.

It has already gone, as had the other couple of TLDs I was interested in. I had a look at the one site that was up and running, using the address I wanted, and was shocked.

The blog was about what my blog was going to be about. It had, as mentioned before, the name I wanted. It used WordPress. It used K2 as the theme. And he had done it all today.

Just how weird is that? Back to the drawing board for me, anyway.

[tags]blogging, wordpress, k2[/tags]

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