Wordle – Obama Inauguration Speech

Wordle – Obama Inauguration Speech – someone had to do it.

A few words of explanation for those who do not know what Wordle does. Wordle is just one of many tools that analyse a chunk of text and produce a graphic showing which words are mentioned most.  You can usually either paste a chunk of text into a box or point the tool at a URL. See also Tag clouds for analysing documents

Wordle: Obama Inauguration Speech

Pageflakes Family Law Blogs

John Bolch has set up a Pageflakes page covering Family Law. John’s Family Lore includes current family law blogs with UK family blawgs at the top and non-UK towards the bottom.

The feeds can also be viewed at Family Lore Focus

A Guide to Corporate Blogging

A Guide to Corporate Blogging looks at why blogging is crucial to corporations and outlines 13 Steps Fortune 500 companies take to create a blog. Cisco, Intel and HP share their experiences and approach to blogging.

The first 2 steps are the most important. Number 1 is to determine if blogging is a good fit for your company – it may not be. Remember just because other similar organisations are doing it does not mean that you have to follow suit. There may be other, more appropriate channels of communication for your company. Number 2 is determine if your company is willing to invest in a blog. Although blogs can be built on free platforms, time and money will be needed to customize it. Then there is the cost of allocating staff hours for blogging, maintaining the blog and managing comments and feedback.

Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media, noted, “A bad blog is worse than no blog. A dead blog is worse than no blog. But an engaging blog is one of the best things in the world that you can do for your business.”

The remaining steps are:

3. Create a strategy
4. Ensure that everyone is on the same page
5. Determine the Involvement of PR
6. Select Bloggers
7. Train the Bloggers
8. Writing Posts
9. Realize that the Blog doesn’t need a tone
10. Editing
11. Establish a Comment Policy
12. Develop a Promotion Strategy
13. Establish a Measurement program

The 33 comments to the posting take up more room than the article itself  but are worth reading. A couple of them mention the initial time involved to get started but that it is worth it in the long run in terms of increased traffic and business.

List and status of UK Local Council Twitters as of 18th December 2008

This list of UK local council twitterers was compiled by Liz Azyan Research and is on the Local Government Engagement Online Research Blog. As well as  giving Twitter details of  21 local councils, there is a Hall of Fame including the first council to start using Twitter (St Helens),  newest council (Pembrokeshire) and the council with most followers (St Helens and Barnet).  Also noted are councils using Twitter for particular service updates: Birmingham City Council Transport, Lichfield District Council Planning Applications and Leeds City Council Press Office

Legal papers served via Facebook

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7785004.stm

An Australian couple have been served with legal documents via Facebook.  The couple apparently missed payments on a loan of over A$100,000 and a lawyer in Canberra persuaded a court to allow him to use Facebook to serve repossession papers. Attempts had been made to contact them at their home address and via email, and they failed to attend a court appearance.

The lawyer found the woman’s Facebook page and used details  such as her date of birth to argue in Court that she was the person in question. Her partner was listed as one of her “friends”.  The judge stipulated that the papers be sent via a private email so that other people visiting the page could not read their contents.  Australian courts have already granted permission for people to be served with legally binding papers via email or text message.

Wikis That Work In The Real World

Wikis That Work In The Real World

This article in Information Week looks at how four companies are using wikis within their organisations: Angel.com, Publicis Group, Seagate and Red Mountain Retail Group.

Virtual World Watch

Tracking activity in UK universities and colleges.

Virtual World Watch (
http://virtualworldwatch.net/
)  is funded by the Eduserv Foundation. It is continuing the series of snapshots that have been undertaken by Silversprite Helsinki on the take-up of Second Life within the UK Higher and Further Education sector. While Second Life is still the most used virtual world by  UK academics for teaching and learning purposes, an increasing number are experimenting with alternatives. VWW is extending its research to include these alternatives.

Recent posts on the VWW blog include Buddhist monastery: University of Aberdeen, Leeds Metropolitan University: from Second Life to OpenSim and Second Life at the University of York.  There is also a useful blogroll of UK VW bloggers.