communication

The Electronic Civic Council encourages you to create your own digital ‘blue plaques’

  • September 7, 2010 at 6:50 pm
  • Categories: communication

  • Last night I set up the Electronic Civic Council. It’s aim is to encourage people to use geo-location tools to share historical or civic information about places. It came from a chat with Jon Bounds, who in turn had been chatting with Jez Collins about spreading music-related trivia. It’s a bit of fun really, but [...]

A web presence can be a bit like a public park

  • September 7, 2010 at 6:00 pm
  • Categories: communication

  • A good web presence is a bit like a large public park: it has a main entrance, possibly one or two franchises, and clear indications that you’re inside it. I’ve recently been struggling a bit with explaining why I think an organisation’s web presence need not be concentrated onto one ‘front page’, and this analogy [...]

Smart Swarm

  • August 30, 2010 at 7:58 am
  • Categories: communication

  • How can ants help us solve complex problems but, using the same technique, end up walking in an endless circle for the rest of their lives? Why can crowds be much smarter, and at the same time more stupid, than any individual? In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed [...]

Will paid-for news create a new underclass?

  • November 9, 2009 at 5:35 pm
  • Categories: Citizenship,communication,Ramblings

  • What happens when paid-for news content online becomes sustainable and influential, but a significant chunk of people who are currently engaged and informed get news from other sources? (This is a very under-developed thought; I’m only putting it here because it’s too long for Twitter.) I never buy the Financial Times, but I used to [...]

Chiltern Railways impress with their use of Twitter

  • August 24, 2009 at 5:47 pm
  • Categories: communication

  • A couple of times I have voiced on Twitter my frustration with the arm rests on Chiltern trains. It hadn’t occured to me that the company might be listening. Since nothing happened the first time I tweeted, I suspect that Chiltern were not using Twitter then. However, when I tweeted again recently… “I’ve asked before [...]

Should we worry about delivering online content to offline users?

  • September 11, 2008 at 9:16 am
  • Categories: Accessibility,communication,Design,Digital engagement

  • In a recent forum* post someone asked how to deliver online content to offline users. An understandable question maybe, but (I believe) a mistaken objective: communicating effectively should be more important than ensuring everyone has the same experience.