Better Browsers update

A little while ago I posted about a little survey I had set up using Google Docs, which aimed to find out about what browsers public sector folk are using, and what problems they have been running into as a result, especially where web 2.0 bits are concered.

I’m pleased to say that there have been quite a few responses, and probably would have had were it not for the fact that quite a few government folk are blocked from using Google Docs with their work machines. I don’t know how to get WordPress to do an eye-rolling smilie, but if I did, it would be here.

Indeed this sparked quite a bit of discussion on the UK & Ireland eDemocracy mailing list, with various horror stories being shared. Some of it is quite frightening, including this message sent out by a local authority IT department:

An increasing number of PCs and laptops have been found with internet browser toolbars such as Yahoo or Google installed. These toolbars should never be installed on [our] computers as they are not required for business purposes, can significantly reduce the performance of your machine and can stop the remote distribution of critical software and security updates.

Still, I am compiling all the results as they come in, and will have a think about what to do with it all. If anyone has any ideas, let me know. Almost all of those who have responded would like to be a part of a campaign of some description, which gives further fuel for thought. I’ve started tagging these posts with ‘govgetfirefox’ so if anyone else is writing or bookmarking related stuff, it might be cool to start collecting it together that way.

If you haven’t already taken the survey, please do.

In the meantime, as I started typing this, Google Reader spat this post from Read/WriteWeb at me:

ComputerWorld is reporting that Firefox is set to hit 20% market share next month according to metrics firm Net Applications. In some communities, Firefox is already well beyond the 20% mark. W3Counter’s global web stats, for example, puts Firefox usage at closer to 29% and over 50% of ReadWriteWeb readers use Firefox.

And Firefox isn’t resting on their laurels. The Mozilla Foundation is planning a major release push for Firefox 3, which is expected to drop this month. Firefox is gearing up to set a world download record by encouraging all 175 million users of the browser to upgrade in a single day. They’re actually encouraging users to host download day parties, with nearly 200 planned already even without a firm release date.

I’d really like to know the reasons – the real reasons – why, bearing all this in mind, FireFox isn’t at least available as an alternative to Internet Explorer. FireFox is quicker, more secure, more useful. It’s better. Why can’t we have it?!

Theo Tait on Gordon Burn

Nice, longish essay in the LRB this issue, by Theo Tait on Gordon Burn’s Born Yesterday which I have written about now and again.

A more unified and organised book would have excluded many of Born Yesterday’s highlights: the brilliant description, for example, of Kate Middleton being hit simultaneously by a paparazzi ambush and a hailstorm, outside Tesco Local on the King’s Road: ‘It was like Kate Middleton’s appearance on the street was the cue for special effects to turn the rain machine on, for the music to be brought up high and the smokers, taciturn and sullen to that point, to become animated into a jostling crowd scene.’ Quoting selectively doesn’t do justice to a bravura five-page passage that works by its accretion of big ideas and weird local detail. The writing is often relentless and incantatory, but it is also sharp-eyed and full of vivid particularity. Here is David Beckham appealing on TV for information about Madeleine, ‘holding up a picture captioned with the single word desaparecida’: ‘the broad diamond-encrusted ring, the buffed pearl-cuticled nails, the big fuck-off watch’. It’s good to see the British novel, or whatever Born Yesterday is, showing a bit of experimental swagger. From time to time, I even found myself excitedly wondering whether Gordon Burn hadn’t written a sort of Waste Land for the rolling news era.

Local stuff

I always like reading Andrew Brown‘s roundups of stuff that’s happening in his area – Lewisham – that he regularly posts to his blog. I haven’t the discipline to do anything regularly, but here are a couple of things I’ve been looking at recently.

First up is that I took another look at the website for my village – Broughton, near Kettering in Northamptonshire. Before you click the link be warned: it’s not a very modern design. Indeed, as I suspected, a quick ‘View Source’ shows that the thing is done in Frontpage (argh!). But ignore that…

…because the content in fabulous. It’s a really, really good community resource. There’s stuff for the Parish Council, loads and loads of photos and bits of history about the village. Elaine Bradshaw, who is behind the site, really has done a terrific job.

The only shame is that I can’t find any contact details for her on the site, firstly to congratulate her on what she has achieved, but also to wonder how much easier it would be if we WordPress’d the whole thing. Maybe stuck all the photos up on Flickr, made it easier for anyone in the village to contribute… If somehow you end up reading this, Elaine, do get in touch.

Secondly, on the way to work today I saw a large fluorescent sign, imploring those that saw it to ‘Save Naseby Battlefield!’. I wasn’t under the impression that the battlefield was under any threat, but apparently it is:

Power company E.ON is investigating the possibility of installing turbines close to the historic battlefield.

The proposals have been met with anger from historians, who are working on plans to boost the national reputation of Naseby by building a visitor centre at the battle site.

A further bit of digging revealed that the campaign has its own site, and it runs on WordPress! Stop Kelmarsh Windfarm is the name of the site, which I can’t help but feel is a rather negative slant on things (‘Save Naseby Battlefield’ sounds much nicer, I think).

It also confuses the hell out of me. I mean, wind farms are good things, right? But heritage stuff is important too… argh!

Plurk – a microblog too far?

Twitter this evening is rife with talk about Plurk, a new micro-blogging service that brings a whole new meaning to the term feature-creep. I’m here.

I mean, the joy of Twitter, and I suspect the reason why we all stick with it despite the appallingly flakey service we receive, is its simplicity. It let you post short messages on the web, and that’s pretty much it. You can do more than that, but that is usually by using a third party service through the APIs.

Plurk adds stuff like groups, called – deliberately provocatively, surely – ‘cliques’, so you can send messages to just a select group of folk, points for regular posting (like that won’t encourage pointless noise…) and the ability to have what look like threaded replies under posts.

I just don’t need this stuff, frankly. The best thing that comes from Twitter is contained within the 140 characters of the posts people make. It’s about the content, not the bells and whistles.

But the most fundamentally annoying thing I found with Plurk during my brief play this evening is the way the whole thing is presented – on a horizontal rather than vertical timeline, which run from right to left. This means that the most recent stuff is the first thing you see, which is good, but once you start scrolling it soon gets really confusing. Well, it does for me.

Lots of people are signing up and giving it a go. But I can’t see anyone sticking with this in the long term. Unless they’re mental.

Simon’s Cat

I’ve loved Cat Man Do, the first of the ‘Simon’s Cat’ animations since I first saw it. It’s drawn by Simon Tofield of Tandem Films and since discovering his Youtube page, I’ve found the second in the series – ‘Let Me In!’:

[HTML1]

Magic.

The BBC and innovation

Mike Butcher lays into the BBC over web innovation:

I think the BBC should do more, a LOT more, to hook into the innovation happening in technology companies in the private sector, and at the same time allowing private sector companies to innovate around the products the BBC produces. And that does not mean just commissioning more user interface design, or the odd microsite, from a bunch of agencies. If it did so, the BBC might even find some products it quite liked and could use to make the BBC better. Really. No kidding.

An entertaining and thought provoking rant.

John Hayes: Another Bloggin’ Boss

John Hayes, a Director at the Improvement & Development Agency, has started a blog – and started it really promisingly, too:

So, having taking my own personal plunge into this Web 2 pool with this my first blog, I’m hoping I can encourage other local government staff and councilors to use this medium as an additional channel for dialogue and debate, and that the transparency will serve to illustrate that we are all working towards the same goals of better government and improved services for our citizens.

Just the sort of thing we need to hear following the events of the last week!

Turning events inside out

Shane McCracken was sufficiently interested in the social reporting that David Wilcox and I undertook at the DC10plus event early last month that he started to develop a business model around it, dubbing it ConferenceXtra.

The concept is that it’s all well and good for public sector organisations to put on events to disseminate information, or share good practice, but the reach is only ever going to be as far as those that attend. By using the social web, events can be turned inside out, so those that can’t attend still get to find out what went on and an even contribute to what’s happening.

evoiceThis idea was put to the test a couple of weeks ago in Norwich, as Shane explains. The event was the evoice international political forum on eDemocracy, hosted by Norfolk County Council. Now, evoice are not necessarily a group that too many people are aware of, which makes putting their work up online all the more important, so that people can learn and share experience.

I was delighted to be involved in getting a whole host of audio and video online, as well as presentations through SlideShare and photos on Flickr. There’s a real mixture of content, especially video, with formal recordings of the presentations mixed with short vox pop interviews with attendees, very much in the social reporter style.

The site that we put together is hosted at ConferenceXtra, using WordPress (of course!). The great thing with the blog format is of course that is has interactivity built in, and it was great to see some comments being made, and conversations held, on the site soon after it went live. Hopefully the site will become a place where all those involved in the evoice project can convene in the future.

One fantastic project that was highlighted was that of Bus Stop 39, an online youth engagement initiative by Norfolk County Council and partners, which aims “to give young people an insight into their local council and its services, as well as offering the opportunity to be part of one of the UK’s first online teen soaps, enabling them to make informed choices when the chance to vote in local elections arises”.

Here’s one video where Tom Hodgkinson introduces the project in detail:

[HTML1]

Check out the Bus Stop 39 page at the ConferenceXtra site for another clip where young people talk with great passion about the initiative. I, and others, have said it loads of times before, but this stuff works, folks.