How time flies and changes. Since then I’m now the proud owner of an iPhone 3GS so my iPod touch has been passed onto my son. Like many iPhone users my first port of call in the morning is to check my Twitter and Facebook, funnily I find I get more contact via my social networking sites than email. Is this a growing trend I wonder?

Me 2.1

Last year I had just opened my Facebook account and was using Flickr. I’ve continued to use Facebook on a regular basis and having caught up with old friends find it’s a great way of keeping in touch with people. However, what I do enjoy a lot of Facebook is interaction with my local Police – PSNI Ards. The officers responsible for maintaining their Facebook page really are on the ball and it’s been a real education discovering just how much good work they carry out that I never get to hear about, until now. With almost 500 fans in a short space of time the response has been amazing and support from other users is very positive. I’ve yet to see a better adoption of social media by a public sector organisation.

Biting big time

I’m no longer one of those people who don’t get Twitter and now find myself something of an addict. Twitter is a fantastic tool for sharing information, keeping up to date and having discussions with selective users. An ever bigger thrill for me has been to receive tweets from celebs that I’m a fan of. Jason Manford, John Bishop and Matt Goss have all sent me personal messages.

What’s next?

Last January I was talking about the launch of nidirect which went live in March 2009. Having recently celebrated its first birthday a redesign of the site is in progress while I work closely with other Departments on the rationalisation of citizen facing content onto nidirect. I’m still managing to keep my hand in doing some development work and am currently working on new sites for DENI and ETI. What lies ahead is anyones guess as demands for our services include transactional services to iPhone apps!

My main reason for moving to wmpu was because I discovered the buddypress plugin which turns your wmpu site into a social network similiar to Facebook. Installation however turned out to be a real challenge and I was surprised at the complete lack of advice on my issue on the web. My current host is a Windows server. Technically speaking wpmu should install on a Windows server but despite following every piece thrown at me from Twitter to the support forums nothing worked. My host did their best and even though isapi_rewrite was installed I was stuck in an endless loop installing, getting stuck  at an IISPassword error, back to installation again…

So I finally gave in and opened an account with HostGator and sure enough my problems were solved. Next nightmare was figuring out themes and wpmu. Again the documentation was either poor or I was being completely thick, the latter is often unheard of

In Wordpress a theme is simple, install it and your site skin changes. In wpmu/buddypress themes are very different and I will blog this as I’m sure I won’t be the first or last to be baffled. Buddypress basically needs 3 themes. One theme for your home page and any new pages you create, one theme for your member/group pages and another theme for any new users who wish to create their own blog.

So when you install a buddypress theme this should come in two parts, home and members. They’re installed in two separate folders which is a problem for maintenance as you have two sets of images, php and css files to work with. But of course these themes are not much use to a new member who wants to create a blog on your wpmu domain. They aren’t running a buddypress site so they need your standard Wordpress themes installed, enabled and available for selection.

In any case I eventually got there and have enjoyed playing with new widgets and getting to grips with this exciting multi user platform. I’ve now ventured into installing bbpress which is a message board with its own set of themes and plugins! Again this has been fraught with problems. It seems the latest stable install doesn’t play ball with some of the basic plugins/features you’d expect with any decent forum. I’ve uninstalled it and rolled back to version 0.9 but still these plugins aren’t work. Most bizarrely icons aren’t being displayed despite the absolute paths being correct.

It remains to be seen if the site will be a success as most users prefer to hang out at the Matt Goss Forum but while they post reviews and photos I wish they’d make the jump to using gossy.us to setup their own blogs and have their efforts perpetually available to view and be commented on.

iPod Touch

I use my iPod Touch every day but not so often to listen to music or videos. Daily I check my Facebook account, email, RSS feed (from hotukdeals!) and surf the web. It’s faster and more accessible than waiting my laptop to boot up and with having a wireless connection at home and work, it’s also portable.

Me 2.0

Over the last few months I’ve really delved into the world of social networking and anything Web 2.0 in general. As I mentioned above I now have a Facebook account, I have umpteen RSS feeds that I read on my PC first thing every morning, which often lead me into hours of R&D and frequently new ideas for design/development work I’m currently involved with. I have a del.icio.us account, in fact I’ve two, one for development bookmarks, which is listed on this blog and one for web design stuff. I don’t know how I lived without these before as they are a fantastic way of managing your bookmarks and sharing with colleagues. I’ve set up a Flickr account and have uploaded many photos for sharing. Admittedly I’ve been a little disappointed with Flickr. It’s not as intuitive or user friendly as I’d expect and also I have to pay for it if I want to create several sets rather than bung all my photos into one. Hmm!

Not Biting

There are other social networks I’ve looked at and quickly dismissed. I don’t get Twitter at all and really don’t see the need to tell the world what I’m doing or where I’m at every day! There must be good applications for this tool but I’ve yet to see it. Digg just doesn’t float my boat, why would I want to waste my valuable time promoting something to world? What’s in it for me? Wikis are great and something I really want to implement in the NICS but finding practical uses and more importantly, content contributors are even bigger challenges.

What’s Next?

I now feel so 2008 and can’t help wondering what new fads will grab my imagination in 2009. Already with my iPod touch I’m newly fangled with interactive comics such as Bone, Shadowhawk and Atomic Robo while I patiently wait on the English version of Lucky Luke to be released.
Work wise I’ve eventually got a Flash video streaming service in place and will be launching a campaign site at the end of the month which will be the first to use it. High on my list of priorities are projects to replace our content management system, a corporate Intranet integrating with Sharepoint and the launch of a NI version of Directgov in March.

A busy year ahead awaits – yet again!

I signed up to Facebook many moons ago but never used it so now it’s like a new toy, albeit it too many widgets that I’m never gonna use. However, today I’ve found this rather useful plugin for Wordpress which integrates my blog posts with my Facebook account.

It’ll be interesting to see what traffic is generated from this seeing as I don’t have many friends on Facebook (or friends in general for that matter, sob). Again this will feed into my R&D as I endeavour to push Government into the big bad world of Web 2.0, even though it’s years behind!

I love my iPod touch it’s easy to use, very accessible and great fun. In France I was able to sunbathe at the pool and email friends availing of the nearby wifi facility. Blogging via safari is a bit more cumbersome but still quicker than booting up PC.

So much to my delight this app makes the whole process simpler. A one time setup means I never have to login so I can post so much quicker. Admittedly functionality is limited as unless I’m missing something I can’t format text or insert links.

Still it’s a great free tool if you own an iPod touch or iPhone I highly recommend.

If you’ve ever visited the Merseyside Police website you will see that so far as content is concerned it’s an excellent site, miles ahead of any other UK police force. It clearly demonstrates an organisation committed to publishing quality content with support from the very top, as seen in the Chief Constable’s regular web chats.

The Merseyside web manager carried out extensive research to get to where their site is today asking a range of questions to people of all ages. The main focus of our visit today was to find out how they went about implementing some of their features, to learn lessons and put them into practice as my team develop a new website for the PSNI.

With social networking high up on the public sector agenda, I was interested to learn that in their survey results site visitors actually had very little interest in podcasts or blogs. For this reason Merseyside have rightly postponed any plans to introduce such features and it made me stop in my tracks as I consider implementation of these Web 2.0 tools into the PSNI and in fact across the NICS.

Jeremy Gould has been highlighting some of the social networking type stuff central and local Government has been doing recently and it enthuses me to see the efforts being made across the board. Based on what I heard today I’d be interested in getting some metrics as to the usage and success these and similiar projects have had. Are we putting the cart before the horse or is this really what the public want?

If anything this reinforces the point that before redeveloping any website consult as much as possible, with your peers, stakeholders and the general public. As techies it can be too easy to produce leading edge websites, rich in social media etc and lose sight of the real picture. If the demand is for solid static content then presentation and delivery is where the focus should be.

As usual it was a superb show with an expensive set, brilliant special effects, amazing costumes, fantastic dancers and a great atmosphere. We were seated two thirds of the way down the hall and so were relying on the big screens for close-up shots. However, not long into the show the lads didn’t disappoint as they made their way to a smaller stage just opposite us where we were able to get closer views.

It was at this point I noticed that almost everyone standing had their mobile phones aloft taking photos, recording video and audio. Of course I did the same and only then did I remember about a cool function in my Sony Ericsson w880i. When I take photos there are various options to me, one of which is to “Blog this”. It’s something I’ve only used once before and it made me realise, here I am standing at this concert and right now I can take a photo and within seconds have it appear live on the web. Ok so maybe you do this all the time and think nothing of it but it made me think wow, how cool is that?!

But what ramifications does this technology have for the future? Most portable devices today are fairly primitive in terms of picture, video and audio quality but over time that will improve vastly. So in the future will people go to concerts and stream them live to their friends? Will online streaming services from mobile phones be available (perhaps they already are?) so instead we will have some kind of live YouTube? Only time will tell…

Top of the charts

Facebook is now the most popular social networking site ahead of rivals MySpace and Bebo. All of these sites have a similiar theme, you create a profile , add friends and have your own web page with little gadgets plugged in. I can’t help thinking I’ve seen this all before, several years ago in fact.

In mid-1995 Geocities began offering people the chance to create their own personal website, for free, with no technical knowledge required. In 1997 it was the 5th most popular site on the Web, so is social networking really new? Do Facebook, MySpace and Bebo really represent Web 2.0? I can’t help think if this is as far as we’ve come in the last 10 years then really we haven’t moved very far at all. Ok the underlying technology is more sleak, the presentation better and availability much more accessible but the concept remains the same.

Next big thing

As a Government web developer Web 2.0, in particular social networking, is the next big thing for us to tackle. However, should we not be getting our own houses in order first? In Northern Ireland I think we’ve set a benchmark in terms of corporacy, writing style and more importantly, accessibility standards. All Departmental sites must adhere to certain guidelines in terms of layout and compliance and after 3 years of continual graft, we’re getting there. Elsewhere in UK Gov I don’t see evidence of such standards and in the main most sites need to look at their standards first before thinking about engaging with social networking tools. Of course website rationalisation over time will tackle and reviews are underway but for now is there not a danger of drowning before we’ve learned to swim?

A nswers on a postcard please

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reviewing Open Source scripts such as Plone, PeopleAggregator and Dolphin. All very interesting, exciting in fact but I’m struggling to think of a use. How can Government employ such tools to deliver something different, interactive and more importantly, that is useful to the citizen? Am I going about it the wrong way, should Government tap into existing networks, such as Wikipedia or YouTube (as 10Downing Street have) and show we’re not afraid to “let go” of our information? Of course in letting go, there are potential pitfalls as DEFRA experienced. It will be interesting to see what comes from Whitehall over the coming year. I don’t think a few blogs is a clear demonstration of Government’s committment to social networking but what is? Well despite my writers block I’ve decided to throw a few ideas out there, they may have legs, they may be daft but we’ve got to start somewhere!

MPebo’s

A bebo style site showing all current MPs. Citizens can then sign up as a “friend” and post their erm, love for their local MP!

FOIpedia

Since the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, citizens can now write to Government to ask for information on various matters. Often a lot of work goes into a response but it after its gone to the citizen it remains on an internal system somewhere. Why not create a Wiki and share that information with the world?

JobSpot

Instead of advertising jobs, why not have a Government expert blog about it? Inspire people to work, blog real life stories, give them inside tips, links, contacts etc.

Got an idea of your own, tell me about it!