This week Lichfield Live launched a business directory, in part because the alternative is so out of date!

Today I’m annoyed because they’ve decided to be all community-hugging and have the residents of Lichfield vote for their favourite pubs.

Number 9 has been shut for years (see screenshot below)!

Not only that but this is supposed to be a local media web site. In that case, what are “Best UK Pubs Ltd”, “Crown at Lichfield Ltd” and “Lloyds No One”?

I’ll tell you – they’re the legal names of the place known locally as Samuel’s (or Sammy’s), The Crown and Gatehouse.

Great work, “Local” People network.

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Blimey, I really need to stop ranting at news rewired! If only because I end up wanting to explain myself. You’ve done that for me very well though.

On the HS2 example, Ross got some great personal stories that the other media simply didn’t. It’s one of many examples where our own volunteer-created coverage has dwarfed that of trad media. The reasons for that though are many and generalising like I managed to do with my comments isn’t right.

I partly wonder whether the cause is a culture/morale thing. Given the attitude from some regionals (management, I mean) towards the question of sustainability I wonder if their approach (seemingly sacrificing good journalism to keep making a profit) has filtered down somehow.

I’m not suggesting journalists are only interested in money (you’ve already pointed out why that’s pointless) but perhaps journalists are more conscious that they need to make money for the paper so they are subconsciously changing their attitude towards stories they perhaps don’t see as profitable.

You’ve given examples that show you’ve identified where your passion for reporting influences sales of the paper. So perhaps what I’m trying to get across is that regionals need to be looking at why the paper sells and helping its journalists to see that. The passion would tie directly into a successful paper as well as a well-served community.

You’ve written on this before David so it’ll be nothing new to you. If only all regionals involved their journalists like that, instead of sacking them and replacing journalism with glorified discussion forums.

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phil AT philipjohn DOT co DOT uk

I’ve seen worse, too.

I hate it because all it does it show the world that you need to obfuscate your e-mail address because you get a lot of spam.

Presumably then, you’re a good target for spammers because your spam filters (if any) are so poor they let such garbled crap (not to mention the phishing e-mails) through.

Problem is those spammers scouring the web harvesting e-mails to spam probably picked up on the whole obfuscation game about two seconds after it was dreamt up by whichever dimwit thought it would ever work.

As a simple example, looking for ‘@’ in a regular expression (that’s how they search web pages for certain patterns of text) could just be turned into something like ‘@|AT’ to cover your obfuscation. Okay, so that’s not the exact syntax but it’s damn close!

Instead, stop using fucking Hotmail or Yahoo or even that free e-mail address you got from Freeserve three million years ago that you’ve just held on to through all the buyouts and re-branding and get yourself a decent e-mail provider that provides some semblance of spam filtering that works!

Also known as GMail.

I use GMail for everything, have done for years and at best I seem to see 1 spam e-mail per month. I’ve very rarely had a legitimate e-mail land in my spam folder and even then it’s been a mass mailing, nothing sent to me personally.

Rant over.

Edit: I forgot something. Not only does it NOT stop spammers, it also makes it harder for people to e-mail you because that have to take every [at] and [dot] and change it. If you invite prospective clients to contact you by e-mail you may as well go outside and piss into the wind for all the good it will do you.

Secondly, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had e-mails from my ‘friends’ using the likes of Hotmail that has been pure spam. Not only do you not get a decent spam filter, your account is used to send spam too! The words face palm spring to mind…

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What will this do exactly? Show that most of the litter starts at the likes of fast food chains, snack manufacturers and soft drinks companies.

Brilliant, because I would have predicted the top brands to be Chanel, Fabergé and Harrods.

Let me guess – Keep Britain Tidy will then tell the top brands to sort it out.

Except it’s not the brands that are dropping the chuffing litter is it boys and girls… it’s people who probably don’t give a toss – that’s the whole reason they drop it in the first place.

KBT’s news page also reveals they’re working very hard watching for litter dropping on Corrie. Well thank fuck for that!

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“Nearly 5,000 followers on force social media sites http://bit.ly/foyiNn“

Brilliant. Good for them. It’d help if they actually engaged though on those social media sites. Or maybe the force is socially inept as an organisation.

Twitter

I actually went through all of @StaffsPolice‘s 1,463 tweets. I found 21 replies (though I may have missed some). After running the account through TweetStats I was given the figure of 1.3% of total tweets were replies. That’s 19 if I’ve done my maths right.

The real telling stat though, was this one;

Over 90% of their tweets are completed automated, generated from an RSS feed with no input from an actual Police officer or employee.

There is some good news though – they have a few manned Twitter accounts which are working on a more community level which you can see in action on the Twitter list.

Facebook

This is a funny one! Or at least, it made me chuckle before I got annoyed by it… The force’s Facebook page has 1,027 “fans” (or whatever Facebook is calling them this week).

Despite some good signs of engagement back in October it seems to have tailed off. The few examples there are focus on the Staffs Police asking us how they’re doing at social Media. Here’s a great example;

Across all of our social media sites we have 5,000 followers! Are you likely to engage more with Staffordshire Police because of Facebook and Twitter than you would if these weren’t available? Please post your comments below.

Andy Bennetts: Are you going to engage with the public through social media? It doesn’t look like it so far. Your various social networking accounts are a one way conveyor of ideas and information. There’s no conversation going on. You post links etc. people comment and that’s that. Doesn’t look like engagement to me.

Staffordshire Police Thanks for your comments, these will be useful as we look to increase the number of social media sites, especially at a local level, and also improve the way we use the sites to engage with youselves. Keep updated at www.staffordshire.police.uk/about_us/social_media/

Andy Bennetts: Just like that.

Andrew Fox: MegaLolz.. Thankyou for you engagement.

And then there’s the forum discussion they started asking how they’re doing. No replies; maybe they should take that as a hint. Once again the Facebook page is mostly made up of automated postings from an RSS feed using an app called RSS Graffiti – no human involvement.

YouTube

Honestly, I’ve got better things to do.

I’d like to make this a sort of open request to Staffordshire Police: please get better. Go and ask Nick Keane and other forces for lessons in doing this right.

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I won’t regurgitate the details, if you’re reading this you probably know what it’s about. Let’s look at this sensibly;

1. Facebook is a web site – it’s on the World Wide Web, a globally-accessible, publicly-available open network.
2. Your Facebook is protected by a password- that’s all. No secure server, nothing. So it’s not that secure anyway.
3. You accepted the terms & conditions and everything that goes with them.
4. You choose what information you put onto Facebook. Anything that can be seen publicly is as a result of your actions.

Bearing this in mind I find it hard to see why so many people are so up in arms that their ‘data’ is out there.

I will concede that Terms & Conditions are often pretty damn cheeky with lines like “we reserve the right to change these T&Cs without actually telling you” which is, in my opinion, unethical and yes, significant changes should be subject to acceptance of new terms and conditions, just like you have to accept new friend requests.

That shows that the problem is not in what Facebook is doing so much as what it asks you it can do. You give it permission to do what it’s done, then later when it actually happens and you actually realise what the unintended consequences were, you attack Facebook.

Facebook is only to blame for it’s lazy Terms and Conditions. They’re certainly not the first though and won’t be the last.

Thing is, we all know none (or very few) of us actually bother to read the T&Cs and that is no-one’s fault but our own. It’s kinda hard to expect anyone to do that when their privacy policy is reportedly longer than the U.S. constitution. I don’t honestly expect anyone to actually read that.

What I would like to see however is people taking ownership of their actions. Realising that the data is out there because they made the decision to put it out there, rather than being horrified when Facebook changes the way it publishes that data.

Facebook can only do that because you gave it your data in the first place. I only put information on the web that I’m comfortable telling any random stranger on the street. Therefore, I’m not bothered how Facebook uses that information (including making it available to third party apps & web sites) because it’s nothing sensitive.

The bottom line is, take ownership of your data. Don’t give it away if you wouldn’t be willing to tell a stranger, ’cause that’s all Facebook is – a stranger – despite the close relationships you may maintain on the site.

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There is no web 1.0 or web 2.0 or even web 3.0. There is only the evolving web. I despise the use of the phrase “web 2.0″ when it relates to web design, for example – it implies that it needs to have cool jQuery and Ajax stuff going on. You know what, if you’re building a site figure out your user need and build it using the right technologies. Don’t just build a “web 2.0″ site ’cause it’s what all the cool kids are doing.

Okay, rant over. But who’s to say I’m right. Disagree at will using the comments.

This was posted via web from Philip’s posterous

There is no new and old media. There is only evolving media. Right now it’s going through what I consider to be a paradigm shift – a period of uncertainty which is changing all our perceptions of how news will be delivered and by whom.

I’m fortunate enough to be at the forefront of this evolution, and boy is it exciting!

This was posted via web from Philip’s posterous

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So why do so many web sites insist on asking for exactly that?

I got a little irate earlier this week (maybe ’cause I’d been in a bad mood all day) at eMusic. I was doing a bit of research for my post about Spotify and just wanted to find out how much eMusic subscriptions were so I could compare the cost and support my argument that Spotify is too expensive when put up against the likes of eMusic.

Could I find out about the subcription plans let alone the prices though? No. I faced the same wall whatever I tried: a 13 field registration form which was just step 1 of a 3 step process.

It’s the same story with sites like Love Film which ask for your bank details just to get a free trial. They say stuff like “to make it easier for you to sign up after your trial, if you want to.” No it’s not, you just know some people are flakey and won’t be arsed to cancel. Or, like me, will cancel last minute but you’ll have already charged my account in advance for the first months subscription that I never actually said I wanted. (I got my own back, by the way.)

I had a brief conversation with eMusic on Twitter about this little phenomenon;

• eMusicNews: @philipjohn This link should point you in the right direction:http://bit.ly/mMGrR
• PhilipJohn: @eMusicNews That asks me to login. How is that useful if I’m not a subscriber and want to know what my choices for subscribing are?
• eMusicNews: @philipjohn I believe there should be an option there to set up an account. If you go through that process, you should see plan options.
• PhilipJohn: @eMusicNews Yeah but only if I give you my passport, birth certificate and god knows what else. It’s called a barrier to conversion.
• eMusicNews: @philipjohn Hi Philip -if you fill in the first reg page, the 2nd page shows you the available plans.
• PhilipJohn: @eMusicNews I get that but I don’t want to part with personal info just to see your prices. It’s like demanding ID to enter a high st shop!
• eMusicNews: @philipjohn Sorry….

Know the phrase, “sorry isn’t good enough”?

You might be thinking, “why do you care so much, they’re the ones loosing out?” They probably are missing out on customers because they’re putting up a barrier to conversion.

Thing is, I’m passionate about the web and how it can be used successfully for businesses. But putting up barriers to conversion in any business is surely a bad idea (unless they’re designed as a qualifier). I hate to see examples of the web done ‘wrong’ because I want to see a web that is easy to use, free of frustration and ultimately a good experience for the user.

Yes, I’m an idealist, bit of a dreamer but it’s not impossible. It’s certainly not hard. So why not JFDI?!

I’ll make this an open letter to all on line businesses… open up. Take down your barriers. Let people in. You’ll benefit in the long run.

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I’ll keep this short. How can the UK Government possibly think that asking for 2Mbps in it’s preliminary Digital Britain report is anywhere near acceptable?

Virgin, theoretically, can achieve 200Mbps with their fibre (aka FTTC) network. Though the actual speed is unlikely to be that high in reality, they do quote a minimum of 100Mbps downstream.

They’re still likely to end up beating BT to it in any case, completing their rollout by 2012.

It makes the Government look like a bunch of uneducated fools touting 2Mbps as the speed to have whereas thousands (if not millions) of homes already have twice that and will potentially, in the next 3 years have one hundred times that speed at their fingertips.

The Government is so far behind the curve it’s infuriating. How can we, as a country, possibly be innovative enough to compete on the world stage with that kind of attitude from Government.

So here’s my request to the folks in Whitehall: Stop spending money on a report that is about two years out of date before actually being fully produced and instead spend it incentivising companies like BT and Virgin to speed up their rollout.

I’m moving to San Francisco if you don’t.

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