links for 2007-11-10

Sketchcast – social whiteboards

Sketchcast is a great little tool which allows you to record yourself drawing a sketch – whether roughly with a mouse or more accurately with a graphics pen – and you can add audio commentary too.

Here’s a great example from Anecdote, explaining how communities of practice can be used to create action and outputs. I hope it embeds ok – one of the few limitations of WordPress is in the way that embedded media works, it often messes up the layout of the post unless you use a plugin to handle it for you. Hopefully there will be a Sketchcast plugin for WordPress soon.

GroupsNearYou.com

Richard Pope has been working on a new social website for MySociety, called GroupsNearYou.com. Here’s how he explains it on his blog:

For all the talk of social networking people forget that for a whole host of internet users have been doing this kind of thing for years using really the really the < web 1.0 technology of email groups and phpBB forums (sw4people, Urban75 and Hern Hill Forum blog are just a few local to me).

They can make a real difference to the local community aspects of people’s lives – discussing crime, finding out about local restaurants, ganging up on their local council or whatever. Many of the people who run these groups (especially the email based ones) are often not that internet savvy, but have found simple tools that let them connect with people where they live that have a shared interest.

The problem is, unless someone tells you directly about one, they are all but invisible.

To this ends, I’ve been building a site for mySociety called (sticking to the “does what it says on the tin” naming convention) GroupsNearYou.com that is aiming to map the locations and details of these groups and, importantly, help people find ones relevant them.

At the moment the site is pretty sparsely populated, but I am sure that will change in the very near future. Making decent websites available to community groups is a topic I am greatly interested in, but equally important is making them accessible and easy to find. Great work, Richard!

Zoho’s CRM

Zoho CRM

I have been looking for a cheap, quick to implement and eay to use CRM (customer relationship management) system to use while a long term solution is identified. This led me to have a play with Zoho’s offering, which is a real gem. Not only is it pretty fully featured, but there is also the ability to customise fields, and add your own. This is invaluable as the service is pretty heavily sales-focused.

Add to this that the system is free for the first 3 users, and only $12 (about £6) a month for any additional users, it’s a real bargain.

Another option within this space is 37 Signals’ Highrise, which isn’t as fully featured as the Zoho effort.

There are downsides of course – I’m not sure, for example, what the data protection issues are for holding large amounts of other people’s personal data online are, especially for a public body. But in terms of features, ease of use, customisability and price, this is a real winner.

links for 2007-11-07

Gordon Brown loves Countdown

It’s a fact:

[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mHOAtgMqr5I]

Thanks to Simon Dickson for pointing out this oddity. I suppose it’s a difficult line to tread, but this definitely falls on the “has he nothing better to do?” side of things.

BarcampUKGovweb

Am very excited about the forthcoming BarCamp for UK government web types. In fact, I think the remit is probably going to expand beyond government into all areas of not for profit web work.

Jeremy Gould, of the Whitehall Webby blog, seems to have kicked things off with his post:

My proposal was to run a barcamp event, where those who want to participate in  developing ideas, sharing their expertise and swapping tips can come together as a community. For those not familiar with the barcamp concept, check out the wikipedia page. The key point is that you come if you have something to offer and you participate, rather than simply observe.

I’m delighted to report that they agree, so I’m pleased to seed the message here that we aim to have the event run across the last week of January 2008 (Saturday 26th/ Sunday 27th). I say ‘aim to have the event run’ because it will only work with the input, energy and enthusiasm of the participants. We have suggested a proposition and date, we’re hoping that enough people will want to be part of this to come along and also to help organise the event.

The story was soon picked up by David Wilcox, who describes it very well, with Jeremy

inviting us to help transform government by sharing expertise in the use of social media tools.

As well as the traditional BarCamp wiki (hosted on the excellent, and free, PBwiki) today I set up an event on FaceBook and a Google group for mailing list discussions. Hopefully more social media tie ins will be possible once photos and videos are being taken at the event – they can be shared through the common ‘BarcampUKGovweb’ tag and maybe some groups and channels.

One of the cute things about Barcamps is the fact that every attendee is expected to present. I’ve put the hugely vague topic of online social tools, community building, using social media to improve engagement down as my area – lord only knows what I’ll actually say. Any suggestions, let me know.