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!

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 not, largely because while Ning makes sharing photos and videos a dream, making other material available is trickier, if not impossible. The idea, though, that a free hosted solution is an intriguing one, not least in terms of the ease and speed in which they can be set up.

So, I’ve been playing around with Google Groups, which is something I have wanted to do since a raft of new features were added relatively recently. I think it’s now possible to use Groups as a sophisticated collaboration platform, and one which will see some real improvements in the (hopefully) near future.

So, what does Groups do? It’s core feature is as a discussion medium, which runs in parallel on the web and through email, depending on how each user prefers it. This is a super way of doing things, allowing information to reach people within the community in the format that they want it.

Membership can be made public, so anyone can join; moderated, so those who request to join have to be given the go ahead by an administrator; or invite only, which speaks for itself.

You can create web pages now, which are accessible on your group’s homepage. These are edited using a stripped down version of Google’s Page Creator tool, which is nice and easy to use. What’s interesting is that permissions can be set to allow any member to create and edit pages which when combined with the excellent version controlling, which allow you to roll back to a previous version of a page, effectively turns these pages into individual wikis.

It’s also possible to upload any kind of document to the group, which is a nice way of sharing information. However, Google misses a trick here, because the documents, whether word processed or spreadsheet based, can’t be automatically edited with Google Docs. This would turn an interesting feature into a world beating one for me.

The handling of other media could also be better. For example, images are dealt with just like other documents. It would be helpful to have separate sections for different types of media: photos, audio, video. Maybe the photos could work with Picasa Web Albums, audio could use the inbuilt mp3 player used in Gmail and Reader, and video could surely be embedded directly from either Google Video or YouTube.

But for the basics, communicating and sharing information, Google Groups is a really strong contender, given how easy it is to use, the fact that it is free and that there will surely be some very interesting developments to the platform in the near future.

Tags: ning, google+groups

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 you can link to for people to contact you. It presents a standard form, with fields for name, email, subject and message, saving you the hassle.

Nice.

Second on my list of tips was to make sure you are using the systems that suit how you work. What sort of things am I talking about?

How do you blog?

A blog is of course just a website, and you could write your blog by updating some HTML pages by hand. Some people probably do. But there are a wealth of systems out there that will help make your blogging experience easier, as well as making things more fun for your readers. There are some decisions to be made, though. Do you want to have your blog at a hosted service (like this one is) or have your own webspace, and domain name and install a system there? Do you want to pay for anything? Do you like editing your posts through a web page or would you like to have the peace of mind of an offline editor? I’ll go through these questions in more detail.

Systems, systems, systems

There are many blog engines out there, online services which act as content management systems, theoretically allowing you to concentrate on the content while the engine does all the hard work for you. Some of the more famous and popular ones are Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Drupal, TextPattern and many more. I use WordPress, both at this site and on my personal blog. I genuinely think it is the best platform there is, in terms of features and ease of use. Most services offer a free version, whether only as a trial or forever so it’s worth playing around with them. Many also offer the ability to import the posts you have made in one system into another, so you can carry your experiments around with you.

For a beginner though, it is probably best recommending starting a blog at either Blogger, WordPress.com or Typepad to start with.

To host or not to host?

Well, it’s certainly a question. The difference is basically one of time and effort. For example, if you go down the hosted route, there is no installing of possibly complicated software, no web hosting costs, no domain name renewals and so on. But if you did host your own blog, you would get the chance to customise your blog engine’s installation, using plug-ins and other third party extensions, you could completely redesign your site’s look or use one of thousands of available templates. You could also implement an advertising programme to try and earn some money back on your investment. Using a hosted service also often means you can’t have your own snappy URL, and it might be the case that your chosen address for your blog is no longer available, which can be very annoying!

It is probably fair to say that the best option for the beginner is to try out a hosted service, as mentioned above, like Blogger, WordPress.com or TypePad. Then, when your blogging really takes off you can consider having a domain of your own and can start to experiment with your chosen blog engine.

On or offline?

All the main blog engines come with an editor built in. These are webpages you visit to either enter new posts or to edit existing ones. It means that you can do it wherever you are and you don’t have to bother installing new software.

But sometime that just isn’t enough. There are a whole heap of blog editors out there – effectively stripped-down, blog-enabled word processors, which sit on your machine like any other application and which allow you to type at your leisure – maybe at a laptop without an always-on internet connection. It means you can save posts and mull over them before you send them to your blog. And you can generally do that by just hitting a button. No copying-and-pasting required. They can also do other cool stuff, like uploading images for you, or adding tags to your posts, or presenting you with a preview of what your post will look like online.

I use offline editors for almost all my blogging – the almost being when I am away from my desktop PC at home. To be perfectly honest, I do not know why I prefer doing it this way, I just feel more comfortable with it and I believe that others do too. Maybe it’s the case that, despite flat rate always-on broadband connections, typing into a browser still makes me feel rushed.

The editors I have come across so far are as follows: BlogJet, Qumana, Zoundry, Live Writer and w.Bloggar. All bar BlogJet are currently free. There are others: RocketPost sounds great but doesn’t work; and Ecto has been buggy recently.

Summing up

Don’t rush into a choice of blog engines. Try out a hosted service first before splashing any cash. Do try using an offline blog editor if you find it helps you post more coherently!

Tags: blogger, wordpress, typepad, blogjet, qumana, w.bloggar, live writer, zoundry

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 on using Gmail for more than just mail, like replying to users via instant message and automatically adding meeting requests to the calendar.

[youtube wY2bpr1TAA4]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY2bpr1TAA4]

…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 after the party was advertised on the website MySpace.

Guests are alleged to have urinated on a wedding dress and stolen jewellery from the house near Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham, on Easter Monday.

Durham Police said the girl had been questioned and released on police bail.

Wrike looks like a worthy competitor to Basecamp in the field of free online project collaboration platforms.

Tags: wrike

I had no idea that writing blog posts for future release was so easy with WordPress!

All you have to do is edit the “timestamp” for the post when you write it to be the day in the future when you want it published, and it automatically appears for you on that day – so simple!

This is ideal for Free as in Beer, where I write quick posts on no cost software. Sometimes I come across more than one cool app in a day, but using this method I can line them all up for publication.

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.

This could be an excellent tool for groups collaborating on documents across the web.

Tags: writewith

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 that could help improve their lives.

There’s no point me writing much about this, as David Wilcox has already done so superbly:

On reflection, what is just as interesting is that Ministers and Civil Servants are  becoming aware that presence on the Net is no longer a matter of creating – and controlling – your own web space. It is a matter of going to the places where people already are, and so ending up in many places at the same time.

I urge you to read David’s post in full.

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 have with their readers is more like an echo chamber, in which conclusions are pre-specified and targets selected. The outcome is horrifying. The intention of drawing readers into the conversation by means of a facility for adding comments results in an immense volume of abusive material directed – and recorded for posterity – at public figures.

The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted – overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

A remarkable view for a political blogger to hold, unless Mr Kamm considers himself a Proper Journalist these days.

It’s early days yet. Political blogging has only really taken off in the last couple of years in the UK. Sure, much of it is unbearably negative and full of inaccuracies, but the same could be said of pamphleteering.

Just because some political blogs aren’t particularly edifying, it doesn’t make the blog format a Bad Thing. In time, some balance will be restored, and as always, the quality will float to the top.

In the meantime, we will just have to trust ourselves to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction.

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 present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
– is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
– is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
– infringes upon a copyright or trademark
– violates an obligation of confidentiality
– violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved–or find an intermediary who can do so–before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible–see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

6. We ignore the trolls.

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them–“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

This seems like a nice policy, and one which could be adapted by local government for use on their blogs to make it clear to users what is acceptable and what isn’t.

O’Reilly also links to the Blogging Wikia, which looks like it could become a useful resource.

According to FeedDemon:

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 feeds is that they mean you don’t have to visit every web site you want to read. Some people are subscribed to hundreds, maybe even thousands of blogs – and to bookmark and visit those sites would become a nightmare. RSS feeds mean you don’t have to – you just subscribe to the site and every time it’s updated, the new material gets sent to your reader application (also known as an aggregator) automatically. And it’s not just blogs that produce these feeds – many news and other sites do too. Soon you’ll find yourself spending as much time in your reader as your browser!

Which reader?

As with all software issues, it just depends on what suits you. There are two main routes to go down, either desktop based, where you download some software onto your machine, or browser based, where you visit a web site which displays your feed within your web browser. If you only read feeds on one machine, then it might be an idea to use a desktop app. If you travel around and use lots of different computers then the flexibility of a browser-based option might suit. Personally, as a Windows user, I use FeedDemon, a desktop application which can synchronise with the NewsGator online service, so I get the best of both worlds. Other online options include Google Reader, Onfolio and Bloglines. These have the advantage of being free (there is a small fee for FeedDemon) so are a good bet for someone just starting out.

How you arrange your feeds is another thing to think about. Me, I just line them all up in one big list. But you can generally put them into folders or tag them so you can group similar feeds together. Another way of viewing feeds is as a ‘river of news’ – with all the entries in chronological order on one screen that you scroll through. I like this style because your attention is grabbed by content, not by who you might be reading, so some interesting stuff gets thrown up that you might otherwise miss. Proper river of news support is missing from FeedDemon right now, but you can get a very good version of it using Google Reader.

Which feeds?

All of them! Seriously, the key to this is not to be selective in the feeds you subscribe to. You never know when something really interesting might pop up on them. As to where to start looking, Technorati is a good place to start – have a look at the top 100 list or the top favourited list and subscribe to those feeds you think might be interesting. Not because they are popular, or well regarded (though that is important) but because these guys often generate a lot of links out of their blogs to other people’s, giving you yet more feeds to check out. Some bloggers have link blogs (like Scoble), or updates from their del.icio.us accounts (like Steve Rubel), providing yet more tidbits. Also subscribe to sites like TechMeme and Digg to spot bigger stories as they come over the horizon.

One way of quickly building up a good list is to import someone else’s list of feeds, or blogroll, into your reader. I’ll shortly be making one available for download from this site to help any newbies out there get up to speed.

Aargh! How can I read all this stuff?

You can’t, so don’t. Instead, scan, scan, scan. This is why a ‘river of news’ view is cool when reading through feeds. Flip though them all, don’t read every word, just look out for the things that interest you. Most readers have a method of marking posts for later review, whether by chucking them into a news bin or marking them with a tag or star. That way you can go back to them for further reflection and to pick bits out to quote in your own posts.

Listening in

These days it’s not just text based blog posts that can be delivered to you through RSS though. Podcasts are audio files, usually in .mp3 format, which you can download and listen to, whether at your computer or through your .mp3 player. You have to be more selective with these, as, unlike blogs, you can’t scan them! Subscribe to the blogs first, then, when you find you trust the author/s, start downloading the podcasts too.

Summing up

There are essentially 3 things to do to read more blogs: 1) choose a system you are comfortable with; 2) subscribe to everything in sight; 3) scan first, don’t read.

Good luck!

Tags: rss, blogging, aggregators

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 just been spolit with WordPress for the last couple of years, because even the latest iteration of Blogger lags far behind. The editor is ridiculously basic (not allowing me to add title text to links, for example) and adding pictures is nigh on impossible.

So I gave up and created a new account at WordPress.com, called Free as in Beer.

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

Sigh.

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 install one for you – the other option is to use a third party hosted solution, like the excellent Wikispaces, but you have to be sure that data is secure.

Another option, though, is to run the wiki from your desktop, and the perfect application to do this with is TiddlyWiki.

Tiddlywiki consists of a single html page, chock full of javascript, which you can download and start using straight away. By putting it on a shared network drive, say, you can share the wiki between an entire team. Other options might be to keep it as a personal organisational tool, on your USB key, for example.

I find TiddlyWiki to be the perfect electronic notebook, and a great way of showing people the benefits of wiki working. For exponents of Getting Things Done, there’s a special customised version available.

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 wikis to improve service or staff satisfaction.

1. Procedure Manuals

The wiki is an ideal platform for managing knowledge. Having an online knowledge base of processes and procedures accessed through an intranet would be useful to almost every member of staff. Run it as a wiki, and everyone can keep it up to date and add as much detail as they want.

2. Project Management

Managing projects successfully is all about communication and managing documents effectively. Every project should have a wiki space for discussions and collaborative working to take place. Why email round spreadsheets and word processed documents when you can all work off the same record?

3. Public Consultation

Wikis provide another route into the Council for the views of the community. Now, allowing editing rights to the general public to a Council website might well be a horrifying thought, but various things have to be born in mind. Firstly, a key component of wiki technology is the ability to ‘roll-back’ edits, to remove vandalism and non constructive comments. Secondly, by making it very clear that a site is a wiki, with all that that entails, the information on the site is approached by the reader in a different way. Defra have a wiki and the classic example of a public wiki that works is of course Wikipedia.

4. Improvement and Change Management

Every council has a suggestions box. Nobody ever uses them, and if they do, not a lot happens. But by using a wiki as an open suggestions forum, others can be involved in the development of business cases for improvement opportunities and momentum built up.

5. Knowledge Sharing

Whether lists of useful links, blog posts, or the sharing of home grown knowledge, the wiki can be a useful format for creating a space where people can simply share what they know. Tap into the talent that exists within the council but which you didn’t know about already by empowering people to share what they know on a shared space.

That’s a pretty quick run through, because the potential applications are pretty much limitless. If you’d like to talk more about the possibilities that wikis offer, leave a comment or send me an email!

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 blog in more detail,then do leave a comment or send me an email!

1. Read more blogs

What you get out of your blog depends entirely on what you put in. Good, interesting blogs do not evolve in a vacuum. Read as many blogs as you can. Not only will you pick up on useful tidbits to improve your blogging, you are exposing yourself to new ideas and content you can discuss yourself. There are plenty of blogs-about-blogs. This might smack a little of navel-gazing, but with any new form, evolution comes through discussion and collaboration. Pick up new ideas and put them into practice. Listen to what experienced bloggers have to say.

Subscribe to anything you might think may interest you. Don’t discriminate in the blogs you subscribe to. It won’t take up more than a couple of seconds of your time to scan them, if there’s nothing to interest you. But there might be that one article that pops up in a few month’s time that makes it worthwhile.

2. Use tools you like and trust

A shorter way of putting it would be ‘USE WORDPRESS!!!’, but that would be a little prescriptive. Choose a blog engine you like and trust. Make sure it has the features you want available. make sure its intuitive for you to use. Does it fit in with your methods of working?

Is it worth having a look at an offline blog editor – does it make life easier for you?

3. Make sure your blog has a feed

People who blog without RSS feeds don’t deserve to be read. They probably aren’t even blogs. Blog engines that don’t produce them don’t deserve to be used. No-one has the time to look at individual blog sites, that’s what the aggregators are for. Never presume that your content is so great that people will go out of their way to read it. Make life as easy for your readers as possible. Check out services like FeedBurner and see how it could improve your experience – and that of your readers.

4. Find a niche – and evolve it

There’s no point writing on some esoteric subject from the off. What are the chances of anyone coming by you? Write about a few things that interest you to start with. Focus on the one you have your eye on, by all means, but include other stuff too.

Really importantly, be regular. Keep the posts coming. If you are going to be away, let your readers know. The last thing you want is people thinking the blog is dead and unsubcribing. It’s a commitment to be taken seriously.

Over time, your blog will evolve, and its niche will become clear, if you want one. It’s an organic process. But unless you are a total weirdo, if stuff interests you, the chances are that there are other people on the web who will be interested too. But you have to cast a wide net to begin with.

5. Link, link and comment

Link to everyone you mention in a post – it’s common courtesy and makes your blog infinitely more useful. No-one would want to read a blog, only to have to switch to Google to find what you’re on about. Use trackbacks to let people know you are reading them and commenting on them. Use comments on other blogs to make salient and constructive points. But don’t do it for the sake of it. The more interesting your points, the more likely people are to sit up and take notice, and subscribe to your blog.

Make sure your blog allows comments, otherwise you are just having a conversation with a mirror. Always respond to comments people leave on your blog at the start, when there aren’t too many, so that a relationship can be formed with your readers. If someone comments on your blog, do them the courtesy of commenting on theirs. The key words are reciprocation and collaboration.

6. Keep notes

You never know when they might come in handy. Always keep a simple text editor open, like Notepad on Windows, so you can tap stuff in as it occurs to you. Keep a notebook. Use an email account as an idea store, or a service like BackPack, PBwiki or Stikipad. Ideas for blog posts can come from anywhere, from a conversation, an email, a book, a magazine or newspaper. Keep your eyes open and keep a way of recording what you see handy.

Have a separate link blog, or use a service like del.icio.us, that you can post quick links to interesting articles on. This has a dual advantage – you can save items for later viewing, and you provide your readers with details on what you’re reading, offering them an insight on your perspective and where you are coming from.

7. Make sure your presentation is good

Some people disagree on the need for good spelling or grammar, but I think it’s essential. I find it puts me off reading, as all I can think about is the mutilation of the English language in front of me. It’s true that the brain tends to skip some spelling mistakes, and no-one is error free, but its a good idea to read stuff back to ensure it makes sense. Capitalise sentences. That’s a big one for me. Avoid swearing, it can needlessly put off readers.

Your blog site should look nice too. Regular readers will be subscribers, but to attract new readers it’s a good idea to look like you know what you are doing. Try to avoid the most common templates that are available, make yours distinctive.

Try and make your posts stand out too. If there is a relevant image available, use it. Sign up to Flickr and post your own photos. Set up a random photo generator near the top of your page, it creates interest and makes people stick around.

8. Be interesting, controversial even, but not stupid

Don’t blog about things you shouldn’t. Don’t leave yourself or (even worse) others open to personal criticism because of what you post. If you don’t fully understand an issue, don’t blog on it – yet. Read more, take in other people’s views. Don’t make yourself look an idiot. Don’t flame people. What’s the point? You can disagree with others while remaining polite. It isn’t hard. Don’t deliberately take an extreme stance to provoke reactions. The most likely effect this will have is that people will ignore you.

9. Be funny

Hey, why don’t I take my own advice?! Everything that is good has jokes. Even the most bleak books, TV shows, films have jokes in them to make them classics. Even if it’s a black, dry seam of humour, it keeps the reader interested and coming back. Another way of putting this would be Don’t be boring. Don’t take yourself, your posts or your blog too seriously. Laugh at yourself. Respond positively to criticism.

10. Stick at it

No-one’s leaving comments. No-one is trackbacking to your posts. You don’t register until the 300th page on a Google on your name. Welcome to my world! But don’t give up. Think about why you started your blog. Was it for fame and adulation? Yes. Was it to get an enormous Google PageRank? Yes. Oh. Well, that isn’t going to happen, at least for a long, long time, or until you get a job at Microsoft or Google. Instead, focus on the smaller positives. Maintaining a blog keeps you in touch with friends and family who might read it. And if you only have a small number of readers, well, you owe it to them to keep going. Plus, your blog posts are improving your skills as a writer, which has to be a good thing. But most of all, you are taking part in a collaborative project, the blogosphere, which is on a quite remarkable scale. Someone, somewhere, is listening.

Tags: bloggingtips