links for 2010-11-24

Fantastically nuanced response from Steph Gray to the Martha Lane-Fox report on government websites. Lots of really good stuff from interested parties in the comments too

"Are we doing all this [releasing data] to ultimately provide value to citizens? Or just to give more fuel to journalists, political activists, bloggers, advocacy groups to draw more readers or supporters? Are normal people like you and me getting anything concrete out of this? Will we or our children ever get more engaged once we are drawn in data or bombarded by more factoids that different groups pull together to make their point?"

Very good post looking at the impact of releasing spending data on local government

"As I've noted many a time, the record of open source usage by the UK government has been and still is utterly dismal. Part of the problem is that few people are aware of how a few big companies have the vast majority of government IT deals all sewn up: the new data next year should expose that unhealthy concentration, and maybe even make a few government managers rightly uncomfortable with it. But in contrast to this new-found and welcome enthusiasm of the UK government for open data, I'm hearing precious little from it on the subject of open source."

"While I was doing that work, I noticed that the Guardian is a very thoughtful organisation. Some might say this means that they are slow to take action, but I think that's unfair on them. In all my dealings with the company, they were thinking of their audience as well as their own staff and thinking about the media industry 10 years out". I definitely prefer to think of my projects as 'thoughtful' rather than 'late'.

"There is a lot of mythologising about journalism right now. Psychologically, I can understand this. Journalists feel threatened, and we’re trying to make the case of how essential we are to democracy. We’re trying to make the case that what we do is indispensable. I understand this, but I think that sometimes this imagined past is getting in the way of creating a new sustainable future for journalism."

"The book challenges the conventional wisdom that the internet has undermined business models by claiming there is no correlation between internet usage and newspaper profitability"

I was sad not to be able to get to Design Jam London, here are Jan's notes, with links through to some other coverage

This also looked like another fascinating evening that I missed out on.

Fascinating rant and response which I've only just caught up with. Not sure I'd ever summon the courage/foolhardiness to blog this hard about something in our collective industries that I was unhappy with...

"I’d suggest a good start would be to get the device to stop thinking it’s a phone. The Amazon Kindle has a SIM card for 3G access, but it’s knows it isn’t a phone. It may be a small point, but I prefer my devices without the split personality."