links

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• Microsoft’s No-Win IE6 Browser Mess – "But who really cares about browser market share other than the vendors and web developers?"
• For Open Government, Technology Is The Least of Your Problems – "It appears that, between Drupal, ideaScale, cloud computing conversations, a disproportionate part of the discussions around open government concerns tools and technologies."
• What do analysts actually do? – Really informative post!
• Work Smarter: Red Gate – Nice little article about Red Gate in Cambridge, a tech company incubating startups.
• Snap Bird – search twitter’s history – Search just your followers on Twitter – and other stuff besides.
• Communities & Knowledge – A rather good blog from the IDeA knowledge management team.
• okcon – The Open Knowledge Conference – "The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is back for its fifth installment bringing together individuals and groups from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of discussions workshops."
• Using the internet for effective citizenship – Lovely post from Michael Grimes – @citizensheep on Twitter (if you don't follow him, do so).
• Ignore the Google and Microsoft sideshow | Irregular Enterprise | ZDNet.com – "There is a pattern emerging here. Don’t like what a competitor is doing? Sue them. Paint them as evil. It’s the last gasp of a company that’s run out of ideas. Oracle is at it and now Microsoft."
• The rise of Open Source Hardware – BankerVision – "With the barriers to entry for companies making new physical products falling, everything becomes about talent and innovation, rather than control of industrial age assets such as finance and manufacturing capacity. This is a world shift we’ve already seen in digital products, obviously. Now we have it for physical ones as well."
• Innovation – what prat thought this up? would you take a bullet for your innovation? – John Suffolk – Government CIO – In times of financial strife, the word innovation, gets talked about more and more as if people think it is something that can be turned on and off at whim. We all know in reality to create an innovative environment takes time, patience, leadership and a recognition that for each successful innovation many fail.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• Likeminds 2010 – First thoughts and reflections « Carl’s Notepad – Carl's views on the Likeminds conference.
• ParticipationCamp – Advancing public participation in government by connecting government managers and staff, public engagement experts, online tool developers, and citizens. – "ParticipationCamp is an unconference that aims to advance public participation in government by connecting government managers and staff, public engagement experts, online tool developers, and citizens."
• Unpacking the world of digital in government at Helpful Technology – A great post from Steph, with some brilliant discussion in the comments.
• App My State – Premier of Victoria – State of Victoria in Australia asks residents for their ideas.
• Staff at child maintenance agency shun computers and turn to pen and paper – "Computers keyboards are being pushed to one side as staff at the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission turn to pen and paper to complete claims that the IT system cannot cope with."
• RSA – Technology in a Cold Climate – "Technology in a Cold Climate aims to engender a greater understanding among the technology sector and policy makers about the role that technologies could play in meeting the UK’s ambitions and challenges."
• The Open Government Dilemma « The Envisioners – "Think about the challenge faced by data.gov.uk – superb solution, but who actually _owns_ it?"
• Department for Work and Pensions CTO reveals the power of crowd sourcing in government – Great stuff from James Gardner, aka @bankervision
• Why the EU Keeps Failing on E-Government – "Although I’m all for good practice exchange, what surprises me is the fact that “e-government” is associated to “wireless broadband”, as if practitioners in those two areas were the same or had to have a particularly strong link with each other."
• Home | Evaluation Trust – "The Evaluation Trust is a well respected community development agency with skills in capacity building."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• eGov AU: If you are a communications professional who chooses not to use social media, will you have a job in ten years? – "If you don't use social media, how can you critically assess its comparative worth as a communications tool? How can you help your employer avoid and rebound from embarrassing social media mistakes?"
• Open Government Ideas Look All the Same: Are You Surprised? – Potential problems with Gov agencies asking the public for ideas at the same time: "Wow, twelve different agencies – including the GSA that offered the IdeaScale tool to other agencies – have the exact same most popular idea, which – as you would expect – has been submitted by the same person."
• NESTA – Mass Localism – "…an approach by which central and local government can encourage widespread, high quality local responses to big challenges."
• Nodalities » Blog Archive » Linked Data Visualisation Launched at Prime Minister’s Conference – "This is only a start, but already this project has demonstrated that publishing data as Linked Data in a queryable store can stimulate innovation beyond the ubiquitous demo mashup towards real full-blown applications that can deliver commercial benefit."
• The future of Australian banking – BankerVision – "Clever institutions – including one in the UK – are already starting to get the fact that the best strategic option is to integrate their stuff into things customers really care about, not be the centre of the universe themselves. If nothing else, it removes them from the falseness of their traditional approaches to customers."
• Giraffe Forum » People are not always the problem – "The end objective of technology should be to extend the capabilities of people, not to replace them. Sure, as technology drives efficiency some people will lose out, but that should not be an objective in and of itself. The objective should be to become more efficient and deliver a better service to the customer."
• Rewired Culture – 27th March « Lost ConsCIOusness – Looks like a cracking day – good mix of hackday and unconference
• Federal Agency Ideascale Dashboard – "To satisfy the Open Government Directive agencies are soliciting your ideas on how to make them more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative."
• The Myth of the Techno-Utopia – WSJ.com – "It's fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom."
• Building Democracy: Evaluation Report – Evaluation of the MoJ Building Democracy innovation competition.
• Making a podcast – some notes and observations – Roo Reynolds – Wonderful guide to recording, editing and publishing a podcast.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• Typists in the Sky | Collaboration 2.0 | ZDNet.com – "The self controlled side of 2.0 computing can be very enabling and efficient for those who can organize themselves well for business and for pleasure, but collectively we are increasingly at the mercy of the lowest common denominator – time bandwidth hogging communicators."
• Why Do Governments Separate Open Data and Social Media Strategies? – "My meetings this week confirmed that most government organizations keep their open data initiatives and their social media strategies separated. Often there are different groups dealing with those two topics, although they admittedly “interact”."
• Britain Loves Wikipedia – "Britain Loves Wikipedia is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest running in museums and cultural institutions across the UK through February. The aim is to increase the number of pictures available to illustrate Wikipedia articles, and to inspire new articles."
• 20 Great Talks on the Future of Information – Useful set of lectures
• Tool-up NGO-style – 20 web-based tools for daily working « BASIC CRAFT – Nice list of usable and easy to access online tools from @rossferg
• Digital citizens and democratic engagement – The Hansard Society – "[This report] shows that for Britons who are already online, the internet has made it easier to take part in civic and political activities and that half of them prefer to use the internet to take part in democratic life."
• Jelly! – Casual coworking is awesome. / CamJelly – "Jelly is a casual coworking event, where freelancers, home workers and people running small businesses meet up in order to get out of their normal space, meet some new people and work together in a social environment."
• The Google Exposure | Linux Journal – "Advertising is a bubble. If that's a true statement, Google is a bubble too. And if that's true, many of the goods we take for granted on the Web are at risk."
• Google Apps Developer Blog – New blog for being hacking Google Apps.
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Buzz by Brad Fitzpatrick from Buzz – How to add your blog's RSS feed to your Google Buzz stream (it's quite tricky)

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• Buzz by Brad Fitzpatrick from Buzz – How to add your blog's RSS feed to your Google Buzz stream (it's quite tricky)
• Blogging and Facebook for councillors – "An increasing number of councillors now have blogs or use Facebook, so there is plenty of experience around and many good examples to emulate. In this article, seasoned 'blogger' Councillor Mary Reid offers you the benefit of her experience." via @pigsonthewing
• How to Send Blog Posts from Google Reader to Evernote « Evernote Blogcast – Nice simple tip for curating content between Reader and Evernote. I'm using this to gather items together that I want to write about in a single post of my own.
• 10 Unsung Collaboration Tools — Many of Them Free – GigaOM – "Most of us can rattle off the well-known applications that are available, but there are many targeted, useful collaboration apps that are more offbeat."
• Synctus – Multi-Master File Replication – Plug and play document sharing across different locations without the cloud, from Manchester based startup.
• Microsoft’s Creative Destruction – NYTimes.com – "Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago."
• Join the Conversation for Free! | blueKiwi software – There is now a free, if limited, version of BlueKiwi, the collaboration and community software used in a pilot at Devon County Council. Worth checking out.
• Why Your Boss Hates Facebook – Is security considered a greater threat than productivity loss? Maybe. What about bandwidth, though?
• Cloud Culture is now available to download: launch and debate at the ICA tonight « Counterpoint – Interesting PDF booklet from Charles Leadbeater
• When failure is not an option – BankerVision – "Failure that occurs at any point before delivery starts is “good failure”, and in fact, is something that innovators should develop competencies in if they want to stay in business."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.