Wednesday, 17 December, 2008

5 Different uses for RSS

RSS is a great technology, one of those that underpins the new usefulness of the web. It’s a simple way of keeping in touch with what is happening in lots of different places, without having to keep visiting lots of sites every day.

Here’s a video from those wonderful Common Craft folk explaining RSS better than I ever could:

One of the really fab things about RSS are the different uses to which it can be put. Here’s five off the top of my head – have you any others?

1. Keeping up with bloggers

I don’t think blogging would have taken off nearly as fast as it did without its very early adoption of RSS as a method of syndicating content. Blogs by their nature are updated on a regular basis, and in a lot of cases a lot more often than other more traditional sites. Keeping up with all that content would be impossible without a way of bringing all those updated into one place.

2. News to you

News site soon cottoned onto the potential of RSS, to the point where now any news organisation worth its salt provides content in this way. Other organisations are starting to adopt it as well, and government is getting there. The need to keep eyeballs on adverts has resulted in some feeds containing only teaser content, to force the reader to go to the originating site anyway. This is a Bad Thing, in my view, and the one positive thing that will come out of RSS feeds that include adverts in them is that it might mean we get rid of partial feeds.

3. Monitoring what’s being said

Now that search engines such as Google are providing RSS feeds for their alerts service – as well as Blogsearches – it makes it all the more easy to set up monitoring dashboards, rather like the ones developed by Steph Gray and others at DIUS. Scanning the web for mentions of key names and topics means that nothing on the web needs to be missed, no matter how small the source.

4. Chchchchchanges

Collaborating on wikis, and forums etc is a wonderful way to experience how the web can help bring people together to share and develop content together. But how to know when people have made updates to pages, or projects, or conversations? One way has always been to get email alerts, but that can lead to having a very full inbox. Any web service worth its salt these days provides RSS for updates, meaning you can keep yourself in the know, and well organised at the same time.

5. Republish, repurpose

This is the most exciting, for me. Because RSS is an open standard it means other services can make use of it to republish material in new ways. Take Steph’s digitalgovuk site – all built using the RSS feeds that Delicious spits out – or Simon Dickson’s OnePolitics – which makes following political blogs both easy and easy on the eye. When you start getting into the territory of combining RSS with other technology like maps and so on, the possibilities seem limitless.

What other uses for RSS are there that are important to you?

Permalink5 Different uses for RSS

Tuesday, 16 December, 2008

Barcamp-Teacamp this Thursday (18/12/08)

Teacamps are the rather British regular get togethers for people interested in cool webby stuff in government. They take place every other Thursday at the House of Fraser cafe on Victoria Street.

Turnout has been a little disappointing of late, so I hear – I’m one of those that hasn’t appeared for a few meets – but it would be great to have as many people along as possible this week. For  one, it’s nearly Christmas and it would be good to pass on season’s greetings in person.

Mainly, though, it seems like a really good opportunity to discuss the upcoming Barcamp, which is taking place at the end of January. From what I gather, preparations are progressing nicely, but it would be great for a pre-meet to take place, where folk can talk together about what they are planning to present, or maybe what they would like to see from others.

So, hope to see lots of you there – 2pm, Thursday 18 Dec, House of Fraser cafe.

PermalinkBarcamp-Teacamp this Thursday (18/12/08)

Web based or desktop?

Just recently, I have stopped using the WordPress inbuilt editor, which runs in the web browser, and have started using MarsEdit – a piece of desktop software I have previously been rather unkind about – to write my blog posts. Since getting a PC, just recently I have continued in this offline blogging vein by using Windows Live Writer.

This started me thinking about the ways I use online services – through web based or desktop applications. As always, the first thing I did was to ask my Twitter buddies:

  • Me: What makes you decide whether to use a web app rather than a desktop one? eg webmail vs client, or google reader vs feedemon or netnewswire?
  • Simon Wakeman: functionality functionality functionality…it depends, I use a mix of each, although my multi-PC multi-site work life lends itself to a cloud-based apps (newsgtr excepted)
  • Nick Booth: experimentation or if someone shows me something I like – then I’ll use it.
  • Matt Kelland: web apps are a last resort for me – only if I need collab access to the data AND I know I will always be online when I need it
  • Kevin Campbell-Wright: I’m with Simon Wakeman
  • Steven Tuck: using desktop for things where I want alerts eg twhirl, feeddeemon and web based for portability google docs, email.
  • Andrew Beekan: Accessibility. When it comes to readers and mail I like to be able to access wherever I am. Docs, I use a mix of Office & Zoho.
  • Michael Grimes: Because I can access them easily from anywhere (with an internet connection).

The answer, it appear, is ‘it depends’.

Let’s have a look at some examples of what I use and where.

Email

I use webmail all the time – Gmail in this case using Apps for your domain. However, I have also set up Apple’s Mail client to download my email through IMAP for backup purposes, which I do roughly once a week. The main advantage of using the client application on my desktop is that it works when I’m not online… but that is rarely the case and my iPhone can be used for emails that just can’t wait. So, I’m happy with webmail. Unless anyone wants to convince me otherwise?

News reading

I started out reading RSS feeds late 2004, using Bloglines (Google Reader didn’t even exist in those days…). Then, as a Windows man, I discovered the wonder that is FeedDemon, a desktop application that really is the Rolls Royce of aggregators. When Google Reader came out (for the second time, the first version was rubbish) I toyed with it for a while before returning to FeedDemon.

When I switched to a Mac, I immediately downloaded NetNewsWire, the equivalent to FeedDemon. Sadly, I found that it just wasn’t the same experience, both in terms of ease of use and features. So, I switched to Google Reader, and that was that.

(It’s worth pointing out that both FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are part of the Newsgator family of RSS products, including the online RSS reader. All three sync together, so you could use NNW on a Mac, FD on a PC and NG at a third machine, and all would be up to date with what you have read and what you haven’t. Pretty neat.)

I really got into some of the features of Reader, like sharing items, with and without comments, which get automatically re-reported in FriendFeed. I also have got used to using Google Gears to download an offline copy of my feeds to read on the train. So, am also a web-based man when it comes to RSS. I have, though, just reloaded my latest subscription list into NetNewsWire to give it another go – along with the iPhone app and the fact that I now have a PC with FeedDemon on it – which could convince me to switch back…possibly.

Blog writing

A quicky this as I seem to write about it so much – I prefer writing blog posts offline. It’s irrational in these days of always-on broadband, but I feel rushed using the built in WordPress editor. There’s more on this topic here. On a Mac, the only sensible choice of offline editor is MarsEdit, whose lack of rich text editing is, frankly, a strength. The only time I use the built in editor these days is when I am using a different machine to my MacBook, or if I need to use a lot of bullet points (which are a bit annoying to do in MarsEdit).

Twitter

I use a client for Twitter – Twhirl. Others may rant on about the benefits of others, like Tweetdeck (which is big and ugly and horrible in my view) but I have found Twhirl seems to do stuff just the way I’d expect and like it to. Which is more than can be said for the Twitter web interface, on the homepage. The brightest thing Twitter ever did was to outsource its UI, if the website is anything to go by…

Word processing

See blog posting. I just like typing into a desktop app more than a box on a web page. Even when the document I am writing needs to be shared, I’d still rather type it locally first, then upload to Google Docs or whatever. What are your thoughts on the online/offline decision? I’m clearly pretty confused about which I prefer and when!

Which do you prefer – doing everything in the browser, on the desktop or a bit of both?

PermalinkWeb based or desktop?

Monday, 15 December, 2008

Bookmarks for December 7th through December 15th

Stuff I have bookmarked for December 7th through December 15th:

PermalinkBookmarks for December 7th through December 15th

Video hosting services

Whilst beavering away this week in Stockholm on Cisco08, I had a chance to play with a few different video hosting services, namely YouTube, Vimeo and Blip. Here’s what I found:

YouTube

YouTube was the default choice for me going into the event, simply because it is a name that everyone recognises and most people are used to the format and the way it works. It’s also easy to upload quickly from a Flip using the built in software. There is also a huge community around it, with rating, favouriting and commenting on videos well established.

However, I found that the quality of picture and (especially) audio was poor on the uploaded videos on YouTube, and the service seemed pretty slow at getting the videos ready for publishing after they had been uploaded. Also, you are limited to less than 10 minutes of video in any one go, which is a pain for longer pieces, such as recorded sessions at events (though short interviews are no problem).

Another problem is that users can’t download the video from YouTube, so it is pretty restrictive.

Vimeo

Vimeo is much less well known outside the circle of social media fanboys and girls, which is a shame as it seems a much better service that is currently provided by YouTube.

The interface is really easy to use and it seems quicker at uploading video, and converting it for use online. One other small but neat feature is that it sends you an email when the video is ready: nice. The quality of the video picture and audio seems much higher than YouTube and the embeddable player is nice to use without some of YouTube rather intrusive buttons and links.

Vimeo also allows logged-in users to download the original video files.

The downside of Vimeo is that you are limited to 500mb of video uploads a week unless you upgrade to a Pro account.

Blip

Blip is aimed less at the occasional video poster and more at folk who want to regularly upload content as a ‘show’ – you aren’t forced to do this, but it is clearly the intention of the site that it’s there for the more dedicated creators of video content. For example, you can get a share of ad revenue from your videos if you like, and the embedded player is highly customisable too.

Blip doesn’t seem to have many restrictions in terms of what it allows you too upload, and also makes it possible to download the original video files. However, I don’t find the player quite as user-friendly as the Vimeo one, and all the options on publishing your video are quite confusing and distracting.

Conclusion

I am going to more or less ditch YouTube for the video I produce. The quality isn’t there in terms of the output and this outweighs the recognition factor for me. Vimeo is great for short videos and for anything below roughly ten minutes, that’s the service I will use. Blip is great quality, and fantastic for longer pieces, but the slightly less friendly user experience means my initial choice will always be Vimeo.

Which is your video host of choice?

PermalinkVideo hosting services

We are all networked learners

More great stuff from David Wilcox musing on the experience of social reporting in Portugal. Whilst there, he was lucky enough to come across Etienne Wenger, a highly regarded thinker in the field of knowledge management and learning, who I first came across due to his promotion of communities of practice.

My conclusion, inspired by Etienne Wenger – above – is that social reporters can aspire to be “social artists” who help create social learning spaces where people can work together on social issues. It’s something anyone can do, with the right attitude and some skills, but I think social reporters should definitely make it a key part of their work.

It would appear that Etienne’s thinking is taking him away from clearly defined communities into a more informal arrangement of learning through sharing as part of wider networks: the ‘social learning spaces’.

This is fascinating stuff, and as I am currently putting together a programme of workshops to help civil servants understand what they need to do to engage with the social web, I wonder how these social learning spaces might be implemented as a part of that.

Here we are seeing different elements of the way the social web can be used – reporting at events, sharing knowledge across networks, collaborative learning, online storytelling, engagement activity between government citizens – merging together into one, like a big Venn diagram.

I think this makes all of us who use the social web on a regular basis networked learners. Every tweet, every Flickr photo, every online video, every shared link, every blog post adds to the sum of what we can know, and we have this knowledge served up, directly to us hundreds of times a day. We probably aren’t even aware that it is happening, but by a process of ambient osmosis, it is.

Of course, what is required with any of this is the willingness to collaborate and share, and the awareness of that fact that we all need to benefit from this networked learning. The technology is just an enabler. But who wouldn’t want to be involved with an initiative that has so much to offer?

PermalinkWe are all networked learners

Vista, innit

I have just got my new Vista PC up and running. When I announced that I was going to buy such a thing in my Facebook status, it caused something of a reaction:

facebook-vista

Since getting it set up, I have had enormous fun finding and installing all the little bits of software that I want to make things work as close as I can get to how I like them. This included:

Using Chrome has been interesting – it is the first time I have had a proper play with it. It certainly seems quicker than Firefox, which has never been lightening quick. However, after this brief honeymoon period I’ll probably go back to FF if only because of those extensions which make life so much easier.

I’m pleased to see that Windows Live Writer now comes preinstalled with Vista – guess this is part of Service Pack 1? Anyway, WLW is the best bit of desktop blogging software there is. MarsEdit had become my tool of choice on Mac, but it doesn’t have the features or power of WLW. Another software improvement on what is available for Mac is FeedDemon, which is just an awesome RSS aggregator.

Of course, this being Vista, it hasn’t all been fun and games. I ran into several problems when trying to install stuff, with errors popping up about DLLs and that sort of nonsense. A quick Google sorted them out, but of course it isn’t necessary on a Mac…

My reasons for buying a PC is a slightly stupid one: I just felt slightly exposed not having one! With most of the work I do being with government, which is of course hugely dominated by Windows, I always had the fear that not being on the same platform might trip me up at some point. It hasn’t really so far, but I can’t help but think that having a native copy of Internet Explorer to test stuff on has to be a good thing.

The other advantage of buying a PC is that it was pretty cheap: £350 for a desktop box with 6gb RAM and a 500gb hard disk, and a 2.2 ghz processor (whatever that means). Even running Vista Home Premium, it seems to work pretty swiftly.

This PC isn’t going to be my machine of choice – that remains my Mac – but it’s nice to have around, not least just to be able to try new, different stuff.

PermalinkVista, innit

Sunday, 14 December, 2008

Gmail gets better with labs

If you are a Gmail user, you’ll be used to the many benefits that this webmail service provides, like massive storage, great search, powerful filtering and labelling of email, inbuilt instant messaging and voice calls over IP, and the ability to access your email anyway you like with POP and IMAP controls.

However, for a while now Google have been sneaking extra features into Gmail, which you can find by clicking Settings on the top right of the Gmail screen, then on the Labs tab on the settings screen. You’ll then see a big list of extra features you can add – some useful, some silly. Here are the ones I have enabled:

1. Tasks

The Tasks feature is great – building in a simple task list to Gmail, which makes it a doddle to create as many lists of stuff that needs to be done as you like, and attaching emails to them is made really simple: just select the email and then click on ‘Add to tasks’ under the ‘More Actions’ menu. I’m using this at the moment to list all the emails I need to reply to.

2. Quick Links

Adds a box on the left hand side of the Gmail screen allowing you to add as many bookmarks as you like. I’ve got things like admin link for the various blogs I am managing at the moment listed on mine.

3. Superstars

Superstars enables you to click through different types of stars to add to emails to make them stand out a little bit more. Makes things a little more colourful if nothing else.

4. Default ‘Reply to all’

I’m always forgetting to choose the Reply to all link when responding to group emails. This, as it says, makes reply to all the default. Must be careful with this when being rude about people…

5. Forgotten attachment detector

Not perfect, but this scans emails for words like ‘attachment’ or ‘attached’ and, if there isn’t a file attached to the emails, pops up with a warning when you click send. Useful for avoiding those occasional d’oh! moments.

6. Custom label colours

Just like Superstars, helps you differentiate between the different labels you give to emails with colours.

7. Mark as read button

Dead handy this, let’s you mark emails as read with a single click rather than the, er, two clicks it took before. Seriously, I save nanoseconds with this.

8. Google Docs gadget

This gives me a sneaky peek at my Google Docs, letting me open them from within Gmail, which is quite handy.

There are a few other gadgets I don’t use, but which, like the ones I have outlined above, help to make Gmail a kind of portal (I  know I’m not meant to use that word…) to all your online organisational stuff. For instance, there’s a Google Calendar gadget which gives you a preview of what you have on that day. So if you are a user of all these Google services, you can make Gmail your home page and not worry about the rest.

What – if any – of these gadgets are you using? And how do you feel about your inbox becoming the hub of your online life?

PermalinkGmail gets better with labs

Saturday, 13 December, 2008

On Social Reporting

David Wilcox, the godfather of the social reporting concept, has written up his reflections from a couple of days spent at an event in Portugal:

What was unusual, in my experience, was that we had the benefit of a three person team, a good base at the venue, and another team led by Richard Jolly doing the really hard work of capturing more formal interviews with the main speakers. That left us to concentrate on the informal…

We were fortunate in having a work space with power and good wifi, in the middle of the venue. People could find us.

You can find the content from David’s team’s efforts on the event blog.

I’ve just finished a similar gig in Sweden for Cisco, where I was the lone social reporter, but with a remit to try and galvanise some of the delegates to give it a go themselves. I was very lucky to identify Rui Grilo (coincidence that Rui himself is Portugese?) early on in proceedings – Rui clearly got what it was we were trying to achieve and was soon contributing via Twitter, Flickr and the conference blog. Lev Gonick also contributed via Twitter and his own blog (all content tagged with cisco08 was also aggregated on our event blog, through Google Blogsearch’s RSS feeds).

One thing I was pleased about was the layout of the site we used, which managed to capture all the new content with a nice dashboard feel. It being displayed on screens around the venues helped – it really helped delegates get a feel for what was being said.

I would have liked to have done more video interviews than I managed, but being on my tod made it difficult. I did have a couple of Flip cameras to lone out to anyone wanting to help out, but I think that such was the quality of the sessions at the event at the networking inbetween that no-one really had the time to do it!

Overall, though, I think my efforts in Stockholm were a success, and adds to the work that David has done in proving that having a social reporting element is vital for any conference. This is because:

  • It gives a voice to those attending the event, with a direct live feedback loop to event organisers and speakers, etc (if they choose to listen!)
  • They help delegates who are not engaged with the social web find out what is being said online about the event they are attending
  • It can provide background material to place sessions into context
  • It gets content online much quicker for those not attending to be able to view – eg my pretty bad Flip recordings of sessions were available online within a few hours of the sessions ending
  • It also gives those not in attendance the chance to contribute by leaving comments, etc

Many thanks to Paul Johnston of Cisco for inviting me along. Paul is one of those behind Cisco’s community for those who want to make government a little more collaborative, called The Connected Republic. Closing the circle, Paul was interviewed a while ago by one David Wilcox at an event about what this initiative is all about. You can watch it here.

PermalinkOn Social Reporting