Photo by Laihu (Flickr)

HootSuite: A twitter app with enough power features to beat the rest of them. I use lists to keep up to date with important twitter updates, and tend to leave my home feed well alone (full of followers that I don’t always need to hear about). I’ve got geographic lists for Bristol (events, announcements, last minute festival changes), a VIP list for movers and shakers, and a news list to get important instant updates.

Latitude / Places / Maps: Part of the core Android operating system, Latitude is set to follow my location and plot this on Google Maps. More for and interesting record of all the places travelled than having any real purpose, the other features on the Maps app including GPS navigation are essential.

NewsRob: I want a way of receiving blog / print media / online magazine and industry updates. NewsRob syncs perfectly with Google Reader and is worth upgrading to the paid version to provide a constant flow of commute-time reading. It is my source to get feature articles and commentary from UK and Australian press, and sources like Lifehacker

Nimbuzz: An all in one instant messaging and cheap phonecall app [via Voip] – it rolls in Facebook Chat, Googel Talk, MSN Messenger, Skype and more. Intuitive and reliable. It is the replacement for  the Skype-less Fring.

SMS Backup: I want my SMS messages to be integrated with Email. This is the near perfect solution, it backs up SMS messages to Gmail to provide a big picture of your correspondence with contacts.

HulloMail: …Lets take this further: Why shouldn’t voicemail be integrated with Email? I want to listen and retrieve voicemails in my inbox – HulloMail is aiming for a deep and seamless integration so that all your communication can be centralised and streamlined. The application routes your voicemail number to HulloMails servers and sends the voicemail as an embedded audioto your email. Invaluable.

StreamFurious: Connecting to a preferred radio station to stream quality music is painless and easy with always available internet and StreamFurious. I customise my radio experience to hear new and great music and news: Australia’s Triple J radio, BBC World Service or Seattle College radio KEXP while making that long drive is excellent.

myPlayer: BBC’s iPlayer made available on the Android. Unpolished but a great effort with live radio and live TV as well as the full archive of BBC shows.

pdaNet: Tether your phone to your computer and turn it into an emergency modem. Great when you’re stuck and need a net connection for your laptop. With a 3G network you can get OK speed to collect emails and work remotely.

Other: Not exactly apps! Home screen shortcuts are great for giving quick access to important websites. Not every app gives you excellent value – the Facebook app is one such example and is a productivity drain rather than a useful addition to your app collection. I opt to place a shortcut to Facebooks notifications screen instead: http://touch.facebook.com/notifications.php is optimised for iphone/android as is the more buggy and stripped back http://m.facebook.com/notifications.php. It only needs a brief check to see if there’s anything you need to view/read/reply to. http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/mobile/ is another useful one to have in the UK and have this set to my current city for a 24 hour forecast

As part of an email conversation I mentioned that as part of the free flow of information online, citizen journalism is a vital element and something which deserves more exposure rather than less. How reliable is it? We might gauge its reliability on two levels. 1) is there a ‘tribe’ present 2) can the authors position, or an indication of neutrality be identified given such an anonymous space as the web.

While good at adding breadth, the failure of citizen reporting is it’s lack of contribution to traditional journalism. It largely fails to add depth to an issue. However, issues and themes get a voice and a platform, where media orgs and traditional journalism had previously couldn’t afford them the space. Does one owe anything the other?? coverage will greatly increase as the proliferation of citizen journalism becomes part of teh media mix on our mobile and home devices.

The impact of citizen reporting on traditional journalism? It will be partly at the expense of traditional media titles and outlets – the survivors of which will find ways to adapt and provide value. Where news has previously not been selective and personalised, users now have a choice to find a media mix of traditional and new journalism. The immediate impact will be dramatic while traditional media finds ways to adapt to new modes of delivering content.

What does social media brings to citizen journalism? It rapidly divides and personalises news content, and it gives prominence to news items with the greatest mass appeal – this is a disadvantage – Journalism becomes a means to activate a community of interests. In the long tail, all content is given an audience over time, and users seek to comment and build on a piece

The ways to social media? Start with Live web, geographic applications, voting, adding reviews, sharing and annotating content — using platforms, qype, facebook, twitter, linkedin and others.

In the future, citizen journalism and social media will develop with a lot of synergy, as personalisation and targeted, geographic aware, fragmented and intricately shared content becomes common place.

Disley.info - developed by First Interval

Approaching First Interval with a request for way to manage their own content, council offices in Disley, East Cheshire UK now have a WordPress based, dynamic and easy to update website at www.disley.info.

With training and guidance, Mary and the office staff quickly learnt the simple steps to add news, events and manage the entire website with a few simple clicks. Website engagement has also increased, and it gives a great perspective on local life for visitors and residents alike.

It’s been a pleasure to work with Disley Parish Council, and it will be great to explore other opportunities with hyper-local websites and complementary community sites in the future.

Funding seminars

The arts plays a large part in leading to open and respectful exchanges of views between individuals and groups belonging to different cultures – it leads to a deeper understanding of the other’s world perception. It’s extremely rewarding to involve yourself in culture, and it brings an intrinsic smile to the fore when you then discover a place like the TATE modern or taking time out at the Louvre.

It’s been a micro-site factory here in the Peaks District, with extraordinarily fast turn-arounds on two sites promoting funding seminars for the art sector, and for a UK consultancy tasked with representing the EU for major arts funding programs.

Developing a micro-site to signpost visitors in the right direction, the project for EUCLID successfully provides an overview of corporate activities, and leads the visitor in a clear path to the unsuprisingly tangled web of European funding!

• Fresh From…the City – “more and more, people are realising that decisions regarding food and health are too important to leave in the hands of others”.
• OutlookDeck Cuts Through Busy Inbox Noise [Downloads] – analysing productivity at work? this post also links to a bunch of outlook boosters

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• Bloblive: Pitch your best green biz idea – Open Mic nights turn from comedy and music to 'ideas'. Liking this a lot.
• DIY, No-Electricity Lighting from 2-Liter Bottles [Weekend Project] – inspiring innovation via a youtube video – video that won't work with England's sunlight hours.as well as Brazil
• Non Profits Lack Social Media Strategy – spelling out what is very apparent across the 3rd sector, given the example of the uk's highest profile charity event Comic Relief's social media presence.
• Frost over the World – John Kerry – 6 Mar 09 –
• Copenhagen Climate Council – "Green Growth Is the Only Growth We Can Afford," Says Hedegaard. Ahead of the Climate Council in Copenhagen (which I'll be attending), Danish minsters are adding important rhetoric ahead of this meeting. <br><br>The Climate Community is launching in March on this site and I hope you can join me there to see what may take place, and what this generation can do to influence the outcomes later this year.

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• Snowfalls in Britain Forcing Many to Work from Home – For my line of work it raised problems of remote server access (online backup service), checking certain email accounts efficiently when remote (google apps on a domain), mobile broadband USB dongles, and the use of other social apps such as social bookmarking, and IM. An interesting week.
• UK’s Directgov Giving Change.gov A Run For Its Money – Positive angle for citizen-engaged government from the UK. will the British public engage with participatory government? Can this rival the US based Change.gov for generated hype?

  While the UK observes all this from a distance, the presentation and dour-ness of government by the media is utterly different to that of the US (Obama), Australia (Rudd) or France (Sarkoszy) among others.

  If political leaders don’t inspire change, the public will take far longer to generate a snowball effect to drive change. I have my fingers crossed for a change in the mood of the British Isles so look out for my first post on Directgov shortly.

• Why Your Community-Building and Social Media Efforts Aren’t Working… – Creating a community around a love for paperclips?

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