Seems to me that Nokia have felt the growing pressure of free map services from it’s competitors and jumped on the bandwagon. I think this is a little late in the game, but they are a very trusted brand and could just pull it back from the edge.

I wonder what TomTom will do next????

Read more at CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10438524-266.html

Go and have a look at: http://data.gov.uk/home

I can understand Facebook’s problems with getting it right. The site has to use the capital in user generated content more and more. With it’s largest revenue stream still advertising, it needs to keep people engaged with the site. So their problem is finding the sweet spot between privacy and having enough interesting content to promote the site.

The question is, what is driving it? Making sure user’s have a safe, engaging time on the site or trying to keep the momentum of growth. “Giving users control” of their privacy settings seems to be a way to pass the buck and avoid finding that sweet spot. Most users will ignore it or not understand it, leaving their information in the public domain.

I think this is a thinly veiled attempt to brush over the privacy issue and utilise the biggest USP they have, their users’ content.

The two key features on the homepage for me are the search box and map navigation. The search is as you’d expect from something mimicking Google. The map is a standard mashup of council data for the area. By web standards nothing new.

But. What I really like about all this is the fact that the council have been brave and tried something new. The search interface works. I can type what I’m looking for and can get to it very easily. This is a vast difference to the traditional affair, like www.lbhf.gov.uk where I have to navigate through a pretty large sitemap to get to what I need. The added benefit is that the average user has used Google and are comfortable in that environment. Instead of a daunting set of navigation links, the user is presented with the familiar. They know what to do and what to expect.

Similarly with the map navigation. I can select different overlays and see what is in my local area. Now this, again, is the standard set of data expected from a council site, but it’s a sure foot on pathway to something really good. My only criticism is that the overlay selection panel should be to the right of the map, as currently you have to scroll off screen to select new data.

On the whole this is a great effort to break from the norms. And I for one would like to see more of this kind of innovation, particularly from the public sector. There is a tendency to “play it safe” from government sites which certainly prove the value in what’s spent, but do little to improve user value.

My fear is that whilst this is a great start to something better, it’s that it won’t be treated as that. It’s a start. Not the final product, but the start. There is a lot of improvement needed on this site to give real value to users. The ball is firmly in their court; let’s hope that they will keep up the momentum.

Visit http://www.westminster.gov.uk/ and let me know what you think.

The move has been pitched as the first company to provide a full application to disk integrated system. Oracle in a box basically. I think it’s a great move. One of the world’s best database systems running on designed hardware will make for truly awesome performance.

One thing that seems quite underplayed is the fact that MySQL is now in the fold. I predict MySQL appliances running on cheap, optimised hardware. This would work great in the budding cloud computing market.

Info for the Has-patch Marathon

Trac Bug List for 2.8

The H Online

And for those that want it, here is my presentation:

WordPress MU Presenation, OpenOffice Format

Now the basic premise of social networking is to allow this kind of interaction to build a “social network”, so I was faced with the problem of explaining this to people that didn’t quite understand how all of this fits into a data protection policy. Their default policy strictly prohibits the sharing of that kind of information and wanted the message removing. As far as I can tell there is no way to change that message.

So the problem is how does all this work together? The answer is quite straightforward. Facebook have gone to great lengths to protect their users data. There are policies in place to legally restrict what users can do, there is a developer policy as well. The API itself controls and prevents certain functions to allow the social interactions without allowing the application to abuse them. They even have a team that has to approve applications before they can be publicly available through Facebook.

They also have built a lot of functionality into Facebook to empower users with the ability to control their own privacy settings. One of these to control who has access to friends information. Every Facebook user has these settings and can control how their information is used. The code within the API takes these settings into consideration when performing operations with third party applications.

So the answer is clear. Don’t over complicate data protection policies within a social networking environment. Gone are the days when they had privacy issues. Facebook has, very publicly, built a great suite of tools and policies to protect their users. Don’t force users to adhere to another data protection policy when they themselves have the power to control their own. If user education is a concern, then add instructions on how a user can go about changing their privacy settings.

Too much policy control will cause problems with the evolving Internet. Don’t get me wrong, privacy and data protection are probably the biggest concern on the Internet, and life in general, today. But put in usable policies, work with the tools available and empower the user. That way, a balance can be made and the evolving web can keep moving forward.

So come along to for a great evening and a few beers.

To find out more and register, visit: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2149675/

My colleague has installed it and so far so good. The backwards compatibility modes look great, and the preview function is awesome. Other features that top the official info is better security and HTML5 support.

Security has always been a big concern for IE, so it will be good to see how well IE8 fares. The strapline underpinning the release seems to be “lessons learnt”. Big talk for the big browser.

Regarding the HTML5 support, well, it’s not exactly a huge leap forward. What I’m really looking forward to is decent CSS support. Actually, the biggest thing I’m looking forward to is, hopefully, the death of IE6. It’s the bane of every web developers life!

Read more about IE8