Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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  • How many Directgov sites?

    You know the way all government sites are meant to be merging into Directgov… does that or doesn’t that cover externally located subdomains of direct.gov.uk? I did a quick bit of Google research and uncovered the following non-authoritative list:

    Several (although not not all) of these sites clearly required functionality which the Directgov platform couldn’t offer: database integration, mapping, etc. And that’s where Directgov’s problem will come. If you’re going to bring everyone on board, you need to be offering adequate functionality – or at least, access to adequate external functionality – to meet everyone’s perceived needs. As it stands, we risk ending up with a proliferation of subdomains.

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    Where's our Directgov blog?

    When the Guardian’s Michael Cross interviewed Directgov chief executive Jayne Nickalls in August last year, he wrote:

    In its response to the Power of Information report, the Cabinet Office proposes that Directgov embraces Web 2.0 technology by incorporating a blog in which users exchange their experiences.

    Now if it’s really in the official Cabinet Office document, ‘The Governmentโ€™s Response to The Power of Information‘ (PDF), I’m damned if I can find it. But that’s not the point. We were promised a two-way communication channel with Directgov… and nigh-on six months later, it’s still not here.

    Tom Watson’s ‘minister for e-government’ role still hasn’t been explicitly confirmed, as far as I’m aware. But if he’s looking for ideas, there’s one for a start. I hear the Directgov people are waiting to be given official guidance. But now we’ve got a blog-literate minister in charge, it’s as simple as three little words – Yes We Can – and a quick trip over to wordpress.com. We could do it tomorrow. What do you say, Tom? Jayne? Anyone?

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    Deezer's music by permalink

    I’ve written before about Deezer.com, the French ‘so good it can’t be legal’ jukebox website. Search for a song, click on the play button and er, that’s it. The music is encoded and uploaded by users, and streamed via Flash by the site… so you can’t download (er, exactly). Sound quality can be variable, but the reality is astonishing.

    The v2 site has another great addition: web-based permalinks. So if you ever wanted to point someone to a specific recording of a specific song, now you can. Click the link, the song plays, the advertisers pay. By way of example: here’s Page & Plant’s live, unplugged version of Kashmir, which compares more than favourably with the Led Zep original… and comes with an extra 50% free.

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    I thought it didn't have to be taxing?

    HMRC in FirefoxOK, so it’s not on the scale of the lost CDs exactly, but… this morning I got a letter from HMRC telling me that I’ll have to fill in an annual tax return. The thing is, it’s not the first letter I’ve had from them recently on such a subject.

    They initially wrote to me before Christmas to tell me I no longer needed to submit a tax return. Then they wrote again to say I did. Then they wrote again to say I didn’t. Now this morning, they’ve written to me again to say I do. The thing is, I’m a company director. They know this, and Companies House knows it. And that’s one of the criteria which requires you to submit an annual tax return, no matter what.

    HMRC has a real credibility problem as it is, and this sort of trivial stupidity isn’t helping. Nor is the fact that a large chunk of their website – basically anything from the VAT / Customs & Excise side, by the look of it – still doesn’t display properly in Firefox. Is it any wonder, as reported by Westmonster, that a majority of the British public doesn’t want inter-departmental data sharing?

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    WordPress as a CRM tool?

    Another example of why I love WordPress. Somebody has built a new theme which, with the help of a few common plugins, becomes a contact manager – with search, tagging, ‘related people’, etc. But I think it can be pushed further.

    Using the standard WordPress comment functionality, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t turn this into quite a sophisticated CRM tool, along the lines of 37signals’ Highrise. You’d automatically get an RSS feed per ‘client’, and a global RSS feed for ‘all client activity’. Plus, it would all happen on the client page – no need to go ‘back end’. Ooh, I’m buzzing with ideas on this one already.

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    Google Docs not there yet

    I haven’t played with Google Docs for a while, but news of a form designer to ease spreadsheet input intrigued me. A lot of spreadsheets, especially in an office environment, are actually pseudo-databases. So why not treat spreadsheet data entry like a database?

    It’s a great idea, but the initial execution is a bit disappointing. The form designer is pretty limited: some nice Ajax-y touches, but a restricted number of field types, and no easy way to enter dates (pre-population? popup calendar?). I have a couple of work-related spreadsheets which I update on a rolling basis, and which I’d happily move over to this kind of form-based approach… but sorry, not yet. Wufoo still seems to be the leader in online forms… and with the addition of payment processing, it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

    But the whole Google Docs experience is definitely improving. I tried using the Prism browser, which is basically Firefox stripped bare: and it made for a more natural ‘Office-y’ experience. It was actually surprising how much the lack of familiar browser screen furniture helped. But I think it really needs to be offline-enabled (via Google Gears or Firefox v3?) to make its breakthrough. That may not be far away, as it happens: offline Google Docs access has been spotted in testing.

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    Microsoft-Yahoo: I'm past caring

    I’ve been extensively quoted in a technology story on the Sky News website this morning, in which I describe Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo as ‘a deal for the accountants and advertisers, not the users’. I’ll tell you why.

    I like to keep a lid on my RSS consumption: anything over 100 feeds feels like too much. I had one of my occasional clearouts at the weekend, and I was actually surprised to find myself removing the final feed in my Microsoft folder. But it’s been a long, long time since Microsoft launched or announced anything which excited or inspired me. It’s not just the disappointment of Vista. There have been too many underwhelming ‘me too’ launches lately: the Zune and Silverlight spring immediately to mind.

    Over at Yahoo, it’s more like a succession of false dawns. The 2005 purchases of Flickr and Delicious suggested they really ‘got it’, and I still use both daily; but they don’t seem to have moved on much since the purchase. Whatever happened to Flickr’s promised video? Delicious has promised ‘big things coming soon‘, but the definition of ‘soon’ is stretching all the time. And just as significantly, neither seems to have influenced Yahoo’s core service much. (I’ve used Pipes a few times, but it’s for RSS-obsessed geeks only… like me.)

    The unpleasant truth is that a Yahoo news story these days is unlikely to solicit more than a disinterested grunt from me, and Microsoft is rapidly going down the same road. From a user’s perspective, all this deal would/will do is reduce the field from ‘Google plus two also-rans’ to ‘Google plus one’. I sense more dread out there than enthusiasm.

    And those following the Puffbox philosophy won’t be surprised to read my quote: ‘Being successful online isn’t about being big – if anything, it’s a hindrance rather than a help.’ Discuss.

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    New Wales Office websites by Puffbox

    Swyddfa CymruWe’re exceptionally proud to unveil the latest Puffbox site: a new corporate website – or indeed, two – for the Wales Office. And as you’d probably expect from us, it’s not just another government website.

    In late 2007, I was invited over to the Wales Office’s Whitehall HQ. I hope they don’t mind me saying, their website was probably the ugliest in government, and people were starting to take notice. They had no hands-on control of their own content, and no site usage data. Could Puffbox help? Yes, yes we could.

    The new site, which we’re launching today, was designed, built and populated in a timescale (and for a budget) which would put many suppliers to shame, and gives them functionality which many of their Whitehall neighbours will envy. I also believe it could spark a culture change in how government communicates.

    Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear it’s built on the WordPress ‘blogging’ platform, and continues our series of ‘blogs which aren’t blogs’. News releases, speeches, publications and FOI disclosures are all entered as ‘blog posts’, distinguished using categories. All the more static, corporate stuff is done as ‘pages’.

    For the readers, there are immediate benefits. Obviously, it’s prettier. It’s been coded with better accessibility in mind. Every page is automatically printer-friendly, using CSS. The blogging mechanism gives reliable, automated archiving by category and month. Not to mention the various RSS feeds. And as you’re legally entitled to expect, there’s a fully-functional Welsh-language version too.

    And for the Wales Office themselves, it’s a quantum leap. Previously they’ve been emailing pages out for someone to hand-code: yes folks, even in 2008. (Not the only ones, either.) They now have direct access into their publishing back-end, with all the benefits thereof. And because it’s WordPress, page authoring and management is a breeze. That’s before we get on to things like Google rankings, site usage statistics, multi-site and mobile working…

    Why do I see it as a culture-changer? The site is being run by the Press Office, a small team in a small department (60 staff). They have the authority, and now the ability, to publish new communications at a moment’s notice. If they want to operate by ‘bloggers’ rules’, they can. And as I recall Tom Steinberg once saying, it’s the tools which are transformational. Let’s see what happens… and if they make a success of it, expect others to follow.

  • Sky News goes Ajax

    Really, really delighted to see Sky News finally adopting Ajax technology for its image galleries. The click-to-reload-the-whole-page approach was just unacceptable in 2008… and it’s great to see my own baby, the always-popular ‘Pop Up Papers’ press review which won me a 2001 European Online Journalism award, finally growing up. It’s got its own permanent URL and everything. Sniff. They’ve also started dropping Ajax photo galleries into stories – see this David Beckham example. Hats off to them.

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    E-gov minister not hanging around

    Just to note that e-gov minister (?) Tom Watson, responding to comments on his ‘tell me what to do’ blog post, says he has ‘already got moving on the single spot for consultations’. It’s a start, but it’s far from the solution. Indeed, not so long ago, we did have a single (Cabinet Office?) website listing all open consultation exercises. It disappeared. The address www.consultations.gov.uk now redirects to a page at BERR.

    The more important aspect to Sheila Thomson’s proposal was the ugly techie bit. Her four-stage plan started with a single list, moved to a single notification channel, then to a standard layout, then to a standard XML schema. The first two are dead easy, we could do it in WordPress in minutes; the second two are much, much more difficult – if not impossible. People get very precious about their writing.

    Of all the issues in government web activity, consultation is the one I’m most concerned about. It’s taking us a helluva long time to find an acceptable means of consulting, online or offline; and frankly, I’m not sure there’s an appetite for it among the general population. Various people are trying various things at the moment; but until those deliver (or not), we need to concentrate on re-engaging the population, and making them actually care enough to get involved.