Informationoverlord

I am sad to see Google has called it a day on Wave, but I am not surprised. According to Google:

‘Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.’

It has not seen the user adoption for one reason in my view – it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer natively, and most corporate IT departments will not let their staff download and install the Google Chrome Frame to make it do so. This is important, because I do think some tech people do tend to forget that for most of us in the corporate/business world, we don’t have a choice of browser to use – or even version of that browser to use (see UK govt announcement last week that plan to carry on with IE6 on most of their machines). The larger the organization, the less likely you will be to customize IE in anyway, with IT departments/security taking control of most of your settings too.

I could have used Google Wave in my work environment, it would have been a faster way of collaborative working than a wiki and the IM aspect of it would also have been useful in some of the project teams I have worked in. But, I exist in the world described above. I could not use Wave at work, and frankly I didn’t need it at home – although I did try it out on a number of occasions and whilst it was not the most intuitive thing going, I liked what they were trying to do, even if for the most part it seemed like a solution looking for a problem, rather than something designed to solve a problem that already existed.

So, hats off the Google for trying it, but creating something that has most use in the enterprise, and doesn’t work natively on the browser of choice of the enterprise, meant that for me it was always doomed to failure.

One of the very noticeable things to come with the new coalition government has been a very quick overhaul of several of the departmental websites, with things getting even more web2.0 (am I even allowed to still use that term anymore?) than before.

Over at the DCMS for example things are going all, well, bloggy. Minister for Tourism and Heritage, John Penrose, published the first ‘of what I very much hope will become a weekly bulletin describing what I’ve been up to, who I’ve met and – from time to time – my thoughts and reflections on issues that I’ve had to deal with in the week’ (comments disabled of course). All seems quite jolly and a nice idea.

However, that doesn’t explain why Sports and Olympics Minister, Hugh Robertson, who has decided to do something similar – a look forward at the week ahead type thing - “This is the first of what will be regular previews of my week ahead, I hope they will shed some light on the day to day work of a Sport and Olympics Minister” is not on the blog, but under ‘latest news’ instead.

Why is one ‘news’, and the other a ‘blog’ item? All seems a bit unjoined-up to me. DCMS, a quiet word … put them both in the blog feed.

Was greatly amused today when I came across two blog posts here and here on the Bloggerheads blog about our new Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media & Sport, Jeremy Hunt, and his interesting approach to blogging and Tweeting.

It seem Jeremy just doesn’t really GET IT. He thinks that the way you do these things is to periodically delete old content all together from your blog and your twitter accounts. No, not random one off items but the whole lot, wholesale. Now this is from a man pre-election who said he’d love to be Minister for Technology and who will at least be partly responsible for it in his DCMS role. Apparently as far as his blog goes he only maintains a recent/immediate ‘archive’.

Rumour has it that the Con-Dem nation govt have been trialling the use of a mission impossible app for their tweets and blogs, allowing them to self distruct after a given timeframe. Think Mr Hunt is one of their beta testers.

I discovered last week that a lawyer in CMT (then MCC) Group here at CC Towers - way back when - has a nice little Commercial/TMT blog. Andrew, who is a Partner at Charles Russell is behind, CRITique - an “unofficial blog from the Commercial Team at the law firm of Charles Russell LLP”

Good stuff Andrew. Wish we were doing that here.

Andrew also has a Twitter feed too [You need to tweet a bit more though Andrew!]

Yesterday on Techcrunch Mrinal Desai asked if twitter was turning into myspace. Interesting piece, but I was more interested in his reference to to growing trend of ‘Ghost Twitterers’. This lead me to a New York Times article I’d missed last week on the Ghost Twitterers and a great quote from basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, echoing my own thoughts on this subject, who said:

“It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”

A slam dunk, I would say.

The news that Britney Spears had joined Twitter had the internet a flutter this weekend, with even Techcrunch claiming it was ‘solid gold’ in Twitter’s push for the mainstream. Britney doesn’t seem to be directly involved in the updates herself, which are being done by ‘her team’, but it is good to see they are savvy enough to realise that Twitter should be part of the latest ‘re-launch’ of Britney. On the plus side they have started adding ‘Posted by’ at the end of tweets, which is good for clarity on who is actually doing the updating.

It is however interesting to look at this and compare it to the other big name adoptee of the past couple of weeks, actor/comedian/writer (uk national treasure) Stephen Fry.  Much to the delight of those following him, Fry has taken to Twitter like a duck to water immediately getting the point - with general ‘I’m doing x now’ mixed with engaging with the community. For anyone even remotely famous looking for a guide on how to do it - Mr Fry’s is the one to adopt although perhaps not follow back as many people as Stephen has, which - whilst lovely, and I do treasure my ‘Stephen Fry is now following you’ email, - might result in drowning in a sea of tweets. [that said, someone else who seems to ‘get it’ also follows back almost everyone that follows him - MC Hammer - no, really, Hammer is quite an interesting tweeter]

Of course, Britney is not the first recording artist to spot the potential of Twitter (as Hammer demonstrates above), I already follow a couple myself and know of a few others, as well as some actors too, such as:Snoop Dogg - This seems to be the man himself doing the updates, but the fact that he hasn’t followed a single person back shows that Snoop doesn’t get it at all. [Followers 3785 / Following/ 17 updates - last update 12th Aug]
Kayne West  - Goes one better than Snoop and is at least following the Barack Obama updates. Unlike Snoop the content seems to demonstrate he could be a decent tweeter, but Kayne, you need to return some love and follow some people and throw out a few @ replies. [ Followers 2367 / Following 1 / Updates 56 - last update 19th Oct]
Sara Bareilles - Love Song was a huge hit worldwide and whilst not a big updater, she does seem to be the one doing it herself. [Followers 2408 / Following 29/ Updates 50 - last update 16th Oct]
Aslyn - Another fine piano based singer songwriter who is not great at updating but does seem to be doing so herself. [Followers 58 / Following 1 / Updates 17 - last update 7th October]
Wendy & Lisa - Still probably best known for their work with the small purple one, but still making music [Followers 207/Following 82/ Updates 103 - last update 16th Oct]
Lisa Loeb  [Followers 1099/ Following 751/ Updates 245 - last update 16th Oct]
Cardinology - the tweets of Ryan Adams and the cardinals [ Followers 948/ Following 616/ Updates 66 - last update 18th Oct] - for those who are fans their is a tumblr blog too.¼br> Warren Ellis - Author, and graphic novelist. Posts a lot. [Followers 8625 / Following 75 / Updates 1599 - last update 7th Oct]
Wil (Westly Crusher) Wheaton - Has been a big twitter user for a while now. Wil was also one of the first known actor bloggers.  [Followers 19550/Following 69/Updates 2481 - last update 20 Oct]
John Cleese  - Yes, before Fry came Cleese. [Followers 7191 / Following 31 / Updates 84 - last update 3 Sept]

There are a lot more out there, but this will give you an idea of the types of people engaging (or not) on Twitter. Who will be next?

As some readers of this blog will know, every year I make an attempt to read all six of the Booker prize short-listed books. Being a bit mad, I even try and manage it (and in all but one occassion fail) to read them all before the announcement of the winner - which this year will be onTues 14th October.

I have already polished off the current bookies favourite, The Secret Scripture by Sebastain Barry, and can report that it is a book well worthy of being a favourite. I’m not going to go into great detail about the plot (a google search will do that), but a brief synopsis is as follows.

The book, set in a Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital in modern-day Ireland, tells the story of 100 year old Roseanne Clear/McNulty through the accounts of two narrators, Roseanne herself and her Doctor, and the head of the Hospital, Dr Grene. The Hospital is being closed down to be demolished and Dr Grene has to assess all the patients to decide whether they can be relocated to a new hospital or whether they can be released. 

Her story (the Secret Scripture), which she is hiding away under a floorboard, sets out to tell the story of her life and how she came - at an early age - to be committed into mental institutions. In doing so it covers a key points in Irish history, such as the partitioning of the country in the 1920’s. By contrast, Dr Grene’s story mixes his own personal torments and the break down - due to a one off infidelity - of his marraige, with his assement of Roseanne’s case.

At first it is hard to see how the two strands work together, but slowly as memory and history conflict some truth is drawn out, and the two very different stands are pulled together.

This is a terrific book. Barry has succeeded in creating two very real central characters.He also brings to life a number of other minor character, such as Father Gaunt, and John Kane  who both play important roles in explaining the mystery of how Roseanne ended up sentenced to life in mental institutions (misogyny and politics).

Well worth a read.

[There are a couple of other things I would like to say about the plot, but will hold off doing so, because in a new twist for this year, a fellow blogger - Jen -  has also expressed an interest in tackling the books, so I will be doing something I had not ever expected to do - give someone ‘guest blogger’ staus on this blog. So, I may hold back on some comments so as not to tip off Jen of plot developments. This is also to warn regular readers that if I start to sound more wise and erudite, it may mean you’re reading my guest blogger.]

The Welsh blogger who was found guilty of posting a grossly offensive and menacing message has picked up a bit of coverage.

Mold magistrates fined Gavin Brent £150 (plus £364 costs) for a blog post found to be in breach section 127(1)(a) of the Communications 2003 Act, which makes it an is an offence to send over a public electronic communications network a message that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”. [most of the coverage including the BBC’s say that “Brent was prosecuted under the Telecommunications Act, relating to the sending of an electronic message.” I’m presuming this is an error, as the relevant section of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (section 43(1)) was superseded by section 127(1)(a) of the Communications 2003 Act, which makes it an is an offence to send over a public electronic communications network a message that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.”]

Brent, who it seems from the coverage is a petty criminal, had been charged with several offences and had vented his anger on his blog at his treatment by local police, and his annoyance at one officer who was absent for the birth of his baby. He ended his post with the P.S. “D.C. Lloyd, God help your new-born baby.”

Now, Brent claimed that what he was trying to convey was that he been mistreated and hoped the officer would not treat his child the same way. He admitted on reflection that he could see how the Officer and his wife could interpret the line as a threat against their new born child, but re-iterated that “their interpretation is different to what I intended.”

However, according to magistrates, any reasonable person would find the words about the baby to be menacing in the context of the overall blog.

This serves as another warning that you do always need to be careful about what you say on your blog. In this case, I have no doubt that - despite his anger - Mr Brent meant nothing more than I feel sorry for your new kid having you as a father. But, it is also easy to see how, had you been the officer in question (and his wife), the interpretation of the comment could be taken as being less than harmless.

The problem with being laid up in bed for a couple of days (although this did provide time for many episodes of The Wire and Battlestar Galactica) is that you do miss stuff, such as Ofcom doing blogging. No, really. Seems, with the review of Public Service Broadcasting now underway, they decided that a blog to go with it might be an interesting experiment.  The blog is written by Rhona Parry & Tom Loosemore, both members of the PSB Review team, and I - both with my Informationoverlord and Ofcomwatch hats on - look forward to seeing how it pans out, and how adventurous they’ll be.  Good luck Rhona/Tom.

I have been a bit slow (after effects of a trip to Amsterdam) in pointing readers to a new blog/twitter experiment going on at Law.Librarians. It is a humble attempt to take the short posting attraction of twitter, but using a Wordpress blog template. And whilst it is still very early days, we are quite an international bunch, whose every word you should be hanging on …

But seriously, folks … some smart folks are contributing and if you’re a law librarian / info person, we’d be happy to have you join us, so please pay us a visit.