I’ve produced an experimental social media news page using Feedly Mixes. You can embed this sort of thing into any site you like.

As you can see, it grabs and mixes up the content from selected RSS feeds – a list of sites covering the subject, as chosen by me. It then ranks the articles according to whether I deem a particular site important. Articles that I tweet or share in Feedly will also be included and take precedence on the page. Then it uses Google Reader’s statistics on how many people read, saved and shared articles to bubble up leading stories. Finally, it uses the age of the article as a fourth filter. The content is refreshed every 3-4 hours.

I’m not sure that my particular implementation is especially useful. The sort of person likely to visit this site almost certainly already reads the sites I have selected.

However, I think it could be a really useful tool in other circumstances. If you work in a particular domain – let’s say it’s construction – then it really is child’s play to create a page that gives a digest of the day’s news from the publications that deal with that area. That page could be set as everyone’s home page in your firm, or a link on the browser’s favourites bar, making sure the whole business is up-to-date with the latest news.

It’s better than the sort of pages you get at Alltop because you decide and curate the content sources – the construction page on that site is a good example of why you want this – a lot of the sources are US-based, which won’t be very relevant if, like me, you’re based in South London. There’s also no way I can see to flag particular stories as important.

A slightly more poetic use for Feedly Mixes might be the Interesting Pictures feed from flickr or ffffound. Maybe a personalised web comics page or a selection of new short stories.

NB: Wordpress doesn’t deal well with the iFrames used to display the Feedly Widget on pages – you’ll need to install the Embed iFrame plug-in to get it to work.

It’s been a little while since I wrote on this topic, but social (and not-so-social) bookmarking is on the rise again.

Remember Diigo, Blinklist and Magnolia from all of two years ago? No? And at least 122 others who wanted to become the social bookmarking standard. They all lost to delicious and improved services from mainstream providers.

All of the competitors were essentially the same as delicious but with some extra usability features or nicer interfaces.

You can’t really catch up or overtake competitors on the web like that, it seems.

Delicious had the early-mover’s advantage of lots of content and a large user base. Even though some of the others were better, functionally and aesthetically, they couldn’t make up the lost ground.

But here we go again. Because people now have increased expectations of their computers and the Internet; because they are now expecting full-fat Internet content on their phones; because the use-case is slightly altered, we have a new crop of bookmarking apps.

These applications are for people are looking for something different – multi-platform compatibility, privacy, downloaded content – as well as great usability. The emphasis on sharing is exchanged for an emphasis on utility.

Here are brief reviews of five relatively new contenders. All of them have Firefox Extensions available, which was my criteria for inclusion.

Instapaper

Instapaper was one of the first of the new generation of bookmarking applications, and deserves full kudos for that. It was also one of the first to create phone applications to complement its service. Sadly, though, it’s somewhat eclipsed by its competitors below when it comes to functionality and usability. Still maintains the first-mover advantage, though.

+ one of the first of the new breed of bookmarking applications

+ really simple and easy

+ iphone app

- relatively narrow functionality

- no browser integration

ReadItLater

Simple to use, synchronises, downloads for offline use. ReadItLater is best-of-breed if what you want is a means of reading that interesting-but-lengthy article later. It’s simple and elegant. It might be too simple for some, but in that case, you’ve probably got a more sophisticated solution for bookmarking that you can run along-side. I have to say that the user experience from start to finish is excellent.

+ Scads of apps for almost any platform you can mention.

+ Downloads the full text of articles for offline use.

+ Synchronisation between different clients.

- No sharing, tags or so-forth – personal use only.

Zotero

The only open-source solution on this list, I believe, Zotero is simply awesome for academic researchers. It grabs and stores pages for offline use, creates citations for all of the major academic style guides and indexes them. You can also add tags and notes and relationships. This is probably the most powerful nu-style bookmarker on my list, though not the most elegant. It also lacks the mobile and social features of the opposition here.

+ specifically designed for academics

+ synchronisation with web server

+ downloads and parses PDF files as well as web pages.

- no mobile functionality

- specifically designed for academics

- no public sharing (hey – it’s for academics… )

EverNote

An application with fervent followers, EverNote was arguably the first of these applications, debuting as a desktop application, if my memory serves me right.

There’s still a great desktop application, and now there are web and mobile versions as well. However, I fail to understand the fervour that some people demonstrate for EverNote. I think that there are much better options on this page.

+ applications for almost every desktop/mobile/thingy you can mention

+ great usability on the desktop.

- not free for some of the most useful features

- also antisocial

- I find the web application cumbersome.

Feedly

I include Feedly here because it’s got most of what it takes and may well integrate perfectly well with your existing web workstream. Very basically, it’s a skin for Google Reader that makes your RSS feeds look less like a chore and more like an interesting magazine about stuff you’re interested in. Its integration of Google Readers Shared Items and Notes means that it could well serve your needs.

+ full integration with Google Reader, without the pain of facing 4000+ unread items

- no mobile app

- Firefox only

What Should You Install?

I’m currently trying to use Feedly and Zotero, but they (very slightly) conflict with each other at the moment*, which is enormously annoying. I’m also using ReadItLater, which remains nice to use and well-designed, with great mobile functionality.

If you’re a Power-User, I’d go with this setup, and hope the developer of one or the other sort out the conflict soon.

If you just want powerful bookmarking and offline reading – Zotero.

If you just want a reminder to read stuff on your own computer – ReadItLater

If you want social, Feedly or stick to delicious.

*The address bar add-ins for the two won’t both appear. Normally, Feedly wins.

We call the Internet a place. We go to sites. Marketing people talk about destinations.

But that’s rubbish. The Internet is with me, and increasingly with most people, all of the time. It follows us as we go to other places. Increasingly, it helps us to navigate those places. You have probably seen it already, but if you haven’t, check this video of the tube-finder iPhone app.

This is the way we’re going. Digital isn’t something you can only do at your screen any more. It’s in your pocket, at your fingertips. You don’t go online any more – you simply shift between different-shaped terminals. We are already android. And your experience of digital isn’t something you do sat at a computer any more. It’s on your billboards, in your pub, driving your telly and your travel. It’s all around you all the time. Augmented reality. It’s projected in 64-bit colour at your retina (oops – no, sorry – that’s next year). It’s not about screens, either, it’s fountains and traffic lights and fridges. We don’t live our lives online or offline, but inline. (That’s an expression I stole from Timo Veikkola, strategist at The Future Laboratory who spoke for us last year).

Virtual Reality used to require a massive pair of goggles and gloves; now it is in your pocket.

So where am I going? The language of places and spaces, and sites and destinations, is outdated. Maybe it always was – a hand-me-down from broadcast TV and media that required physical outlets – like newspapers – that we took on board because we didn’t have any other words.

Stowe Boyd talks about us living in a state of flow instead. I get the idea, but am not quite comfortable with it. There’s something there (like ‘river of news’) that suggests being sat under a shower all day. And I also have uneasy feelings around the idea of ‘going with the flow’, which is all too true of a lot of online activity. (Green Twitter badges for Iran? eh?) This is something we work with not absorb.

We’re screaming for better metaphors about our on inline lives. Maybe we shouldn’t be searching for them. Maybe this is just too new and the next stage of evolution – we’ll work out the metaphors in retrospect.

Forgive me a quick plug. But. This is what the i-Design Conference is about on September 24.

I have five free tickets for the NMK Behavioural Targeting event, next Tuesday evening. We’ll be looking at the likes of Phorm, Specific Media and so forth and the opportunities they hold for advertisers and publishers, and also the threat to privacy that they may or may not represent.

Leave a comment to get one of the free tickets. First come; first served.

When: November 25th, 2008 18:00 to 21:00

Location: Bath House, 96 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 3TA

Chair: Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB. Panel: Nick Barnett, UK Commercial Director, Phorm; Baroness Sue Miller, Liberal Democrat Member, House of Lords; Rupert Staines, VP Europe, Specific Media; Ian Brown, Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute.

As I am sure you know, the plot is that the videotapes at the store run by Mike (Mos Def) and friend Jerry (Black) are accidentally wiped. They decide to remake the movies themselves in order to avoid getting in trouble with the store’s owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Baker).

Surprisingly, the neighbourhood takes kindly to these homemade remakes, thanks to their authenticity, and… but that would spoil it. The remakes are retitled as ’sweded’- hence the title of this post.

The movie is fun and has some memorable moments: well worth 100 minutes of your life. It’s a sentimental story, though, and, frankly, I don’t think that it could happen in real life.

In real life, raising the initial funding would be really easy but gaining community support would be a massive challenge. Almost the opposite of the film’s premise.

Community, home-grown video projects are typically created because there’s funding available from agencies like RDAs (Regional Development Agencies). They do some stuff. No-one outside the project cares, the project leaders only care because of the funding, and once the funding money is spent, they generally die away. They are supply-driven. Some bright spark in Whitehall or somewhere comes up with the idea of a community creative project and throws a couple of million at it. They haven’t bothered to survey the landscape and so it stumbles at the first hurdle, getting anyone interested.

Agencies leap at the chance of delivering to this non-existent demand, and come up with all kinds of reasons why yes, it really is out there on the street because that couple of million sounds pretty sweet. They have probably failed to deliver on a couple of projects like this before, but they do know how to write a tender document. The creative industries are rife with this shit.

As we all know, successful projects are driven by demand. And so, is there a demand for sweded video community or even a sweded commercial project? The geek demand I know about. The star wars pixellated remake (link) and sweded Doctor Who are out there, but I don’t know about mainstream stuff.

Is there sweded Desperate Housewives?

[SPOILER]

In the movie, the protagonists are eventually slammed by copyright lawyers and have to come up with their own material. I am not a lawyer and so I am not sure of the legality of that. I believe pastiche and parody allows some protection.

I introduced my colleague Alan to the term ‘Abandonware’ today. As a net-savvy individual, I was surprised he’d not come across it before. But, then again, it’s only really current among gamers.

Abandonware is software that has been given-up by its original developers and publishers. Normally, it applies to old games which fans still love, but which their publishers don’t care about any more.

The spiritual home of abandonware is Home of the Underdogs (beware Dragons and possibly viruses), which, appropriately enough, hasn’t been updated for two years. The site hosts binary files for hundreds of old games, manuals and screenshots.

While some of the content is definitely illegal, according to the letter of the law, it’s also a shrine to those old games that you played as a teenager. On balance, it’s definitely a good thing that it exists. Not just so you can get free w4r3z,  but because it keeps the games and the emotions and memories of those games alive. These games, despite the moniker, are not abandoned, but carefully curated and preserved (if the site owner would get off his arse).

Back to Web 2.0, Alan’s observation, just on the basis of the term was that, “a freemium model endgame is suggested” (I think it’s disrespectful to represent someone’s opinion from a single Twitter message. I do so here only to advance the argument. Sorry, Alan.)

Web 2.0 abandonware already exists, surely. I have no idea how Google Docs, for example, could ever make any money. Annoying Microsoft doesn’t seem like much of a model to me. Open Source is ‘cards on the table’ abandonware in some cases. There are interesting examples – when Movable Type went Open Source was that a form of abandonment?, but if there is a Home of the Underdogs 2.0, it won’t really matter very much.

I can still find a working binary download for Computer Quarterback published in 1979 (don’t bother – it’s shit) nearly 30 years after its publication date on Underdogs. I wonder if someone couldn’t make a fortune by starting a Web 2.0 Underdogs for those projects that were loved, but not by the right people.

If you start a job as an oil rigger, then there’s a 50% chance you’ll have a reportable accident within the next six months. After that period, the risk drops to 5% or less, as you get to know the ropes.

That’s quite frightening for potential oil-riggers and for people in the oil and gas industry who hire such folk.

I was lucky enough to be at a presentation from Kevin McNulty from Coole Immersive yesterday, part of the Visual Web Convention. They’ve made a simulation game that allows new oil-riggers to get that first six months’ experience for free. That’s to say, the likelihood they’ll have a reportable accident drops to <5% if they’ve used the game. That’s a fairly cast-iron case for games in the workplace, if you ask me.

Earlier in the day, Lord Puttnam gave a challenging keynote suggesting that this field – serious games – was a potential answer to the work he was doing with the climate change commission in the House of Lords. Briefly, his argument was that younger people are more likely to engage with games than any other media – I’d agree with this but suggest that older people are also gamers. Games are also blessed with the ability to offer experiential learning unlike any other pedagogic technique currently available – I think the oil rigger case study shows that’s true. Communicating the things that all of us need to do to avoid the looming disaster that climate change will bring is a tough problem for all professional communicators. We held a private event this week for advertising professionals called Can Advertising Save the Planet? The answer is probably ‘no’, but as communicators, we have the ability and responsibility to make things a little easier and better – the disaster is imminent, after all, but even the lowest of the low can do something to help.

If we are to steer society away from catastrophe and into education, games will have a key part to play.

Unfortunately, as Puttnam admitted, as soon as something is called a ‘game’ then bureaucracy and government recoils. The idea of our government lending public support, and ultimately money, to games, is stymied by its vocabulary. Games are trivial and a social harm in the minds of most bureaucrats and, sadly, most newspaper editors (see the press about the recent Byron Review which, while admitting a need for some governance over which titles were available to younger gamers, was overwhelmingly in favour of video games as a learning resource, if you bother to read the whole thing).

Flipping back to climate change and the emergency we face communicating the facts about it and what needs to be done, then games provide an excellent opportunity. But the flip-side of the problem with bureaucrats then sets in – entertainment providers are terrified of being associated with anything remotely ‘worthy’. Being ethical is, apparently, uncool.  There have already been a few brave attempts – World without Oil, the BBC’s Climate Challenge and others. But the likes of Sony, EA and Microsoft aren’t developing or promoting these sorts of titles. What needs to happen to make the big games publishers alert to their power to change the future?

[Update - Robin Blandford has some videos of what this looks like and a challenge for the rescue industry]

As is customary at top-end press-conferences, there was a schwag-bag for all attendees containing various branded giveaways. Mouse mats, mugs and stuff – it saves having to buy Xmas presents for a lot of journos. *cough*

(As an aside – Yay! that more bloggers and vocal fans are getting their hands on this stuff.)

But the cleverest bit (for me) was that this also included an online keycode for WoW that would allow players of that game to gain a new companion for their online avatars – the characters they play in the game. Remember, they invited guild leaders and fanatical WoW bloggers along**.

The pet itself will be a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael of Diablo 2 fame who will travel with you on all your grand adventures in Azeroth! Pictures of this amazing new pet will be available on the official website soon for everybody to check out.

Get it? The WoW pet is a viral promo-item for Diablo III! It’s limited edition, so it’s sought-after; it’s a sign of prestige in the community; and it’s constantly in the face of relevant audiences.

Pure genius. Or evil.

________________________________

*World of Warcraft – or WoW to its friends – an online roleplaying game which charges a monthly subscription – to around 10mn people.

**WoW players organise themselves into ‘guilds’ to assemble teams for online combat and for social reasons – their leaders are the most visible, longstanding and respected players.

Via. Kotaku

It’s a sort of wiki – but wait, come back! There’s a few interesting differences from the sort of wiki software you might be used to:

(a) the whole thing is contained in a single HTML file – the javascript, the CSS, the data you’ve added.

(b) so you can download it and use it on your laptop or travel with it on a USB key. If you like you can sync that with an online version.

(c) you can use it on any browser – even the iPhone.

(d) it’s written to encourage short posts – Tiddlers – rather than the massive empty spaces found in the MediaWiki software and others.

Apparently, there’s some way to use it as a blog platform, but I’m still working that bit out…

But don’t search for ‘ie8′ with Google, because you’ll get this:

One half of the screen is a search for news about ie8. The next suggests that I was probably searching for IE7. None of the remaining four links, as I scroll down, are any use.

I buy into the idea of integrated search, that results from news, maps etc. be incorporated into your search. But, in this case, half the screen is devoted to trying to persuade me to search for a different product entirely.  Pah! – Page and Brin, your time is up. (Not that I tried any other search engine for this result – we all know they’re rubbish,eh?)

(Here are the links you really need.)