links

Awesomeness off of the internet for October 11th to October 14th:

• THE WAIST LINE: Advertising… just do it… why? Because we’re worth it! And remember… every little helps. – Lincolnshire County Council bring ads back to their site
• Warwickshire Localities – Working for communities in Warwickshire – Community forums on Ning by Warwickshire County Council
• Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith – “People are having conversations about us online, but we are not part of those conversations."
• Using Technology to Move from e-Government to e-Governance – "In this report, the Accenture Institute for Health & Public Service Value explores the fundamental shift in how public service organizations are viewing and using technologies."
• 7 Tips for Measuring the Success of Your Blog – "The success of your blog, or any social media effort, depends on your willingness to solicit feedback and take corrective action when necessary. If you want to have a successful blog that supports your organization’s goals and adds value, improvement should be continuous. You need to pick the right hard data points, or metrics, that will help you harvest insights and improve your blog."

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 29th to October 5th:

• Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age | The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy – "The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is a group of 17 media, policy and community leaders. Its purpose is to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs."
• The first local ‘unconference’ shows local news is alive and kicking | Sarah Hartley | Media | guardian.co.uk – "Almost 100 people left their bedrooms, home offices and local community halls for talkaboutlocal's inaugural unconference this weekend."
• Premise: Yes, I’m going to be advising the Opposition on IT – "As the Guardian has just reported, I've been asked to advise the Tories on IT policy, and I've accepted."
• CKAN – Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – Home – "CKAN is a registry of open data and content packages. CKAN makes it easy to find, share and reuse open content and data, especially in ways that are machine automatable."
• LP Party Highlight: Let’s “Googlelize” local government! | Learning Pool Blog – "So last week, the Learning Pool Summer Party took place on board the HMS President…"

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 25th to September 28th:

• Improving data visualisation for the public sector – "Good data visualisation can help users explore and understand the patterns and trends in data, and also communicate that understanding to others to help them make robust decisions based on the data being presented. This site supports public sector researchers improve the way that they visualise data, by providing good practice examples and case studies, practical and step-by-step guides on how to visualise data, and links to more detailed resources. "
• Google Blog Directory – All of the official Google blogs listed in one place.
• Global Neighbourhoods: Using Lethal Generosity in Social Media – "In today's competitive environment, you need to understand that the customer is in control. If you want to win, give the customer what the customer wants. If you do this often enough and credibly enough it will be brutal to your competitors–unless the competitor rises to the occasion and tries to "out-generous" you back."
• What will Council 2.0 look like? « Business Analysed – "The most useful phrase that I have heard when describing new technology and the debate when to implement is that some innovation can be ‘a solution without a problem’. I feel that this is true."
• The BCS: enabling the information society « Conradiator – Conrad Taylor's view on the big BCS rebrand.

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 21st to September 22nd:

• Scitable | Learn Science at Nature – "A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science. "
• Things to ask before you redo your website – Some good questions for anyone to consider before a web project. Lessons here that could be learned by government, I'm sure!
• How To Handle Troublemakers – Useful notes on what to do when people want to play up on your online community.
• How to build an online community – Some useful advice.
• Knowledge Hub – part 1 – Steve Dale blogs about the local government knowledge hub.

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 16th to September 20th:

• Postscript two: Lessons from the great 2009 Birmingham City Council website disaster – Paul Canning keeps up the pace on the BCC website story.
• Crowd Fusion | Web Publishing – "Crowd Fusion is a publishing platform that combines several popular applications – like blogging, wikis, tagging and workflow management – with some original concepts."
• stribe.com – Welcome – "Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website"
• Case Study & Example Round-Up for Local Gov Using Social Media – Local Communities – Here's a simple round up of links to case studies and information about local governments using social media.
• Apps.Gov – "Cloud computing plays a key role in the President’s initiative to modernize Information Technology (IT) by identifying enterprise -wide common services and solutions and adopting a new cloud-computing business model. The Federal CIO Council under the guidance of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO), Vivek Kundra, established the Cloud Computing Initiative to fulfill the President’s objectives for cloud computing."