Tuesday, 4 March, 2008

BuddyPress

This looks very exciting.

Thanks to Nick for the tip off.

Edit: More via TechCrunch:

It is easy to dismiss this as completely unnecessary given the abundance of social networks already out there, as well as application development platforms like OpenSocial. But an open-source social network does present some intriguing possibilities. New apps and features could be added simply by creating new plugins. And there would be no lock-in to any proprietary code or development environment.

PermalinkBuddyPress

I promise…

…not to write another blog post about blogging for a while.

I do need another area of obsession though. Wikis? Social networks?

Any other suggestions?

PermalinkI promise…

It’s Not Just the Blog

As part of some notes I have been putting together for getting started with blogging, I’ve written about some of the other services that it might be a good idea to register with, in addition to your blog:

No blog exists within a vacuum, and if you to get the most out of yours, you need to be engaging with other online social services too.

1. Flickr

Flickr is a photo hosting and sharing site. What that means is that you can upload photos onto the web, and embed them into your blog posts without having to worry about whether you have them in the right size to suit your blog’s theme – Flickr resizes them all for you. You can then link back to the photo’s page on Flickr, allowing your readers to see larger versions, for example. You can also tag your photos with keywords that make it easier for people to find them and for you to find similar content uploaded by others.

Flickr is a social network in itself, of course, and therein lies another of its strengths for the blogger. If someone comes across one of your photos through Flickr and likes the look of it, the chances are that they will click a few links and find their way to your blog. Bingo! Another reader.

Along similar lines when it comes to media sharing are YouTube for video content and SlideShare, which allows you to embed and share PowerPoint presentations.

2. Technorati

Technorati used to be the number one search engine specifically devoted to blogs, but now it has pretty much been overtaken by the Google juggernaut. Having said that, though, it is still a pretty useful service.

Once you have claimed your blog on Technorati, it lets you track who is linking to you, which is both heart-warming and useful. You can assign tags to your blog, which can help people find you. Other things you can do include putting a little badge on your blog, linking people to your Technorati page and encourages them to mark your blog as a favourite. Other people are then alerted to the act of favouritisation, and so they too are aware of your blog.

It’s essentially another service to make your blog more discoverable.  And that’s a good thing.

3. MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog is a service from Yahoo! Which helps you both find out a little more about your readers as well as building a bit of community spirit around your blog. It does a number of things: it tracks where people are coming to your blog from, and where they leave it to; it logs members of MyBlogLog and displays their photos on your blog; and it allows people to join a community page for your blog and have discussions with one another.

It’s a great way of finding out more about your readers, what they are interested in and what topics, or styles of writing, attract are most popular.

4. Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service. Rather than just save sites you see as useful to your browser, it allows you to save them to a publicly viewable website. Like Flickr, you can tag your bookmarks, which will help people to find them.

Del.icio.us also lets you integrate its service with your blog. So, you can have a daily posting of the links you have bookmarked that day to your blog. This is a great way of flagging up stuff you think your readers might find interesting but which you don’t have an awful lot to add to. You can also have a cloud of your popular tags in your sidebar, so folk can access links you have recommended on a certain topic.

You can also make it easier for your readers to add your posts and pages to del.icio.us too, by including links in each one which they can click to be taken straight through to the del.icio.us site. These can also tell you and your visitors exactly how many people have already bookmarked a particular posts, which is another great way of finding out what’s hot on your blog.

5. Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging service, which allows you to post updates on what you are up to that are of up to 140 characters. The limit is important because some people used text messages on their mobile phones to both provide their own and receive updates from others.

Twitter can also be used to inform people of when you have made a new posting to your blog, which is another effective way of publicising your content. Twitter regularly features as the top referring site for DavePress, for example – people do follow the links that appear there.

PermalinkIt’s Not Just the Blog

Who are you blogging for?

A key consideration for a blogger is who the blog is being written for. I am going to try my best throughout this post not to use the word ‘audience’, because the people that read blogs are more than that, not least because of the interaction they can have through comments and pings from their own blogs. But even if we avoid thinking of the readership – or intended readership – of a blog as an audience, we still need to have an idea of who they are. It might be that a blog is written primarily for the author’s purpose, more than anyone else, for example.

It’s fair to say, I think, that a log can probably be written for several groups of people, indeed maybe the question is who is this blog post for, rather than the entire blog itself. But it might be useful to try and break down the different groups.

1. Blogging for yourself

This doesn’t necessarily mean making very private thoughts public – maybe a handwritten diary is best for that kind of thing. But blogs can be used as notebooks, capturing thoughts and ideas so you can return to them later. Again, the blog format, including stuff that appears in the sidebars as well as in actual posts, alows it to become your hub on the web, so you can have in one place your del.icio.us links and flickr photos, say. The blog almost becomes your online scrapbook, but one which you ahre with the world and welcome their thoughts on – if you have comments turned on, that is!

2. Blogging as ‘consultation’

A blog can also be used as a sounding board, putting your writing out there for people to come back to you on, which you may then use for another purpose. A lot of the stuff I write here on blogging, and getting started with other social media and web 2.0 tools is slowly being edited and added to, and one day when I have some time I might try and put it into an e-book format or something. This is a bit like 1, really, as the beneficiary of it is yourself, but if you publish what you do put on your blog with a Creative Commons licence, say, then others can benefit too.

3. Blog your experience to create a niche

There are plenty of niches about, and one way you can carve one out for yourself is to write about an area of expertise tha you have, sharing your ideas and good practice with others who do similar stuff. You can soon make your blog the centre of a community of interest in your sector, as you tailor what you write to meet the needs of the people you work with, whether in your organisation or others.

4. Family and friends

It’s quite legitimate to use your blog just to communicate what you are up to so that family and friends can keep up to date with your movements. Using photos and video in your blog means that it will be a fair bit more exciting that your average round-robin letter or email. If your content is good, too, you might pick up some readers who just enjoy what you post, even though they don’t know you. Having said that, though, your readership is generally going to be pretty limited if you concentrate all your writing for family and friends!

5. People with the same interests as you

You can use your blog to write film reviews, or book reviews. A good friend of mine has started a blog doing just that and after a little over a year is now seeing publishing using his reviews on book jackets. Now, it helps that he is a fabulous book reviewer, but the fact that his blog features book reviews and book reviews only means that he attracts an audience of book lovers, ie people who share the same interest as him.

6. People who can help you

You can use your blog to attract the attention of people who can help you achieve something. Say you have a great idea for a web service but no idea how to put it together, well, by blogging about it, interested folk will come across you when Googling and can offer their help. Don’t just write one “HELP!” post, but write a few, explaining what you want to do and why, and how you are going about trying to fill the gaps in your knowledge. By making it look like you are making an effort, people will be more likely to help you, and you may well be informing others, too.

7. Future employers

Your blog can become your online CV, and the best thing (actually it could be bad…) about this is that it provides a snapshot of exactly who you are: your interests, your style and your ability to work with different types of media. For example if your CV or application forms claims that you have amazing communication skills, it’s fabulous to be able to back that up with a real example, of which a well-written blog is a great one.

What have I missed out?

PermalinkWho are you blogging for?

5 things every blog needs

I am trying to come up with a short, snappy list of things that a blog has to have if it is going to have any chance of being successful. I want to limit it to five. So far, I have come up with:

  1. Authenticity – your voice has to be genuine
  2. Regularity – you don’t have to post three times a day, but a regular flow of new content is vital
  3. Responsive – respond to comments, and what’s going on outside your blog
  4. Integration – it’s not just the blog, it’s flickr, del.icio.us, youtube, twitter etc etc
  5. Identity – The blog is the author’s space on the web – make sure it represents you well

I am not sure if 1 and 5 are repeating themselves. Has anyone got any comments or suggestions on how this list can be improved?

Permalink5 things every blog needs

Monday, 3 March, 2008

links for 2008-03-03

Permalinklinks for 2008-03-03

Sunday, 2 March, 2008

links for 2008-03-02

Permalinklinks for 2008-03-02

Future of the cloud

Interesting column from John Naughton in today’s Observer on the potential issues of an increased focus on ‘cloud computing’ ie using online services like Google Docs, etc. Firstly he talks about the recent outages in Asia caused by the Pakistani authorities re-routing YouTube to nowhere – in other words, just how stable is the web? – and secondly he discusses the environmental issues.

A comprehensively networked world requires unconscionable numbers of ‘server farms’ – huge warehouses stuffed with computers consuming vast quantities of electrical power. We haven’t yet begun to think seriously about the environmental footprint of this kind of technology, but it’s clearly significant.

Some companies are already aware of the looming environmental issues. Google’s senior executives are reportedly obsessed with their company’s power consumption. And last week IBM launched a new mainframe which provides the computing power of 1,500 PC-based servers but with 85 per cent lower energy costs. Perhaps this is a token of what’s to come: the mainframe is dead; long live the mainframe!

Or, the network is the computer. Interesting, the green angle on this. I had always equated innovative methods of online working as being environmentally friendly. This aspect has taken me rather by surprise.

PermalinkFuture of the cloud

Saturday, 1 March, 2008

What Google Apps Does

Google Apps
I’ve written a couple of posts about Google Sites over the last couple of days, and in summary: I really like it. I have spotted a few posts about complaining that this isn’t a service that’s available to those with standard Google accounts. That’s because it’s a part of the Google Apps (for your domain) service, which provides a bunch of Google’s systems for you to use under your own label and domain, with users limited to those you set up on the system.

What’s remarkable about Google Apps is that it’s free for up to 200 (count ’em!) users. Given the range of services now provided (Sites is an important addition), this presents a way for a new organisation to run their entire back office systems online, or within the cloud as the current popular phrase has it, for free. No need to invest in the necessary technology to run email and web servers, networked drives, groupware systems like calendars or intranets. Not only does it cost nothing (except for the registration of a domain name) but it also provides other advantages – because it’s in the cloud, the folk in your organisation can be working anywhere in the world.

You can even set up access to the services to use easily understandable domains, so email is accessed at mail.domain.com, calendars at calendar.domain.com etc. The only issue is around how you present the web content for your organisation – but more on that later.

To show just how good this actually is, I’ll give a brief run through of what you get for nothing.

1. Gmail

Your very own branded version of Gmail, with 6.5gb of mailspace for every one of your potential users. It runs exactly as the normal Gmail does, with filters, labels, threaded conversations etc. Gmail is the best web interface there is, and you can have it for yourself.

2. Google Docs

Create presentations, word processed documents and spreadsheets using a web based interface. You could see this as the equivalent of the network drive on a traditional setup. Only with this solution, you can share and collaborate on documents with your colleagues without having to email them round. You can instantly make any document created within your domain viewable or editable by other account holders, as well as invite in people from the outside.

3. Start Page

This is the Google Apps take on iGoogle. Your own branded version of the personalised start page. You can make this more interesting though by setting what one of the columns features for all users on the domain. This way you can ensure that vital stuff appears on everyone’s page, whilst they still have the option to personalise the majority of the content presented.

4. Google Calendar

Shared calendars across the domain, using one of the best online systems there are. Calendars can be shared across the domain, and again it can be branded with your own logo.

5. Google Talk

This is present in the Mail interface, as with traditional Gmail, but also can use the downloaded client software. A great way to communicate internally without worries as to which instant messaging platform others are using, and you can open it up to the outside world if you choose.

6. Page Creator

This is the only really piss-poor feature to Google Apps, and following the launch of Sites, it seems to be disappearing from view. It’s a simple way to produce pretty useless web pages. It certainly isn’t good enough to produce any kind of website for an organisation. You’re far better off delving into the world of DNS records and pointing web traffic to WordPress.com or something like that.

7. Sites

The really exciting bit, Sites is JotSpot reborn and Googlified. Not the perfect wiki, but the perfect introduction to them, and this – Gmail apart – is the real convincing argument for using Google Apps. When you consider how much stuff like Micrsoft’s Sharepoint costs, it’s unbelievable that Google is giving this thing away for free. It’s an intranet on steroids.

Google Apps rocks, and it provides pretty much everything a startup organisation might need. Work in a grown up, distributed, online way – for free.

PermalinkWhat Google Apps Does

Mec Puck Z

…is the name of the artistic creation that young Master DavePress produced using the graphics tablet just now. He has given it the title ‘Mec Puck Z’. Don’t ask, I didn’t dare.

Mec Puck Z

(Warning: it’s a pretty big download!)

I am sure you all agree it’s a real work of art. He loves the tablet though – makes using the computer far easier and more intuititive.

PermalinkMec Puck Z

New toy

On the way home from work last night I bought myself a little treat:

Wacom Bamboo 1

It’s a Wacom Bamboo 1 graphics tablet – just the basic model for playing with. One of the things I will start using it for is creating Sketchcasts, which look like a really cool mashup of lo- and hi-tech. Here’s an example which describes what they are all about:

PermalinkNew toy

Playing with Google Sites

Huzzah! Google Sites has finally been added to my Google Apps account, which means I can start playing. I’ve created a test wiki here, whicha anyone can view, but if you want to have a go at editing it, you’ll need an account. Just mail me to get one (er, if I know who you are).

Overall, it’s pretty great. Dead easy to use, lovely interface, plenty of customisation options. You can have multiple wikis, all with different designs. Pages within wikis can be standard text and image affairs, or you can use one of the presupplied templates:

  • Dashboard – let’s you create an iGoogle style page with loads of widgets and RSS feeds etc
  • Lists – let’s you create to-do lists, issue trackers etc. There are a few templates for these, or just create your own
  • Announcements – effectively a blog within the wiki. Very nicely done
  • File cabinet – upload and share files. Easy to use – just a shame that files can’t be directly loads into Google Docs, you have to download them

The widgets and stuff can be embedded in any standard page as well, though. Essentially, if it’s available on iGoogle, you can have it on Google Sites.

Google doesn’t mentioned the word ‘wiki’ anywhere on Google Sites though, maybe because it scares people off, but possibly also because there are some decidedly un-wiki things about Sites, not least the fact that I can’t seem to be able to compare versions of pages, nor roll-back to previous ones. Also, you can’t create a new page just by linking to it, which is a bit poo.

These minor niggles apart, Google Sites is really rather good. It completes the circle of applications that might be needed by a small organisation to communicate and collaborate within Google Apps. It’s very professional looking, and is much, much better than Sharepoint. Seriously.

PermalinkPlaying with Google Sites

Friday, 29 February, 2008

Thursday, 28 February, 2008

links for 2008-02-28

Permalinklinks for 2008-02-28

Wikia release social network feature

You can now make your MediaWiki running wiki have social networking features, too, as reported by Wikia head honcho Jimmy Wales:

Today at Wikia we have released our social networking features for MediaWiki under the GNU GPL 2.0. The best place to see this running live is at Halopedia, our Halo site.

I am excited about all the stuff going on in this space. With google’s open social initiative, our work in social search and social networking for mediawiki, I think the whole wiki/free culture space is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

Cool. Will have to track down where I can get this from and have a play. Might be useful for GovHack?

Edit: I can’t find it anywhere.  Help?

PermalinkWikia release social network feature

At last! JotSpot = Google Sites

Finally Google has finished making the JotSpot wiki service their own, and have relaunched it as Google Sites. This is great news, as a wiki solution is something that has been sorely missing from Google’s line-up of services for some time.

This is TechCrunch‘s take on it:

Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just five basic templates – a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums.

Here’s a video from Google explaining a bit about it all:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KnC2EIS5w]

At the moment though it looks like it is only available to people who use the Google Apps service, where you can have white label versions of various Google services with your own domain and branding. So you can’t start a Google Site wiki with your standard Google account, I don’t think.

I use Google Apps to handle my email and calendar and stuff, and will be implementing a Google Site as soon as it appears on my dashboard, and will make it available for people to have a play.

That’s my weekend sorted, then.

PermalinkAt last! JotSpot = Google Sites

Wednesday, 27 February, 2008

links for 2008-02-27

Permalinklinks for 2008-02-27