As much as Conservative Party leader David Cameron gives me shivers up my spine and makes my hair stand on end, I think his latest venture will probably work well for him.
Webcameron is a series of video blogs that are just unblatantly staged enough to work. If they do it right, it’ll be a series of confessionals on political policy that I’d like to see all parties engage in. (Although can you really see Gordon Brown or Menzies Campbell keeping a blog?) Otherwise it’s just an extended party political broadcast.
Either way, they’ve got John McCain as a guest blogger, which suggests there will be some meaty appearances; those of you who like your politics over to the right may find yourself with something new to watch.
danah boyd has this to say about Facebook’s recent opening to the general public:
I do not believe that social network sites are able to sustain lots of conflicting social contexts. Or, rather, i don’t believe that they can continue as a hang-out space. I know that Facebook will continue to grow but i believe that the core value of it will be lost for the sake of growth. MySpace is already struggling to cope with what happens when teens and parents/authorities are in the same place.
MySpace allegedly has something like 100 million users (although there has recently been controversy about this and other user figures). How on earth do you sort through that many people? And unless you’re just out to search through people’s photos, how can you have targeted conversation?
Take another view on the community – the discussion board. Discussion boards rarelely work unless they have something underpinning the content, be it a shared location, interest in a particular thing, and so on. Facebook did have this, but by opening it up they’ve removed their unique selling point and eliminated focus from the community.
Rather than striving for one giant uber-community, a better model would seem to be a set of user credentials that can then be used to log into a set of communities that represent your interests. Even in terms of the MySpace crowd’s advertising-driven worldview, a more focused community makes more sense (advertisers will pay more if they know users are interested in the kinds of things they have to sell). This way the only context-juggling is the kind that you do in real life, and communities can streamline themselves towards covering a particular thing really well.
Boy, building out a fully-featured online service turns out to be a lot of hard work, even on top of the two and a half years we’ve already put into Elgg. Frankly, it’s taken longer than we thought to get everything in place.
But we’re nearly there.
We’re oiling up the gaskets and fitting the sparkplugs as I write this; things are looking good, but we want to make sure the service is the best it can possibly be. And for that, we need your help.
We want to invite a limited number of people into the system, and we’ll trade a month’s free service for your feedback. In turn this will make the system better for when we fully open its doors.
‘In Search of the Valley’ is a movie which tells the story of three friends’ personal journey in September of 2004 into the psyche of Silicon Valley. Steve and his pals spent one month visiting and talking to many of the valley’s luminaries, including Apple’s Steve Wozniak, Adobe’s John Warnock, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org. The film also features Apple alumni Guy Kawasaki, Sandy Miranda, Andy Hertzfeld, Dan Kottke, and the late Jef Raskin, as well as the computer pioneer Lee Felsenstein, Tim O’Reilly and Marc Canter.
I have my own opinions about the people involved, largely obtained through reading about them, and the prospect of getting under their skin a little more is very interesting. Certainly on the strength of the trailer below, I can’t wait to see it.
In the Silicon Valley Web 2.0 scene, they host wild and raucous tech parties where Kevin Rose signs people’s chests and the cocktails flow all night long. Everyone gets a free T-shirt and somewhere, a Valleywag hack is on hand to post incriminating photos to Flickr.
In the South-East England E-Learning 2.0 scene, we pick a pub, decide to sit in it for seven hours or so and would like you to partake in a pint of real ale with us. I’ll have my camera on me, pictures will be uploaded to Flickr, but I’m assuming nothing too incriminating will occur and Dave and I will absolutely not sign your chests.
The Eagle and Child, St Giles, Oxford, 10th October 2006 from 4pm onwards. You know it makes sense.
There are about a billion reasons why this won’t work, but here’s what I think are the most pressing:
.mobi is long. Mobile phones have 10 keys, from 0 to 9, usually with an extra two for special functions. Extra thumb work isn’t going to be appreciated.
Everyone knows .com. The .com top level domain is the one everyone’s familiar with, and is likely to continue to be used for marketing reasons. Some devices even have a special .com shortcut button.
Mobile devices are getting better at surfing the web. I use my candy bar Nokia N70 to visit Gmail, Elgg.net, Livejournal and more. None of those sites are specific to mobile phones.
Users don’t want to remember different sites for different purposes: it should just work. Ubiquitous computing is getting closer, and people in business are clearly eager to realise the potential. But the fact that you can browse the web during your morning commute using just your phone doesn’t mean there should be specific sites for your phone. Maybe there could be specific sites that cater to people on their morning commute, but it should never be about the technology: let users use whatever suits them best. Serve the people, not the technology.
The BBC article quotes the chief executive of the Mobile Top Level Domain organisation as saying:
“If you try your favourite websites on a mobile phone, the chances are they are not going to work.”
I direct you all again towards Opera Mini, a really excellent mobile browser. Try your favourite website in the simulator; chances are, it’ll work. No need to muddy the domain name waters with yet another top level at all.
The district receives a 2006 Enterprise All-Star Award for creating this social network, an easy-to-use, technology-rich environment for more than 1,800 teachers and administrators – and departmental users and students, too. The site is proving to be a great SUSD community-builder and tool for enhancing education, at no cost but the time Klein spent on development.
The article goes on to describe the installation:
The SUSD site features blogging tools with an editor for adding in rich text, Web links, pictures and file attachments. Each user has access to secure file storage and sharing, and can control sharing of documents, images, sounds, short videos and other files. RSS feeds and podcasts can be posted for subscription or played directly from a blog post using a thin, Flash-based player, he says.
It’s a challenge to create a lively community, so congratulations to Jim and everyone at the Saugus Union School District for their well-deserved award!
Ahoy! Some of ye scurvy sea dogs may be wondering what lurks on ye horizon in Elgg World. Ye may have seen Skipper Dave’s announcement of ye dashboard, which is making us dance ye hornpipe up on ye deck, but there be plenty more treasure in ye Elgg chest, arrr.
Smartly, me beauties, we will be making available ye interim release, being as it contains many bug fixes and new features ye lily-livered landlubbers may find of interest. Ye dreaded multiple comment bug be dead and gone, for one – and avast! We be sowing the seeds of a more fully-featured event notification system, and providing ye groundwork for ye scurvy OpenID. As usual, me hearties, this won’t cost ye a doubloon.
Skipper Dave, Ensign Misja, Bosun Kevin Jardine and me will be at ye ePortfolio 2006 conference in Oxford next month, organised by ye sons of biscuit eaters over at EIfEL. Come say ahoy, and if ye be of hearty demeanour we may see fit to share our rum with ye. (Rum may also flow at ye Elgg user group meeting on October 10, at ye Eagle and Child.) On the first day in particular, we be participating in both ye Plugfest and ye ePortfolio workshop, shivering ye timbers with our adherence to open standards and commitment to engaging software. Avast!
I can’t get over the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon, which particularly over the past week or so has been exploding. We now know that the actress involved is Jessica Rose, and that LG15 is a show related to some kind of Internet service. It’s professionally produced, and needs to be monetised somehow. Some have suggested that Youtube itself is responsible, which isn’t too far out there – for ages there were persistent questions about Youtube’s business model, which were instantly replaced by discussions about the intrigue surrounding a Youtube-hosted drama. Publicity doesn’t come any better.
Whatever the purpose, a compelling story is developing. A reference by Bree in this swimming video to Cassie – “what ever happened to her?” – has led to Cassie turning up as a new videoblogging character, whose first, Ringu-influenced entry is truly creepy and encourages participation from viewers. “Come and get it,” she urges, as she tosses a sack of unknown contents into the same water where Bree was swimming in her video. Another Youtube user went to find it, and found the Judgement tarot card. The story continues to unfold, and it’s clear this isn’t just a teenage soap opera: this is the first drama to truly make use of this medium. I’m completely hooked.
This is probably the last time I’ll write about this, so I’ll leave you with an interview with some of the people involved:
I’m a little late on linking to this due to spending a little while on the road, but on Friday I spoke to Leon Cych over the phone for half an hour or so. It was a little early in the morning, so please excuse my waffling for the first couple of minutes, but later on there’s talk of Elgg Spaces, monolithic e-learning standards and more.
Click here to listen; despite the introductory blurb, I assure you the ZX81 is a very small part of the interview.
