Gavin Wray // Carefully crafting content since 2001

Selection of links I’ve bookmarked recently:

• West Midlands Regional Observatory dashboard on Pageflakes
• Commentariat WordPress theme: Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills
  WordPress theme designed to allow collaborative reading and commenting on a document. Code released under GNU Affero licence.
• Beyond cut and paste: the professional skills every government web publisher should have
  Neil Williams has summarised the core skills required in web publisher or web editing role. The majority of the skills are applicable to any web publisher role, not just within government or public sector.
• Is Google News ignoring meta “description” tags?
  Article by Murray Dick on how “meta ‘description’ text used to summarise some news articles, is not being displayed in their Google News results summaries.”
• Tracking documents and external links in google analytics – iQ Blog
  Add this single javascript file to enable tracking of document downloads and clicks of external links.
• OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles : Tim’s Blog
  Tim Davies lists 50 small hurdles to successful online engagement that, while small individually, can stack up to prevent success. The list is also applicable to large organisations outside government. The good news is that these small hurdles can be overcome individually. Add a comment on how you did it or write your own blog post and tag ’smallchallenges’.
• ConsultationXML: getting reusable data out of horrid PDFs – Archive – The Dextrous Web
  “Making consultation documents easier to use”
• SEOmoz | Canonical URL Tag – The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps
  Useful introduction to the new canonical URL tag, which site publishers can use to suppress duplicate content being indexed by search engines.

See more bookmarks like these on Delicious.

Some links for you:

• Innovative Interactivity
  "For those who are curious about the ever-evolving trends of interactive multimedia, who’s doing it best and the tricks to staying on top."
• Am I An IA? – Information Architecture Institute
  You know, I think I just might be.
• Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture | UX Booth
  Great introduction to the role of Information Architects, what they do and the tools they use. Lots of resources are included to explore this area further.
• Data Store: Facts you can use | Data Store | guardian.co.uk
  The Guardian's compilation of publicly-available data for others to re-use.
• Directory of Usability, Information Architecture, and User Experience Design Software
  List of software by Windows and Mac OS versions with full descriptions, license details and user ratings.

Some links for you:

• Hitsville Soul Club of America
  Site for fans of rare soul, Detroit and R&B music
• Manage your online reputation
  Flowchart on listening to what people say about you online and the considerations on whether to get involved, where appropriate.
• Jesus Rodriguez Velasco
  I tagged this site for its amazing typography and small, detailed visual elements.
• Free Sand Textures | Raymond Selda
  41 sand textures from Stock.xchng
• High accessibility is effective search engine optimization
  Article by Andy Hagans on how designing accessible websites that work well for people – by following the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – can also provide benefits in terms of search engine optimisation.
• WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
  Add your URL to see a visual representation of your web page with embedded icons and indicators revealing accessibility information. Firefox toolbar available.

Some links for you:

• How To Design The Perfect List
  Huge collection of well-designed lists used in web design, along with the markup and CSS to implement a well-designed list.
• Free and simple CMS » CushyCMS
  Lightweight, simple CMS. Might be worth a look if you’re making WordPress-based sites for clients who don’t actually require most of the features in WordPress.
• InstantAtlas Local Information Systems Resource Pack 2008
  Collection of seminars, reports, websites and solutions related to local information systems. Includes examples from data observatories, local government and NHS organisations in England, Scotland and Wales.
• East of England Development Agency – Case studies
  Nice use of Google Maps to help geographically visualise economic regeneration case studies in the East of England. This is so much nicer than a list of text links or a standard menu navigation.
• Instant mash: empowering communities through the web
  How Kent County Council is using web 2.0 technology to push knowledge management forward in Kent.
• Robots.txt Syntax Checker: a validator for robots.txt files
  Simple, handy tool to validate your robots.txt file.

Some links for you:

• Online Content Strategies: The Best 2008 Editorial Advice From MasterNewMedia
  Collection of articles on content strategy pulled together by MasterNewMedia. There are nuggets of good advice in here.
• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog
  31 day series of tasks by Problogger to make your blog better.
• 7 Days to Rediscovering Your Blogging Groove
  Advice from Problogger on seven different types of blog post you can write.
• Pipes: Social Media Firehose
  Use the social media firehouse to monitor mentions of your brand or products across social media sites such as flickr, friendfeed, digg, etc.

Some links for you:

• The UKGovWeb Twitterverse
  Dave Briggs compiled this list of public sector workers on Twitter. It’s useful if you’re starting with Twitter and you need some help finding other people active in similar fields or organisations.
• The Discipline of Content Strategy
  Interesting article by Kristina Halvorson on A List Apart on the often under-covered subject of web content management, analysis and development.
• The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook
  Etiquette guide by Tamar Weinberg on how to behave appropriately when engaging in social media services such as Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Facebook and social news sites.