Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, is trying to convince Parliament to allow the posting of parliamentary footage to social media services such as YouTube. She is asking other Members of Parliament to sign her Early Day Motion in support of putting parliamentary procedures online. At the time of writing 28 have done [...]

I keep telling people how my life has altered since using Twitter, even though I’m well aware of how sad that sounds. The thing is it’s not really about Twitter at all, but about people: all Twitter did was help me find them. This post will appear particularly self-indulgent: it’s trying to articulate something that [...]

Excellent post by Tim Davies. He argues that when it comes to governments and large organisations engaging with technology for social change, there is not one big challenge but lots of little ones; and that as those multiply, the ability to engage effectively shrinks. He then lists 50 key challenges that he's encountered so far this year: so now we know they exist we can do something about them; and – hopefully – improve the chances of technology to support social change effectively.

Visit OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles

With so much of people’s conversations and personalities now available for everyone to see, is there a responsibility on us as users of social media to keep an eye out for others? If the answer is ‘yes’ – as I should hope it is – does that mean that we should also learn to see [...]

Ok, I’ve finally decided I may as well publish my Twitter mosaic; only because the look pretty, mind. (Mosaics were correct at the time of writing.) Friends These are the profiles which I find interesting enough to follow: Followers And these are all the folk who – for reasons known only to themselves – are [...]

The Times Labs have joined the ranks of those pushing Twitter to its limits. It's tweeting the entirety of Romeo and Juliet over the next month: with cats. There are 15 accounts – one for each of the main characters – and a line from the play is tweeted every 15 minutes.

Good to see that the same paper which throws scorn upon Twitter is testing it with such intellectual rigour. Not.

Visit Wherefore art Romeo and Juliet on Twitter?

Explaining to the uninitiated why web feeds are useful is something a lot of us find hard to do. So here I’ve attempted to draw an analogy: with fish. I’m not actually going to try and explain what RSS is (or equivalents such as Atom), because it’s a bit technical and has a confusing history [...]

These are my links for 11 February 2009 from 12:40 to 12:40

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

These are my links for 4 February 2009 from 13:41 to 13:41