With the new toy (Treo 650) comes the need to try a new blogging tool. so here it is.
Archive for November, 2005
Pledgebank, one of the e-Innovations funded projects has helped create an organisation. The pledge was “I’ll set up a fiver a month standing order if 1,000 other people do”. Over 1,000 have, which gives a minimum starting point of £60k a year - enough for part time part-paid volunteers (or a full-timer) and some marketing. Nice idea, and I’m sure there are a whole pile of similar national, regional and local organisations that could work the same way. Question: how many people will convert to paying having signed the pledge. It’s not an eBay thing where there is a legal relationship once you offer to buy something.
Cybercrime yields more cash than drugs? Seems difficult to make those numbers stand up, especially since it includes corporate espionage, child pornography, stock manipulation, extortion and piracy. Then again, cybercrime requires far fewer real assets, so should be better at scaling up than drugs.
A speech and a declaration I found interesting: Gordon Brown on globalisation and the Ministerial declaration at the Manchester e-Government conference. Both looking forward, both with some substance, unusually.
Will the Mac mini take over the front room? I think it could - it’s already doing well in mine, and that’s the “old” version with the Front Row hack on it.
Evidence-based policy and democracy looks at the paradox that evidentially improving public services (e.g. crime rates) show declines in public perception (e.g. fear of crime statistics). My take on the thesis: Currently the public feels disconnected from the decision-making process, so won’t believe “spin” published by the government. If the public were more connected to the decisions and how they were made, they might recognise and understand the evidence.
Eye Movement and Lying is a neat no-nonsense guide to what might or might not work in this area. It feels about right for the way I work. Would reactions could well change in stress situations? Generally no; I guess they might be more likely to behave like the norm. One to try at the mediation on Wednesday week (my family - not me and Caroline!).
I just added Google Analytics to my site, despite feeling slightly wrong about giving yet more of the world’s information to the big G. Anyway, I was surprised to see that the visitors from my site come from a splendid spread of locations. Very little in North Asia or Africa, but that pretty well tracks internet usage and my rare or complete lack of postings about those areas.
On another depressing day for English cricket, over 72 has some sage advice from a friend of ours. Which is nothing to do with cricket, of course.
Treo 650 tips and tricks is mostly applications, but some useful ones.
As may be clear, I got the new 650 on Friday, so have been playing around with it for a few days. First impressions - it’s far faster and has a simply beautiful screen. Otherwise its much the same.
Maybe I should reconsider my long-standing aversion to iTunes on the PC. It sounds like most of the things that annoy me are being fixed within or without the system. Now to work out how to maintain a 60Gb iTunes library and sync part of it with a 40Gb iRiver. Haven’t succeeded yet in a way that doesn’t involve exporting everything every time.
Not much info in a written answer on e-enablement. But Teather used to be a councillor in my ward, so I had to look.
Apparently…: We are your friends looks at some commonly raised arguments around social care and the risk that they are fallacious. Worth thinking about harder. Some good stuff on the fact that the long tail is not a power law distribution on the site as well. Need to do my statistics 101 again.
Mac OS X 10.4 Orientation has some beginner tutorials for Mac newbies.
The Million Dollar Homepage. Crazy idea - sell a million pixels for one dollar each - and he might even do it…
Always strange to see a thing that I’m responsible for pop up in the news: e-Innovations goes Wiki says we’re first, so that must be innovative? Sorry to anyone else who has done this before (and there must be many examples).
Pictures On Walls: Banksy for £75? Worth a pop maybe?
List of open source software packages at Wikipedia.
E-government awards off target sees a journalist sniffing around the Digital Challenge. Let’s hope it gets launched soon!
Forward-thinking in all but title sees some comments in the Guardian about the IT Strategy for government. Somewhat predictably, each commentator cleaves to their own background, rather than looking at it as a whole.
