I used to love politics. Over the last four or five years I’ve developed a dislike for it.  I was starting to think I had maybe grown out of it or maybe I’m no-longer so idealistic and naive.

Some interesting things have been happening recently, I bumped into @absond on the train into work a good few months back. He told me about BarCampUKGovWeb which sounded quite interesting.

Ive since started following a number of blogs from people that work in and around government. I’ve even started to follow the blogs of some MP’s. I have so far followed all MP’s I am aware of regardless of party.

I don’t pay particular attention to every post but rather scan read whatever they choose to blog. As more MP’s start to blog I will need to become more selective. At the moment its interesting just to see what our representatives feel comfortable blogging about.

The other day this post from Lynne Featherstone caught my attention.  She talks about human rights in China in relation to the Olympics.  An issue at the front of my mind after going to see the Olympic torch pass St Paul’s the previous week.  We didn’t actually see the torch, it was bundled onto a bus with the Chinese thugs just before it got to us. Regardless I found Lynne’s post quite agreeable.

Normally in this situation I would drop a comment on the blog to show my agreement. Unfortunately Lynne’s blog is not quite a real blog. You can’t add comments.  Here is what is really cool though, Lynne’s on Twitter. So I tweeted her.

The Downing Twitter feed is rather interesting. @DowningStreet. It provides updates, responds to questions and actually provides an interesting insight into life at Downing Street.

The @Conservative twitter feed even impressed me yesterday. I was getting ready for work when they tweeted that David Cameron was going to be interviewed on BBC 1 just after 8am… and they wanted feedback. So I watched. And then I replied :

“@Conservatives - not bad - Your still not getting my vote. Just to confirm. Are you left or right these days?”

It was slightly sarcastic and I wasn’t particularly expecting a reply. When I arrived at work an hour later there was a reply from the Conservative  Party.

“@simonmcmanus Thanks for your feedback, and we’re on the centre-right!”

For the first the first time in my life I had engaged in a two way conversation with a political party!

The 140 character constraint removes some of the formality associated with blogging and email.   I sure as hell wouldn’t have written that in an email.  Even an email of the same length. Twitter, it would seem is making politicians more accessible. Or at least making politicians appear more accessible.

I’m really interested to see how this all develops. I’m loving the idea of my MP being on Twitter.  Lets hope Eleanor Lang (my MP) is listening.  I would love to see politicians adopting these tools because they provide a  highly effective communications platform.

I should thank http://puffbox.com/ for keeping me informed about the latest politicians using Twitter.  Interesting to see that @brianpaddick , @backboris are both using Twitter.

Politics and politicians can often seem invisible and unaccountable. Twitter could start to change that.  Given that MP’s claim to represent us in parliament I don’t think its wrong to wonder…..What are they doing?

For those of you that have not already seen http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ please go and check it out now. Its been around for a good few years now but I was particularly pleased to see their recent action list (Free our Bills) has gained support from David Cameron. Im sure this will make lots of the “Give us our data back” folk happy.

In relation to Emma Mulqueenys point about Links, libel and law. My linking to Mr Cameron does not in anyway suggest support for his views except in the Free our Bills case. I am simply linking to an article which I have read/watched and found sufficiently interesting to share with others.

Over the last couple of days I have been working on the ccUpload macro for ccTiddly.  This is a macro that will allow people to upload files to the ccTiddly server so that it can linked to and included in their TiddlyWikis.

The work was in part motivated by Jon’s requirement to post HTML files and strings to a end point where the file is then uploaded. This is a part of his template work and some SEO work which will naturally fall out from it - that, however, is a completely different blog post.

We are getting to the stage where we have something functional to share and wanted to provide the opportunity for community feedback.

We’re introducing three concepts for ccTiddly users; instances, workspaces and user areas.

Instance: An area containing multiple workspaces.

Workspace: An online area where an individual TiddlyWiki can be stored and maintained. The area can also contain files which have been uploaded by a workspace administrator.

User area: An online area exclusively dedicated to the uploading of files by a single user. Each user has their own user area by default.

The macro enabling file upload does not require the page to refresh in order to upload additional files; instead it posts the form to a hidden iFrame for processing. At present, we’re giving users the choice to upload their file to either their workspace or their user area. I am probably going to remove the ability to upload a file to a user area for sake of simplicity (although the code will still exist and can be used if needed).

I am yet to decide what convention I will use when assigning a user area directory to OpenID users. The following structure is not an option:
wiki.osomsosft.com/uploads/users/http://simonmcmanus.com

I would be interested to hear any suggestions/examples.

I have currently not implemented any security with ccTiddly.  I am currently thinking that we will only allow people to upload files if they are the owner of the workspace; at the back end users will be able to upload files to their user space provided they are logged in.

Here are the screenshots showing the work so far….. feedback is welcomed.

You can either leave your comments against this blog post or leave them on the google groups page :

http://groups.google.com/group/ccTiddly

We are also going to need an area where people can browse and manage their uploaded files. That will probably take the form of a separate macro (ccBrowse??) but I would be interested to hear from anyone who sees value in displaying the previously uploaded files underneath the upload functionality as the below sketch shows :

Does this sound useful to anyone?

When I have formalised the upload API, I will document it on the ccTiddly page on TiddlyWiki.org. I hope to have this code released in the next week or two.

For me the bigger issue here is how we can encourage management to let people blog about their work. Particularly people working for Government. I suspect governance/regulation can only provide minimal assistance on this matter, what we need is common sense.

Personally I have never read our companies’ blogging policy, I think we have one, but there are some pretty common sense rules which have managed to keep me in work so far :

- Be authentic and honest.
- Don’t bitch - If you must then make sure you back it up with evidence.
- Justify what you say.
- Make your Mum proud, my mum doesn’t understand most of the stuff I blog about but I like to think she would be proud if she did understand.
- Learn from your mistakes.
- keep secrets secret.
- Talk to your boss about what you’re blogging and why.
- Abstract away from events/people/companies/parties and talk about anonymous examples.
- Don’t be afraid of being wrong (this one does depend a bit more on your employer)
- Make it clear that the views expressed are yours and not that of your past, present or any future employer.

I am quite fortunate in that my boss and his boss are bloggers with a good understanding of the blogosphere.

There is one key thing here, the people at the top need to realise that the “one voice culture” cannot be maintained. There will always be a variety of opinions in any organisation; it’s often the variety in opinions that result in great innovations. To stop your customers talking to your staff about ideas does not seem to make sense. When you take it a step further and stop politicians/civil servants talking to voters it makes even less sense. My understanding of the role of civil servants is quite limited, but I suspect we need to encourage them to debate topics in public using the same level of professionalism that they would use when discussing any given issue with their boss. Jeremy’s Whitehall Webb blog provides a nice example.

I was pleased to see that MP Tom Watson seems to get the idea; let’s hope his colleagues see the benefits of his conversations and start their own.

Exclusively positive blogs don’t work. People can tell when a PR machine has been working away on a statement, even when it’s cunningly disguised as a blog post - the tone of voice lacks authenticity. You need to let people talk about negatives, but at the same time empower them to turn them into positives.

Most complaints start with a small fault which only becomes a complaint through poor communication/management.

Forming tight guidelines on what you can and cannot say is never going to encourage people to blog, quite the opposite - and besides, lengthy policy documents never get read.

Just to confirm, The Guardian quotes me as saying that I believe that Civil Serf has been sacked. I actually said “If the civil servant has been identified and sacked it will be a real shame for the civil service”. In fact I suspect ’she’ may have pulled the blog to avoid being sacked. It’s mainly for this reason that I have not re-published the blog posts which google reader stored nicely for me.

Well she started an inevitable conversation which is never a bad thing. Looking back over the Civil Serf posts I don’t see any comments. I’m not sure if that’s because they were never enabled or they have not been cached. I would like to have read over peoples reactions to the blog. If there was no ability to add comments the blog was effectively just a scratching post.

As for setting back Government 2.0…I’m no fan of terminology 2.0 mainly because people seem to use such terms to describe things they don’t understand or can’t explain. I suspect we can learn a great deal about Government 2.0 and the issues that need to be tackled in order to make it a reality. Whatever that reality may be.

If you want to learn more about blogging in Corporates I can recommend reading Naked Conversation from Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Its a good read.

She eventually gave enough details for her to be identity to be revealed so it was not entirely unexpected.

We (businesses) spend a great deal of time talking about how tools such as blogs can improve collaboration within businesses. The same can surely be said for Government.

The internet is far less tolerable of nicely worded press statements that have been worded in corporate/politicians waffle. Or as Doc puts it :The internet means “Bullshit will lose leverage.”

Politicians need to learn to engage people in conversations. It’s an interesting issue if a civil servant should blog but there is clearly a lot that can be learned by politicians from this experience.

Corporates are currently trying to understand how they can be private in public; trying to understand how they can collaborate with their customers safely on the internet while still keeping their core data secure. It’s an interesting issue. There are great benefits from any organisation talking openly about its ideas before it commits firmly to them.

Obviously certain information needs to be kept secure for legal, financial, commercial, diplomatic or political reasons but when I start thinking seriously about what information needs to be protected and what would benefit from being shared the vast majority falls into the “should be shared” category.

Hiding problems which are shared with others rarely makes sense.

“Information wants to be free!”- ?

“The internet recognises censorship as a fault and routes around it.”-?

Governments could be using blogs such as this as a great way to dip their toe in the water, instead of leaking a policy one week before announcing it.

I have not managed to find much information about the circumstances around the blog being shut down (it only happened over the weekend). While I understand the reasons for shutting it down I would much rather see them do something more positive with the blog. If the civil servant has been identified and sacked it will be a real shame for the civil service. They would be wasting a fine asset.

One day I will try to read the civil service code and form a slightly stronger opinion about how openly civil servants should be allowed to blog.

It’s hard to justify the production of a single piece in a jigsaw.

A mash-up is much like a jigsaw. The services which sit behind the mash-up are generally of less value than the combined value. Businesses want to own the whole jigsaw because that is where the obvious money is.

So why should a company expose data when they can see no immediate benefit? Can exposing such a service be justified when the benefit to the end user is not immediately obvious?

Businesses seem to understand the widget model quite well. They can stretch their online estate, pushing the brand outside of the traditional .com domain. However, when the only reference to the brand is an AJAX call to a server never seen by the end user, where is the value?

Businesses are comfortable with prescribed innovation. They need an idea before there is investment, and exposing data is not an idea. The thing that I particularly love about the English language is that it’s described rather than prescribed.

Its the reasons that we have words such as: “blogosphere“, “flash mob” and “stealth tax” in the Oxford English dictionary.

Solving problems not building business models….in many cases we may not even be able to see a problem. The end users knows all about the problems and weaknesses, and if you can enable the edges of your network to try out different solutions to their problems you are going to see more innovative solutions.

Lets think of it as an innovation model rather than a business model. By allowing developers to mash up their own data you find out that they want to do something with it that you could never have imagined. You can then incorporate those ideas into your own product(s).

In my previous post I said that :

“Software (as with people) is only as good as its ability to interact with the eco-system around it.”

Increasingly we are judging software by its ability to pump information in and out. How long will it be until the same can be said about a business?

If you have any other good reasons for business opening up there data please let me know.

As always comments welcome.

Two blog posts have got me thinking lately,

This from PSD and this from JP.

The snapshot analogy led to a plethora of sins, to the way we designed databases, to the way we “inserted”, “amended” and “deleted” data. As we tried to force the snapshots to move around between systems, we hit DRM version 1. Enterprise Application Integration. Otherwise known as paying to bury our data, paying to dig it out again, and then, just in case we haven’t had enough, paying to move it around. And we could do so many wonderfully silly things as a result. Hire armies of people to write code to synchronise things, then hire more armies of people to write code to reconcile the data. Sometimes we missed out the “writing code” bit and just hired the reconcilers direct.

And the platform vendors prospered. And the database guys prospered. The storage guys prospered. The EAI guys prospered. The code writers prospered. The reconcilers prospered. Everyone prospered.

Except the customer.

- JP

I have seen a number of enterprise projects pay external consultants to bury, dig out and then move around data. Its amazing how complicated a simple job can become. Its even more amazing that an industry still thrives from doing so.

For a while now it has been common practice to buy off the shelf products to perform common tasks. They come with a nice fluffy layer of support and there is always a consultant on hand if you want to spend some more cash. In general these off the shelf products do NOT do what they need to do. They require a great deal of customisation usually taken care of by a bespoke programming language specific to the “Off the Shelf software.”

As a result you either buy consultancy or train your own staff in the bespoke language. - both of which stink of vendor lock in.

Lets think for a moment what that common task actually is. A common task is accessing, consuming and potentially updating data from a completely different system. None of the off the shelf systems seem capable of doing so without swallowing vast sums of consultancy fees. JP points out the daily tasks for knowledge workers are actually search, syndication fulfillment and conversation. Each of these are very valuable to the enterprise. In this case I am particularly talking about syndication.

No man is an island.

Neither is software….. particularly in the enterprise.

Software (as with people) is only as good as its ability to interact with the eco-system around it.

In fact without some kind of syndication between systems you will find that search, conversation and fulfillment lose much of their value.

We seem to be at an interesting time in the enterprise, billions of pounds have been spent on massive integration projects/software but when compared to small RESTful APIs like Flickr and Twitter your left wondering where all the money has gone.

I love Paul’s definition of a mash up :

To me its actually simpler,

• mash ups are fun
• integration sounds like hard work and usually is

As Doc points out Markets are conversations, two way conversations, which means companies need to state very clearly to big vendors what they need to change. In this case, its zero touch access to data stored with-in an enterprise system.
Maybe the big vendors will sort out their act or maybe open source and open standards will provail in the enterprise leaving the vendors wondering what to do with all their consultants.

Will that day ever happen?? I’m hoping so…..

PSD has also pointed me to a earlier post of his : A Moral Tale, which is well worth a read.

This post is just a load of useful links and info about things you can do with the Nokia n95.

I was going to send it to a friend via email but it seemed worth turning into a blog post.

Installation Tip : I have experienced some problems when trying to extract and install .zip files on the phone. If you do have this problem you can try unzipping them on your PC and then send the files one by one. The installation file is usually a .sis file.

A guide to setting up you nokia n95 to run gmail through the phones built in functions can be found at:

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/nokia/nokian95/nokian95internet/2533/setting_up_email_on_the_nokia_n95.html

I don’t actually use this method. Its set up but it doesn’t seem to work with gmail very well. I believe a benefit of this technique is that you can attach files when sending emails.

Google Mail Application

I don’t use this either. I just connect over the web and have a bookmark stored which is linked to from the main screen.

Other Applications :

Rotate Me

Auto rotation: when you turn your device, the screen automatically rotates.

Not played with this one too much yet.

FlipSilent

DivX

To play AVI files rather than just mp4s.

NiiMe

I am really looking forward to this being released for the mac.

pyPiwo

drink beer from your n95.

pyPoziomica

Spirit level tool for the n95!

QR Code Generator

You don’t need to download any software, the n95 has a built in QR code reader, from this site you can generate QR codes to try on your phone.

Dr. Jukka’s Inclinometer

Y-Inclinometer by Dr.Jukka is an instrument for measuring angles of slope (or tilt), elevation or inclination of an object with respect to gravity . You have only to fix your phone and adjust it so that it is perfectly upright in your vehicle

More apps and reviews :

http://n95blog.com/25-must-have-applicatons-for-your-nokia-n95/

http://sjc-123.blogspot.com/2007/06/best-tips-and-tricks-for-nokia-n95.html

http://www.hd911.com/archives/114

Running a Web Server from the N95

Mobile Web Server

allows you to run a web server on the phone.

PAMP - Personal Apache Mysql and PHP

I am yet to grasp the potential of everyone walking around with a web server in their pocket. ccTiddly is nearly working on PAMP and I have been reading some interesting use cases. Notably a bar which pulls its music from everyones phones and can also project videos from peoples phones onto the walls.

I’m off to Brazil for two weeks but will post more about the potential of the n95  running a web server when I get back.