It occurred to me that the phenomenon of the cheapskate company trying to get some professional work done on the cheap isn’t a new one:

First they came for the newspaper typesetters,
And I did not speak up because I wasn’t a newspaper typesetter

Then they came for the graphic designers,
And I did not speak up because I wasn’t a graphic designer

Then they came for the web developers,
And I did not speak up because I wasn’t a web developer

Then they came for the journalists,
And I did not speak up because I wasn’t a journalist

Then they came for the photographers,
And by that time there was nobody left to speak up.

Sounds a bit dull when described like that, but the point of it being in a mashable format is that would allow other websites to easily import that data for their own use – to produce a map of the routes just for your own local area, or for the whole city. Dave’s point was that he had to do a whole bunch of unnecessary work in making a new map by drawing lines on Google Maps taking the text information on the council gritting routes pages, when surely since the council already has the mapping data from its own mapping systems, why can’t it just make that data available from source?

Which is a reasonable question, if you don’t know the answer! Actually, most councils (or at least the people within them who use or have other interests in the data themselves) would love to release this data – after all, as Dave points out, at its crudest it’s a way of enabling community volunteers to do useful things with it instead of the council having to do (and therefore pay for) it.

The sad fact is, much as councils would like to release this data, central government, in the form of its various quango agencies, won’t let them. The mapping data for the gritting routes is derived from mapping by the Ordnance Survey – ie, the mapping .kml (or whatever) files are generated by somebody clicking on an Ordnance Survey map in a piece of mapping software, which then makes that data subject to OS’s rather restrictive licensing conditions – meaning that if those councils were to release that data, they’d get sued by the OS. No ‘might get told off’, most definitely will get sued – when it comes to protecting their intellectual property, the OS make Disney look cuddly. And sadly, over 90% of local government geodata (especially the interesting stuff) is compiled in this way – not by council workers walking around with handheld gps devices doing their own survey.

“But wait!”, I hear you shout, “OS are due to make their mapping free from April 2010!”

Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that – OS are indeed making the maps free, but any data which is derived from those maps (ie, by somebody clicking on it) will still be restricted.

So the target for ire about the inability of local activists to easily produce a map of, say, local lollipop operatives – aka School Crossing Patrols – should be central government, not your local council.

You’d think, though, that with the launch of www.data.gov.uk – central government’s new open data repository – we’d be seeing the Dawn of a New Golden Age of Peace and Prosperity, with the possibility that this extra data will be in the second wave to be freed?

However, it looks unlikely, with the announcement that the petition to free the Royal Mail’s postcode data, which a number of interesting online applications were using until the Royal Mail threatened to sue them, has been rejected.

Don’t forget, all this data which the government continues to prevent us from using in our own applications, we have already paid for. We have a moral right to it. In the USA, not usually known for its free, open, and uncommercial attitude to things, absolutely anything which is created by a government employee is free for others to use, on that very basis that the taxpayer has already paid for it.

Or rather, it’s not that he’s no longer doing what he’s been doing for a living for the last couple of years to go and do something else, rather, that – cutting a long story short – he’s not going to be describing himself as such any more.

Those of us who’ve been doing this thing for ages (especially those of us who have been doing it since long before the term was coined) have never been particularly comfortable with the term ‘social media’, but we’ve grudgingly accepted it on the grounds that it doesn’t cause share prices to tumble on the stock market, nobody’s harmed by it, and the horses aren’t frightened by it. And nobody’s been able to think of anything better that’s caught on in a snappy way. Myself, I thought the term collaborative media might have legs (since that better describes what we do), but nobody else has nailed their colours to that mast.

Anyway, part of the point Pete makes is that whilst it was an OKish term for a while, it has now become polluted, as the PR people and the Marketeers and the all the other people have moved in thinking they need to have a ‘social media strategy’ for their organisation, fundamentally missing the point about what social media is. It’s media, that’s social – that’s collaborative, interactive, and conversational. You’re having a conversation with your audience, not making a speech to them – and in a conversation you listen and respond, not just talk. And the ‘professionals’ moving in singularly fail to realise this – they want to have a Twitter feed, but want to have every post to their Twitter feed signed off by a manager before it goes out!

Some time after Pete published his article, he posted to Twitter giving a real-world example of why he wrote his post:

Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it’s so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as ‘paragraphs’.

It beggars belief how anybody writing for what’s supposed to be a respectable technology blog could possibly think that.

To think that Twitter might have killed blogging because it’s easier to publish a sentence than it is to publish a collection of paragraphs is like saying that crisps might kill tartiflette because it’s easier to get a packet of Walkers than it is to get hold of Reblochon cheese. If I post to Twitter, it’s not because it’s ‘easier’, it’s because it’s frankly silly of me to log into WordPress and faff about trying to come up with at least 200 hundred words for a narrative just to say that the water level of the canal by the NIA is quite high.

Admittedly, myself and my friends have often commented to each other how we all seem to be blogging less since we’ve been using Twitter more – but that’s not in the sense of microblogging killing fullblogging, it’s in the sense of a combination of the way we’ve repurposed our use of Twitter itself, and also that we send the appropriate communication to the appropriate channels. When I write an article here, I’m writing for the world and aware that some of my friends will be reading. When I write a post to Twitter, I’m writing for my friends and aware that some of the world will be reading. It’s as simple as that, and it’s not a competition.

So there.

(Pete’s article also raised a couple of other interesting resonances for me which I may well write about in a future post)

“European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves. Bowing to European competition rules, Microsoft Windows 7 will ship without Internet Explorer”.

I trust in the spirit of fair competition, Apple is also going to remove Safari from OS X, meaning Mac users will also need to download a browser before they can look at websites?

“It all began with a tin of cat food, an empty coffee tin and a hairdryer. When air was forced between the two tins, the ensemble began to float on its own little cushion of air. Thus, through a combination of eccentricity and genius, Sir Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft, in a shed, in a boatyard, in Norfolk”.

The hovercraft, whilst as a passenger carrying vehicle was superseded by the channel tunnel, is very much a British success story.

Development was largely funded under the aegis of the National Research and Development Corporation, a government body set up in 1948 expressly to help British inventors develop and commercialise their work. As well as the hovercraft, other British inventions which benefited from NRDC assistance include:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Interferon
• Continually Variable Transmission, &
• Disposable daily contact lenses

The NRDC was privatised in 1992 after being renamed British Technology Group, and thus public funding of research and development ended. BTG itself scaled its operation right down in 2005 to concentrate only on medical research. Of course, private enterprise hasn’t been entirely unsuccessful in bringing brand new products to market, as Clive Sinclair, Eric Laithwaite, James Dyson, and Trevor Baylis proved (though the first two clearly could have benefitted from better help in making their inventions commercially successful), but in an era where enterprise is supposed to be key to Getting Us Out Of The Recession(tm), what real help is government offering to British inventors? Indeed, what real help has government offered for enterprise in the last 25 years?

It’s sufficiently general that it works as good advice for any organisation thinking about how to modernise its public relations activity; indeed, it serves as excellent advice on how news organisations and magazines themselves might adapt to the reality of the modern world.

Active Plugins

  Akismet 2.4.0
» Automattic (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need an API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  AZIndex 0.8.1
» English Mike (url)
A highly customizable and user friendly plugin to create one or more alphabetical indexes of selected posts in your Wordpress blog.

  Better RSS Widget 2.0
» GrandSlambert (url)
Replacement for the built in RSS widget that adds an optional link target, shortcode, and page conditionals.

  Blubrry PowerPress 1.0.9
» Blubrry (url)
Blubrry PowerPress adds podcasting support to your blog. Features include: media player, 3rd party statistics, iTunes integration, Blubrry Services (Media Statistics and Hosting) integration and a lot more.

  Contact Form 7 2.3.1
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

  Custom Class Selector 0.1
» Aaron Forgue & Tammy Hart (url)
Allows users to style their post content using custom classes made available by the active theme.

  del.icio.us for Wordpress 2.0.2
» Ricardo González (url)
Displays your recently listened links. Based on Pownce for Wordpress by Cavemonkey50.

  Dewplayer 1.2
» Roya Khosravi (url)
Insert Dewplayer (Flash Mp3 Player) in posts & comments.

  Edit Comments 0.3 beta
» Andrew Sutherland (url)
Allows users to edit their comments for up to 30 minutes after posting. To change the time limit, configure it in this plugin file

  Live Comment Preview 1.9
» Brad Touesnard (url)
Supply users with a live comment preview. Use the function <?php live_preview() ?> to display the live preview in a different location. Based on version 1.7 by Jeff Minard.

  MobilePress 1.1.5
» Aduity (url)
Turn your WordPress blog into a mobile website/blog.

  Post-Plugin Library 2.6.2.1
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

  Quote Comments 2.1.1
» Joen Asmussen (url)
Creates a little quote icon in comment boxes which, when clicked, copies that comment to the comment box wrapped in blockquotes.

  RSS Digest 1.02
» Sam Charrington (url)
Publishes RSS items to daily digest

  SFC - Bookmark Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Shows a “Add Bookmark” button in the sidebar which allows users to add the site to their bookmark bar in Facebook.

  ShareThis 4.0.4
» ShareThis, Manu Mukerji (url)
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. Configuration options are here. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README.

  Similar Posts 2.6.2.0
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Don’t be disturbed if it takes a few moments to complete the installation — the plugin is indexing your posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Simple Amazon S3 Upload Form 1.0.3
» Adam Murray (url)
Simple form that allows users to upload files to a specific Amazon S3 bucket.

  Twitter Tools 2.4
» Crowd Favorite (url)
A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.

  WordPress.com Stats 1.7.3
» Andy Skelton (url)
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.

  WordPress Mobile Admin 3.8.2
» Rich Gubby (url)
Manage your blog from your mobile with this plugin. After activating this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Wapple Architect Dev Key.

  WP-FLV 0.2
» Roel Meurders (url)
This plugin eases insertion of Jeroen Wijerings FLV Video Player

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP-Polls 2.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

  WP-RSSImport 4.4.8
» Frank Bültge (url)
Import and display Feeds in your blog, use the function RSSImport(), a Widget or Shortcode [RSSImport]. Please see the new possibilities.

  WPtouch iPhone Theme 1.9.18
» Dale Mugford & Duane Storey (BraveNewCode) (url)
A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.

Inactive Plugins

  BackType Connect 0.2.5
» BackType (url)
Show related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.

  Custom Admin Branding 2.0
» Josh Byers (url)
Allows you to brand your WordPress install for clients. Display custom images and styles for the login screen, admin header and footer.

  Disqus Comment System 2.46
» Disqus (url)
The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus. Head over to the Comments admin page to set up your DISQUS Comment System.

  Elastic Theme Engine and Editor 0.0.3
» Daryl Koopersmith (url)
A theme editor for the Elastic framework.

  gPress 0.2.4.4
» PressBuddies (url)
gPress adds new geo-relevant layers to WordPress, allowing you to create your own location-based services…

  Hello Dolly 1.5.1
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly. When activated you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.

  IntenseDebate 2.9
» IntenseDebate & Automattic (url)
IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Full comment and account data sync between IntenseDebate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you! To get started, please activate the plugin and adjust your IntenseDebate settings .

  Lexi 1.0
» Juan Sebastián Echeverry (url)
An RSS feeder using ajax to show contents after the page has been loaded.

  mobileadmin 2.0.1
» Jared Bangs and Dan Cameron (url)
Gives a mobile-friendly admin UI to browsers by user agent, using a plugin architecture. Includes support for iPhone/iPod-Touch.

  Multi-level Navigation Plugin 2.2.1
» PixoPoint Web Development / Ryan Hellyer (url)
A WordPress plugin which adds a multi-level CSS based dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. Visit the WP Multi-level Navigation Plugin page for more information about the plugin, or our navigation support board for help with adding the menu to your theme.

  Really Simple CAPTCHA 1.1
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.

  SFC - Activity Feed Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Create an Activity Feed for your sites sidebar.

  SFC - Chicklet 0.21
» Otto (url)
Creates a chicklet for showing fan count of your app/page on FB.

  SFC - Comments 0.21
» Otto (url)
Allow users to leave comments using their Facebook info (without their logging into WordPress itself).

  SFC - Connect Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Shows a “Connect with Facebook” button in the sidebar which will log you into the site (should be used with SFC-Login plugin).

  SFC - Fan Box Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Create a Fan Box for your sites sidebar.

  SFC - Find us on Facebook Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Adds a “Find us on Facebook” image to your sidebar, with a link to your Facebook Page.

  SFC - Like Button 0.21
» Otto (url)
Simple like button for use with SFC.

  SFC - Live Stream Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Create a Live Stream in your site’s sidebar, allowing users to chat in real-time.

  SFC - Login 0.21
» Otto (url)
Integrates Facebook Login and Authentication to WordPress. Log into your WordPress account with your Facebook credentials.

  SFC - Publish 0.21
» Otto (url)
Allows you to share your posts to your Facebook Application page. Activate this plugin, then look on the Edit Post pages for Facebook publishing buttons.

  SFC - Register 0.21
» Otto (url)
Allows new users to register using Facebook credentials.

  SFC - Share Button 0.21
» Otto (url)
Simple share button for use with SFC. Adds shortcodes and function calls.

  SFC - Upcoming Events Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Shows a list of upcoming events (for a user, group, fan page, or application) in the sidebar.

  SFC - User Status Widget 0.21
» Otto (url)
Display your FB User Status in the sidebar, simply.

  Simple Facebook Connect - Base 0.21
» Otto (url)
Makes it easy for your site to use Facebook Connect, in a wholly modular way.

  Simple Twitter Connect - Base 0.12
» Otto (url)
Makes it easy for your site to use Twitter, in a wholly modular way.

  Simply RSS Fetcher 1.2.1
» Ricardo González (url)
Displays the items of a desired RSS feed. Based on Pownce for Wordpress by Cavemonkey50.

  STC - Comments 0.12
» Otto (url)
Comments plugin for STC (for sites that allow non-logged in commenting).

  STC - Follow Button Widget 0.12
» Otto (url)
Create a follow button in your sites sidebar.

  STC - Followers Widget 0.12
» Otto (url)
Show a list of your followers in the sidebar. See plugin code for CSS styling to add to your theme.

  STC - Linkify 0.12
» Otto (url)
Automatically link @usernames to twitter, anywhere on the whole site.

  STC - Login 0.12
» Otto (url)
Integrates Twitter Login and Authentication to WordPress

  STC - Publish 0.12
» Otto (url)
Allows you to tweet your posts to a Twitter account. Activate this plugin, then look on the Edit Post pages for Twitter posting buttons.

  STC - Tweet Button 0.12
» Otto (url)
Adds a Tweet button to your content.

  STC - TweetMeme Button 0.12
» Otto (url)
Adds a Tweetmeme button to your content.

  STC - Twitter Dashboard 0.12
» John Bloch - Avendi Media, Inc. (url)
Allows you to tweet from the WordPress dashboard.

  Twitter Tools - Bit.ly URLs 2.4
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Use Bit.ly for URL shortening with Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.

  Twitter Tools - Exclude Category 2.4
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Exclude posts in certain categories from being tweeted by Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.

  Twitter Tools - Hashtags 2.4
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Set #hashtags for blog post tweets sent by Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.

  What Others Are Saying 1.6
» SarahG (url)
Use the RSS field in your Blogroll and display the most recent post from sites that you link to.

  WP Super Cache 0.9.9.3
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.