A win-win in the cloud for UK Public Sector?

Image via Wikipedia

News that Portsmouth Uni has moved all of its students into the cloud with free, multi-lingual access to an advertising free version of Google Apps, including webmail with 7gb capacity, online documents, spreadsheets and calendars, chat and collaboration and site building functions.

They have around 30,000 students who will get @myport.ac.uk addresses.

In a deal with Google - which runs a similar discount exception for academe in the US - they get it for free for four years with no ads (Google quoted a commercial price of $33 per annum per user at the #googlelocalgov event last month). They will also - for free - establish application programme interfaces allowing data to be exported if the university decides to move.

The Uni believes that despite recent brief downtime, Google will provide a better service than doing it in-house. Answering critics, they repeat that Google is signed up to the Safe Harbour Act which commits a US company to comply with European data protection standards, even when information is stored outside Europe.

One of the best received presentations at their recent local government event was about Google Enterprise Tools. Given that the Government's CIO, John Suffolk, is promoting the take up of cloud computing it would seem that Google is kicking at an open door and pushing apps will be a key task for them (disclosure: I am currently in talks with Google).

This task is one they are taking up. Their local government targeted website has a savings calculator which specifically compares Google Apps with Microsoft Exchange 2007. Socitm 2009 in Edinburgh in October has Adrian Joseph, Managing Director of Google Enterprise, as a key speaker.

However, furious debate over the take-up of Google cloud in US local government should flash some warning signs about their potential progress, and where a backlash might come from, in the UK.

The discussion over the pond on the cloud computing push by White House lead Vivek Kundra has generated heat and light over issues such as transparency and how the regulatory constraints and certification and authorization should be handled and managed. This shows the potential for the cloud's seemingly, cost-savingly, obvious UK local government advance to become bogged down.

Those with most to lose, such as Microsoft, will undoubtedly have their own strategy to throw mud and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out, including how the incoming agenda and policy setters in Whitehall react.

Gmail now rocks even more

I had the unfortunate experience recently of having to access a Yahoo account. Could I work out how to do some simple tasks? No, not easily.

Yahoo seem to be on a self-destruct bender with a badly received homepage redesign and increasingly dodgy search results containing paid-for entries.

And don't get me started on the horrors of Hotmail.

Gmail - in sharp contrast - just gets better and better.

I just added a bunch of useful stuff to my set-up from Gmail Labs. To find them go to settings > labs.

Such as? Auto non-English message translation, signature tweaks (this places your signature before the quoted text in a reply and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures), 'Canned Responses' (save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form), quote selected text (just text you have highlighted when you reply to a message), a tweak which lets you specify starting and ending dates for the out of office autoreply, adding a Mark as Read button, Undo Send functionality, and a tweak which allows insertion of images into a message body.

As well, Gmail now lets you automatically unsubscribe from mailing lists when you hit 'spam' for a message.

Like with Firefox, I just love this type of functionality personalisation. Why use anything else?

HT: Craig Elder/thenextweb.com

The coming 'tracking' storm

Greg Sterling has an excellent analysis of the coming storm over online tracking by advertisers - prompted by a first legal move in the New York State Assembly:

Here’s where we are today:

• Traditional media are less and less effective because of audience fragmentation
• Agencies are still largely clinging to traditional media because of “inertia” and familiarity
• The Internet is where huge audiences are today but they’re harder to effectively reach
• Arguably search is the most effective online ad medium
• Brands generally don’t want to spend money on search
• Taking the lessons of search to heart, display advertising — where most of the brand advertising is seeking to go online — is tapping behavioral targeting (BT) and other, similar strategies to make display more “relevant”

After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law — Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the sponsor of a New York bill to limit how companies collect data on computer users.

And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.

From a legal standpoint this law wouldn’t survive a court challenge because, assuming it passed, it would violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, which doesn’t allow individual states to regulate “interstate commerce.” Of course there are exceptions one can find but this wouldn’t be one of them.

What’s significant here is that it represents a first step in what is sure to be an ongoing legislative and regulatory discussion of consumer privacy. This is analogous to what happened with Click Fraud only more extreme: the search engines failed to “get out in front” of the issue from a PR perspective until they’d been repeatedly hammered in the press.

He's right. Web companies aren't good with PR. I can see the Panorama 'expose' now ... maybe written by the 'ubiquitous' Nicholas Carr, who goes all paranoid again in this post about a new Google ad-serving patent.

• paulcanning: Nicholas Carr goes ballistic

C4's legacy news website

To read the transcript you need Microsoft Word. Do they have a deal or is it just ..... oh geez, don't get me started ...

Guardian shows Beeb how to tell stories

This is how to do it. The California firestorm is a big, visual, story. Show me a 'play' button.

The BBC has only started experimenting with Flash in-page video (on technology pages) because it has too much tied into single platforms — the main criticism of the iPlayer vis Microsoft. The Guardian can just do this with no problem from their previous investment and ability to experiment.

I also notice the Guardian's using Google free tools to display tagged content.

Neither is letting me post their content though. Yet.

Dictatorship 2.0: Bloggers as targets

Reporters Without Borders 2007 Worldwide rankings — done on their website as plain, flat web pages and hence very easy to find useful info — have highlighted a number of countries slipping down the index because "of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information".

A decade ago, regime opponents in Vietnam or Tunisia were still printing leaflets in their basements and handing them out to fellow militants at clandestine meetings. Independent newspapers were no more than a few hastily-stapled photocopies distributed secretly.

These days, “subversive” or “counter-revolutionary” material goes on the Internet and political dissidents and journalists have become “cyber-dissidents” and “online journalists.” Most of them know how to create a blog, organise a chat group, make phone calls through a computer and use a proxy to get round censorship.

New technology allows them to receive and share news out of sight of the authorities.

The Web is also a blessing for human rights groups, which can now build a file on a political prisoner with a few mouse-clicks instead of over weeks and sometimes months.

The Web makes networking much easier, for political activists as well as teenagers. Unfortunately, this progress and use of new tools by activists is now being matched by the efforts of dictatorships to fight them. Dictators too have entered the world of Web 2.0.

According to the group at least 64 people are currently imprisoned worldwide because of postings on the web, eight of them in Vietnam.

They flagged up the case of Abdel Kareem Soliman, an Egyptian blogger jailed for four years after he used his web log to criticise the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university, and President Hosni Mubarak, whom he called a dictator.

The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.

More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.

In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible.

China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison.

Talking about Burma:

The Burmese government’s Internet policies are even more repressive than those of its Chinese and Vietnamese neighbours. The military junta clearly filters opposition websites. It keeps a very close eye on Internet cafes, in which the computers automatically execute screen captures every five minutes, in order to monitor user activity. The authorities targeted Internet telephony and chat services in June, blocking Google’s Gtalk, for example. The aim was two-fold: to defend the profitable long-distance telecommunications market, which is controlled by state companies, as well as to stop cyber-dissidents from using a means of communication that is hard to monitor.

During the recent crisis the Net was, of course, a huge boon for journalists, but then the regime (like the Chinese) turned the tables, undercutting whether the Net makes any real difference:

Several Burmese journalists confirmed that the security services are circulating photos of demonstrators taken by citizen journalists or foreign reporters in police stations and among police informers. Scores of people have reportedly been arrested on the basis of these photos.

The same photos sent over the Web, before the regime shut it down.

The Internet was not designed to protect message confidentiality. It is fast and fairly reliable but also easy to spy on and censor. From the first mouse-click, users leave a trail and reveal information about themselves and what their tastes and habits are. This data is very valuable to commercial firms, who sort through it to target their advertising better.

The police also use it. The best way to spy on journalists a few years ago was still to send a plainclothes officer to stand outside their house. This can be done more cheaply and efficiently now, because machines can spy, report back and automatically prevent subversive conversations.

Cuba has installed spyware in cybercafé computers so that when users type “banned” words in an e-mail, such as the name of a known political dissident, they see a warning that they are writing things considered a “threat to state security” and the Web navigator then immediately shuts down.

China keeps a tight grip on what is written and downloaded by users and spends an enormous amount on Internet surveillance equipment and hires armies of informants and cyber-police.

It also has the political weight to force the companies in the sector - such as Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems - to do what it wants them to, and all have agreed to censor their search-engines to filter out websites overcritical of the authorities.

China has already signed an agreement with Skype to block key-words, so how can we be sure our conversations are not being listened to? How do we know if Skype will not also allow (or already has allowed) the Chinese police to spy on its customers?

It has become vital to examine new technology from a moral standpoint and understand the secondary effects of it. If firms and democratic countries continue to duck the issue and pass off ethical responsibility on others, we shall soon be in a world where all our communications are spied on.

• Google Board rejects shareholder challenge to its ethics

Dancing Hitler lives!

I love the tone of this headline from Techmeme:

Greg Sandoval / Webware.com:

FIRST PRINCE, NOW VILLAGE PEOPLE TARGET YOUTUBE — Somebody combined the Village People's hit song, "YMCA," with footage of a dancing Adolf Hitler and posted the clip to YouTube. Now the company that owns the rights to the band's music is preparing to sue YouTube.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Good Morning Silicon Valley, Valleywag and Mashable!

I met the Village People in Sydney once. Very bored /boring people ...

YouTube is a platform and the U.S. Constitution (free speech and all that) bars the sort of censorship being called for (particularly by daft UK pollies). Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing (except problems for others, like police deprived of their evidence).

Everywhere around the Google empire people are yelling about a lack of customer service - it's the same here, more people needed to 'take-down' quicker, 'why aren't these rich 'don't be evil' people employing them faster?'. Which is bad news for Google and sounds just like what happened to Microsoft.

But I can't help thinking it won't be long before technology exists to pre-screen soundtracks and auto-bar videos with copyright tracks on them.

Which may suck but then someone will come back with a way to get around that.

I'm sorry but I guffawed when I read this about the dancing Hitler:

Each time the video is pulled, someone else uploads another copy

Now you can't kill either the message or the messenger. Satire sure is powerful ...

• the link-changing, platform shifting, disco-lovin' dancing Hitlers

Office 2007 apparently crap for blind people

Just emailed a friend a post by the fabulous Leonie Watson on E-Access Blog.

Leonie's blind and is no fan, no way, of Microsoft Office 2007.

Hates it. Dreads it.

Office 2007 - Interface Design Revolution?

Office 2007. Revolution in usability? Innovation in interface design? Hell no, not if you're a screen reader user at least.

I installed Office 2007 at home recently. Fully ready to embrace the next evolution in interface design, I thought I'd take things easy. A little light emailing, perhaps some gentle word processing. I mean, how difficult could it be? I've been through several different versions of Office, surely a few changes to the interface can't be a problem?

Several hours later, an exhausted supply of curse words and a lifetime's supply of patience behind me, I uninstalled it. Never, I vowed, would it darken my desktop again.

From how Leonie relates the issues - auto-actions like menus 'thinking' and hence changing order - they sound so very obvious that I ended up thinking 'either they never tested Office 2007 with screen readers or they ignored the results'?

Now how does a big corp like Microsoft get away with that?

Those Wikipedia edits in full ...

CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith built a search tool that traces IP addresses of those who make Wikipedia changes.

WikiScanner is the work of Griffith, 24, a cognitive scientist who is a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Mr. Griffith, who spent two weeks this summer writing the software for the site, said he got interested in creating such a tool last year after hearing of members of Congress who were editing their own entries.

Mr. Griffith said he “was expecting a few people to get nailed pretty hard” after his service became public. “The yield, in terms of public relations disasters, is about what I expected.”

Mr. Griffith, who also likes to refer to himself as a “disruptive technologist,” said he was certain any more examples of self-interested editing would come out in the next few weeks, “because the data set is just so huge."

Here's Wikiscanner. It's slow but persist — I found edits done from my work PC (these were legit!).

It has "editor's picks" — showing the latest body to be 'outed' using WikiScanner.

The Independent has helpfully done a round-up of what's been discovered thus far about who's editing Wikipedia.

Exxon Mobil and the giant oil slick
An IP address that belongs to ExxonMobil, the oil giant, is linked to sweeping changes to an entry on the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. An allegation that the company "has not yet paid the $5 billion in spill damages it owes to the 32,000 Alaskan fishermen" was replaced with references to the funds the company has paid out.

The Republican Party and Iraq
The Republican Party edited Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party entry so it made it clear that the US-led invasion was not a "US-led occupation" but a "US-led liberation."

The CIA and casualties of war
A computer with a CIA IP address was used to change a graphic on casualties of the Iraq war by adding the warning that many of the figures were estimated and not broken down by class. Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited to expand his cv.

The Labour Party and careerist MPs
An anonymous surfer at the Labour Party's headquarters removed a section about Labour students referring to "careerist MPs", and criticisms that the party's student arm was no longer radical.

Dow Chemical and the Bhopal disaster
A computer registered to the Dow Chemical Company is recorded as deleting a passage on the Bhopal chemical disaster of 1984, which occurred at a plant operated by Union Carbide, now a wholly owned Dow subsidiary. The incident cost up to 20,000 lives.

Diebold and the dubious voting machines
Voting-machine company Diebold apparently excised long paragraphs detailing the US security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's chief executive's fundraising for President Bush. The text, deleted in November 2005, was very rapidly restored by another Wikipedia contributor, who advised the anonymous editor, "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism."

The Israeli government and the West Bank wall
A computer linked to the Israeli government twice tried to delete an entire article about the West Bank wall that was critical of the policy. An edit from the same address also modified the entry for Hizbollah describing all its operations as being "mostly military in nature".

The dog breeders and fatal maulings
A dog breeders association in America removed references to two fatal maulings of humans by the Perro de Presa Canario dogs in the US. In 2001 a woman was attacked and killed by two Presa Canario/Mastiff hybrids in the hallway of her apartment building in San Fransisco. Last year a pure-bred Presa Canario fatally mauled a woman in Florida.

The gun lobby and fatal shootings
The National Rifle Association of America doctored concerns about its role in the increase in gun fatalities by replacing the passage with a reference to the association's conservation work in America.

Discovery Channel and guerrilla marketing
A source traced to Discovery Communications, the company that owns the Discovery Channel, deleted reference to company's reputation for " guerrilla marketing".

MySpace and self-censorship
Someone working from an IP address linked to MySpace appears to have been so irritated by references to the social networking website's over-censorial policy that they removed a paragraph accusing MySpace of censorship.

Boeing and a threat to its supremacy
Boeing has made it clear that it is not just one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers, but is in fact the leading company in this field.

The church's child abuse cover-up
Barbara Alton, assistant to Episcopal Bishop Charles Bennison, in America, deleted information concerning a cover-up of child sexual abuse, allegations that the Bishop misappropriated $11.6 million in trust funds, and evidence of other scandals. When challenged about this, Alton claims she was ordered to delete the information by Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori.

Amnesty and anti-Americanism
A computer with an Amnesty International IP address was used to delete references accusing the charity of holding an anti-American agenda.

Dell computer out-sourcing
Dell removed a passage about how the company out-sourced its support divisions overseas.

Nestle and corporate criticism
Someone from Nestle removed criticisms of some of the company's controversial business practices, which have all subsequently been re-added.

The FBI and Guantánamo
The FBI has removed aerial images of the Guantánamo Bay Naval base in Cuba.

Scientologists and sensitivity
Computers with IP addresses traced to the Church of Scientology were used to expunge critical paragraphs about the cult's world-wide operations. On biography pages for dead celebrities, links were added to articles by a Scientology front group suggesting that pharmaceuticals were responsible for their deaths.

News International and the hypocritical anti-paedophile campaign
Someone at News International saw fit to remove criticism of the News of the World's anti-paedophile campaign by deleting the suggestion that this amounted to editorial hypocrisy. The original entry reminded readers that the paper continued to "publish semi-nude photographs of page three models as young as 16 and salacious stories about female celebrities younger than that."

Oliver Letwin and his great disappearing act
An edit linked to the Conservative Party IP address expunged references to The MP Oliver Letwin's gaffe during the 2001 general election when he reportedly said he wanted to cut "future public spending by fully 20 billion pounds per annum relative to the plans of the Labour government" . The accompanying paragraph, explaining that when his own party failed to support the move he took a low profile on the election campaign, was also removed.

Some more:

• Someone from SeaWorld's owners removed a paragraph about criticism of SeaWorld’s “lack of respect toward its orcas [Killer Wales]”.
• Ebay deletes criticism of Paypal.
• Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects.
• Someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed "Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20 percent less than at other retail stores," citing the author Greg Palast as the source, to "The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage", citing Wal-Mart.
• Last year, someone using a computer at the Washington Post Company changed the name of the owner of a free local paper, The Washington Examiner, from Philip Anschutz to Charles Manson.
• A person using a computer at CBS updated the page on Wolf Blitzer of CNN to add that his real name was Irving Federman. (It is actually Wolf Blitzer.)
• Someone at The New York Times Company changed the page on President Bush repeating the word “jerk” 12 times. In the entry for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, the word “pianist” was changed to “penis.”
• A member of Pope Benedict’s staff changed Gerry Adam’s entry to remove links to newspaper stories written last year that claimed Mr Adams was involved in a double murder in 1971.
• A BBC employee changed US President George W Bush’s middle name from 'Walker' to 'Wanker'.
• Someone from Al Jezeera changed Israel's entry to add: "Jews believe that they are chosen by God and that they are better than other people."
• Someone from the United Nations changed the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci's entry to describe her as a “racist whore.”
• Two Spanish TV stations exposed for performing an 'experiment' on John Lennon and Elvis Presley's entries.
• Games trade association ESA removed references to mod chips which can be used to play pirated game software.
• Apple employees editing the Microsoft page.
  
• Someone using a Connecticut Police computer added " the holocaust is fucking awseome."
• Editors from Christian-right Liberty University deleted the fact that Moral Majority leader and Liberty founder Jerry Falwell was fined in 1987 for illegally transferring funds for his ministry to his political action committees.
• Someone in the South African Government added "'I think that was all bullshit, thats why I deleted it. Thank you motherfucker!" on being discovered editing the HIV/AIDS entry.
• Someone at the ACLU added "during the Pope's final illness, he carried out many of the Pope's functions as leader of the Catholic Church, such as molesting young boys and degrading women."
  
• FoxNews removed references to misquotes, legal brushes, bad ratings, and gaffes by personalities — and, once exposed, responded by attacking Wikipedia's credibility.
  

The only people who seem to have come out clean from Griffith's 'disruptive technology' are Microsoft.

In another blow to Andrew Keen, FoxNews and other anti-Wikipedia credibility types, they are now adding 'nofollow' tags to all outgoing links, thereby destroying Search marketeers attempts to 'game' Wikipedia.

Postscript: According to TechCrunch, Google also come out clean.

Bytes · Right on Miss America - MS tortoise/Google hare - Wikipedia Story

• I agree with Miss America [could she be any perkier?] — she wants mandatory Internet safety classes for kids.

• The Guardian's website has a new Science section, very useful when mass media (the Beeb, sheesh) and politicians push nonsense like concerns about WiFi.
  
  
• AJAX is a technology underpining many dynamic web 2.0 apps, so it's good to see this accessify post suggesting that the well-used Screen reader JAWS is including language about support for AJAX in it's next version.
  
  
• When web accessibility is not your problem (MP3, 28MB) - Joe Clark [session notes]
  
  
  
• Scott Karp: Online Publishers Need To Stop Selling Space.
  

  Google doesn’t sell any space. It sells user intentions, i.e. what’s on people’s minds. And that’s a scare resource — there’s a finite number of people thinking about buying a digital camera today.
  
  So what else is a scarce resource online? Locality.
  

~~~~~~~~~~~


NYT: Microsoft Offers a Web-Based Strategy

“We’re not moving toward a world of thin computing,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, referring to systems in which simple processing takes place on a PC, but more complex processing is moved to a centralized computer through a network connection. “We’re moving toward a world of software plus services.” Nearly every Microsoft software application will be transformed with the addition of a Web-services component within 3 to 10 years, he said.

SEL take:

Even as Microsoft says it's defending its home turf, the company is of course trying to aggressively compete in the world of search and online advertising, which is Google's core franchise. Recent purchases of aQuantive/Atlas (for $6 billion) and AdECN, as well as high profile deals with Facebook and Digg, show how serious Microsoft is about being a major player in both arenas ... my guess is that "3 to 10 years" is too long for Microsoft to wait to web-enable its critical applications; because by then the free, online options will be much better.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If you missed it, Clive Anderson's great take on The Wikipedia Story is still on Radio 4's website

The NeoConservative Oliver Kamm responded on his blog and distilled the objectors - to them, Wikipedia represents "an anti-intellectual exercise".

(Gawd knows what's going on with the BBC at the moment. Withdrawn digital services + the complicated sounding iplayer. And have you used their website search lately? Whenever I've used it it consistently fails the same comparison test against Google that DirectGov does)

Search Wikia is Jimmy Wales' latest.

Our Four Organizing Principles (TCQP) - the future of Internet Search must be based on:

• 1. Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.
• 2. Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.
• 3. Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.
• 4. Privacy - Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.

Active areas of focus:

• Social Lab - sources for URL social reputation, experiments in wiki-style social ranking.
• Distributed Lab - projects focused on distributed computing, crawling, and indexing. Grub!
• Semantic Lab - Natural Language Processing, Text Categorization.
• Standards Lab - formats and protocols to build interoperable search technologies.

URL importance

Proportion of total fixation duration for each
component of search results, broken down by task type and
snippet length. As snippet length increases, the relative
proportion of gaze devoted to the URL decreases.

Jacob Nielsen reveals in the latest emailed Alertbox that SE users spend nearly a quarter (24%) of the time staring at web addresses (URLs).

Edward Cutrell and Zhiwei Guan from Microsoft Research ... used Microsoft's own search engine (fair enough), but their results match what we found in our eyetracking which included the current market leader as well as the #2 search engine in addition to Microsoft.

Users have evolved a firm model of search behavior which they apply across search engines, which is why it's probably a lost cause to make a non-standard search user interface.

Searchers are particularly interested in the URL when they are assessing the credibility of a destination.

This finding confirms the importance of human-readable URLs, which I discussed 8 years ago.

Another interesting finding from the MSR paper is that longer summaries (or snippets, as they call them) are useful for informational queries, whereas short summaries are best for navigational queries where users are looking for a pre-determined site or page.

Full academic paper (warning: PDF).

Clearing search pollution?

Now here's an interesting proposition ..

Today I'm thrilled to announce the Mahalo Greenhouse, a place where the public can build search results that-if accepted by our Guides-will be included in the Mahalo search index.

Oh yeah, if we accept your search result we will pay you $10 to $15 per search result (the range is based on how many search results you've completed: more here).

Now, if you're a disciple of Yochai and you absolutely will not work on a web-based project for money, we've got an amazing proposition for you: make the web better by writing spam-free search results and we'll donate your fees to the Wikimedia Foundation. So, you can make the world better 2x: first by making clean, spam- free search results and second by helping keep the Wikipedia running (those server bills ain't cheap!).

We've earmarked up to $250,000 in donations to the Wikipedia this year.

I love Wikipedia. They've got me already. Have lost several hours in Wikimapedia, which is brilliant and growing. I just tried 'Paradise garage' and got nowt though ... it'll grow..

Web Guru, Dan Gilmor, loves it. He blogs that Maholo founder Jason Calacanis, at the NMK event in London this week, called for wide efforts to rid the Net of the pollution he says threatens to choke off all of the value.

Calacanis hates SEO, calling them 'one of the worst polluters. (Click on his slide, left, to see a trajectory of decline.).

But, he says, blogs have so far responded fairly well with antibodies. (The “blogs” slide at right has a happier ending.) Naturally, he pitches his new company as an andidote for part of the problem.

There’s no question that the major Internet companies (read Google, Yahoo, Microsoft et al) have not done enough to curb the pollution. But do we really want to toss out the part of this that machines handle so well? I don’t think so.

Gilmor is reminded of the Open Directory Project, which ironically is a pillar of Google - "but this time with payments for the editors. Not a bad idea."

As I said, not a bad proposition ...

Google and privacy. And?

Following John Battelle on Google's big slap (BBC etc) on privacy:

The original release from Privacy International (yow, that's not good).
The Media Story. (ouch, wow, says Average Joe Newsreader, Google sucks).
Danny (the counterintuitive Google defense).
TechCrunch.
Scoble.

In the end, this is only going to play poorly for Google. Sure, folks like us might read Danny or TC and realize the story has more than one angle. But two or three orders of magnitude more folks will only read the Media Story.

Google, get out in front of this one....

According to GMSV:

Google has countered that the PI report misunderstands its services and is based on inaccurate information. Google also apparently pointed out that a member of the PI advisory board works for Microsoft and therefore the watchdog group has an anti-Google bias, which drew an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt from PI Director Simon Davies demanding an apology.

Battelle suggest I read Donna Bogatin (her of the 'Inside Chatter'). She thinks:

Google is WRONG On Consumer Privacy

She mainly has a go at Matt Cutts, one of Google's Bloggers.

Google defied the {Department of Justice] DOJ not in solidarity for its users, but in defense of its business model and competitive stance.

In any event, Google may not even be able to find its users data to comply with all of the DOJ’s demands! I recently discovered a “reason” for Google’s inconsistency in its privacy and data practices: Google apparently does NOT readily know where its users’ data is in the Google cloud, according to its top privacy point man!

Peter Fleischer indicates that Google doesn’t automatically know where user data is. So what, he nevertheless suggests. Fleischer is Global Privacy Counsel for Google and, as Google proudly declares, sits on the Board of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

And ... ?

It is surprising then that he cavalierly declares “Your data is in the cloud,” somewhere.

Surprising? Not only does this expose the real lack of depth of understanding by PI but also the - frankly - luddism.

As Bogatin constantly returns to, Google's interest is itself.

And ... ?

There are gawd knows how many companies who would have to say - “Your data is in the cloud”. What's it with Google, eh?

They have no interest in breaking the basic bond on privacy with their customers. That would end their business (the Googlers would get terribly upset for one thing ...). Do they actually want Google to stop producing stuff like Maps and Earth until they approve it?

Here's Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land:

Privacy International’s report is based on quite a bit of secondhand information there. “Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well–and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn’t seem fair,” he writes. “But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn’t appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed. Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the worst. That’s almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren’t so bad.”

I just Googled 'Google and privacy' and look what's top:

News results for Google and privacy - View today's top stories
	Group Criticizes Google Over Privacy Practices - FOX News - 3 hours ago Defending Google's approach to privacy - Guardian Unlimited - 9 hours ago Google Maps aids terrorists, NY lawmaker warns - Register - 3 hours ago

Google as Big Brother

Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets ... www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html - Similar pages - Note this

Google's Privacy Policies

UPDATE 2004-07-18: A new California law, the Online Privacy Protection Act, went into effect on July 1, 2004. Google changed their main privacy policy that ... www.google-watch.org/krane.html - Similar pages - Note this [ More results from www.google-watch.org ]

Google balances privacy, reach | CNET New

Bytes · YouTube transfers - Psychology of banner ads - Mash up Excel

Catching up .. clearing the scrapbook ...


Stevie Ryan, AKA Little Loca, has become the first YouTube discovery to get her own network TV show. She'll co-host reality-based "Online Nation". The half-hour series will showcase user-generated clips found on YouTube, Revver and other sites.

I hate this stuff - Al Gore's CurrentTV would be watchable if they got rid of the amateurish 'announcers' top-n-tailing some actually interesting product. Maybe that appeals to teenagers, doesn't to me. They'll be a looot more of this ... Little Loca's definitely got a demographic, girlfriend. Pour moi? One clip's enough. Later!

• How Microsoft battles Google in Search warfare
  “Enterprise search is our business, it’s our house and Google is not going to take that business,”
• Five things you didn’t know about Google’s search Googleer Matt Cutts in very interesting online dialogue with the New York Times.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The psychology of banner ads

repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product.


as


repeated exposure to a stimulus that's barely perceptible can enhance a person's feelings towards what's otherwise a neutral object


however


familiarity-based advertising may work best for impulse buys, where more detailed evaluations aren't likely to occur




~~~~~~~~~~~

An OpenNet Initiative report has found - apart from what you'd think about the usual suspects


no evidence of filtering in more than a dozen of the surveyed countries, among them Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Hong Kong, Israel and Iraq.



~~~~~~~~~~~

Motivation, context, and citizen analysis of government data
Swivel is just one place showing how communities can use stats mashups. Jon Udall examines another on his blog and points at his own mash-up which, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, is publishing/explaning crime stats details.

Talking about 'patient intimidation', he comments:


Similarly, when your neighborhood is sick, you’ll be motivated to engage with government data, and you’ll build yourself a context for that.

He likes Excel.

MSFT Search Skunk Works

Microsoft have just handed the development of their next generation (aka 'stealth', aka 'MSFT Search Skunk Works') search engine to 25 yo Sanaz Ahari

From Fast Company:

Ahari is widely credited with helping pioneer a new way of programming the Web. She's currently working on the Live Search team, preparing to launch her fourth new product since she arrived at Microsoft from college.

"Gadgets are making the entire Web a canvas. Gadgets (or widgets, as they're also known) are small programs that can reside online or on the desktop and perform a simple, single task, such as keeping track of your recipes. They usually extend an existing product or service, and they're primarily for the display of personalized information.

I can see a whole new level of advertising through gadgets. An early example was when Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) had that Da Vinci Code gadget--a replica of the 'cryptex,' the cylindrical decoder device from the book and movie. You could take the puzzle and put it on your Web page for your friends to discover. That was great. Create something cool, and people will distribute your brand for you. And content will become the new forum for advertising.

Users will tell you if you're doing it right. When I launched Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Start.com, a gadget-powered home page, we released a weather gadget with only Fahrenheit capability. That was really bad of me as a Canadian--but after people complained, we had Celsius up there almost immediately. I was so delighted to really connect with customers and show that Microsoft is not a big, bad, evil thing.

Now all these startups are creating widgets. It's kind of exciting but a little out of control. Everyone has their own standards, and they aren't as portable as they should be. Users should be in control of data and be able to put widgets on any Web site they want. They also need an effective way to find the best ones for them. I don't worry about progress, though. This is still in its infancy."

Bytes · McCain, tough guy - Nielsen attacks - Northampton 3D

ClickZ analyses the online ad campaigns of the Hillary and McCain campaigns (he's being more innovative/reckless).

This is a McCain Ad ...



They're not talking about search ads. Surprisingly.


~~~~~~~~~~~


Jakob Nielsen has a go at academics Paul Van Schaik, University of Teesside, and Jonathan Ling, Keele University about online survey design.

They confirm Nielsen's finding to use a list of numbers when people are asked how much they agree with a statement and use radio buttons rather than drop-down menus — but he disagrees with their finding to "present one question at a time across multiple screens".

Nielsen reminds that asking 23 questions (the study length) is too many for commercial use.

MAXIMIZE the response rate by MINIMIZING the burden you impose on customers.

His finding is that most users want all the questions on a single screen.

Since practical Web surveys rely on *voluntary* compliance, it's important to make them as pleasant as possible and to follow users' preferences. (This is in contrast to the research study, where participants were *required* to complete the survey.)

The biggest usability problem in questionnaires on real websites is that they are inevitably TOO LONG. This again leads to low response rates, which invalidates the entire exercise. See:
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040202.html

~~~~~~~~~~~


Apparently MS Maps, Microsoft Live Search, new 3D online maps of six World Cities includes ... Northampton. You read right. Good on them.

The other lucky MS launchees apart from New York ("Imagine you are there" "As seen in Spiderman") are Austin, Texas, Cape Coral, Florida, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ottawa. I would bring you screenshots but it's crashed.

• CNET Gallery includes Northampton Guildhall
  

Fortunately Matthew Hurst has already gathered a 3D shot of his mum's house in ... Northampton.

Bytes · Getting usability buy-in - Gender stats - Defamation + students

• Christine Perfetti on User Interface Engineering runs through five ways of getting buy-in for user testing.
  
  Much of the article chimes with my experience, so I'd recommend it. Her first point is 'start testing right away' simply because of the power of the actual testing — once people see it, their attitude changes.
  
  

  When I’m teaching courses on usability testing, I’ve found that no amount of lecturing about the benefits of testing gets development teams onboard and past their skepticism. Instead, people only truly comprehend the power of testing once they’ve observed a user interacting with a design.

  
  This is so, so true. IME you can practically see the light bulbs going off. You can always start by using discount techniques.
  
  
• Etre tell a great story about usability in practice in their newsletter. I related it to points made by Jacob Nielsen about Command Links:
  
  

  When Microsoft first added the "Program Files" folder to Windows, they received a barrage of complaints. Most came from armchair usability experts. What irked these experts wasn't the folder itself, but the folder's name. They didn't like the term "Program Files". They said that it was unfriendly and intimidating. They felt that users wouldn't dare click on a folder called "Program Files" for fear of upsetting the inner workings of their applications. They demanded it be renamed ...
  
  ... "Programs" was a non-starter. It was too user-friendly - enticing the average to step in, take a look around and get himself in a whole heap of trouble.
  
  "Program Files", on the other hand, was quite the opposite. It hadn't gone down well at all during user testing. Users found the term scary. Just as the experts would later come to predict. This, of course, made it the perfect choice. By choosing to name the folder "Program Files", the Windows UI team made users wary of it and afraid to explore its contents - and thus unlikely to make painful errors or learn ridiculously long-winded ways of working.

  
  
  
• 5.7m Brits used a mobile device to access the Web during January 2007, compared to the 30 million people age 15 or older who accessed the Web from a PC, according to new research.
  
  The study, from Telephia and comScore puts the UK Web market at 19 percent of the PC-based Internet audience. This makes it slightly more developed on a relative basis than the US Mobile Web market, where 30 million (or 17%) of the 176 million US PC Audience accesed the mobile Web.
  
  As well, 63 percent of Mobile Web users in the U.K. are male, compared to 54 percent of PC Internet users.
  
  Hower Nielsen/NetRatings also reports that "young women are now the most dominant group online in the UK".
  
  Women in the 18 - 34 age group account for 18% of all online Britons and they spend the most time online - accounting for 27% more of the total UK computer time than their male counterparts.
  
  Of UK males active online, the 50+ age group is the most prevalent.
  
  NB: the BBC report of this fails to disclose the connections between the BBC and Nielsen, as do other recent reports by them about questions surrounding web stats.
  
  
• Speaking of the stages of the two markets, SearchLatitude has produced a White Paper suggesting that US advertisers research the UK search market as it is much more advanced!
  
  Author Dylan Thwaites claims that:
  

  "A whole new sector has failed to thrive as effectively as it should have done, because the advertising industry in the US has adapted more slowly than in the UK."

  
  
  
• According to Helen Milner, managing director of UK Online Centres (which as I may have mentioned are one of the few initiatives addressing the Digital Divide in the UK and are currently under funding threat), speaking at a recent conference:
  

  "Just a few years ago, people thought that time and market forces would close the digital divide, with everyone using the internet to conduct their everyday business, buy goods and find out information.
  
  "But around fourteen million people still aren't doing so. The high levels of interest in the conference and input from leading figures across government, industry and the third sector proved that the digital divide isn't over. It's not going away, and it won't be swept under the carpet.
  
  "Digital inclusion isn't headline news. It's not one of the issues on which elections are fought, like health, education, employment or crime. But what has emerged from the conference is the recognition that digital inclusion does have an impact on those issues, and that giving people the confidence and skills to make digital choices and take digital opportunities has a wider political, social and economic consequence.
  
  "The number of internet users has stalled, and at the same time the internet is changing from a passive information-providing medium to a participative global community. If even ICT users can be left behind, non-users are further behind than ever."

  · Milner's presentation (Powerpoint)
  
  
  
  
• In Australia a new Do Not Call Register has been overwhelmed. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has confirmed that the public overload is creating delays for those trying to access the site at www.donotcall.gov.au
  
  
  
• A desktop application allowing organisations to convert their Word and pdf documents into accessible structured html web pages has been launched by Northern Ireland software company RiverDocs.
  
  It looks great and my colleague Dan Champion rates the software highly, and if anyone would know, he would.
  
  
  
• IBM is developing a Web Browser which includes pre-defined shortcuts that enable users to start and stop video files, adjust the volume and playback speed of audio output, and choose whether to listen to the video soundtrack, output from a screen reader, or an audio description track if it is present.
  Currently, Flash Video + WMP compatible, this gets around the need to 'see' a button.
  
  
  
• Parliament has quietly started running online consultations on behalf of Select Committees.
  
  It now has ones for Medical Care for the Armed Forces and Local Government and the Draft Climate Change Bill.
  
  
  
• Keele University has reminded its students that defamation law applies online.
  
  The administration was provoked by a Facebook group called "James Knowles is a Twat" (not to be confused with 'Beyoncé Knowles is a bitch'). Professor James Knowles is an English literature academic at the Staffordshire university.
  
  Members of the group were warned that the group was unacceptable and would be dealt with "very severely" if it continued.
  
  The Uni also sent a general warning to all students against criticising the university on social networking.
  
  The former was the right thing to do, the more general email seems to have provoked a backlash from students as it didn't define what's legitimate and what's not and was therefore interpreted as an attempt to shut down all online criticism.
  
  The Register quoted an unnamed student: "We can all understand people being warned personally, but a global email to all students telling us to be quiet is a bit rich."
  
  

Bytes · MS dev roundup - Blogging eGov boost - Wikinomics

• Etre sums up some of the most interesting recent MS developments:
  
  · A speech recognition browser (TellMe)
  ...Say the word "Microsoft" and you'll be transported to www.microsoft.com.
  · A 1d barcode scanner (AURA)
  Snap a photo of a normal barcode using your phone, send it to Microsoft and they'll return you the product's info.
  · A 2d barcode scanner and software suite (Windows Live Barcode)
  Snap a photo of a Quick Response Code barcode using your phone, send it to Microsoft and they'll return you the product's info.
  · A mobile image recognition engine (Lincoln)
  A product that allows people to search the internet via their mobile phone camera (for example, users might snap pictures of movie posters or DVD covers to receive movie reviews via the web.
  · An RFID browser (in collaboration with Symbol)
  Technology built into your mobile phone that allows you to scan products with RFID tags and navigate to their associated websites for product information.
  · A colourful 2d barcode
  A new barcode standard, allowing identification of commercial audio-visual works such as motion pictures, video games, broadcasts, digital video recordings and other media.
  
  
  
• Opera has released a new version with an updated 'speed-dial':
  

  "Similar to Speed Dial on Opera Mini (a version of Opera designed for mobile phones), where you can quickly access your top 9 bookmarked sites by simply pressing '*' with the bookmark number on the phone keypad (i.e. *1), the desktop browser allows you to use CTRL+1 to CTRL+9 for the top 9 sites. In addition, these bookmarked sites will also be shown in a thumbnail preview on blank tabs. Clicking on the thumbnail preview brings you to the site."

  
  
• Australian eGov Minister Gary Nairn spoke up for blogging at CeBit in Sydney this week:
  
  

  An area of web 2.0 technology we are evaluating is Government web-logs or blogs. For example, I may establish an e‑Government blog.
  
  Blogs offer another means for government to seek feedback from citizens on major programs or topics of interest to Australians.
  
  Blogs could speed up consultation and enable the Government and other citizens to analyse and debate issues in reasonable detail. This could then lead to more informed policy and program development.
  
  Blogging could lead to a new era of community interaction – not just between government and citizens – but between citizens.
  
  For example, Australians in the cities might learn more about life in the bush or on farms – from people that live there.
  
  Likewise the blogs and other ICT enabled communication tools may allow our rural population feel closer to city dwellers.
  
  While blogs present much potential we are not waiting to realise this enhanced interaction between citizens and government.
  
  We have already established pubic [SIC — See. It does say 'pubic' on the Australian Government's website, common typo which is apparently worth $$$$
  ] consultation systems through australia.gov.au.
  
  Australia.gov.au facilitates public consultation with a range of agencies including:
  
  * The National Health and Medical Research Council;
  * The Office of the Access Card, and
  * The Office of the Privacy Commission, just to name a few.
  
  We are making progress!

  
  
  
• Federal Computer Weekly has an interesting interview with ‘“Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”’ author Don Tapscott.
  
  

  In Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, you’ve got three pillars — business, government and civil society — working together to create something that didn’t exist ...
  
  .... you’re got a map of Los Angeles that changes as the data changes and communities start to show problems. Groups can intervene before problems grow into crisis situations. This is about delivering services that did not previously exist. We’re in the early days of some really big changes in terms of how we create new services .....
  
  
  
  
  Search of Neighbourhood Knowledge CA showing LA census data.
  
  
  
  
  
  Search of similar UK National Statistics website (it crashed my browser!)
  
  
  ... we’ve come up with 18 themes of democracy in the digital economy, and one of them is digital brainstorming. It’s a baby step toward a new model of democracy. By the time you publish this article in May, it will have been publicly announced that one of these sessions will be held in Canada. It’s going to happen in the fall. There will be a three-day discussion among all citizens of Canada. I’m involved in advising them on how to do it ...
  
  
  ... the biggest problem is that old paradigms die hard. And the way companies are getting into trouble today is not by moving too fast into mass collaboration. In industry after industry, you can see the old model being eclipsed by the new model. So the stakes are high for governments to somehow find the leadership to bring about similar change.

• Still with Wikis, the National Archives has launched one called Your Archives. It is a virtual community where people can contribute their content and share their knowledge of archival sources held by The National Archives and by other archives throughout the UK.
  
  
• More on Wikis. Tapscott collaborator Anthony Williams reports that:
  

  Wharton Business School is teaming up with MIT’s Sloan School of Management to publish the first full-fledged business management book to be written Wiki style. It’s called We Are Smarter Than Me (fall 2007) and the project is spearheaded by Barry Libert, cofounder of WeAreSmarter.org and CEO of Shared Insights. Libert hopes he can extend the project to develop a series of wiki-books on management and community. So far 900 people have signed on to be part of the networked book collaboration, but Libert wants up to 2 million potential authors to get involved. Visit the website if you’d like to pitch in.