London social media development February 14, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, social objects, London, cider , add a commentIt was Wednesday evening so I went along to the Coach and Horses in Greek St, Soho to take part in an early user testing session for i-together’s new twitter and google maps mashup project. The usability test was run by Ofer Deshe of Flow Interactive who introduced himself as coming from a background in cognitive psychology, using techniques borrowed from ethnographical anthropology, so being chosen as the user to be observed was something of a privilege. I was sat in front of a laptop running a web service with no explanation or guidance, asked simply to explore and try to make sense of it. Well I just hope my slightly flummoxed attempts at navigation and comments provided some useful data.
Afterwards we had some wide ranging conceptual discussions which touched on ideas about public identity and personal security, activities or events as social objects, the natural development of some online communities into face-to-face meetups and much more. There’s still a fair amount of work to be done on the prototype service, both in explaining the concepts and making a winning user interface, but if anyone can do it then Luke, Benjie and Jof are in position to succeed with support from the vibrant and friendly London social media development community.
The Coach and Horses is also the venue for Social Media Café on Friday, and I was happily able to use the free wifi to update the cider wiki to mention the Westons Old Rosie currently on tap.
Tim B-L says “This is serious” June 22, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, internet, theory, web2.0 , add a commentI tend to have a kind of “faith” that once the technology has been invented, then it generates a momentum of its own which will obey certain natural laws regardless of individual human motives. So once the internet existed, it was pretty much inevitable that people were going to communicate and collaborate across international and corporate boundaries, and that any attempts to stifle or steal ownership of this could always be circumvented, sidestepped or innovated around. If somebody did manage to completely clamp down on the present internet then we’d just set up another one wouldn’t we? Well maybe I’m being over optimistic. Tim Berners Lee says it’s serious:
When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
Net Neutrality: This is serious | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs
Citizen Frankie June 20, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, UK , comments closedFrankie Roberto is taking a week off from the Science Museum to join an experiment at the BBC.
Frankie’s own news site : http://frankieroberto.com/citizenjournalist/
Reporting Back ( BBC Diary of the experiment )
Frankie’s entry for a new BBC Homepage May 26, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, UK , comments closedFrankie Roberto has submitted an excellent entry to the BBC’s competition to redesign their homepage. I think it’s a really well thought out design based upon sound principles that Frankie has obviously given a lot of thought to, and cares about. He’s created a mini-website to present his proposal together with the thinking behind it and used Movable Type to allow feedback. That’s a technique which is in advance of simply using a blog page for an online exhibition
Frankie has a lot of time for the BBC and boasts a good track record at entering writing competitions so I wish him well with this one,
The thing is, you really need to read his blog entry about it as well in order to get the whole picture, so I hope that is part of the entry as well.
Frankie Roberto - Citizen journalist January 22, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : london bloggers, social media, wildlife, internet, Flickr, London , comments closed“All in all, a good few days for citizen journalism, if not so great for the whale.”
So concludes a lengthy blog from Frankie Roberto who has taken a big interest in citizen journalism and wikinews recently. No doubt he has his reasons for doing so.
frankie roberto blog - Citizen journalists report on the London whale
photo by Mr Jaded
Tags: London, blogging, citizen, journalism, media, news, websites, whale
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
