ONS Web Strategy
I was asked to present the ONS Web Strategy to a programme board last week, and also include some material on data mashups. I searched for good simple but visually stimulating demos, and was disappointed to find very little new material. I returned to the Yahoo Pipes demo I created two years ago, and found it still a very powerful way to convey the potential of data mashups. I think the audience found it helpful too (at least I have been asked to make it more widely available).
So, here it is running as a Flash “movie” condensed into just 5 minutes. Alternatively, you can run the pipe live (and copy it if you like).
Before that, I ran the excellent “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video from Michael Wesch. This and other fascinating videos can be found on his Digital Ethnography site. His key message about separating content from form really is the driver for everything that is happening with data on the web at the moment.
To illustrate the ONS strategy, which has Mass Collaboration at its heart, I used two case studies, the first of which involved a prop made by my 9-year-old son, Robert.
“Spike” is a Lego Mindstorms robot. What does it have to do with Mass Collaboration? The first version of Mindstorms was not a great success, but it was reverse engineered by some fans, and once Lego had decided not to sue them, they instead asked them to help design a better product. It is all the better for the involvement of its customers in its development. Lego have gone even further now, by giving away their design tool and allowing enthusiasts to design, publish and rate their own models.
The second case study was AuctionMapper, which uses the eBay API to create a totally new way of exploring eBay Auctions. Another great example of the fruits of publishing an open API and letting in customer creativity.
The Wave is growing
I’ve highlighted Google Wave before, but now it has been launched to a large number of beta users, more and more people are exploring just what it can do. Here is a wonderful demonstration of Google Wave for Tarantino fans (not for the faint hearted!):
Goodbye Visio?
A warm welcome to Creately, an online competitor to Visio. It looks nice, with good collaboration features and an underlying data model that has me thinking about its potential as a real modelling tool. Of course, I’d also like to see an Archimate template here too. Watch the video to get an idea of what it can do.
Service Architecture Review Method – a prezi
I’ve enthused about Prezi before, and with an upcoming conference presentation on service architecture reviews, what better opportunity to try it out for real.
My experience? Prezi seems easy to use, once you get used to the different menu / control navigation. But you realise quickly that with a virtual, infinite, blank sheet of paper, and no Powerpoint template behind which you can hide, you have to really think about the concepts you want to convey, and how they relate to each other.
The result is that you come out with a better understanding of your subject than you started with. Whether it also produces a good presentation remains an open question. For my first serious attempt, you can take a look below (you’ll have to guess the words I will use to accompany it).
Are you a tweetotaller?
At last someone has expressed just what I feel about Twitter. Thank you Devin Coldewey.
(this post is less than 140 characters!)