UK government site accessibility
Not the most exciting of titles, but the The Web Standards Project discusses the UK’s drive for accessibility in government websites. It is bizarre and also shocking that so many content management systems in use by government agencies, ministries and quangos seem unable to generate good clean accessible and semantic code.
There is no gPhone
Apart from the hype about the iPhone and social networks, the other thing that the web industry has been obsessing about is the gPhone: Google’s mythical mobile phone. In fact there is no gPhone, or actually, there could be 1000s. Google has just announced Android, a mobile phone operating system that will help developers integrate the mobile experience and the internet. At least, that’s the theory. While interesting, many people may be surprised there is even the need for this. It will be interesting to see what exactly this will mean for us, the users, as well as Nokia, Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft, and the rest of the technology sector as it tries to grapple with the mobile world.
5 November, 2007
Opening the social network
Ever since MySpace, and then particularly Facebook, took off, the industry has been thinking about where social networking should go next. Most importantly, people have become increasingly unhappy about the way social networks keep personal information locked-up in their ecosystems. The web became as pervasive as it is today partly due to its ‘openness’ (look at and contact anything), but conversely social networks are popular partly due to their ‘closed’ nature (look at and contact only your contacts). So, how do we balance these two elements? Google has come up with the OpenSocial concept – a way of making the whole web your social network. See these articles on TechCrunch announcing the strategy, Marc Andreessen’s blog discussing the concept, and Wired does a good job of making the idea accessible. Update: Read/WriteWeb brings up three concerns about the OpenSocial strategy.
Look out vampires and werewolves, it’s MySpace vs Facebook
Yesterday saw the unveiling of the new MySpace Platform at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco – a move which has been seen as a clear counterstrike against main rival Facebook.
The MySpace plans are clearly a response to the huge success of the Facebook Platform, which launched last May and which has seen the creation of thousands of third party applications (some, admittedly, more annoying than others).
Showing how important MySpace is to News Corp, the announcement was made by Rupert Murdoch himself, along with Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder of MySpace. Indeed, of the $5 billion News Corp are expected to make in 2008 Murdoch predicted a significant contribution of $300 million profit will come from MySpace alone.
“If the best band in the world doesn’t want a part of us, I’m not sure what’s left for this business.”
Radiohead have announced the release of their new album ‘In Rainbows’ on the 10th October. They’re doing it on their own without a record label as a pay-as-much-as-you-want download and a fancy expensive CD/vinyl/book behemoth. This is pretty fundamental stuff: the record companies know it, and are scared of it. Time (which features the above quote from an anonymous exec) and many others are discussing what it all means.
Investment in the web grows in the UK and Ireland
Now, more than ever, is the time to fine tune your brilliant web idea that will change the world – or at least get bought by Yahoo/Google/Microsoft/News Corp. Techcrunch UK (which has recently relaunched) discusses a study that shows growth in venture capital in the UK and Ireland. So, if you ever thought that it might be difficult to get venture capital unless you were based in Silicon Valley, now is the time to dust down your ideas.
Update: Venture Beat has more about how venture capital is leaving Silicon Valley.
The older web
The New York Times has an article up about how the web’s users are getting older, and (as with other areas of the media) people are realising how they can be a more important and valuable audience than the much desired youth audience.
Facebook takes over
Facebook seems to be everywhere at the moment. Everyone suddenly seems to be using it, it’s all over the newspapers and television news, and weblogs debate whether it is the new MySpace/Google/Microsoft/AOL. Recently there has been talk of Facebook bankruptcy and fatigue, but while the discussion is interesting, we love it here at FoxLand where it seems to have taken over from email, texting, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace and instant messaging. And that’s only in the last 2 months or so that we’ve used it.
Jakob Neilsen: Prove that you’re an expert…
Jakob Neilsen argues that for certain organisations or people, it is better to avoid quickly written blog entries (like this!), and concentrate on longer more in-depth articles. It’s an interesting article, but not for everyone. Various good discussions have been started on the topic, and are worth scanning at The Guardian and Robert Scoble’s blog, who takes it almost personally. We primarily write short posts on subjects that we find relevant to our business and our clients. We would at times like to write longer posts, but find that not only do we not have the time, we also want to be as succinct as possible.
CEOs should think more like designers
Using Web 2.0, Steve Jobs and the iPhone as prime examples, Bruce Nussbaum in Businessweek argues that rather than just employing designers, CEOs should be designers.
The Latitude of Soho and Bloomsbury
Over the last few months we have been working with the search engine marketing and optimisation company Latitude on a variety of projects. One of the most unusual was a brief to commission photography for two meeting rooms and the reception area in offices on New Oxford Street, London. Latitude wanted something to make their offices more interesting, to stand out from the typical. They didn’t just want the usual bland corporate art – they wanted something bold and unique to them – something that reflected that their offices lie between Soho and Bloomsbury. They didn’t want the usual postcard style images of these grand old areas of London, they wanted something that paid homage to the true rich character of the areas.
To this end we spoke to Fiona Campbell, an award winning photographer who we felt would do well to eke out the unusual and different. She spent a good amount of time researching the idea, and decided to talk to some of the characters of the area. Read more…
12 May, 2007
WordPress is 4 years old: “I’m not a millionaire, and may never be”
WordPress, a wildly popular open-source blogging and simple content management tool, is 4 years old. Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer, but very much not the owner or only developer, discusses the development of WordPress and people’s expectations of him being a ‘Web 2.0 trailblazer’.
Twittering
Twitter has recently been taking off, as Jack Schofield notes on the Guardian Technology Blog. Twitter enables groups of people to be in constant contact with their social group by sending tiny text messages to the Twitter site, such as “I’m getting on a train to Hampstead” or “I’m watching the football”. If you still don’t understand what I’m on about, take a look at this graphic on Mashable. Frankly, it sounds like my worst nightmare – even worse than having a Blackberry. I am in contact enough with the world through this blog, Messenger, iChat, email, the phone, Skype and even when I actually talk face-to-face with people. That said, I would not be surprised if this time next year I’ll be texting to Twitter from my Blackberry about how much I was mistaken.
Google is “lacking in usability”
“Poor usability is the main reason behind the limited adoption of Google’s services such as Gmail and Google Talk, according to Jeff Bonforte, senior director of real-time communications at Yahoo.” Computing.co.uk discusses how removing features encourages user adoption.
Yahoo! Pipes – the web as a database
Yahoo! Pipes, a truly innovative, but complex, web application was launched recently and has gained a lot of attention on the web. Read/WriteWeb has a great article exploring the ideas behind it – and the way the web can be seen as a database.