Nick Mudge’s Technology and Government Weblog

About 3 weeks ago I went to the 2005 California Best of the Web.

I was standing in the hall and a lady got my attention. She told me she does the Experimental Space blog. I instantly knew who she was. I often check over at that blog because it has some good tech and egov news there sometimes and I like it. Recently I decided to post the New Oxford American Dictionary: 'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year story in GT News after seeing her mention it in her blog.

This is the first time I've met in person another blogger I knew about through the web, and who knew me through my blog (and we never directly communicated or address each other before, through email or anything. Just read each other's blogs.) It was exciting and I really enjoyed it, and I'm amazed by how similar our knowledge and action is. I asked her if she uses del.icio.us. She said yes, and said she reads David Fletcher's bookmarks. That's awesome. I told her I read his bookmarks too. (For a Govtech News editor, a Gov IT director's travels around the Web is an amazing resource.) I asked her how she knew it was me that does this blog that you're seeing right now. She said she read my name tag I was wearing; it said Nick Mudge.

I've read about other bloggers and people meeting in person. It's nice to experience it.

Afterwards I realized that one of the person's bookmarks I have within my del.icio.us account is bhaven, and I realized that those are Barbara Haven's bookmarks. I had been looking at her bookmarks without knowing who she was. I recently blogged about Tim Berners-Lee starting a blog, which I found through her bookmarks, though I knew it was her by then.

9:35pm | web technology - government resources - egovernment - blogs | no comments

The guy who invented the Web, Tim Berners-Lee started a blog last week. He got 455 comments on his first post before he turned comments off.

Here's one of the things he said in his first post:

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

And then:

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.

5:07pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

This Hole in the Wall story was interesting.

2:23pm | egovernment - workforce | no comments

I'm working on a blog piece about the California Best of the Web. I have rather a lot to say, which is good, so it will be fairly long I think. I think I'll be done with it in a couple days.

2:20pm | open government | no comments

I'm going to be doing most of my blogging from now on at my blog Content & Technology Crossroads, priorly named Intersection (Just changed the name 5 minutes ago).

The reason is because I've noticed that most of my interest is in the evolving landscape of the interaction between people, content and Web technology to provide better information services over the Internet. I want to narrow in on that subject. And it seems to me that I'm most adept on that subject.

Most of what it will have on it will be applicable to eGovernment, as it will be applicable to anyone or thing that has an interest in providing better technology, information and public relations on the Internet.

And I should add, I think it will be more personal because sometimes I just feel like writing what I feel like writing.

12:12pm | web technology | no comments

NY Times: Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese

Here's a comment about this story left on Digg.com that cracked me up:

oh my gosh! I can't believe that we are even outsourcing our videogame playing so we don't have play it ourselves! What is this world coming to? TOO lazy to build up your own character's experience, so you pay someone else to do it for you? REALLY PATHETIC! But it sounds like a great job!!!

12:35pm | web technology | no comments

From Nevon:

The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, started a blog last week, called Nick Robinson's Newslog.

His first post includes this text:

[...] The BBC is about to start a trial series of blogs, each of which will be built using the kind of software employed by millions of weblogs around the world. This is the first of that trial.

The 'kind of software' Robinson refers to presumably means TypePad as his blog is a TypePad blog (so a very nice coup for Six Apart Europe in getting this deal with the BBC).

10:29am | web technology | no comments

I thought this was fascinating. The Washington Post is moving beyond news.

Check out this from bespacific:

Washington Post Launches U.S. Votes Database
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/009829.html#9829

Data:

This makes sense. I've learned that the Web is about delivering information. Information is so general. It could be a one sentence blurb about something, or a full length editorial, or a news story, or it could just be data about something. It doesn't matter as long as the information is presented and provided in a useful way. If there is a news website about something, I think it is smart to pretty much get as much related information about the subject as possible on the news website or link to it off the website (doesn't matter if the information is news or not, only matters that the information is used and provided in a useful way). Connect tons of databases of information that are related to the subject of the news website. I think news website is a misnomer. It should be information website. A news website or information website should cater to and make it easy to put and connect as many forms and kinds of information to it as possible that is related to the subject of the site.

There may be a concern that too much stuff will crowd a website, making it overwhelming and bulging etc. and concerns of how to fit so much stuff on a homepage etc. I think the answer is to span it out. Each web page should be clean looking and focus on as few things as possible. Why have only one Homepage for the whole site? Why not have 5 homepages for the whole site that each focus on a different aspect of information and/or format of information contained in the Website? It's not necessary to show someone everything that the Website has. It is only necessary to show someone what one wants. If someone wants to know everything that you have, it is good to a have a directory or multiple directories that point the visitor to many things or all things that you have.

Google is a good example. It doesn't have a single homepage for its whole site. It has section homepages for many different aspects of google: Homepages about specific google services, hompages for things about the company google, homepages about how to do things with google things, etc. It has directories, it has webpages, and it has a search web page (www.google.com). The closest thing I know of in google to a hompage for the whole site is google.com, which only displays a few of google's services. Here is one of the directories that branches out into many different section homepages in google: http://www.google.com/intl/en/about.html Anyway I was just using Homepages as an example of spanning out. We can never have too much information or services. We should get as much services and information as we can and organize it by differentiating it as distinctly as possible, while associating and connecting related information and services. I think the key though in organization is differentiation. Keeping the same kind of data distinctly seperate from other kinds of data. Or binding together a bunch of data that may be disrelated but has a very useful common theme or aspect, like location.

There is a saying that the Web is flat. That means that information should never be buried deep into a website. Information should always be upfront. People should have to click deeper into a website as least as possible. Always work on expanding information and services horizontally, never vertically. Make the users click as least as possible to get to the information they want. The more you span your information and focus on as few things as possible, the more you can put the information the user wants on top. The more specific and more focused on few things as possible your web pages are the better search technology can search and handle it. Use search to bring to the front information users want. There are ways of expanding information horizontally and bringing it to the front, like a flat webdesign and user personalization. Some websites create ways for users to easily create their own webpages containing their information.

Realize that the Web is a decentralized model. The Website designs and approaches that follow the Web's decentralized pattern are the ones winning big (Google, Myspace.com, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, blogs, blogger.com, craigslist, etc.) The hardware may be centralized but the software, user interaction, content, web design is decentralized. These things are comming from all over the place. The site content is flat -- horizontal.

4:17pm | web technology | no comments