Facebook Application Spam

Facebook

I like FaceBook, though I don’t log in nearly as often as I ought to, so as to make the most of the service.

One of the reasons that I don’t, though, are the tonnes of invitations I get to have some application or other added to my profile. I know that the thir party developers are what makes Facebook cool, and some of the apps are really useful (or just fun, like the Graffiti one).

But having to wade through the invites and the interminable options that follow them really does get me down, and turns me off the platform to a certain extent.

 

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Social Networking Video

Apologies for the lack of updates lately, have been busy doing other things. Here’s the latest video from Common Craft, to make up for it. It’s a plain speaking guide to social networking. Cool!

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Videos!

I’ve been adding plenty of video’s to my VodPod, but of course they don’t appear in the RSS feed, so those that don’t regularly visit the site won’t know they are there.

So, here’s a list of some of the video’s I’ve recently added:

Have you got some favourite online videos you think other LGNewMedia readers might be interested in? Join the VodPod and post them!

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Customised Search with Google

Here’s a presentation I have put together to explain some of the whats, whys and hows of creating a Google Customised Search.

A perfect blog post

Evan Davis

Evan Davis, BBC News’ economics guy, has a pretty good blog called Evanomics (nice). Yesterday he posted on the hot topic of the moment, private equity. And as a blog post, for me it is pretty close to perfect.

For those that do not feel they know what private equity is all about, let me offer a few arguments on both sides.

First an explanation. Private equity is quite simple. Investors borrow money (from banks); they usually add a little of their own and use the cash to buy companies. Often the companies they buy were publicly-owned – in the sense that a large number of relatively anonymous shareholders buy and sell shares in them on the stock market – and once bought, they become privately-owned, in that their shares are no longer traded.

Davis provides explanation and opinion, facts and commentary. Despite reading articles every day in the papers about private equity, I never understood as fully as I do know after reading this post.

It’s a great template for new bloggers in terms of style and content.

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The importance of the browser

Safari

Simon Dickson points out that the latest Beta of Safari, the web browser for the MacOS operating system, has now been ported to Windows.

I’ve just installed the new public beta of Apple’s Safari browser on my Windows PC. It works, it looks like a Mac app, and it seems pretty quick. Will I be switching from Firefox? Er, no. And I can’t imagine many others doing so either, speed boost or no speed boost.

I’m going to download it and have a play, as Simon says, it’s good for testing if nothing else. But I’m a FireFox man through and through.

There is a big, long post brewing inside me at the moment about browsers and their use within local government. I feel it’s one of the major things holding back the use of new web technology in the sector.

We need to get Firefox into local government – or at the very least, IE7.

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Web Development Resources

Marc Andreessen, one of the trailblazers of the web – he was the co-author of Mosaic, the first mass market web browser, as well as a founder of Netscape (find out more at his Wikipedia entry) – has started his own blog. I suggest you subscribe ASAP.

His posts thus far have been notable by their length, as well as their quality. His latest is a really useful list of resources on HTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript. One for reading now and future reference.

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Community spirit: supporting CoP facilitators

IDeA

You can read some of my words of wisdom about IDeA’s Communities of Practice platform and the CoP Facilitator’s day out at IDeA Knowledge. The interviews and articles were done by Ray Khan.

While Briggs found the fact that he now knew he was “not alone” a simple but valuable outcome of the day, he also felt he had more of a grip on what CoPs mean for local government.

“We’re trying to sell two very ambitious concepts with this platform. Firstly, we are asking people to tear down silos and start working together and sharing our knowledge – something that is an anathema to some elements of local government culture. Secondly, we are asking them to do so using the web, with blogs, wikis and forums!”

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