PoliGeek UK Award?

What do you think about an idea to award a UK blogger at the end of every year based on the technical soundness of their blog?

The winner would be chosen from any UK political blogs where the blogger has met accessibility standards, uses new technology and shows a real understanding of the technology they are using.

Just an idea... Any thoughts?

Going Beyond Blogging: Ruby on Rails

My inbox gets hit every couple of weeks with a request from some young activist, or indeed some not-so-young activist, who has come up with the latest, greatest idea for a website. It sounds amazing - they often do. But then, the killer line comes: "I have no budget and want to build it on WordPress" (... or worse. Some have wanted things built using Blogger. Not a problem for a blog like this, but anything more and you're knackered.)

Sadly, as I am no longer a charity, I can't afford to take up their quest. There's only a limited space in my little black book for freebies and those slots are taken up by more established folk who might not be able to pay me per se, but give me traffic in return or buy me a beer or a curry every now and again.

Don't get me wrong. I love WordPress, but it has its limits. You can do amazing things with it - turning it into a content management system for an entire site, for example. But when somebody comes to me and says they want to build a directory of politicians that the visitors to the site can vote up and down it's clear that WordPress won't do.

Sure, I could spend weeks hacking plugins, developing new ones and making WordPress do what the client wants, but why bother when Ruby on Rails can do all that too? What's more, when I'm at the right standard I should be able to use Rails to build Facebook applications and more, thus tying in the client's idea into new audiences.

And that's my point: cross-platform accessibility. The web is changing into this more social of mediums. Twitter, Facebook and Bebo as well as many other sites is now where political audiences sit for great periods of time. Yes they still browse blogs and read sites, but why not take the opportunity to engage them in their own space and gain some useful metrics in the process?

Is there a reason why we can't have a Barack Obama-style website in the UK? Well, apart from our campaigns being very different, there's also the fact that if somebody with the political vision for such a site comes along the chances are they will lack the money and the technical expertise to develop such applications and web sites. That's where Ruby on Rails can help.

Ruby on Rails will enable political applications and websites to spring up quickly and to a high standard without costing a fortune. They will enable activists and campaign managers to be creative and take a step up from Blogging and start gathering useful and measurable data that will help them to target campaigns.

But the thing is, I can't do it alone. In order for some real applications to start making a real impact I need to be part of a poligeek development community.

So, how about it? If you'd like to join me and start making some really cool political applications feel free to head over to "Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby" and other documents and start riding the Rails.

Spam Cut Dramatically in One Fell Swoop

Via the Washington Post, one that I missed last week:

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide dropped drastically today after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations allegedy engaged in spam activity was taken offline, according to security firms that monitor spam distribution online.

While its gleaming, state-of-the-art, 30-story office tower in downtown San Jose, Calif., hardly looks like the staging ground for what could be called a full-scale cyber crime offensive, security experts have found that a relatively small firm at that location is home to servers that serve as a gateway for a significant portion of the world's junk e-mail.

The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email.

But the company's web site was not accessible today, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo's connectivity to the Internet, security experts said. Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide. E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.

Read it all.

Test Your Site in 80 Different Web Browsers: browsershots.org

Browsershots.org offers a service which will display screenshots of how your website will appear in a wide range of different web browsers:

What is Browsershots?

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

The service displays thumbnails of your website after you enter the web address into a queue and return to the site a few minutes later.

There are options to check the appearance with different screen sizes and colour depths, and with Javascript, Flash and Java turned on or off.

As a service it won't verify everything about your site, but it is a good quick check. There is also a paid version of the service.

Routes.rb

As you will see by the previous posts, I have been learning Ruby on Rails overnight. A couple of cheap books, web tutorials and time is all that is needed. So far, I've found it about a 3 out of 5 on a difficulty scale, but coming at it from knowing a bit of PHP and web technology in general has helped. If, like me, you're a bit of a WordPress template hacker you should be able to get your head around it.

In the last post I went through the process of creating my model, controller and view to display the "Hello World" message on my website.

The problem, however, is that I wanted the message to appear on the homepage, not in what appears to be a subdirectory.

I opened up routes.rb from within the app/config directory and added the following line at the top of the file:

map.connect '', :controller => "helloworld"

All we've done there is tell the system that whenever somebody hits the root of the site they should be shown "helloworld" as the default page.

Now... How do I get my blog to return to /blog/ without giving out a page not found error? Well, if you want to have a non-Rails app running alongside a Rails app it might be worth checking out this forum thread I started:

• http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4030015#post4030015

The First Destination: Hello World

There's nothing more satisfying as a n00b to see the words "Hello World" appear on the screen as a result of a steep learning curve.

Multiple Tools

It became apparent that I would need more than my 'suitcase' of books, so along the way I picked up some much-needed tools for the job. An SSH client called Bitvise Tunnelier and the pre-installed phpMyAdmin tool on MediaTemple's server.

Using the MediaTemple interface I created a database called 'helloworld' and then using the phpMyAdmin tool I created a table called 'helloworld' within that. Inside that table I created two fields: 'message ID' and 'The Message'.

• Are you still with me? All I've used so far is a basic knowledge of how to use phpMyAdmin and a basic knowledge of terminal/SSH commands. You can get an SSH command reference online.

Create a Model

I needed to create a model that would hold my data - the "Hello World" message. I did this on the SSH client by giving the command "ruby script/generate model helloworld", which came back with a list of files that had been created, such as app/models/helloworld.rb.

Fill the Database

Using the SSH client I followed some instructions in my "Build your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications" on how to create a new record in the newly created database with Ruby. The commands were issued once I was in the Ruby Console by typing "ruby script/console":

(What I type in blue, what computer says in red)

$ ruby script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.1.0)
>> class Helloworld <>
=> nil
>> helloworld = Helloworld.new
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: MysqlError: Table 'db12510_mikerouse_typo.helloworlds' doesn't exist: SHOW FIELDS FROM 'helloworlds'

... and this is where I got a bit lost. You see, I created a database called 'helloworld' and I can't for the life of me understand in that syntax where it says that we're dealing with plurals. I can only guess that Rails is not used to the type of experiment I am carrying out. In the book it uses the example of creating a 'Story' within a table called 'Stories', which is logical. I suppose I am trying to create a 'helloworld message' in what Rails thinks is a 'helloworlds' table. No problem, just rename the table to 'helloworlds' in phpMyAdmin.

Back to the commands:

>> helloworld = Helloworld.new
=> #
>> helloworld.class
=> Helloworld(msgid: integer, themessage: string)
>> helloworld.save
=> true
>> Helloworld.create :themessage => 'Hello World...'
=> #
>> exit

Create the Controller

I need to create my controller that will take my message in my database and give it to the view. To create the controller in the system I did a command thus:

$ ruby script/generate controller Helloworld index

Like when I created the model I got some feedback about some files and directories that were created.

One of these I would need to go in to in order to get the right data from the model and save it in the controller so the view could use it. The file I needed was called helloworld_controller.rb and I edited it thus:

class HelloworldController < ApplicationController
def index
@current_time = Time.now
@helloworld = Helloworld.find_by_msgid('3')
end
end

The @current_time = Time.now line is there because I saw that in my book and wanted to see if I could output the current time onto the page using controllers. I suppose, strictly speaking, I should have put that bit of code into its own controller, perhaps. Not sure.

Alas, the important bit of code is the @helloworld = Helloworld.find_by_msgid('3') bit. This sets up @helloworld to be used in the view. When I call @helloworld I will be telling the controller to go away and fetch the contents of the Helloworld class where the message ID number is 3. I say 3 because the first 2 attempts were part of my learning process. The 3rd row in my database is the one that contains the message I want.

The View

The file I needed to open up next was in app/views/helloworld/index.html.erb and I just edited is as follows:

<%= @helloworld.themessage %>

You'll probably recognise the H2 tag from HTML. The <%= bit is how we tell the system to start talking Ruby. The %> is when we say that it can stop talking Ruby and start talking HTML again.

The @helloworld.themessage part is where I call the @helloworld as set out in the controller and tell it that I only want the message. It duly obliges.

The View from Firefox

Time to restart the application in MediaTemple (every time I make some changes I have to restart it for some reason)

I call up my browser and go to http://www.mikerouse.net/helloworld and voila... We have our message.

But, how do I get this message to appear on the homepage and not on the /helloworld/ page? That bit is really easy, as it happens, and is coming up in the next post.

Getting to "Hello World" Seems a Challenge...

In the previous post, I had managed to get the the 'Welcome Aboard' page on the root of my website using MediaTemple's container manager. The next step in my journey is to make myself comfortable with a nice "Hello World!" message and something to explain what's going on and point people to this series of posts - y'know, until the site is properly ready and I'm a Rails supremo.

The thing is, with Ruby on Rails, it's not as simple as uploading a HTML file to a server that contains some code like:

<HTML>
<BODY>
<P>HELLO WORLD!!</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

It turns out I have to create some 'models' and 'controllers', which will stick the message out to the world in a 'view'. According to my sources, the 'model' is like the stuff that messes around with databases - like a backroom boy, the 'controller' does all the thinking and is like a middleman and the 'view' is what everybody in the normal world gets to see. We call this 'model', 'controller' and 'view' system 'MVC' for short. My Sitepoint book explains:

1. "The browser, on the client, sends a request for a page to the controller on the server." Sounds a bit like somebody at a table shouting the waiter over and making an order.
2. "The controller retrieves the data it needs from the model in order to respond to the request." Sounds like the waiter goes back to the kitchen to see the chef to make sure everything can be cooked as required by the guest.
3. "The controller renders the pages and sends it to the view." Ah, so this is like the waiter getting the food from the chef and putting it on to the plate for the view to carry out to the table.
4. "The view sends the page back to the client for the browser to display" I suppose my illustration falls apart a bit here because it's a bit like the view taking the plate of food to the table (the client) for the customer to eat (the browser rendering it), but hopefully you get the picture.

So, with a bit of luck, we're up-to-speed with the idea of this MVC architecure and know that in order to get our pages to say "Hello World!" we need to create a Model that contains the text we want to show, a Controller that details how we want it to be shown, and a View to pull it all together.

It's clear that Rails is supposed to be used for projects a little bit more complicated than a simple homepage, but the whole point of these posts is to demonstrate that change is needed in the world of political technology and that it's not hard to learn a brand new development framework that will allow us to develop more advanced sites and services.

Learning a New Language... Ruby on Rails

I have been talking with colleagues for some time about taking up Ruby on Rails. You see, the thing with web design is that anybody can start a website these days. Expertise that was once considered a voodoo art is now readily deployed in a myriad of WordPress sites, Blogger blogs and MySpace pages. HTML, CSS and a bit of PHP here and there no longer cuts it.

A web designer that wants to put food on the table, especially in the political environment where 'change' is the word on everybody's lips, has got to stay ahead of the game. Everybody might have a blog these days, but what about when they want to take that blog a step further? What about when they want to campaign? What about when they want to raise thousands if not millions of pounds or supporters?

Join me, therefore, on a journey to learn a new language (or 'framework' as it likes to call itself) known as "Ruby on Rails" - a neat little trick that will allow me to develop application-based websites in a jiffy - from blogs to campaign sites, I will be able to do them all - or so goes the theory.

I am armed with "Ruby on Rails for Dummies" by Barry Burd and "Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications" by Patrick Lenz. Both books have been gathering dust on my shelf for some months, but I have brought them down along with a splattering of web tutorials and videos - a veritable suitcase of goodies on my trek along the Rails.

First Stop: Hosting

I need somewhere that is geared up to host "Ruby on Rails" sites. Thankfully, my existing host, MediaTemple, already offer such a service through 'Rails Containers' that will allow me to at least dip my toe in the water.

I dive into their control panel and activate my first container and application. Turns out this was a bit premature of me. It's killed my website.

You see, on the root of http://www.mikerouse.net/ I wanted to have a temporary holding page that redirected visitors to the /blog/ part of the website. Turns out all visitors get is the screenshot attached telling them that I am riding the Rails. This is going to be a long and arduous journey and I have the feeling that a lot of things are going to go wrong.

The thing is - I know nothing about Rails, well virtually anyway. I read a little about the so-called "Model-View-Controller" way of doing things and that's about it. I understand that it's quite cumbersome to get going, which is why I am grateful to MediaTemple for making the initial hurdles so easy, albeit a little dangerous for my PR management.

Next Stop: An Editing Environment

I need something that's friendly to Rails - a bit like a tribal guide who will bash down branches in my path. I turn to the "Ruby on Rails for Dummies" book and am told that "RadRails" should do nicely. Well, turns out things move faster than expected in this world of Ruby on Rails. RadRails no longer exists in the form expressed in this book. Instead, I have had to download Aptana Studio and add the RadRails plugin. That was a rather tedious affair and one I didn't fully understand if I am honest. The videos on the Aptana website were out of date also, which didn't help matters. Alas, we are now together Aptana and I - my guide to my journey - and although he's a little complicated for my liking I hope he will be effective and helpful.

Next Stop: Connecting to my Server

As I write this I have just managed to use Aptana's FTP tool to connect to the MediaTemple GridServer I am using and have opened up the database.yml file. This is the file that tells my application where my database is and what password to use. I've fed it with the necessary lingo and am about to enter Chapter 5 on the "Ruby on Rails for Dummies" book, which is going to tell me how to get a simple message to appear on my screen. Watch this space. Or rather over at http://www.mikerouse.net/ for the elusive message.

(PS: If you click mikerouse.net and get a working website then you're a bit behind on this blog post and it's either all worked out just peachy or I've had to revert to WordPress on PHP)

Why?

Good question. I've been meaning to learn Rails for ages. I want to be able to develop apps and step up my game. I'm tired of just tweaking WordPress templates and deploying basic CMS-driven sites. I want to do more. I want to offer full-featured applications for data capture, for engagement or delivery of materials/training. I want to develop Facebook apps and other cool things like that.

The problem is time.... I don't have enough of it.

I also wanted to move my blog to /blog/ and off the root so I could put a self-promotional welcome page on the root. I then got the idea to do the homepage in Rails. But, when I tried to activate this in MediaTemple's control panel it also killed the blog at /blog/. I tried switching it back off again but got 503 Gateway Error. With MediaTemple's phone lines down at the time I was up the creek. Actually, not a bad thing because now I am forced to learn Rails out of necessity - I can't put it off any more.

In addition to it being very helpful for me to document my experience, I though it nice to share it with anybody that's interested too - oh and I haven't updated this blog for ages, so it's also a good excuse to get contributing again.

The Benefits of Offline Blog Editors

Offline blog editors are PC-based editors that allow blog posts to be written on a local PC and then uploaded as a separate operation. In conversation last night I was asked about the benefits. I put a list together, and I thought I would post it today.

I've now done something like 2000 blog posts using an offline Blog Editor called Blogdesk by Johannes Oppermann. I am very pleased with the software. This is only suitable for a PC, but there are other editors available, and I have a list at the bottom of the article. Here is what Blogdesk looks like: Click on the image for a full screenshot.

Offline Editor Benefits

These are the benefits of Blogdesk which I came up with. This is not exhaustive.

1. I do maybe 95% of my editing offline, and can then "squirt" a post in maybe 10 seconds, rather than having to pfaff with online delays (and I am on a relatively slow - 512kbps - link), and I get a good editor and decent image crop / resize / borders / align utility that is v. quick.


2. Responsiveness is massively better than any online editor.


3. The is no need to login to WordPress every time I do something.


4. I have maybe 25 different post templates some with WP Options and
   
   Custom fields set up as required etc, e.g., with all the different attribution links in for the different cartoonists each morning.


5. In my setup I run with 2 copies of WP (the "Magazine" and "Blog" views) - and things like videos have to be posted to each separately easily.


6. I have boilerplate phrases and paragraphs to hand.


7. There is no need to upload pictures and photos through the Wordpress online image library feature, which is slow.


8. I don't have problems with my connection going down or website response times while editing.


9. I also cross-post quite regularly - I can cross-post just by ticking off boxes next to each one.


10. I can get straight at the last 99 posts without needing to troll through the Wordpress Backoffice.


11. I can automatically upload sound files. I only use this feature for small files since I have a tight limit set on my server for "upload" size. I usually use ftp for media files.


12. I get a full display of categories rather than a little Window showing about 3.


13. I can disable the WYSIWIG editor in WordPress, which removes one past source of hacker attacks. Note that it is safer now, but on this subject it is useful to be slightly paranoid.


14. I can do Wordpress and Technorati Tags, and Customised Fields directly from my PC desktop.


15. I can go and write in a pub over a pint, or on a train without the risks of a mobile connection.


16. A boilerplate text storage area.


17. Configuration was a doddle. You need to know your blog configuration settings, and what a few terms mean - but that is about it.


18. There are decent support forums.


19. Blogdesk is free.


20. Blogdesk supports the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine and does not support Blogger, which means that it helps get people away from Blogger. Some may disagree on this last point.

A Wide Choice

There are a large number of desktop editors available, both free and paid. A recent post on Smashing Magazine gave summaries of 15, and there was a decent discussion in the comments.

These are the ones they list, which cover different platforms. They are all linked to their home websites in the article:

• Windows Live Writer (Windows)


• MarsEdit (Mac)


• BlogDesk (Windows)


• Zoundry Raven (Windows)


• Ecto (Mac)


• w.bloggar (Windows)


• Thingamablog (Window, Mac, Linux)


• Qumana (Windows, Mac)


• Scribefire (Firefox)


• BlogJet (Windows)


• Flock (Mac, Windows, Linux)


• Post2Blog (Windows)


• Bleezer (Mac, Windows, Linux)

This is the conclusion reached by Smashing:

If you have little experience in blogging you might try either Flock, Windows Live Writer or Scribefire. Those three have fairly intuitive interfaces and don’t have all the advanced features that more robust programs have. Also, they are free so you can check out what application better manages to cover your needs.

Advanced bloggers looking for a bit more firepower should try Ecto, BlogJet or BlogDesk. BlogDesk works especially well for bloggers who frequently use photos in their posts (Image Wizard). Windows Live Writer and Ecto have extra functionality built in, as they both allow you to install plugins to add specific features.

Every desktop blog editor is a great benefit to any blogger’s toolkit, as it saves time and has features that traditional blog platforms don’t always have.

How to Proceed

My recommendation is to try experimenting, while accepting that some people genuinely do not get on with offline editors. If you like it, the benefits can be significant.

Scribefire is worth a look if you do not like separate applications, as it is a plugin for the Firefox Web Browser.

You may need to experiment - I tried about 6 different editors before I settled on the one I like, so patience may help.

Advanced WordPress and Twitter

Alex Foster has a neat suggestion that will either make you go "ah, brilliant!" or "what, why bother?" The former is the correct response. Probably.

Media Training for Young Political Activists

One of my interests (and aims of my blog) is to encourage participation in politics as widely as possible. At least two of the three main parties have been talking about training, including media training, for younger members. The Liberal Democrats are talking about why their Leadership Academy should train everyone as they are all potential leaders.

Meanwhile, the Young Britons' Foundation ran a training day at the Conservative Party Conference for young activists. Mike Rouse has kindly written an account for the Wardman Wire, which I have also crossposted to the Thunderdragon's blog.

Conservative Conference Activists' Training Day

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham recently the youth wing of the Conservatives teamed up with The Young Britons' Foundation to provide activists with the opportunity to learn some media handling skills. There were around 100 attendees, including Torybear.

Vox Pop

This course taught how to handle being "vox popped" and how best to convey a message through a medium like TV.

Experience

The morning started with some presentations and sharing of experiences. Donal Blaney, from the Foundation, shared a particularly amusing tale of an appearance he made once where he discovered via his father who was watching that he had developed a hole in his shoe. From the basics of appearance to handling tough questions the course offered it all.

Attitude

There's a thirst within Conservative Future for training and skills development. Many young people join the organisation without any previous experience of politics or the media and will have previously had to learn from experience or guidance by peers. This course enables everybody to be prepared for the cameras, the journalists and understand how to shape their communication for their audience. There's no voodoo or dark arts, just simple training and advice that seems to really work wonders. The activists at conference started nervous but left confident.

Practical

The practical workshop came in the form of pretend "vox pops" where each delegate appeared in front of a camera and was asked a few quetsions: about the conference, about policies or about a made-up event. It's a tough slog going through everybody that attended, so much so that all that camera handling and movement I was responsible for caused me to pull something in my foot causing days of agony.

Wrapping Up

It was worth it though, because Conservative Future now has a large group of people with much more savvy media skills out there.

What did Politics Home get right in September?

I normally don't trust Alexa further than I can throw Ken Clarke with a toy catapult, but ...



That is a big enough change to be worth a look.

You can see the graph and other data here. I have some thoughts for tomorrow, but I'd be interested to hear other views first in the comments.

Blog Rebuttal Units: Attacking Hornets with a Stick is Easier

Does Derek Draper have a blog?

Derek Draper is the leader of Labour's new rebuttal unit . I went looking for his blog and couldn't find it. Anyone who doesn't have a blog can't engage in conversation is likely to end up with a case of "Japanese students on bikes for the first time in their lives going round a traffic island the wrong way looking like Martians" syndrome.

It seems to me that the focus of the work needs to switch from one-way rebuttal to two-way debate and dialogue, and then DD will get an enthusiastic welcome from (nearly) everywhere.

Treating the blogosphere as something to be rebutted will be very, very embarrassing - especially if they end up needing to rebut things that are true.

Not quite about Poligeeks - but I reckon that the rebuttal unit is a technical gadget that will be a cause for regret.

(I develop this theme more at the Wardman Wire).

Is your website down?

A useful tool via Daily Blog Tips: Down for Everyone or Just Me? If a website isn't coming up for you, just pop the address into this tool and it will tell you whether or not it comes up from a range of other places on the internet.

Handy, and I like it's Google-like simplicity with just nine words, a full stop and a question mark on the home page.

The Strange Affair of Nick Robinson's Missing Blog Comments

I probably missed this, but I can't find a reference.

Why does Nick Robinson's Newslog never have any comments in the first half of the month?

This applies to April, May, June and July this year.

Nick's posts in the second half of each month get hundreds of comments, but none at all in the first half of the month.

What is going on?

Hokey-Cokey Comments

These are the dates of posts and the numbers of comments in June:

• 2/6/2008 0 comments
• 3/6/2008 0 comments
• 4/6/2008 0 comments
• 5/6/2008 0 comments
• 6/6/2008 0 comments
• 10/6/2008 0 comments
• 12/6/2008 0 comments
• 13/6/2008 0 comments
• 16/6/2008 10.28am 0 comments
• 16/6/2008 01.46am 107 comments
• 17/6/2008 229 comments
• 18/6/2008 194 comments
• 19/6/2008 160 comments
• 23/6/2008 207 comments
• 24/6/2008 141 comments
• 25/6/2008 132 comments
• 27/6/2008 84 comments
• 27/6/2008 109 comments
• 30/6/2008 164 comments

July has a similar pattern - no comments at all until the 16th July, then BANG:

• 16/7/2008 173 comments
• 18/7/2008 347 comments
• 21/7/2008 124 comments
• 22/7/2008 340 comments
• 25/7/2008 191 comments
• 25/7/2008 125 comments
• 26/7/2008 478 comments
• 29/7/2008 215 comments
• 30/7/2008 453 comments
• 31/7/2008 831 comments

Coming into August, Nick has gone on holiday:

• 1/7/2008 325 comments

Into the Past

Going backwards, May has nothing up until the 15th, then the post on the 16th has 149 comments.

Meanwhile April has nothing up until at least the 18th April, then lots of comments on all the posts.

Wrapping Up

What on EARTH is going on?

[tags]bbc blog, blog comments, nick robinson[/tags]

YouTube statistic of the day

Something to remember next time someone says, "Why don't we just put something on YouTube and make it go viral?": only around 0.5% of the clips on YouTube have had more than 1,000 views.

Twitter axes text message updates in the UK - and what you can do about it

The following email going out to Twitter users in the UK is fairly self-explanatory. It would be churlish to get too annoyed at a free service being cut back, and credit to Twitter for calling bad news bad news rather than the usual PR guff about new opportunities and directions.

However, it is still bad news for many Twitter users, and I suspect quite a few will be mightily annoyed not to have had some advanced warning to give them a chance to let their followers know via SMS about any changes they might therefore be making (e.g. by using conventional blogging more).

Here's the full official email:

I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?
Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish relationships with mobile operators around the world such that our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective. We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States. We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones
Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founderTwitter, Inc.http://twitter.com/biz

Outlook Yellow Background

Yellow might be a beautiful colour for daffodils, but Microsoft seems to think that it's also a good colour for email backgrounds. Many of us normal human beings would disagree.

I am currently helping to develop a registration application that sends a confirmation email at the end of the process. We've put together an attractive email and began our testing of it yesterday. GoogleMail's web client handled it well and it looks good in Mail on Mac, but when we sent to an Outlook user we had a nasty surprise. The background colour was yellow. Not just a subtle shade, but the bright enough to regenerate Superman's power at a rate faster than the sun would.

Naturally, we looked at the HTML code behind it to find that the body's bgcolor tag had a background colour of #FFFF00 - bright yellow.

"Ah ha!" I thought... Check that tag in the source code.

"Err..." came the response. "It's set to #FFFFFF - pure white"

Somewhere in cyberspace the background colour had magically changed from white to yellow. Some Googling was needed here to see how this could be possible without an explicit instruction to make that change somewhere down the line.

Turns out that the problem lies at Microsoft's door. Kevin Yank tells us all the way back in Jan 2007 that:

Redmond has done it again. While the IE team was soothing the tortured souls of web developers everywhere with the new, more compliant Internet Explorer 7, the Office team pulled a fast one, ripping out the IE-based rendering engine that Outlook has always used for email, and replacing it with … drum roll please … Microsoft Word.

My heart sinks and my head is about to explode. What kind of fucking idiot made that decision?! Who and where is he/r?! I'd like to have a quiet word...

As for our application, we've had to put a more code and styling in place to compensate, starting with the attempt to specify the background colour in CSS, but it turns out that Word's support for CSS is just as flaky as it's support for just about everything else.

And sometimes, Google isn't quite so good

File this in the ironic timing pile.

Sunday, I finish writing an article which amongst other things sings the praises of Google News Alerts. Today I receive a Google News Alert with the breathless breaking news that Ming Campbell has emerged as the front runner to become the new Liberal Democrat leader. Sometimes news doesn't travel that quickly on the internet...

How to speed up your computer, or not

Lifehacker has a rather combative post debunking various myths about how to speed up your computer. At least, it claims to debunk myths but, as the lively debate in the comments to the piece shows, a couple of the myths actually have quite a lot of substance to them. Oh, and there are two excellent cartoons awaiting you in the comments thread as a reward for reading that far :-)

Data Capture at Conferences with the iPhone

As part of the "political iPhone" series I want to touch on the potential of the iPhone to be used as a data capture device at political conferences. I hope they won't mind, but I am going to use ConservativeHome as the main example of how and why this might be a useful avenue for political groups to explore.

ConservativeHome has thousands of readers, but I am sure they would fancy a few more. They do already have a ConservativeHome mailing list, so wouldn't it be great if they could just add a few more subscribers to it at the various political conferences going on? Well, that would involve pens, paper and lots of time - not to mention the potential for mistakes in hand-writing. That time would be better spent attending or giving a lecture or two.

Well, thanks to the iPhone, conferences and events can be a lot more productive for organisations like ConservativeHome.

I have worked with a number of people on an iPhone application that is great for signing up people to mailing lists at events. Because of the 3G service the application is quick and the iPhone's interface makes it an easy system to use. Simply loan an iPhone from a hire company and take it along to the conference. Not only can you show off latest videos and pictures, but you'll be able to use the application to pop their name into the database - no need for pens, paper, data entry after the event, or the need to get your laptop out and find a table.

Because of the cheap cost of such an option it is a reall oppotunity for political organisations to smarten up their data capture methods. This is just one incredibly simple example - there are more, but the price tends to go up as they get more extravagent.

Tron 2 Bootleg Trailer Circulating Now

You know when a film is going to be massive amongst geeks when a crappy bootleg version of the trailer burns around the web like a wildfire. Tron 2 is coming ladies and gentlemen and judging by the trailer (albeit poor quality video) I think we're in for a treat.

Slashdot has the details...
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?id=793317&op=view

Blogger Responsible for 2% Malware

A number of political bloggers use Google's Blogger service because it is free and very easy to use. As seen with Guido, Iain and Dizzy it is also easy to get a decent style out of it - even if it does have that weird XML code all over it.

But, did you know that loads of people, 2% in fact, are using Blogger to host malicious code or spam other blogs? More details over at Slashdot.

One of the reasons Blogger is good for this is because Google spiders it early and often. It is also very quick and easy to sign up to and abuse in this way. Could this latest news mean changes to how Blogger works? I can't imagine that Google will be too chuffed with a repuation of providing service to Malware.

Add GPS, FM Transmitter and more to your EEEPC

If you've got yourself one of those tiny EEEPCs and have started to get bored of it why not throw in a GPS receiver, Bluetooth adaptor or FM transmitter to give it a new lease of life? Turns out there's room under the hood and plenty of points to hook in to. Engadget has more....

Political applications? Well, unless you're a bit of die hard poligeek and want to set up your own pirate FM mini-station to broadcast your message of hope/hate over Parliament it's defintely one that's more for the geek side of poligeek!

Snap Happy Politics

As part of the "Political iPhone" series of articles I want to examine the possibilities for political embarrassment at the hands of one of these highly sought after devices.

The Facebook iPhone application allows you to use the iPhone's built in camera to take a snap and upload it straight to Facebook. So, the next time you spot your MP doing something he shouldn't you could have the shot uploaded and distributed quicker than the time it will take them to come over to you and ask you to delete the photo.

Twitter allows a similar function through the Twitterific application. If you've got the Twitter Facebook application set up in Facebook (tutorial here) you can hit two birds with one stone by just uploading your prize snap to Twitter and letting it tell the world via SMS and Facebook status update.

You don't actually need an iPhone to enter this world of almost instant photographic evidence distribution. Most mobile phones these days can send multimedia messages. Simply attach your snapshot to a message and send it to the Facebook number.

How many people are using Twitter?

Somewhat surprisingly, the latest web traffic statistics suggest that Twitter is more popular in the UK than in its country of origin, the US. Robert Goad over on the Hitwise blog has more details, including these snippets:

"Looking at the Experian Mosaic lifestyle data for Twitter over the same period also paints an interesting picture. The two most over represented types are still both typical early adopters: City Adventurers (High-salaried, twenty-something singles in smart flats in inner urban areas) and Town Gown Transition (Students and academics mix with young professionals in terraces relatively close to universities). However, there are a number of other over-represented types that would imply a more mainstream appeal, in particular Settled Minorities (Young families and singles of varied ethnic decent, in high density, pleasant urban terraces) and White Van Culture (Younger owners, many in good quality ex-council properties, take advantage of local economic opportunities)."

A Video Game in Your Favicon: Defender of the Favicon

This is slighty Geeky.

Mathieu Henri has written an arcade game that runs in your favicon:

The menace come from above! Protect the humanoid population from the waves of aliens coming to abduct them. Thankfully the shield of your Defender can take a few hit.

Press N to start a game or shoot, and WASD or the arrow keys to move your Defender over the humanoid city. If your browser struggles to update the favicon, press enter to toggle between favicon & canvas display.

Here is a screenshot:



For those of a less acute eyesight reading the blog, here is an enlarged screenshot:



OK - just for you. Here is a shot of the whole window.



Play the game here. It does not work with Internet Explorer.

Tags: defender, defender of the favicon, mathieu d'henry

The Political iPhone 3G: Do You Need One?

In short, the answer is that I am sure you can get along just fine with your BlackBerry or your Windows Mobile smartphone or just an ordinary mobile phone. It calls people, it sends texts... what more do you want?

Do you want to show yourself to be in touch with the trendy aspirational masses? Do you want to be able to monitor YouTube from any location? Do you want to kick off a Facebook campaign at a touch of a button? Send a mass email to your distribution list? Snap a photo of your opponent doing something naughty and have it go viral within minutes?

If the answer to any of this is a 'yes' or even a 'maybe' then you really should get a 3G iPhone. OK, if you're a front-line politician like Barack Obama or David Cameron then you probably want to get one just to show that you're trendy, but if you run campaigns and are part of the political machine then it's a much more valuable tool for you.

MobileMe is the new service from Apple that will push contacts, email and more to your mobile device and keep eveything in sync. Native apps through the new Application Store will give you opportunities for data capture and communication like never before.

Come back to PoliGeeks or add us to your RSS reader for the full series of articles on the Political iPhone, which I will be publishing over the next 2 weeks.

Alarm Clock from Hell Antidote - Leave me alone box

As a follow up to Mike's last "Alarm Clock from Hell" post that phones your one of your friends every three minutes and (for all I know) tells them that you are a total failure and a waste of space, here's my "Alarm Clock from Hell" antidote.

It is known as a "leave me alone box".

An alarm clock you won't dare ignore

If, like me and a few other people I know, you have trouble responding to the beeps of your alarm clock at 5 or 6am then here's a gadget for you...

It's basically the alarm clock from hell. If you're not up within 10 minutes of it going off it will randomly call up your friends every three minutes.

Engadget has the details...

Keeping your bookmarks under control

One of the reasons many people love Firefox is the large range of add-ons available. I generally keep my Firefox installations fairly sparse (my default view until persuaded otherwise: it takes more time to find out about, install and learn to use a time-saving plugin than the time it will save you even if you use it for ten years) but one add-on I always add is PlainOldFavorites.

As it says on the tin: Use Internet Explorer Favorites directly from Firefox. No need to import, export or synchronize - the same Favorites appear.

In other words, if you've got both IE and Firefox on the same machine, you can use the same set of bookmarks in each without having to mess around with maintaining two separate lists (and if you use a file synchronisation service such as Foldershare you can even have the same bookmarks across different machines, all without having to maintain more than one list and without having to use an online service which requires you to login etc, though that's another story...)

Time to show them a better way....

Fantastic news for those of us who think more should be done with the piles and piles of statistics collected by the UK government. The Power of Information Taskforce has made gigabytes of data available for the public to propose potential 'mashups', combinations of related information visualised in a coherent and comprenhendible way.

One of the most well known projects to come out of this new age of information collection are the much-lauded 'Crime Maps' (which I have blogged about before), where crime statistics for an area are superimposed onto a Google Map allowing residents to check the level of reported crime in their local neighbourhood. The promise of this new initiative, called Show Us A Better Way, is to open-up the massive databases up to the public, starting with access to data from the NHS, DEFRA, and Office of National Statistics.

The potential for finding fun and facsinating correlations between seemingly unrelated information is brilliant in itself, but to add a little something extra they're offering a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best idea. The competition runs until September, and looks like an incredible opportunity to be a part of the nascent digital democracy movement in the UK. Indeed, as I've asked in the past, what's the point of collecting all of this information if no-one can use it?

I've got a couple of ideas, but I'm going to keep schtum until I see where this prize-money is going....

And Another Thing... Syncronisation Tools

One thing that has irritated me lately is the number of syncronisation tools sitting in my Windows system tray. I know, I know, what the hell am I using Windows for?! Well, it's because of Photoshop and Flash... I want to get a Mac, but that's too expensive right now.

Syncronisation tools are, for me, becoming increasingly essential. Particularly in today's poltical world of social networking, campaigning and e-democracy. To be able to keep eveything easily accessible so you know what (or who ;-)) you're doing and when is a great thing, but let's just pause for a minute and think about this.

I have a tool to syncronise files on my laptop to a portable hard drive throughout the day. Then, I have a tool to syncronise my Outlook Calendar up to Google Calendar and back again. Then, there's ActiveSync to keep my smartphone up-to-date. On top of it all is the OpenDNS updater, which syncronises my ever-changing IP address to the OpenDNS service.

I would perhaps be tempted to shout about how this is all over-kill, but all of these tools are essential to me (pretty much). It's a simple usability point. Much like Windows created Windows Security Centre to bring in all the various firewall, virus cheker and other security features there perhaps needs to be a re-examination of the system tray.

Could there be a "Syncronisation Centre" or "Mobile Life Centre" that could bring in all the syncronisation services and reduce system tray clutter as well as perhaps making it easier to manage all these apps?

Search Engine Crawl Rate: Wordpress Plugin

This week I have started using a Wordpress plugin called "Crawl rate Tracker" on the Wardman Wire Blog.

The plugin a graph of how often your website has been visited by the indexing spiders from Google, Live Search (Microsoft), Yahoo and Technorati. This is important since it is an indicator of how much trust particular pages attract from a search engine.

The graph below is from the Wardman Wire for the few days since I installed the plugin. As you can see, the blog has had up to 1000+ search engine spider visits each day - which makes clear why it is important to filter "robots" out of your traffic statistics. Also, the front page is being indexed up to 13 times a day by Google.



You can click through to the report for each page.

This is the one for my article "What can Technology bring to the Political Process next?" published in June 2007. I'd be interested to know why that article is attracting so much attention - but the web moves in mysterious ways.



My Notes on the plugin:

• It provides very useful information.
• It is one more reason why I think that self-hosted Wordpress is preferable to blogger as a platform.
• It could possibly use a lot of CPU power (judging by the amount and frequency of data it generates), and so there may be some advantage in switching off the plugin when you are not using it actively.

You can download the plugin from Blogstorm (zip file), and read some more information here.

eBook Reader that's like a Book!

NewScientist reports on development of an eBook reader that's more like, er, a book. At last. Sorry, but the Amazon Kindle is a waste of space and the prospect of reading eBooks on Windows Mobile smartphones is just silly.

High hopes for this gadget.

Civil Service Code for Online Conversation

Following on from Tom Watson MP's release of a Code for Participation for Civil Servants online, I thought I would turn it into a Wordle (word cloud).

Since the Statement of Principles is free of waffle and padding, it seems to work quite well. Click through for the full size version.

Here are some further examples of different Wordles created from the Code for Online Participation.