In the highly unlikely event that you’re a subscriber to this blog and not to the Government Digital Service blog, here are three posts I recently wrote there and neglected to cross-post here:

• Government corporate websites in eye-popping 3D
• Why do people need government department websites?
• The vision for government corporate websites in the single domain (with product wireframes)

I’ve a half-baked notion I might blog here about some of the more personal learnings from my work at the mo’, such as:

• Making the transition from waterfall to scrum; and from senior user to product owner
• Coping with a 50/50 split role between two biggish jobs

Odds-on, I’ll probably remain way too busy with those things and the kids to find time to write anything much here until early 2012. But stick with me, if you’re grooming your RSS feeds. This blog isn’t dead.

(Cross-posted from The Funding Network website, with thanks).

I would be lying if I said I do a lot of work for charity. But by donating slivers of time to The Funding Network (TFN), which pairs worthwhile projects with pots of money at auction-style giving events (see video below), I can just about get away with saying I’ve done a tiny bit of work for a lot of charities. Of course, I don’t like to talk about it, but for the purposes of this blog post I shall just have to force myself.

I was introduced to TFN in July last year through Media Trust – an organisation which specialises in connecting media professionals with third sector groups to help them improve the way they communicate.

TFN were after some help with their digital communications strategy, while across town in Whitehall I was looking for opportunities to broaden my experience and do my bit for civil service volunteering. Media Trust put us in touch with each other and before long I found myself on my first date with TFN’s Adizah and Sonal (in the BIS canteen – I sure know how to treat the ladies).

Not that they needed much help, mind you. My first impression was of a lean, keen and digitally savvy communications operation, already well advanced in its use of social media channels (YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) with an enthusiastic digital native to run them. Better still, the team was looking to learn and do more, and to supplement their intuition with further professional knowledge.

Since then, I’ve been advising TFN on how best to use digital tools to promote and record their unique funding events, reach and engage new and existing members and givers, curate and amplify interesting content elsewhere on the web about social change, and to tell the story of TFN as clearly as possible via this new website.

In practical terms, that has meant giving the team tips about free tools they can use like Google Reader, Tweetdeck and Inbox Listening for monitoring relevant conversations online; sharing my own guidance documents with them to help refine their social media engagement; attending website project meetings and feeding back on draft designs; and explaining how adding blogs to the website might help them to showcase social change success stories and sustain a sense of community between events.

Which brings us right up to where we are now. I hope it turns out to be good advice and that these blogs really take off . Please subscribe to be notified when new posts are published, and do tell the team what you think by adding to the comments.

But before I sign off – what do I get out of all this exactly? Well, personal development and kudos from the boss. But also the warm fuzzy feeling that just by giving a bit of time and being available at the end of a phone (or tweet), I am helping in a small way to fund numerous sustainable social change projects.

I highly recommend volunteering through Media Trust to other comms professionals, and commend the work of TFN to anyone. It really is worth talking about, whatever Mike Smash and Dave Nice might say.

Without noticing, it seems I haven’t published a list of my bookmarks here for nearly a year. That’ll be partly down to subconscious choice (I’m not overly keen on link dumps on other blogs) and partly through neglect (I prefer to manually edit rather than automate these kind of posts, and haven’t found the time).

This post ought to more than make up for it though! Below is a mammoth dump of my choicier Delicious* bookmarks from Feb 2010 to date, loosely categorised for your scanning pleasure.

I’m not sure whether to resurrect these kind of semi-automated bookmark posts in future or not, and would welcome feedback on whether you find them useful, irritating or neither.

[*With speculation rife that Delicious could disappear, I've recently switched to using Pinboard. You might want to do the same.]

Inspiration:

• 25 brilliant examples of Facebook brand pages
• Coolest Error 404 Pages In Web Design
• BBC sounds death-knell for left-hand nav
• BBC Online – putting quality first
• BBC tests new homepage
• New BBC site search
• FCO: Evaluating our blogs
• The National Autistic Society
• The 10 best museum websites
• Lincolnshire County Council
• Experimenting with the online presentation of a Bill
• A Trend of Multi Column Mega Drop-down Menus with 30 examples
• JISC Digital Media knowledge hub

Stats/analysis:

• An Exploration of Retweets and Replies
• How Much Big Brands Spend on Search Ads
• Social media stats for the UK
• The State Of The Internet
• OpenOffice is the new David Hasselhoff
• Gapminder.org – For a fact based world view
• The UK technology startup map: finding the clusters
• The Latest Global Social Media Trends May Surprise You

Interesting reads for digital professionals:

• 28 reasons why website management is brutal
• These are your users… read and be horrified
• Nobody Knows What You’re Talking About
• 5 Ways to Express Yourself More Clearly Online
• Why pay for Sitecore when you can get Umbraco for free?
• Why Boxed CMSs Can Suck
• The tyranny of content management systems
• Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems
• Stop letting people use your CMS
• HOW TO: Deal With Negative Feedback in Social Media
• 3 Places to Discover New and Relevant Content
• Engaging using LinkedIn
• Learning about content strategy

Think pieces:

• The innovation delusion
• The BBC’s misguided approach to social media
• Where next for digital engagement?
• Everything’s going to be alright

Tools, tips and other useful stuff:

• Loop11 – Usability & User Experience Testing Tool
• Usability testing with UK users. Affordable and fast – whatusersdo.com -
• The introvert’s guide to speaking
• Manage Who You Follow On Twitter Easily with ManageTwitter
• thumbalizr – thumb your webpages
• Real Time Search – Social Mention
• TALKI – The easiest way to embed a forum
• Jive – Enterprise Communication & Collaboration Software
• Follow live conversations from Twitter and Facebook on Tinker.com
• surchur – The Dashboard to Right Now
• Tool-up NGO-style – 20 web-based tools for daily working
• Bit.ly Pro Makes it Dead Simple to Create Your Own URL Shortener
• Delib’s Dialogue App
• Typekit web fonts
• Teamly • Get the right work done
• Pownum | there’s power in numbers
• Brand Visibility Metrics – HowSociable
• Pipl – People Search
• Brandwatch | Social Media Monitoring Company | Tracking & Management
• Boardreader – Forum Search Engine
• Forum Discussion Search with BoardTracker.com
• Check Username Availability at Multiple Social Networking Sites
• Fluther embeddable Q&A
• The Hello Bar | A little web toolbar that gets noticed
• Screencast.com, online video sharing
• Survs – Online Survey Tool, Collaborative Web Survey Software
• Make a Print Friendly Version of any WebPage, save Webpages as a PDF
• Screenr – Create screencasts and screen recordings the easy way
• Dimdim: Easy, Open and Affordable Web Conferencing and Webinars
• Newspaper Club | Helping people to make their own newspapers
• Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test – Browsershots
• BridgeURL – Shorten multiple URLs into a single URL
• Generate a QR code for your website in seconds with bit.ly
• Heatmap visualization for clicks, scrolling, and the fold
• Flickr Slideshow – create flickr photo slideshows for your website or blog
• Keynote Wireframe Toolkit – Get your Keynote Kung-Fu on
• Tagxedo – Tag Cloud with Styles
• GROU.PS :: connects obsessively! Create your own social network
• SocialGO – Create Social Networks, Build Social Networking Sites
• Elgg – Open Source Social Networking Platform
• MindQuilt | Ask Tag Send Answer
• Moodle.org: open-source community-based tools for learning
• Quality Control—A WordPress Theme for issue logging/support ticketing

Gov-specific links:

• The Five Best Government Blogs and The Six Reasons Why They Work
• Delib – OpenGov: the movie
• Leadership 2.0
• Open Government Ideas Look All the Same: Are You Surprised?
• Speech on Building Britain’s Digital Future
• Political hacktivists turn to web attacks
• Fulfilment for Government Marketing Campaigns | Business Link
• A digital engagement framework adapted for local government
• UK launches data.gov.uk (and how Australia could top it)
• Whitehall reorganisation ‘cost £780m in four years’
• BBC – dot.Rory: The £105m website
• Bloggers to be granted lobby access
• Social Media Surgery Plus
• Apps.Gov
• Challenge.gov : The central platform for crowdsourcing US Government challenges
• The Central Marketplace for Challenges | ChallengePost – As used by challenge.gov
• Safe and effective social media use by government agencies
• My MP iPhone application

BIS digital in the news:

Image credit: Lego dumptruck by bucklava

‘Tis the season for facile lists and for trying not to think too much about work. And as I’m about to say bye-bye to full sleep for a few months with the arrival of baby #2 (due in early Jan), I thought I’d mark the occasion by blogging my top ten pieces of sleep propaganda for tiddlywinks.

I love kids’ books to bits – ones about bed and sleep even more so. They account for some of the best moments I’ve shared with my son in the past three years; and have been a lifeline of comfort during some of the worst. Below are some of his and my favourite. I’d love to hear about yours.

1. Goodnight Moon
This wonderful rhyme about a rabbit saying goodnight to everything in his bedroom is tremendous wind-down fodder and never gets dull, mainly due to the detail in the illustrations. I’m still spotting new things in this after three years. Best line: “Goodnight nobody, goodnight mush. And goodnight to the old lady whispering hush.”

2. Peepo
Beautifully illustrated poem recounting all the things a (WWII-era) toddler has seen in his busy day. Like Goodnight Moon, there are almost endless things to discover and discuss in the illustrations. Best line: “He sees his sisters searching for a jar or tin / To take to the park and catch fishes in.”

3. I Wish…
I like to think this one inspires happy dreams about the moon and sea, with its magical rhyming tale of a boy and his teddy flying through the night. It even glows in the dark. Best line: “Past galleons laden with gold we would glide / As a thousand bright fishes flashed by our side.”

4. Sleepy me
I can’t vouch for my son, but I get very sleepy reading this. The repetition of the word ‘sleepy’ alone is partly responsible, but it’s the pictures of half-asleep parents, pets and babies that make this utterly soporific. Best line: “Sleepy story, sleepy sighs / Sleepy mum will kiss my eyes.”

5. On our way home
I love this one mainly for its dad bias. A simple, mainly pictorial tale of a baby bear and his daddy walking home to bed after a busy day playing together. Best line: “On our way home, Daddy raced me. And I won!”

6. I’d rather go to Grandad’s
Could there be anywhere more snug and safe for a young cat to bed down than at the top of a lighthouse owned by his grandfather? I doubt it. Best line: “First we go on a big fast bus, then we go on a train. And I can hold the tickets for there and back again.”

7. Peace at last
A classic, and lots of fun. I mostly like this for introducing the notion that parents need sleep too – and also that bed is the best place for it.  Best line: “Well, you would not believe what noises there are in the garden at night.”

8. Goodnight, Lulu
It says it right there on the back of the book: “guaranteed to ensure a good night’s sleep”. And it does, by reassuring little ones that mummies and daddies can easily scare away any monsters that could attack in the night – and there are no such things. Best line: “Then I would stomp and yell and chase it all the way back to the icky, sticky swamp where it belongs!”

9. Can’t you sleep, little bear?
In which a baby bear learns to overcome his fear of dark by discovering the moon and stars are always there, lighting up the night. Admittedly he ends up with a huge lantern on all night too, as has my baby bear. Best line: “‘But I brought you a lantern!’said Big Bear. ‘Only a tiny-weeny one,’ said Little bear. ‘And there’s lots of dark!’”

10. Back to bed, Ed
Last but by no means least, this book has worked wonders in explaining why big brave boys and girls should go back to sleep in their own bed, not climb in bed with mum and dad, when scared or woken in the middle of the night. Best line: “Mum and Dad had had enough!”

What do you make of my list? Any you’d add?

Familiar?

Source. Via Spaghetti Testing.

• Why I’m going dark for purdah – Steph explains why he won’t be blogging during the election period. (I won’t be writing about work stuff during that time either for the same reasons, but intend to resume blogging about other interests and this could be a good time to do it).
• Richard Sambrook: Big Thinker – on how journalism has changed in the last 35 years and where it’s going next
• Opening Times – via @alistairreid, all UK opning times in one place.
• The benefits of blogging – DFID’s Julia on the back story of their frontline bloggers.
• Uncorrected Evidence 219 – Matt Tee evidence to PAC on gov comms. My Twitter doc gets a brief mention.
• Radical shift in Government ICT will save £3.2 billion annually in public money – Get in!
• Slides from GovCamp: Making the Political Sell – Simple messages for digital workers in government about where to focus the lines of attack.
• UKGovCamp as the future – “I suspect we are moving from “Homebrew Computer Club” towards “MS-DOS 1.0″, and as our small world grows, there are a few fractures along which it could splinter…”
• UK Govcamp 2010 – Sessions – Write-ups galore from the recent UK govcamp.
• Apps On the Move – What Does .Gov.UK do Next? – Some pretty good app development ideas here.
• Minister wants departments merged – Northern Ireland Minister proposing equivalent to merger of BERR and DIUS to create BIS.
• Google Reader Lets You Subscribe to Any Page on the Web – that is, pages without RSS.
• OMG: brains can’t handle all our Facebook friends – Dunbar’s upper limit of 150 meaningful relationships is the same online.
• In The Eye Of The Storm: Can Government Do Beta? Direct.gov Travel News – A constructive critique of Directgov’s travel news app.
• Amplicate – Making Your Opinion Count – A brand monitoring tool with a black or white outlook. (Everything either rocks or sucks).
• Fingertips transcription services – Reliable, cheap transcription services.

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:

• Setting up a group for public sector web professionals – progress from Socitm and how to get involved.
• Digital campaigns in government – how they are planned, who owns them, what the challenges are.

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:

• Steph ‘the machine’ Gray has blogged about his and Anthony’s session on being brave in an atmosphere of cuts. Awesome.
• Check out Paul Clarke’s great photos of the day on Flickr

Updates II:

• Organiser supremo (and now Epic Visionary?) Dave Briggs has blogged his reflections and a load of links here, including a de-brief interview with himself and Jeremy Gould
• Sharon O’Dea has posted her reflections and notes of the Socitm web professionals session, which are far better than mine
• Kevin Campbell-Wright has blogged here including a few notes from the session on journalism

Updates III:

• Dave’s updating his list now, so I don’t have to. Go see uncle Briggsy.

(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

• Tweetie 2 – the Twitter client to rule them all. Beats its major competitors (Tweetdeck, Twitterific) hands down on all fronts if you ask me. Only one tiny niggle: a bit too didactic on the etiquette of retweeting.
• Boxcar – does the one thing Tweetie 2 doesn’t, and does it very well: sends you push notifications of Twitter replies and DMs. Alerts you about Facebook too if you want. (Nah)
• Facebook – of course, Facebook. Gotta have the Facebook. The app can be a bit clunky and hard to find your way around though (a good companion to the full site, then) …but it beats trying to use Safari.
• LinkedIn – I mostly use it to accept new connections and supplement my iPhone contacts, but you can do pretty much most things you can do with the full site.
• Touch BB – a PHPBB forum client for iPhone. I use this every day, hooked up to a private forum I run for some old uni friends.
• WordPress – if you’ve got a WP blog, you need this app – it’s great for deleting spam comments while away from a computer, editing existing posts or drafts, or drafting (short) new ones.
• Huddle – to be honest, I’m yet to have much call to use this. But as a member of several Huddle communities, it’s bound to come in useful soon.
• Red Delicious – I use this app to access my Delicious bookmarks and a bookmarklet in Safari to add new ones. Am sure there are better ways of doing this, any recommendations?
• Skype – one of the first apps I installed and I’ve never used it. I’ve never been sure why I need Skype, but am prepared to be convinced and so I keep it installed in readiness for my VOiP epiphany.
• Audioboo - as per Skype, I’ve barely used this but can’t bring myself to delete it.
• Photoshop.com mobile – easy to use and elegant app, useful for cropping photos and applying basic effects.
• Flickr – for quick access to my own photos on Flickr and to search for others, e.g. to use on this blog.
• Shozu – a powerful media sharing app that works with Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and more – and which I have barely begun to use. Keeping it to give it more of a trial run sometime.

Productivity apps

• Things – my ‘to do’ list app of choice. Much simpler than Omnifocus, mush better looking than ToDo. Syncs nicely with the desktop version over Wi-Fi. Only wish there was a cloud equivalent too.
• Evernote – for more substantial list making and occasionally taking photos of phone numbers on tradesmen’s vans.
• Quick Office - MS Word, Excel and that in your pocket.
• SimplemindX - An intuitive mind mapping tool.
• Pingdom – for checking server status of your websites.

News/content apps

• Newsie / Byline / Mobile RSS – I’m running these three clients for Google Reader and am yet to settle on any one which does it all (sharing, starring, offline reading, tweeting, emailing, unsubscribing, recategorising…) Your advice welcome.
• Independent / Guardian / Sky news / Thomson Reuters News Pro - I dip into one or more of these virtual ‘papes on my commute most days.
• Mashable - geek news on the move. I prefer using this sort of dedicated app to just using the RSS feed, but don’t ask me why!
  
• Instapaper – where saved webpages go to die, if I’m honest.

Travel and location apps

• Mini A-Z / Tube Deluxe / London Bus - aka the Knowledge.
• Directgov travel news – good work, fellas. Well worth checking before any long journey.
• AddLee.com – the best taxi firm in the world, in your pocket.
• The Trainline / National Rail - train times, bookings and live departure boards.
• Around me / ATM Hunter / Urbanspoon – pretty reliable for finding nearby banks, hotels, cafés, restaurants etc
• Fix my street – MySociety’s tool for complaining to the council about graffiti and potholes. Never used it yet but you never know.
• Google Earth – mainly for impressing old people. (Hello, dad!)

Music

• Last.fm – personal radio and streaming music; my music discovery engine of choice.
• Shazam – for identifying songs and buying them, and impressing old folk some more.
• In the Mood – for tweeting about what’s playing. Probably a bit annoying.

Telly & film

• Sky+ – lets me schedule my TV recordings from anywhere. Utterly awesome.
• Radio Times – because, although I wish there were more choice in the TV mag market, and in spite of it being utterly obsessed with Dr f**king Who, ‘RT Choice’ is probably the most reliable filter of decent quality telly around.
• Flixster – handy for seeing trailers of upcoming movies and keeping lists of stuff you’d like to see.
• Movie Genie - an IMDB client.
• [LoveFilm - doesn't exist yet, but I'm told it's coming. I love LoveFilm's online DVD rental service but an iPhone app for managing my rental list would make it so much better.]

Shopping

• Red Laser - another one for impressing people, this fun app lets you scan the barcodes of almost anything and get price comparison results for buying it online.
• Amazon / eBay UK – making it dangerously easy to spend my money.
• Ocado – yet to use this Waitrose online grocery shopping app, but if there was a Tesco or Morrissons equivalent I’d use it in a flash.

Reference

• Yell.com / Dictionary.com / Wikipanion / iTranslate / All recipes UK – these do what they sound like they do, and get you there in fewer steps than firing up Safari.
• Musée de Louvre – because it’s free and maybe I’ll be bored enough on a plane one day to improve myself wiv a bit of culcha.

Games

These are the keepers at the moment:

• Jewel Quest / iBlast Moki / Fling / Puzzle Bobble - Great puzzle games I never tire of and may never delete.
• Ravensword / Spider / Rolando 1 and 2 - Adventure and role player games.
• I Dig It Explorations / Robocalypse / The Settlers / Worms - Simulation and strategy type games.
• Fantastic Contraption / Crazy Machine / Crayon – Highly addictive physics games.
• Star Defense / Sentinel 2 / Tower Madness – Tower defense games.
• Speed Forge / 3d Rollercoaster Madness – Racing games.
• Scrabble / Hold’em / Table tennis / Arkanoid / Smart Go – Classic games.

Toddlertainment

Tried and tested on my two year old:

• Birds UK – bird calls and songs of all common British birds. Teaching daddy a thing or two in the process.
• Dora saves the Crystal Kingdom – and rides on a rainbow slide while she’s at it. And shouts a lot.
• Bubblewrap – mindless popping.
• Preschool Adventure - six activity games for toddlers.
• Balloonimals lite – inflate and pop balloon animals, without hiring a clown.
• Little Red Hen – the classic story, with animal noises.
• Pocketphonic – alphabet games
• Peekaboo Barn – animal noises
• iTot cards – great set of digital flash cards

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.

• The state of the UK gov blogosphere – Great post by Dave Briggs.
• Why websites matter less and less – “Summary: Our audiences will increasingly find ways to use our web content that are more convenient than visiting our website. This won’t reflect well in our stats, but we shouldn’t fight it.”
• Rock Solid HTML Emails – Dead handy post about creating well crafted HTML emails that work in all clients (via @lesteph)
• Mockingbird | Wireframes on the fly – A nifty online wireframer (via @wilcallaghan)
• Contrast Analyser 2.2 – Free contrast checker for testing accessibility of your website colours.
• Millicent Pro – From the Audioboo people, a nifty tool for professional video (via @alistairreid)
• cardboard toys | kid-Eco toys – Very cool recycled cardboard play houses, castles, wigwams and so on – cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the plastic junk from Toys R Us.
• Run-Rabbit-Runs – Good source of chicken (and rabbit, if you must) houses and runs.
• bernetblog.ch » Blog Archiv » Twitter-Tipps: So macht man ein Konzept – britische Vorlage – Blmey, that’s me! Apparently the “no 1 blog in switz (tiny country) for media, pr, online comm, her translated to German”
• Mythbusters – Myths about the Civil Service. Busted.
• XEN Carousel « WordPress Plugins – Via Dave Briggs, this is a very nifty, simple rotating news/image carousel for WP.
• IPSV (Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary) Resources – A necessary evil.
• Classifications: Office for National Statistics – Statistical classifications and taxonomies, like occupation and sector.
• Can I have a new website? – Stephen Hale is blogging brilliantly so I don’t have to.
• More cynical sniping at Twitter costs – Ahem. I’m saying nothing.

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:

• your website visitor is horribly impatient, even irascible, and 100% focused on a single task: find X or do Y
• in this mood, your website visitor is not going to think laterally – if they’re looking for ‘procurement’ and you’ve written ‘suppliers’ they won’t even see the option is there
• using the right words in the right places is critical, so people can find the content in the first place (by searching and navigating) and understand it when they get there
• failing to get this right is almost worse than having not tried – an incomplete customer task is very bad PR*
• web managers (unlike other shopkeepers) are physically distant from their customers and more closely aligned with head office concerns and language – an imbalance which needs to be redressed proactively

(*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:

• The Wonder Wheel – explore a clickable mind map of the most popular related search terms from the results page of any Google search by clicking ‘Show options’ then ‘wonder wheel’. Great for a quick hunch-check or visual demonstration to your big cheese of how strongly one thing connects to another in the audience’s minds.
• Google Keyword Tool - type in a search term and see a long list of related searches and their relative popularity right now, or enter a URL to get rich keyword recommendations based on your site’s (or some other site’s) content. This does what the wonder wheel does plus a bit extra, in more depth and detail.
• Google Insights for Search - compare the relative popularity of search terms over time, correlate peaks and troughs to news events, and see suggestions for related popular search terms. Oh, and make funky embeddable real-time graphs like the one below.
• Google Ad Planner – enter any URL to see the demographics of that site’s user base, the things they most frequently search for on Google, and the other sites they visit based on all the data Google gathers from various sources. Wow. (And a bit Bwah-ha-ha).
• Insights for audiences and YouTube insights – eye-popping insights on video consumption and searches by different demographics, and (for logged in YouTube users only) amazingly useful graphs showing the levels of audience interest in any given video rising and falling as it plays, based on user behaviour while watching (pausing, rewinding, giving up and doing something less boring instead).

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:

• check why a particular page might not be performing as well as expected
• prove a point to a content author about the impact of organisation-centric language
• build a campaign (or write a better brief to a PR agency)
• identify sites your target audience is most likely to be using and place your ads there/send the digital engagement boys round (but less aggressively than that sounds, obviously).

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

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..

• Nov 2008: Migrating website content is like pouring sour old milk into a shiny new jug
• Dec 2008: Browsing a badly structured site is like hunting for a toilet in a shopping mall
• Jan 2009: Hiding detailed information behind vague marketing spiel is like mistaking the web for chocolate. Or something (this one was a bit too obscure)
• Feb 2000: Paging through search results is like altitude sickness up Everest
• Mar 2009: The visual impact of good website design is like being frightened by a lion, being sold margarine and falling in love with Dyson vacuum cleaners
• Apr 2009: Facebook rides roughshod over its users like Napoleon on horseback
• May 2009: Aiming to increase web traffic is like wanting more people to catch swine flu
• Jun 2009: Senior internal stakeholders for your website are like needy children
• Jul 2009: Marketing communicators are like dog trainers
• Aug 2009: Announcing your website redesign is like telling Tony Soprano about your new kittens
• Sep 2009: Resisting new ideas is like going to an Irish funeral or doing strange and dangerous things with ovens
• Oct 2009: Links are New Yorkers
• Nov 2009: Using text on black backgrounds on web pages is like trying to read a grey book and using subtle link colours is like hiding roadsigns behind a curtain

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.

• BBC Democracy Live – Nifty live political TV and news thingummy via Simon Dickson.
• JobFact – community of anonymous employees – Compare your salary anonymously.
• Optimal Workshop – online card sorting tool – Fantastic and free online IA toys.
• Cybersoc.com: guide to using social media (in 6500 words) – Headshift on the basics.
• We don’t want to read your website. We want to write it - “Government should do nothing about us without us” – including running websites?
• New look FCO website – Stephen Hale on the new FCO website and see also FCO’s modest redesign for a healthy debate.
• Pesky People - because digital access is a human right (UN 2006).
• Twitter insights: Blaine Cooke @ teacamp – Q&A with one of the early architects of Twitter (so that’d be back when it used to fall over a lot, right?)
• The Social Media Marketing Blog: Recent Twitter Statistics – Useful presentation fodder.
• Mozilla Raindrop: Is the Intelligent Inbox Coming? – I live in hope.
• The myth of engaging with everyone /The myth of easy engagement. Who should participate and how? – Digital engagement isn’t about reaching everyone, and decisions are made by those who turn up. So how do you get the right people to turn up? This blog-off between Dave and Tim is required reading.
• Essential drum & bass albums! – Because you’re never too old.

But recently Croydon Council sent round an enthusiastic man with terrible B.O. to do a home energy review, and kitted me out with a load of cool energy saving stuff I never knew existed.

So, for my contribution to Blog Action Day 09, I’m going to take you on a tour of my house. This is stuff you can stick in your house too, stuff which is cheap, easy to install and saves you money while doing a teensy little bit more than you’re already doing to save the world.

1. Water saving shower head

Here’s mine. They cost around a tenner, come in all shapes and sizes, have a powerful flow just as luxurious as your normal shower but save about 4 litres of water every minute. Haahoo optional.

2. Chimney balloons

If you have fireplaces, you have draughts. Chimney balloons are like double-glazing for disused fires, and – as a bonus – also stop dead things falling onto your carpet. You can buy them here or here for £20.

3. Wireless energy monitor

You’ve heard of these. They show how much energy you’re using and the cost per minute. The wirelessness means you can carry them around the house and see what happens when you switch things on or off. Here’s me, switching on the kettle (a YouTube sensation in the making):

Mine’s an OWL, which appears to have won plaudits from pundits, though others are available. From £25.

4. Radiator panels

These are bits of moulded, shiny plastic which you stick behind your radiators on any external walls to reflect the heat back in, and come in packs of 5 or more for about £20. They save 80kg of CO2 a year and cut heating costs by about £10, according to this. And they make your house look a bit more like a spaceship, which is what we’re all striving for after all.

5. Low energy halogen bulbs

My house is full of tacky Argos spotlights, and for the two years I’ve lived here (and not got around to swapping them) I’ve been buying evil 50w bulbs thinking there was no alternative. But wait…

Croydon Council to the rescue! (A phrase not often heard). You can get these energy efficient GU10s which suck up less than a sixth of the power and last ten times as long. Hard to find in shops but very easy to find online for around a fiver.

And that concludes our little tour.

If there is a serious point to make here, it’s this. Tackling climate change needs everyone to switch to a low carbon lifestyle, and that’s a gargantuan ask. Innovative products like these are therefore absolutely vital to stimulate consumer demand by making it easy, affordable and desirable to make the change. They’re a key part of the transition to a low carbon world which – to quote from the government strategy:

will transform our whole economy. It will change our industrial landscape, our supply chain, and the way in which we all work and consume. For as well as being an environmental and economic imperative, the shift to a low carbon economy is also an economic opportunity. Businesses and consumers can benefit from significant savings through energy and resource efficiency measures. And supplying the demands of the low carbon economy offers a significant potential contribution to economic growth and job creation in Britain, not only as part of the short term economic recovery, but also through sustainable growth over the decades to come.

You can follow and have your say about what the government’s doing to stimulate all this here, or for a load more stuff you personally can do about climate change, have a look at the Blog Action Day site and Directgov’s Act on CO2 pages.

• The wraps come off data.gov.uk! – Harry Metcalfe posted this exclusive preview of data.gov.uk – the UK government’s free open data store, currently in private beta.
• Teach us a Lesson – Crowdsourcing the directory of learning – BIS and Becta competition seeking ideas to create a user-friendly national index of informal adult learning opportunities. Best ideas stand a chance of winning a share of the £25,000 funding pot to take them forwards.
• Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith – “People are having conversations about us online, but we are not part of those conversations” / “If we ignore conversations we may be risking more than if we get involved” …and other efficient phrases I wish I’d written.
• Online Database of Social Media Policies – Via a colleague at work, this is a great list of SM governance policies.
• ZX Spectrum Games – ZXSpectrum.net – retro gaming heaven.
• www.philipsvs.com – Interesting use of Twitter for a crowdsourced marketing campaign by Philips
• 15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids – When my son’s beyond the age of chucking precious objects against the wall, this might come in handy.
• Twitter is tomorrow’s email… technology adoption in organisations -Ross’s great post from a while ago about the stages of technology adoption.

• PortableApps.com – Portable software for USB drives
• Coolest power tools of some top geeks
• 10 kickass crowdsourcing sites for your business
• Social Networking on Intranets (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Twitter 101 — Download the slides & print the guide
• Digital diplomacy website – FCO digital team’s knowledge hub
• MP asks UK.gov: Why are you still using IE6?
• Civil Service Live 09 knowledge working in Whitehall and Blackhall
• Keeping poultry in cities: Checking out the chicks
• The A-Z of social media for brands
• What’s an API and why do I want one?

…but stay tuned, I promise to return to some proper blogging soon.