The irrepressible Dave Briggs has launched another really cute local government web app.
lgSHOUT! is a ’site that lets local government folk yell for help or holler about something fabulous’.
It’s very similar in concept to a much loved micro-blogging tool.
It’s tools like lgSHOUT! that will open up geek concepts like micro-blogging to a mainstream audience, making web 2.0 truly accessible to ‘normal’ people.
Good one Dave.
Popularity: 47% [?]
As anyone in the tech world who hasn’t been under a rock for the last few days will know, the SXSW tech love-in is currently taking place.
I’m not there but I’m trying to keep abreast with what’s going on. Fortunately, this is a lot easier to do than ever before. Twitter and Seesmic are updating me with observations from people who’s opinions I respect and my rss reader is busy gathering feeds. There are also a number of tools I can use to ‘manually’ find content - digg, del.icio.us, hashtags etc.
But sifting through the gossip, chatter, informed opinion, official texts, party videos etc etc to identify key themes, opinions and zeitgeist is a daunting task.
Established publishing channels such as Wired seem to be doing a good job of recording key moments and general observations. But I’m not totally certain their reporting is accurate. What if they are completely failing to notice the Twitter buzz around a new application?
What I’m faced with is my perception of trust and authority in the recording of this event. I need to employ a number of methods to build a complete picture of the conference as there isn’t one source to do that for me. I trust that I’ll be presented with well informed, intelligent, crafted commentary from the Wired blog, and I also trust my Twitter and Seesmic friends to reflect zeitgeist and offer their expert opinion.
What I need is a website where I can get a roundup of what the Twitterverse is buzzing about, what’s being discussed on Seesmic, what’s being blogged, rated, bookmarked and so on.
I’d still like to read ‘professional’ editorial and interpretation but this and the user generate content would complement each other in order to present a holistic vision of - in this case - SXSW.
I wonder if this is the approach established news publishers will need to move towards in order to survive changing perceptions of authority and the inevitable mainstream establishment of user generated content?
What do people think? Does anything like this already exist?
Popularity: 100% [?]
Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new Australian research has found.
Awww - I concur.
(Thanks to Broadstuff for the link.)
Popularity: 14% [?]
I’ve been thinking about how you might go about taking the free-form nature of barcamp and merging it with ’static’ industry-expert panel discussions.
Very much in response to discussions after Chinwag’s measuring social media event on Monday.
So…
How about a panel event where there is a set subject and fixed set of panellists - but the areas of discussion are worked out on a wiki by the attendees in the run up to the event?
The agenda would have to be managed to the extent that there could only be, say, 4 or 5 areas of discussion in order to stick to the time frame. You could open up the wiki for general suggestions and comments and then a week or so before the event someone arranges the suggestions into logical groupings in order to form the agenda. (For the panellists’ sake you’d probably want to fix the agenda about a week before the event.)
What do people think?
Popularity: 31% [?]
There have been a couple of posts commenting on the apparent uselessness of web 2.0/social media web apps recently.
Mike Ellis commented that:
None of these tools (Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr etc) actually adds anything… All of these tools do add huge amounts of noise, but to me none of them add signal… they’re not doing anything useful for me.
And then godofbiscuits79 commented that Google Reader is ‘not bad though fairly pointless’.
The last comment I’ll put down to web 2.0 naïvety (godofbiscuits79 is my little brother - it would be wrong of me not to take the opportunity to tease him a little about this) but both these comments got me thinking.
Genuine human relationships are essentially useless. Most of us don’t form connections with people because of a transactional value (apart from some business contacts perhaps). My relationships with my friends are based on shared interests or opinions or outlook on life. Sure, some of those relationships come with benefits (like knowing music industry people who can source tickets to sold out gigs ;) ), but these relationships still only last if there is some genuine connection between the parties involved.
At the moment, most of the ‘friends’ I have in online social networks fit into the description above - they are people I share interests, opinions or outlook with. This means social media for me is essentially useless as it facilitates relationships that are essentially useless. But that’s what I like about it the most.
Popularity: 41% [?]
Hello, I'm Jenny Brown.
