ruralnet|online - help create the next generation of web services from ruralnet|uk

Comments and registration for this site now closed

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:42:30 +0100

The co-design phase of ruralnet|online has now closed but will remain here for reference.

The launch of ruralnet|online 2.0

Simon Berry — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:17:30 +0100

Here is my presentation of the new version of ruralnet|online delivered at collaborate|2008. Sorry that the audio is a but stuttery . . . I need more practice. but anyway I think it is still helpful.

[Addendum: at one point I say we had 40,000 users. I should have said 4,000 users and this is the number on the slide.]

if the slide transitions don't work automatically for you, you will have to advance them yourself. Or, you could go to slideshare and watch it there.

| View | Upload your own

Pulling insights together

Simon Berry — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:24:08 +0100

All the insights gathered in this co-design exercise have been pulled together to produce a prototype for ruralnet|online 2.0. This prototype is a fully working system for the Rural Community Carbon Network and is live here: www.communitycarbon.net. It was launched at collaborate|2008 on 10/4/08. Click on the image above to view an annotated screenshot which describes each area of the 'root' page.

The Community Carbon Network is truly innovative and draws on the ideas expressed here over the last 3 months. The key factors that guided this implementation are: >>Read more

User interface

Simon Berry — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:51:21 +0000

I think I have just caught a glimpse of the user interface for ruralnet|online 3.0

Something to get your teeth into

Simon Berry — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:48:13 +0000

Thanks for everyone's input so far. It's now pay back time. Drawing everything together and injecting Paul's and Duncan's excellent work this week with Wordpress MU the image to the left is an attempt to show the status of our current thinking. A focus on relationships between people and organisations rather than 'information'. A focus on 'services' rather than 'content'.

In summary, it's a graphical RSS aggregator, maybe Google Apps For Your Domain, with WordPress (organisational websites and individual blogs), Drupal (Experts Online), Gmail (for those who want it) and other things sitting behind it. Although we're focussing on ruralnet|online here we'd be able to replicate this for other networks using the Networks Online philosophy.

Please let us know what you think. This is an Aunt Sally for everyone to have a go at.

Key questions are: What's the business model? Do we need a forum facility? What about shared file storage?

:-)

What about Google Custom Search (GCS)?

Simon Berry — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:32:54 +0000

This is one of Google's best kept secrets. It's a free service but you'll need to sign up for a Google account if you don't already have one. Within Google Custom Search you can set up as many customised searches as you like and then GCS provides you with a bit of code to paste into your website (or blog) and this displays a search box and search button. Like this:

About this search

So what is a custom search? A custom search works just like the main Google search but just searches the list of websites (or bits of websites) that you specify when you set it up.

This one searches all the websites that I am contributing to. This includes my personal blog, my cycle websites and the things I post here. Note that GCS can be setup to search parts of a website. So this custom search only searches my contributions on this site, not the whole site.

So what's the relevance of GCS for the new ruralnet|online? Well, if we go down the road that Paul is suggesting, ie we provide a Pageflakes page with all the key rural feeds on it, then we could also, in theory, provide a custom search to cover the websites that these feeds come from. So the pageflakes site would provide a snapshot of the latest rural information from many sources, while the Custom Search would provide a search over all of those sources. I'm pretty sure that the GCS could be incorporated into the Pageflakes page which would be neat.

What about Twitter?

Simon Berry — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:20:39 +0000

I have to admit to being a bit sniffy about Twitter. I took a look at the public area of their website (see image) a while ago and was a bit put off. Then I realised I was falling into the trap that so many people fell into when they dismissed blogs on the basis of who they perceived were using them and what they were using them for.

I remind myself. It's not about content its about the underlying functionality and the network of people using it, or potentially using it. Anyone can use twitter (or any other technology) for whatever content they like. Contrast twitter's public feed with the view I get of twitter: Interesting mini observations and calls for help from trusted friends, a feed from the BBC on technology and the rural news from xPRESS Digest.

So twitter, like everything else, is what you make it. The real question is: "Is the network of Twitter users relevant to ruralnet? Are there people using Twitter that would appreciate ruralnet|online services delivered to them in this way?"

To try and find out and as part of an experiment, I have set up a Twitter account called 'ruralnet_xpress' and each day I am pasting the day's rural headlines to it. So far ruralnet_xpress has two followers me and Paul Webster - cheers Paul! If you're a Twitter user and would like a daily dose of rural headlines, you know what to do.

On the road with the Circuit Riders

p.henderson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:05:38 +0000

Yesterday and today I'm out and about with at the UK Circuit Riders conference in sunny Birmingham. We had a great day yesterday and I helped out with a session run by David Wilcox, Nick Booth and Laura Whitehead who I've finally met!). highlight of the session was the chance to Skype with Beth Kanter (who has already blogged about it here).

Linking up the debates via xPRESS and CPRE

p.henderson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:51:31 +0000

I picked up on a new 'forum' while doing xpress this morning. It's from the CPRE and nothing more sophisticated than a Wordpress.com blog.

A comment on Paul's post - rsnonline

Simon Berry — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:11:09 +0000

This is really a comment on Paul's latest post.

Following a long train journey and discussion with my colleague Brian Rich last October I produced a 'Green Paper' which described what I thought ruralnet|online 2.0 would look like. See the document Forum ideas.doc attached. The graphic here is part of that document and if you go to www.rsnonline.org.uk they look remarkably similar.

However, when I presented these ideas to my colleagues at ruralnet|uk they challenged me. "How do you know that this is what users want?" they said. And this co-design process was born.

So. Will we go through this exercise and come back to my green paper and implement that anyway? No, we will definitely not. One thing this process has reinforced is that ruralnet|online is not about information. It's about relationships. It's about making links between people and the ideas they have. For example, Experts Online is about putting one person in touch with another (an expert) who can help them. The shared information and resources this generates is a spin-off of the relationship building process.

So, I think, ruralnet|online should start with the ideas expressed here and here.

If we develop (and I think we will) a forum-type feature then it will be based on Web 2.0's ability to make links (relationships again) between people and ideas. It won't be an information system. See Ideas on Forums.

Added on 22/2/08
Another thing I should have said is that a key aspect of our strategy is the ability to deliver services through the websites of others (see thread 3). So we have already contacted the 'Rural Services Network' to offer free access to Experts Online (the RSSupport implementation) and a free 'rural services' newsfeed from our xPRESS Digest News Service.