Tag: web 2.0

Who is the most web 2.0 savvy out of David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell?

UK-political-parties.jpgAshley Norris writes…

Sadly Gordon Brown has done the sensible thing/bottled out at the last minute (delete as appropriate) and put the general election on hold. Which personally I find a little disinegenious given that the Tech Digest team spent most of last week checking out the political parties’ online offerings so we could announce who we thought would win the web 2.0 election.

Well we can’t be bothered to hang on to this piece until May 2009 or whenever he pulls his finger out, so here is Tech Digest’s guide to how the UK polical hacks are using the web to combat the widespead political apathy which seems to have taken root in the UK.

None of the sites are anything near as whizzy or imaginative as Barack Obama’s online calling card, but there is some decent stuff out there including evidence that – get this – the Tories may have a sense of humour.

So do all these sites mean anything to anyone who is not a resident of Hackville? We got Tech Digest’s politically agnostic Deputy Editor Katherine Hannaford to find out.

Katherine Hannaford writes…

So the UK’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced on the weekend he wouldn’t be calling a general election this week. But it wasn’t because of David Cameron’s unscripted speech at the Tory party conference or the fact that he wants us to properly digest yesterday’s public spending review. It was because his minions couldn’t unearth a sex-tape showing an opposing MP in a compromising position in time. Ok, that was wishful thinking, admittedly.

Nope, the reason why ol’ Gord bottled it was because he hasn’t got his Facebook profile in order, he is still agonising about the poor viewing figures on his YouTube account and he hasn’t yet worked out what Digg is. Last I heard, he thought it was a gardening forum.

If only eh? Anyhow, instead of having a real general election in the UK, we here at Tech Digest are going to have a web 2.0 election – deciding which of the three main political parties have made the best web 2.0 efforts thus far. Read on below for the initiatives made by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, and we’ll give you a chance afterwards to elect a party to the Political web 2.0 Houses of Parliament….

Katherine Hannaford Top stories, Web 2.0

Shiny Media Poll: Shall we bring Web 2.0 to Tech Digest?

As you learnt on Monday, Shiny Media is expanding even more into the Web 2.0 world, with the recent creation of our Who Ate All The Pies football web community. We also have Shiny Fashion Forums for all our fashionista friends, but would you be interested in seeing a community targeted, well, at you? Somewhere to discuss general gadgetry and geekery, yet another excuse to skive off work?

Katherine Hannaford Polls

Shopping social networking site OSOYOU launches in beta

osoyou67.jpg Surely some girls read Tech Digest, right? You’re not all hovering around Shiny Shiny getting your fix of all things pink and fluffy, are you? So hopefully there’s some of you who’ll be interested to hear that OSOYOU, the sparkly new social networking site we happen to share an office with here at Shiny Towers, just launched in beta yesterday.

Allowing you to create user profiles, drag and drop items to your wishlist using their super-cool clothes hanger, bookmark…

Katherine Hannaford Web 2.0

Facebook opening up public profiles to search engines

facebook_public_profile.gifLog in to your Facebook profile (of course you have one) and you may see a new alert letting you know that you could soon have a “public search listing”.

Facebook’s developers yesterday announced that they’d be opening up publicly-available member profile information to the likes of Google and other search engines, and allowing non-members to search for people from the front page of Facebook.

All users have a choice over whether their listings are accessible in this way, by altering their privacy settings. However, given recent member stupidity, that’s easier said than done. A lot of Facebook users, it has to be said, are more interested in adding bizarre applications and letting their personal information spread itself all over the place, rather than limiting their profiles.

Andy Merrett Facebook Applications, Internet, Web 2.0

Joost opens up its API for developer widgets

joost-bear.jpg

Widgets rule. They’re taking over the Web 2.0 world, as companies realise that the more open you are, the faster you grow. And if that involves people biting each other as Facebook Vampires, so much the better.

Joost is the latest Web 2.0 outfit to get widgety. The online TV service has opened up its API, allowing developers to create their own Joost plug-ins. There’s a dedicated website with all the documentation and tutorials eager coders will need.

Stuart Dredge Web 2.0