Philip John › Comments

A truly hyperlocal blog, focused around a block of flats in Digbeth, Birmingham. - Philip John

Great example of using data to provide local information to residents - Philip John

EDM 2197: That this House calls on the Government to ensure that transport timetables for rail and bus operators are made freely available for re-use, using an open standards format, thus enabling voluntary and commercial organisations to publish the data on their own digital platforms. - Philip John

"Really? I don't think so… they'll become much, much smaller and largely aggregate content from bloggers, hyperlocals and feed from independent journalists on the ground. They'll be like editors. @DavidHiggerson has some interesting thoughts in that area, actually…" - Philip John

"Oh yes, very! That bit about who covers the regional development agency is very interesting. I'd suggest that existing local media (Northcliffe with Lichfield Mercury) sort-of cover the county-level stuff while regional media (e.g. TM with B'ham Post/Mail or ITV/BBC) do the regional stuff like AWM. That leaves us to cover the City & District Council and community groups like North Lichfield Initiative (a small part of Lichfield City, which is a small part of the District that we cover)… that needs more of a co-ordinated network though, I reckon." - Philip John

"Thanks for mentioning my post, Jeff. Good to know we’re thinking along similar lines. I figured you would be with your involvement in GrowthSpur. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to take part in C&binet with you too, it sounded fascinating. Looking forward to hearing more from you." - Philip John

Excellent "check your facts" post - Philip John

Openness of data is as important for local government as it is for national government - making people more connected to their community and giving them the tools to demand action on issues that matter. Digitalising council records could mean that citizens can find out everything from the council accounts to the number of streetlights and community wardens, to when the rubbish is collected and the hedges trimmed. The work Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt are doing needs to extend across the whole public sector. And I am working with them to ensure that their work embraces local government and local services and that local government responds quickly, consistently and effectively to the challenge. - Philip John

"I don't wanna get all 'self improvement' on ya so I'll just say “self-fulfilling prophecy” and leave you to it. Oh and read 7 Habits by Stephen Covey." - Philip John

"I can see why Krishnan didn’t welcome the idea with open arms but if we’re going to incorporate social media into mainstream media (as Channel 4 are doing) we might as well get on with experiments like this." - Philip John

"I can see why Krishnan didn’t welcome the idea with open arms but if we’re going to incorporate social media into mainstream media (as Channel 4 are doing) we might as well get on with experiments like this." - Philip John

Definitive word from Google's Matt Cutts that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in search results - Philip John

"Newspapers haven’t charged for content for so long they’ve forgotten how it’s done": (via @timesjoanna) - Philip John

Lichfield Twestival is a Twestival local event that aims to raise money for charity through the power of Twitter! - Philip John

Using the same user table for two Wordpress blogs - Philip John

"@Adam – They are used extensively yes, but it’s one of the biggest web usability gaffs around. Don’t take my word for it though, take Jakob Neilsen’s: http://www.useit.com/alertbo..." - Philip John

Interesting social media stats. - Philip John

"Great tips here that make a lot of sense. I have an issue with #3 where you say “a flash platform displaying your best photos” – from a usability point of view, flash should only be used where necessary. Instead, use a custom lightbox system which uses Javascript (ask any good web developer). Also, a little extra tip related to #4: you can always use a service like VisualCV.com rather than a PDF (never a good idea) or Google Doc (can be confusing to some). For #4 you can use a service like usernamecheck.com to check the many social networking sites. You don’t have to claim all of them, but try to cover most bases. Oh and it’s called an Avatar, not a Gravatar. Gravatar is a service which allows you to upload an avatar that can then be used by different web sites. By default, all WordPress blogs use Gravatar. @Tracy – if the reel is video or images you can upload them to your Flickr account and embed a Flickr slideshow into your web site. This means that everytime you upload your..." - Philip John

"It’s a bizarre requirement and you’re right, we don’t have it and neither do the Guardian by the looks of it." - Philip John

Google's resource for UK Local Government - Philip John

"Ah my mistake, I thought you were referring to OJB." - Philip John

"That distinction that you say keeps your blog out of Google News isn’t actually much of an issue. Once you know what to do it’s relatively easy to get into Google News. We got The Lichfield Blog on there and pretty dominate any Google News search for Lichfield now. I had the blog’s founder do a guest post on it for me: Google news registration is an easy win." - Philip John

Great example of a local TV station - Philip John

Great site for plotting post boxes on a Google map. - Philip John

"Why care about Google? Google wants _quality_ for the user in their search results. This is a basic web usability issue. If you’re writing about something chances are the person reading might want to know more, so make life easy for them. I’ll bet there’s some thinking in the newspapers you mentioned that linking out is bad because it means they loose visitors. I’ve heard that same reason for not linking out a hundred times, but guess what? Visitors will leave *because* you haven’t made life easier for them. As for the print vs web CMS issue I believe that print and web deserve separate attention. Too often mistakes made on the web are down to offline practices being applied online. Business (and newspaper) owners need to realise that the web is a completely different animal that needs a completely different approach. Build a new CMS! Sorry, I’ve ranted" - Philip John

Cool lightbox script for adding inline videos to a site - Philip John

"AND… a Google map, with a tag cloud next to it. As you move around the map and zoom in/out the tag cloud changes!" - Philip John

Tim Berners-Lee on opening up Government data - Philip John

"Couldn’t agree more and you echo the sentiments of David Higgerson who wrote a great piece recently on exposing the BNPs flaws rather than taking the ‘no oxygen’ stance. http://blogs.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/outside... The consensus does seem to be that the lack of Labour support has been the root cause of the BNP gains, as Owen says. This is backed up by a YouGov survey as reported by Channel 4 News today. http://www.channel4.com/news..." - Philip John

"Lovely jubbly, and it's the same process I used to create a new 'language' for BuddyPress so I might have to do an en-gb for that and share it with the world in the same vein. Will you be sharing your completed en-gb.mo?" - Philip John

Great site for mapping walks, big rides, runs. It has features for training programs, remembering training routes and tracking progress... awesome. - Philip John