Found/interesting: 28 Dec to 5 Feb

Look what I found interesting:

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Notes from the 3rd annual UK government unconference (#ukgc10)

This is just a quick one to send you over here, to the team BIS tumblog Alistair set up, where I liveblogged my notes from two sessions at Govcamp 2010 today (alongside posts from @alistairreid and @lesteph). Namely:

It was a great day, and a packed schedule, in the awesome venue that is Google UK – lending just the right kind of innovative atmosphere.

Open data was a dominant theme this year, and I dipped in and out of several interesting discussions, not least of all Richard Stirling from the Cabinet Office talking about the launch of data.gov.uk, merely 2 days after it went live to huge acclaim.

Inevitably I missed (and am about to miss – there’s a few sessions to go as I post this and head home to prior engagements) loads of good stuff. I am depending on good write-ups from others – especially the sessions on what digital means for the future of press officers, personal blogging, and defending digital innovation in a climate of cuts. I’ll add links here as I find them.

Meanwhile the Twitter stream is still going strong.

Updates:

Updates II:

Updates III:

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The perfect page…

A lot of my focus at work lately has been about how we publish to the web – who’s doing it, with what tools, and to what standard.

While the boss is focusing on what goes up when and how to make it more engaging, I’m mainly working on three things:

Underpinning all three of these, I’ve been working in my spare time on a checklist of quality criteria for web pages.  (You know me, I love a good document).  Feel free to grab it in PDF or Excel if you’re interested in taking a look:

I’ve got my doubts about its practical application day to day, so I thought I’d share it here and get your feedback. It builds on work I did at my last place, owes a teensy bit to the much meatier Directgov equivalent, and has had some input from the guys in my team. But it’s also only a draft, was written outside work hours and is in no way an official publication from my employer, OK?

Here’s what I’m trying to achieve with this, if it flies:

So what say you? Useful or likely to be ignored? Too detailed or not detailed enough?

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What’s on my iPhone? (Or: Appy new year)

(This is a lazier than usual post for a lazy New Year’s Day. Normal service will resume when the year is in full swing…)

I don’t know about you, but I can’t so much as glance at someone else’s iPhone without wanting to grab it and have a nose at what applications they’ve installed. So for any fellow members of Appaholics Anonymous who read this blog, here’s what’s cluttering up my iPhone* on the dawn of the new decade:

Social web apps

Productivity apps

News/content apps

Travel and location apps

Music

Telly & film

Shopping

Reference

Games

These are the keepers at the moment:

Toddlertainment

Tried and tested on my two year old:

Hmm, that’s a much longer list than it seems just from flicking through the screens on my phone.

And yet… with over 100,000 apps in the app store and counting I’m bound to be missing some gems. Personal recommendation counts for a lot against those odds, so I hope you’ve found my list useful and would really love to hear your suggestions too.

(H)appy new year and here’s to the next ten years of jaw-dropping advances in web and mobile technology. I’m rubbish at predictions but feel pretty confident in saying all this stuff will probably just look like Pong in comparison to what we’ll be using in 2020. (And my son will be better at using it than me).

*other smart phones are available. Hold your tongues, Android fans, I’m not an Apple fanboy.

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Found/interesting: 9 Nov to 24 Dec

I haven’t done one of these bookmark posts in a while, and I’m some way off posting anything new here. So here’s a look at what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently.

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How to read minds and influence people

Derren Brown doing something odd with his eyebrows

Knowing what your customers are thinking is the first step towards making them happy. But how do you know what’s in their heads (without being Derren Brown)?

I’m some way closer to being able to read my website users’ minds than I was this time last week – thanks to two unrelated events which turned out (maybe supernaturally?) to be related after all.

The first was Gerry McGovern’s masterclass on web management. An inspiring, often amusing rallying call to public sector web managers to manage their sites properly: by identifying the top tasks users come to the site to do, and testing and re-testing those tasks continually to improve user satisfaction.

That’s a crude summary of a packed day’s course which has left a big impression on me. (If you get the chance, go). Among the many points which hit home were these:

(*Incidentally, writing this just reminded me of a visit to WHSmiths last Saturday – a non-virtual example of this customer service sin: chaotic, frustrating, and probably not long for this world).

At the second event, a meeting at Google, I heard about some incredibly useful tools for finding the right words which will help me put some of McGovern’s ideas into action. Most of these were new to me and might be to you too:

These tools are all free, enormously powerful and allow you to do seriously useful things beyond just buying up keywords for SEM. Like, just for starters:

Now shouldn’t you be crossing my palm with silver or something? I accept chocolate coins.

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Gerry McGovern’s metaphor masterclass

McGovern giraffe metaphor (5% of your website delivers 25% of its value, the other 95% is a long neck)

I’m a big fan of Gerry McGovern

I’ve read his New Thinking newsletter avidly for years and, in a couple of weeks’ time, I’m going to his masterclass on managing effective task-based websites. I can’t wait.

If you haven’t heard of him, Gerry’s a usability guru with a particular emphasis on writing and managing website content based on the tasks that users want to perform and – crucially – the words they carry in their heads at the time.

It’s a narrow focus and a simple message (pretty much how good web content should be, right Gerry?) So it’s remarkable how he never fails to find new and inspiring things to say on the topic.

Partly, he does this through interesting similes and juxtaposition. Occasionally, these veer on the bonkers.

Here’s my selection of the best and worst (they’re the same) McGovern metaphors from the past year’s worth of New Thinking. Just crying out to be made into a desk calendar, if you ask me..

And – like all good desk calendars – how about a favourite quote or three?

From: How many webpages can one person manage?

Some web teams are based on a distributed publishing model. In such a model the web team is often not responsible for any pages, but merely facilitates other parts of the organization to publish. This model has failed miserably in every organization in which I have seen it implemented in.

And from: Writing killer web headlines and links

There is nothing worse on the Web than welcoming people, and telling them about how you’re so delighted to announce the launch of, or about how on your website they will be able to find, or about how it’s now even easier to… Web content is brutal and to-the-point. Lead with the need. Don’t get to the point. Start with the point.

And best of all, from: How to create clear web navigation menus

“Come, little links, gather round,” said the designer to the links. And the little links gathered round, all happy and expectant.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” the designer said.
“Good news first,” the little links chirped.
“Well, the good news is that we think you’re very special links and because you’re so special we’re going to call you Quick Links,” said the designer.
“Quick Links!” they shouted in unison. Then a silence fell and a little voice was heard to say:
“Master designer, does that mean the other links are Slow Links?”
“Well no,” the designer replied. “It’s just that you’re special.”
“What’s the bad news, master designer?” another link asked.
“The bad news …” and the designer paused. “The bad news is that we’re putting you in the right column.
“The right column!” they said with horrified voices. A long silence.
“Bad master designer,” a disgruntled little voice said.
“Yes, bad master designer,” another said. “Nobody looks in the right column.”
“But you’re Quick Links! You’re special,” the designer said as the links began to close in.

If he comes out with any more gems like these at the class, I’ll be sure to write them down.

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Found/interesting: 15 October to 7 November

Look what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently:

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