Citizensheep » blogging http://citizensheep.com/blog Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies. Tue, 22 May 2012 05:53:09 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Coming round to ‘hyperlocal’: my notes on the Talk About Local unconference 2010 http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/coming-round-to-hyperlocal-my-notes-on-the-talk-about-local-unconference-2010/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/coming-round-to-hyperlocal-my-notes-on-the-talk-about-local-unconference-2010/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:47:36 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=2215

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    • ]]>     ‘Hyperlocal’ has been a buzzword in the online engagement community for about eighteen months, and to be honest it’s not one I’ve been comfortable with: why try and define a sub-category of ‘local’ which is itself pretty undefinable?

    I still have a bit of a problem with it, but yesterday it did become clearer to me just how much can be gained by people investigating, reporting on and engaging with the things that happen in and affect their immediate locality.

    I was at Talk About Local’s second un-conference, this time held in Leeds. The last one – in Stoke-on-Trent – was full of enthusiastic people wanting to do great things; but it left me a little worried that we (the social media evangelists) were leading them up a garden path, to be disillusioned when their enthusiasm wasn’t met with an audience and thrown unsuspectingly into a pit of libel lawyers.

    However, things have moved on very positively. People are finding their feet, a solid sense of purpose and determination has set in, and the enthusiasm to share knowledge and experience is as strong as ever.

    I arrived late: partly because we never intended to be early and partly because we couldn’t find the venue. The man in the car park said: “See that concrete building? It’s behind that”. He should have said: “See that concrete building? That’s it”.

    So I joined in halfway through the second session, attaching myself to a group discussing the legal dangers of citizen reporting.

    I attended three discussions during the course of the day, for which I made notes:

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/coming-round-to-hyperlocal-my-notes-on-the-talk-about-local-unconference-2010/feed/ 0     Talk About Local unconference 2010: Legal issues discussion http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/talk-about-local-unconference-2010-legal-issues-discussion/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/talk-about-local-unconference-2010-legal-issues-discussion/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:42:51 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=2214

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    • ]]>     The first session I went to at yesterday’s Talk About Local un-conference was on the legal problems of managing sites that allow user feedback or investigate stories of public interest.

    It’s very depressing to hear of the crippling situations people repeatedly find themselves in, simply through a determination to get at the truth in the face of power and wealth that’s determined to stop them. The heartening bit I suppose is that sometimes there are also powerful people prepared to join in the fight.

    Problems faced by people in the room had included: unfounded but effective demands to have comments removed from websites; moral dilemmas about balancing legal rights to publish with social implications for individuals; threats of crippling legal action.

    Some tips from the room

    • Make interaction/commenting guidelines clearer
    • Always check your story with more than one source
    • Consider remove first-post moderation: if you moderate comments you are legally responsible for their content. Instead add a ‘report this comment’ button and ensure you have a tight take-down policy
    • Don’t hold the website in your own name but set up a limited company, so that you’re only liable for the amount that the company is worth. However you must make sure that all content is transferrable to other websites and under your personal control.
    • Ensure you have clear terms and conditions are on your site, and review them regularly.
    • Ignore the majority of threatening letters from lawyers: most of them are just trying to scare you.

    Please remember:
    This post is a report of information from other people at a conference. Therefore I may unintentionally have misunderstood or misrepresented what I heard. Please do not treat anything here as fact: check with a reliable source before, say, putting yourself in danger of defending a libel case.

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/04/18/talk-about-local-unconference-2010-legal-issues-discussion/feed/ 0     On what it is to volunteer http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/04/08/on-what-it-is-to-volunteer/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/04/08/on-what-it-is-to-volunteer/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:03:07 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/04/08/on-what-it-is-to-volunteer/ Steve Jackson - a VSO volunteer in Cameroon - on the important work of volunteers and some of the prejudices they face from the very sector they support. I don't read Steve's blog nearly as often as I should: for me it is an invaluable, thought-provoking and refreshing glimpse into the world of international volunteering.

    Visit On what it is to volunteer

    ]]>     Steve Jackson – a VSO volunteer in Cameroon – on the important work of volunteers and some of the prejudices they face from the very sector they support. I don't read Steve's blog nearly as often as I should: for me it is an invaluable, thought-provoking and refreshing glimpse into the world of international volunteering.

    Visit On what it is to volunteer

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/04/08/on-what-it-is-to-volunteer/feed/ 0     ‘Listening’ to the web with Addictomatic http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/11/listening-to-the-web-with-addictomatic/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/11/listening-to-the-web-with-addictomatic/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:00:21 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/11/listening-to-the-web-with-addictomatic/ These are my links for 11 February 2009 from 12:40 to 12:40

    ]]>     I did this for work, but it's a useful example. Addictomatic is an online aggregator for latest mentions of any search term you wish (in this case, "citizenship foundation"). And it's configurable: you have the choice of a wide range of services to aggregate from (including Technorati, YouTube, Google News, Delicious and Twitter) and you can move them around the screen to order them as you like. There is no login: simply copy or bookmark the url and you'll see the same confiuration next time you visit it.

    See results for “citizenship foundation” on Addictomatic

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/11/listening-to-the-web-with-addictomatic/feed/ 0     Manage your online reputation http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/09/manage-your-online-reputation/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/09/manage-your-online-reputation/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:11:17 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=799

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    • ]]>     It frustrates me that organisations still seem to think they can manage their reputations by controlling what information is spread about them.

    My flow chart for managing online reputations

    This is simply not possible anymore, and attempting it just makes you seem heavy-handed and out of touch. Far better to listen to what other people are saying about you and engage when appropriate.

    The US Air Force produced a useful guide to blog assessment which susequently found its way onto the internet. It’s good, but I wanted something more generic, in plainer English, and more suitable for UK Third Sector organisations.

    So I’ve had a crack at making my own version, which you can download here. It’s released under a Creative Commons licence so you can re-hash it providing you don’t do so for commercial gain.

    Download my flowchart for managing online reputations (pdf).

    Have you found this flowchart helpful? If so, I’d love to hear how. Either leave a comment below or use this form.

    Update: 26 February 2012

    I have made a minor tweak to the pdf. I have changed the heading of the first ‘yes’ thread, making its relationship to the subsequent choices a bit clearer.

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/02/09/manage-your-online-reputation/feed/ 13     31 Days to Building a Better Blog http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:02:41 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/ These are my links for 26 January 2009 from 12:46 to 12:46]]> A great set of posts from Problogger showing simple but effective ways of improving your blogging. Watch out, I may try implementing some of them.

    Visit 31 Days to Building a Better Blog

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/feed/ 0     How to use Postalicious to create single blog posts from Delicious bookmarks http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/19/using-postalicious-to-create-single-blog-posts-from-delicious-bookmarks/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/19/using-postalicious-to-create-single-blog-posts-from-delicious-bookmarks/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:02:06 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=572

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    • ]]>     This one’s really for Nicky over at Digbeth is Good, but as it could be useful for others it may as well go here. It explains how to use the Postalicious addon to add delicious bookmarks to your WordPress blog as single posts. It presumes a certain degree of experience with these tools. (Example of where a bookmark has been added automatically to a blog post.)

    Obviously (I hope!) you need to start by going to ‘Settings’ then ‘Postalicious’ in the admin area of your WordPress blog.

    1. Set value for ‘Minimum bookmarks’ to 1.
    2. Select ‘Post at most … bookmarks per post’ and set value to 1.

    This will ensure that each new bookmark appears as a separate post on your blog. Unfortunately you can’t also set a specific time, so a new post will be added whenever Postalicious is updated. (Postalicious will update either hourly or automatically: you can change this at the top of the Postalicious settings page.)

    Now to get it to display what you want. This is how I did it (see example post):

    Settings

    Post title (single day)

    Changed value to %title%.

    This makes the title of the post on your blog the same as the title of the bookmark on delicious.

    Post title (two days)

    Changed value to %title%.

    You shouldn’t need to worry about this if you’re only displaying one post at a time, but it’s probably worth it just in case.

    Bookmark

    Changed value to <p>%date%</p><p>%description%</p><p><a href="%href%">Visit <strong>%title%</strong></a></p>

    This is the bulk of the post, and you have quite a lot of control over configuring it if you know a little html. My code explained:

    <p>%date%</p><p><a href="%href%">Visit <strong>%title%</strong></a></p>

    1. <p> opens a paragraph
    2. %date% will display the date the bookmark was added
    3. </p> closes the paragraph.
    4. Again, <p> opens a paragraph;
    5. <a href="%href%"> opens the tag for a hyperlink
      • %href% adds the web address for the bookmark;
    6. Visit <strong>%title%</strong> is extra text that I wanted to add
      • %title% inserts the title of the bookmark (as in ‘Post title…’ above);
      • <strong>%title%</strong> makes the title bold;
      • </a> closes the hyperlink;
    7. </p> closes the paragraph.

    That’s how I’ve done it anyway, but of course you can use whatever html you want.

    Post template (single day)

    Changed value to %bookmarks%.

    This field can have other text and html, but it must contain %bookmarks% in it somewhere. %bookmarks% inserts everything from the ‘Bookmark’ field (explained above) into the main body of your blog post.

    Post template (two days)

    Same as for single day, above. You shouldn’t need this if you’re only displaying one post at a time, but better to be safe than sorry.

    Notes

    The values with percentage signs (%title%, %href%, etc) are the codes that Postalicious uses to add the content to your post. When you save the settings (don’t forget to do that!) these values will still be there. Don’t worry, the published post will look as it should do.

    To make the posts look different I also tampered with my theme’s templates, but that’s more complex and beyond the scope of this post.

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/19/using-postalicious-to-create-single-blog-posts-from-delicious-bookmarks/feed/ 0     Bookmarks for 6 January 2009 through 8 January 2009 http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/08/bookmarks-for-6-january-2009-through-8-january-2009/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/08/bookmarks-for-6-january-2009-through-8-january-2009/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:00:31 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=441

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    • ]]>     These are my links for 6 January 2009 through 8 January 2009:

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/08/bookmarks-for-6-january-2009-through-8-january-2009/feed/ 0