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Google Street View launches in Cardiff, Swansea, London, Oxford, Birmingham and other cities

19 March 2009 by

In the past few months, if you’ve seen a mysterious looking van gliding past your home, this could be the explanation.

The intriguing Google Street View has launched in 25 cities today, including Cardiff where I live and work.

I’d be interested to hear if you find anything noteworthy – just go to Google Maps and drag the yellow man on to the spot you want to view. It takes postcode, street names and location names.

It’s a funny aspect of people that they’re able to look anywhere – but usually people go straight to their own house and locality.

Here’s Juno Lounge (where we hold monthly Trydan cafe meet-ups to discuss the social web).

I was trying to date the pictures by looking for cues from Cardiff’s cultural scene. Gwdihw cafe bar appeared in this bit of Cardiff in late 2008 and Cafe Bar Europa took on new ownership and name in summer 2008. But I’m pretty sure the Visitor Centre vanished from Cardiff Bay a long time ago. Finally I happened on this poster site on Womanby Street, where most of the posters refer to events in June 2008.

Telegraph have an intro and photo gallery of big (mostly English) landmarks.

Roger Browning at The Guardian was captured on camera striding into his London home. Here’s a Times piece about the privacy issues from 2007, when the service launched in the USA.

Google’s press department have also slung out a brief list of ideas for uses of Street View for business. As with anything, it’s worth having a good play before even considering business applications. Besides, the big winner will be Google itself, with whole new data sets to draw eyeballs and clicks to their ads.

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BBC Enables Video Embedding, Sets Good Example for You and Me

13 March 2009 by

BBC News and Sport are beginning to enable you to embed their videos on to your own site.

Below is an example of an embedded video. It’s hosted by the BBC, who also take care of the streaming too. (The story happens to be about cybercrime, I’ve included it purely as an illustration of the technology – the range of embeddable videos is still small while the scheme is being rolled out.)

Technically it’s always been possible to embed BBC videos elsewhere (in a cheeky fashion – you just grab the code).

But this change of policy is a good move – by actively encouraging and helping people to embed the videos and discuss them it will increase the BBC’s presence around the web, including on blogs like this one.

In order to embed a video, you go to the original story page. Let’s take the example I embedded above. If you click share, you’ll be presented with the following code which you then copy and paste into your website/blog. (You don’t have to understand every tag in order to use it.)

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”512″ height=”400″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><param name=”FlashVars” value=”config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&amp;playlist=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/7930000/7938900/7938949.xml&amp;config=http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/config/default.xml?1.3.105_2.10.7938_7967_20090310160409&amp;config_settings_language=default&amp;config_settings_showFooter=true&amp;config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_pageType=eav6″ /><param name=”src” value=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/2.10.7938_7967/player.swf” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”512″ height=”400″ src=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/2.10.7938_7967/player.swf” flashvars=”config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&amp;playlist=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/7930000/7938900/7938949.xml&amp;config=http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/config/default.xml?1.3.105_2.10.7938_7967_20090310160409&amp;config_settings_language=default&amp;config_settings_showFooter=true&amp;config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_pageType=eav6″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

Of course, other video streaming sites have allowed and encouraged this for years. Seasoned bloggers and webheads may quip that “BBC embedding 2009 = YouTube embedding 2005”. But to be fair to BBC, they have had “a huge number of tricky little issues to sort out and most of these have been complex business issues around rights, terms and conditions, etc.” (quote).

This also illustrates a good principle. Making a success of the web means not only having a good destination site but also having a good web presence.

It’s now considered somewhat precious to want to “own” visitors and insist they come to your website first. You will spread awareness of yourself and and actually drive future visits to your site by giving stuff to other sites.

In practice, you may not have your own video player like the BBC. But if you’ve uploaded video on sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv or Viddler, then make sure embedding is enabled. It will multiply the potential audience by several factors of ten AND probably bring more people to your site anyway.

I cannot think of a single good reason not to allow embedding on a video. Universal Records, the largest record label in the world, appear to have disabled embedding on their official YouTube videos. If you can explain this decision, feel free to comment below or contact me.

Even if your primary focus is not video, the more general principle is engagement with other sites. I feel another blog post emerging, mmm. I’ll explore it more next week.

(As it happens, YouTube have been in the news this week regarding a separate issue – their disagreement with PRS, who represent song publishers and composers. Robert Andrews at paidContent summarises the complexities of such deals, while Rhodri Marsden at the Independent gives an insightful view from a songwriter’s perspective.)

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The Guardian Newspaper launches its own API (And Why this is Exciting)

10 March 2009 by

Today’s exciting story at the crossroads of media and technology is the Guardian’s new API.

If you’re new to the idea of an API, or “application programming interface”, read The Guardian’s own intro to the concept of APIs from 2007. Here’s today’s announcement.

OK, why is this exciting?

Every newspaper is a massive storehouse of potentially interesting data. You can access that data by getting a paper copy and reading it. Or you can access it by visiting their website.

There aren’t many other ways of sifting through the stories, features, facts and statistics held by the newspaper. You are somewhat limited by the design and the methods the Guardian have deemed useful for presenting that data.

But now, The Guardian have opened up access to their content. The same copyright applies, they’ve just allowed you to query it in a multitude of ways. Now, you can write software (or hire someone to write software) which presents it in new forms, giving new insights. The “interface” part of API is not a graphical interface but a set of requests you can send which result in answers and other data coming back.

The API idea is familiar to software developers. Usually it wouldn’t be a surprise for an online service to launch an API – examples abound: Amazon, Facebook, Google Search, Google Maps, Twitter, Yahoo, Flickr and YouTube are just some of the services that offer their own APIs. If you visit one and scroll to the very bottom of their homepage, usually that’s where you’ll see a little API link which takes you to the documentation for developers.

If you take the perspective of a service owner, the set of data you are sitting on is suddenly more useful because of the versatility of access you have allowed. The world at large knows more than you about what it wants from your data – and can do more. When that data is combined with data from other APIs, in the form of a “mash-up”, that’s when the real fun begins.

The practice of newspapers offering APIs is relatively recent. The other big one already available is that of the New York Times. Here’s a real example I picked arbitrarily, Reading Radar. This developer has taken the bestselling books chart from the New York Times and is linking directly to the Amazon listing for each book. Incidentally, he probably makes a modest amount of money via Amazon Associates, an affiliate scheme to drive sales. He credits the New York times prominently as the source of the data, so they get the kudos and the brand recognition. Here’s some technical info on how he achieved it.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research has a list of suggestions for developers who are keen to flex their coding skills and tap into this rich resource. You can guarantee that most or all of these will appear in the coming weeks.

If you’re not a developer, you can still make use of the new services that spring up – Reading Radar and the like. That’s the point! If you’re on Facebook and have ever used applications like Scrabulous (as was), Super Wall or the hundreds of others then you’ll know this – and sometimes with annoyance in that case. But people come back to Facebook because the usefulness and fun factor outweighs the clutter.

But if you’re a content owner then you should be thinking about how this could impact on the future of your business. Jeff Jarvis argues today that APIs are the new distribution, citing BBC and National Public Radio as further examples of media owners who’ve experimented with offering APIs.

News Corporation, Trinity Mirror and other media owners should be eyeing this Guardian announcement with interest.

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Cafe-shaped conversations – for the rest of us

6 March 2009 by

Tom and I meet a lot of people asking:

“OK, so what’s this social web all about?”
“Is it all a bunch of hype?”
“What about software tool or gadget abc or xyz…?”
“I don’t need to know about it! Isn’t it just for nerds and tech whiz kids?”

This blog post for Pop!Tech by Chris Brogan is an instant classic. Mass communication through TV and the like is a fairly new idea in the history of humanity but we can’t let it constrain us in how we converse with people. He gives some potted examples from the nascent social web across business, charity… and the unseen world of virtual graffiti.

Here’s the key paragraph for me.

Business at the speed of the web is now a human game. I’m not Googling these relationships. I’m finding them online in social spaces. Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter aren’t just marketing channels. They aren’t places to swap resumes. Instead, these new tools empower rapid connection, and allow people to feel heard.

I recommend reading the whole thing. His analogy with a French cafe holds well.

Additionally, I find it interesting how a lot of the technological innovation that supports these shifts is coming from USA, specifically California. (The history and culture of California and how it relates to these issues is a whole different blog post – which I’ll leave to someone else.) Although of course it’s not uniformly the case that USA is driving these shifts. Nevertheless this is insightful:

In America, everything is big, everything is repeatable, everything works on the “it looks like the one in my town, so I know how it will operate” perspective. We know how to order at any McDonalds. We understand how the Wall Street Journal will look from day to day, no matter where we pick it up or on what day. In other countries, small and personalized businesses are more obvious.

As much as I’m a fan of American culture in all its forms, having earlier had my lunch in a local independent cafe instead of a chain, I love this.

If you live in Wales like me, you will instinctively understand this and grasp hold of it.

Substitute UK, Europe or “outside the USA” into that last sentence if you want. Although I’ve lived in Wales a long time. It’s March and we’ve just recently had our national day, St. David’s Day. He was the one who popularised the slogan Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd (Do the little things in life). That’s another hypothetical blog post, where in among the hard observations I might risk indulging in some blatant sentimentality!

The focus on “doing the little things” is not to say we don’t try to build our projects to make big successes. It just means that we’re tuned into to the subtleties, nuances, eccentricities and character traits that make up individuals. That is increasingly the future of how we will approach working as well.

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Sky News appoints Twitter correspondent… (via Guardian)

5 March 2009 by

Jemima Kiss at The Guardian pretty much nails it with this analysis of today’s Sky News story.

The danger is that is this rush to fetishise Twitter, the media perpetuates the rather irritating habit of always looking for The Next Big Thing. The point is not Twitter itself, or the company that Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey built, but the behaviour it has facilitated and encouraged. It’s the impact of the tool and not the tool itself that is meaningful, because that is what will grow and influence more new services, and impact existing ones. Facebook is already responding, and there are swathes of services all plugging into the conversations Twitter is driving.

There is merit in monitoring Twitter for breaking news – particularly with services like Monitter and Twitter Search. But more generally, it’s just one platform – and part of a technological and cultural shift towards a real-time web.

Besides the real-time web, Sky News journalists like Ruth Barnett should probably be monitoring the rest of the web in other very established ways. One such example is with RSS to catch topical search results like this. But it’s the cultural and societal shifts that are the really big deal.

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Building an online reputation? Slow process. Having it destroyed? Much quicker process.

5 March 2009 by

Matt Cutts of Google receives a lot of requests to remove pages from the search engine’s index. This is his standard response. In short, Google don’t remove pages from their index unless there are extremely good reasons.

What he didn’t mention this time (although he obviously does know it) is that it’s vital to maintain your own web presence to overcome any negative or defamatory treatment you might be getting online.

This means monitoring and responding to people’s grievances in a timely fashion on various networks and platforms. Twitter is just one (read the Motrin story from last year for just one example).

It also means having your own site or blog which you regularly update. There are many benefits to this – idea development, more “content” to pull people in, maybe a dash of promotion and a nice, recent “last posted” date to reassure new visitors you’re still on the case. Plus you will probably get a better search ranking from a frequently updated site.

But the benefits for reputation are what I’ll focus on here. With your own blog, you can respond instantly to any trend of opinion that might be emerging – highlighting the good stuff and rebutting the bad stuff.

It’s possible to nip something at an early stage and make your stance clear. Ideally each blog post would have its own permalink so people can use it to respond in turn and – if you deserve it – support you. Here’s the permalink to this post.

Depending on the situation you might need to take it on the chin and admit a mistake, the earlier the better. Most organisations can expect a sensitive and potentially reputation-damaging event at some point. You can’t “bury bad news” in this space, sorry!

Here’s this week’s good example – Spotify’s honest admission of a security breach. Spotify are a tech company and they seem to know about this stuff. But it’s just as applicable in other industries. And will become more so.

Building an online reputation is a slow process.

Having it destroyed is a much quicker process.

Make sure you’re prepared.

If you want another angle, I’m also reminded of a seminal blog post from Anil Dash of Six Apart – about privacy and identity control, an oldie but a goodie.

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Ryanair’s Cheap Shot – I’m Not Taking The Bait…

25 February 2009 by

There’s lots of blog bustle about this Ryanair story. (In summary, a blogger wrote about a minor glitch he’d experienced in Ryanair’s online ticket booking system. Ryanair employees responded in his blog comments calling him an “idiot and a liar” and berating his choice of the WordPress blogging platform. Ryanair compound the fury by releasing an official statement saying “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers…”).

Customer service now happens on a stage… Customers are networked. I’ve visited these themes before, with Chrysler and Ford. Read the seminal and prophetic book Cluetrain Manifesto for more of this wonderful stuff.

But rather than take the bait, I think this is completely in keeping with Ryanair’s PR policy and possibly everything they’ve done before this point.

This may well fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. Undoubtedly, it’s a cheap shot response – in keeping with the airline’s established reputation for cheapness.

(As a staunch advocate of WordPress, I’m sure they can only be kidding…)

After the blog post, Travolution covered this and later Guardian, Telegraph, The Times and other news outlets. What’s the value of all that exposure – in exchange for some blog comments and a quick statement?

While I’m on it, did you know Ryanair don’t hire outside agencies for their advertising?

The Times had a feature about Ryanair’s advertising in December 2004, containing this gem from Paul Fitzsimmons, their then head of communications:

“We have a Wal-Mart approach to business: stack ’em high and sell in bulk,” said Fitzsimmons. “We are driven by price and we don’t need a bunch of ponytails in some ad agency to tell us how to build our brand.”

Then later:

Fitzsimmons admits the Ryanair ads are designed to spark controversy on the basis that “any negative perception of an ad is a publicity opportunity”.

So why should their online PR be any different? Talk about an integrated communications policy! It’s risky, for sure. For fans of the Cluetrain Manifesto, it certainly corresponds to the “authentic human voice”. But I can imagine it backfiring if their amiable tomfoolery does not translate across countries. For instance, now that CNN have covered it, will USA and other international readers appreciate the jokes?

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Trydan social media cafe this Friday

24 February 2009 by

We are co-organising Trydan social media cafe this Friday in Juno Lounge, Wellfield Road, Cardiff from 11AM till 2PM.

If you’re interested in social media, there’s more info on the Trydan event wiki. If you’re planning to attend, please add your details to the list.

If you’re from elsewhere, we’re also maintaining a list of social media cafes around the UK.

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Is marketing evil? (Via Seth Godin)

23 February 2009 by

Seth Godin tries to answer the question “is marketing evil?“.

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Carsonified – A Model of a Good Company Blog

19 February 2009 by

I subscribe to quite a lot of blogs.

But I don’t subscribe to many company blogs.

By “company blog” I mean a blog which is an adjunct to a company’s ordinary business. I just haven’t found many that are worth following. In order to get my attention, the blog needs a human voice and needs to tell me something useful, relevant or interesting.

Usually, companies either don’t do it or they do it wrongly. I know you want me to buy your goods and services. But to keep me coming back to your website you need to give me more than a pitch.

One exception to this is the blog of Carsonified, a software development company based in Bath, UK, who specialise in web-based applications and related conferences. Please bear with me, even if that’s not your area of interest.

To be sure, they have plenty of work to be getting on with besides writing blog posts. But something about the industry insights of co-founder Ryan Carson in particular has kept me coming back, plus his eagerness to blog honestly about their company activities.

Building and launching a successful web app is a fraught and turbulent business, which adds to the fascination for me. It reminds me of artist development in the music industry, especially music managers I’ve met – not least in the fact there is an abundance of people making a play and only a few who will win. Even by their own definitions of success.

As if to undermine part of what I’ve just said (!), Ryan Carson sometimes gets it wrong, as he admits in this new video, Blogging Tips for Downturn 2.0 (don’t let the title put you off).

After laying off three employees in December 2008, Carson (with their permission) decided to blog about it. That wasn’t the problem. Yes, layoffs are embarrassing but the news will travel anyway. So you may as well set the tone. And you’ll probably do the former employees a favour by highlighting their availability.

His mistake, in his view, was to combine the news with some advice about how to be a “good” employee. In effect, he combined two blog posts into one which gave out an impression that he was admonishing them, which wasn’t his intention. You can still read the original post about the redundancies.

Those who don’t blog may ask: was all this worth the effort for Carson? Well, I for one am reading his blog and checking out his products and have also mentioned the company to a few people as a result, including you now. So make up your own mind.

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