I am indebted to @jennybee for this who retweeted

“RT @AndyBold: just as the Times paywall is fully raised, Guardian says “Please republish our articles on your blog!” http://bit.ly/9YFlHY”

So, as an initial trial, here’s an example.

This article was written by John Crace, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 2nd July 2010 12.53 UTC

And a very warm welcome to all our readers from The Times. We’re very sorry you awoke to find you could no longer read your newspaper online without a credit card and we feel your pain.

We couldn’t get into the Times site either last week when it was supposed to still be free as the registration system had crashed. But we can help you through this trauma. Call it a belief in an open internet or care in the community if you like, but here at the Guardian we can offer everything you ever wanted from the Times – and more – for nothing.

I suppose I ought to start by introducing myself. I write the weekly Digested Reads, among other things. As this is a sales pitch, I’ve been asked to mention that the new Oxford Book of Parodies says I’m one of Britain’s best parodists, dead or alive. You can work out which.

To many of you, much of our website may seem a bit unfamiliar. We’re not going to try to hide the fact that on certain – make that all – issues we tend to be the teensiest bit liberal.

But don’t let that scare you. We don’t bite. Very hard. And we do have a few of our very own Tories writing for us, though apparently they don’t like being called Tories so I’m not allowed to say who they are as they have friends in very high places and could get me fired.

It’s possible you last read the Guardian when the sports coverage ran to a single line – “Last night England lost 4-1 to Germany in a game of Association Football”. Well just check it out now. We suspect you’ll find it rather more interesting and fun these days.

And the same goes for all the other subjects we cover – politics, comment, education, environment, books, film, music, TV and a whole load more.

There’s no need to miss your favourite columnists either. We know you like Caitlin Moran’s Celebrity Watch but excellent though Caitlin is, check out her inspiration: Marina Hyde’s Lost in Showbiz. (Sample quote: “Until Wednesday, Madonna had appeared to be dealing with the Guy-shaped hole in her existence the best way she knows how: by frotting a couple of nuns on stage every night in a crowd-thrilling tableau that hints at both the eternal fragility of the human heart and the recession-proof nature of amyl nitrate.”)

We’ve never quite understood your fascination with Giles Coren, especially as his much more talented sister Victoria writes for us twice (yes twice) a week, but each to their own.

And look, we’ve got loads of other great writers — Patrick Wintour, Gary Younge, Polly Toynbee, Amelia Gentleman, Zoe Williams, Simon Hattenstone, Michael Billington, Simon Jenkins, Alexis Petridis and dozens of others who will knife me in the front when I get back into the office for not giving them a namecheck.

We can also guarantee to be a 100% Melanie Phillips-free zone – although we are happy to count her as one of our most avid readers. She’s always moaning about us on her Spectator blog.

To make you feel right at home, we run a selection of interminably dull pieces by the great and the good that no one but the commissioning editor ever finishes, but I’m not allowed to mention who they are for much the same reason as I can’t name the Tories.

But if you stick with us, you’ll soon work out who they are and stop reading them for yourselves.

There will of course be a few very noticeable differences. We don’t always write about Rupert Murdoch in the way the North Korean media reports Kim Jong-il and we have occasionally made a critical remark about Sky and News International.

You may however find it refreshing that we do also criticise the Guardian Media Group when they step out of line.

We’re told that most of you read the Times online just for Jeremy Clarkson. But look, he’s here too! Or rather his avatar is. But we don’t think you will be able to tell the difference …

What’s the point of Norway? On the night I stood having a cigarette outside Lillehammer’s equivalent to Piccadilly Circus, I didn’t see a single car. I felt like a lonely fat poof hanging around outside a public lavatory, while my friends George and Michael were inside getting it on with an Eskimo in salmon-pink, reindeer-skin chaps. And talking of which, here’s the Mazda MX-5, the gayest car ever built.

Fighting my way past the scores of Hungarian paedophiles and Muslims wearing waistcoats packed with explosives whom Tony Bliar and his multicultural cronies have personally invited into this country brings me nicely on to the Lexus. Here’s another piece of foreign rubbish we could do without. If we filled every Lexus with Germaine Greer and her bunch of dungaree-wearing lesbians and sent them back to Japan, the country would be a far better place.

OK, so it was me who wrote that.

And if you get fed up with too many words – as I’m guessing you might well be by now – then catch up with all our podcasts and videos. So don’t be shy. Have a look around wherever you fancy. We can guarantee you’ll have fun and it won’t cost you a penny. Come on in. Thirty million online readers can’t all be wrong.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

He posits:

Based on my own observations and discussions with people, perhaps the only people who care about KM are the KM-ers in the industry itself.

He suggests that we perhaps celebrate the odd success of bottom up initiatives, rather than recognising that they symbolise general apathy from the executive.

In as poignant comment, he adds

I really doubt that senior management has any interest in KM because KM is often about empowering a workforce, or at least flattening the structure via networks and network platforms. There is a perception that this weakens the authority of “those in power” and it also permits workers to have greater freedom to make choices

I think he’s probably painting a gloomy picture, but I wonder if KM – with its ability to stimulate and empower people in the team – is seen by some seniors as challenging their “command and control” approach.

My firm is revisiting our KM strategy, and I’ll be watching carefully.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Brad Hinton on knowledge management measurement (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
• How Enterprise 2.0 fosters Knowledge Capture from Cecil Dijoux (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
• Twitter Chats for Knowledge Management (steveellwood.com)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The image above is what the website of Inventory magazine looks like, to me.

Like many others, I generally block Flash using Flashblock. Most Flash is an intrusion, and it slows up my machine and uses resources I could use to keep more tabs open… Yes, I can choose to see what is in Flash. Why does this site not want me to see anything?

If I can’t instantly get something from your site… I’ll likely move on, and any chance of sharing knowledge will have gone.

My attention was drawn to this site via a posting from Paul Downey entitled Polite Comment, about Web Design. He’s started looking at Web Design and is trying to encourage

standards based Web sites which work in any browser and which are truly inspirational and from which we can learn from using view-source

I fully support Paul’s campaign, and encourage others to support this.

As I said in Lessons from Jamie Zawinski

You don’t need stuff to be unreadable to be attractive.

One of Paul Downey‘s erstwhile colleagues, Phil Hawksworth, (@philhawksworth), is a passionate advocate of Unobtrusive Javascript and Progressive Enhancement – and made an explanatory site about this. You can see the site at unobtrusify.com, and read how unobtrusify works.

So, you can make stuff look good and read properly.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I had a brief meeting today, about Knowledge Management.

I didn’t know where the meeting started; I didn’t know everyone who was there. I didn’t know when the meeting started – and I wasn’t invited.

How did that work then? Basically, I spotted a tweet from someone I follow that was hashtagged with #KMers. Following the link got me to the live search for the hashtag, and I was able to take part in the lively discussion – the bit that particularly interested me was the creative tension between folksonomy and taxonomy.

What’s it all about?

Chasing it up after the event, I found the excellent KMers.org site, where a group of Knowledge Management professionals

aim to use a Social Media tool (Twitter Chat) and a CMS tool (Drupal) to run a site that helps KMers share information about the practice of Knowledge Management

I just lucked into it. I enjoyed the section I was involved in, and I’d recommend future events.

You can see the transcript of the [Pilot Chat] Best Ideas from KM World.

If you are interested in Knowledge Management you should take a look. Maybe I’ll see you there?

Related articles by Zemanta

• On Tweckling during conferences (socialfish.org)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I’m still trying to find my way through what social media/”Web2.0” actually means to me.

I have accounts on lots of services, and use:
Twitter – a lot
Facebook – a bit
LinkedIn – a bit
I blog – a little

I glance at other services, share some photos on Flickr and follow a few folk on friendfeed. Prolific posters on any of the services, I tend to consume via RSS.

One of these is Robert Scoble, who is hugely well known – in certain circles – and has made a recent career about knowing things in this space.

I was staggered to see in his recent post Twitter’s platform shortcoming

… last week I learned that there are tons of followers who just follow you to get you to follow back

I thought everyone knew that. But then, there’s loads of stuff I don’t even know that I don’t know.

Why do *I* follow people?
I know you, you’re geographically close to me, I liked your blog post, someone I follow has @ replied with something of interest.

If you follow me, and you’re not immediately interesting, or your tweets are pushing links all the time… sorry, I won’t follow you.

I can’t remember ever knowing something before @scobleizer. I did this time.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Homeworking. Good for everyone?

While looking for some reference material the other day, I came upon a 7 year old report on teleworking in BT [PDF from SUSTEL].

I commented in a tweet

“I still think teleworking is positive for co. and people“

It is quite important to me to share this view, as in parts of the company there is an increasing focus on co-location. For certain roles, for certain teams, for some of the time there is a really good case to be made for co-location.

A colleague, who is a fellow editor of an internal blog, who – coincidentally – I have never met, made the following valid observation.

agree but need to understand intangibles-impact of never meeting your colleagues f2f-need to be able to travel

Is homeworking isolating?

I thought about this a bit, and realised

• it is well over a year since I’ve seen a member of my team
• it is over 9 months since I have seen a colleague I am working with

So, why am I not feeling the impact of isolation?

BT equips its homeworkers with good technological support. We use teleconferencing extensively throughout the company, and use a variety of tools in the Unified Communication area to improve working.

Glancing at Office Communicator, for example, I can see if a colleague is in, taking part in a call, or can drop them an instant message. That can be seamlessly converted in to a call using my VOIP client which gives me an internal extension in the company.

Doing that makes it easy to just have a quick chat – and lets someone politely say they’re busy, too.

Don’t I miss the face to face? No, because for years my “watercooler/coffee machine” chat has been on the company’s internal newsgroups, where people can share banter, tips, or even ask for recipes. So, you can glance at that while you’re waiting for a call host to join or some code to compile.

Now, the company’s internal social networking is improving, we have an internal blogging platform where all sorts of individual groups share experience and activities, and even MyBT, which gives an internally and externally visible individual portal into our online world.

So, who are your colleagues?

I can “talk” to far more colleagues than I ever could when I worked in an office nine years ago.

Many of my BT colleagues are visible externally, blogging and tweeting away – BT even publicised the online life of some of our graduate entrants for a while – one of whom now edits another internal blog with me.

This publicly visible face of many of my colleagues means I can build relationships, which foster teamwork, with people I wouldn’t normally meet; I know more about many of them than I would about a colleague at the other end of a building.

I also learn from people in other businesses; some businesses I have worked with, like IBM; some I haven’t like SouthWest Air. This has improved me as an employee of my own company.

What does it cost for homeworkers?

Like all businesses in this downturn, BT is being careful of its expenditure. Business travel costs real money; having your people homeworking *saves* real money, too. The Work Foundation‘s report said

• The annual cost to support an office-based worker in central London is
  around £18,000. It costs less than £3,000 a year to support a
  homeworker. On average each homeworker saves BT £6000 a year
• Improved retention saves c£5m a year on recruitment and induction

Do you want to meet your team? Or someone else’s?

Where would I like to travel to? To work with “my” team? No, most of us spend a huge proportion of the day on the phone; I’d like to work somewhere I’ll learn something new.

Next time I do travel to London, and have a morning or afternoon spare, I’ll try and blag some desk space at Osmosoft‘s office space in Westminster Telephone Exchange.

There’s a community I’d like to belong to.

What’s your view of homeworking?

Image Credit:Jasoon

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

As @andypiper said

although the list of “IBM*” Twitter IDs is useful, it is far from complete – there are many IBMers active here

So, I don’t feel so bad in pointing to:

• @BizExperience – Twitter account for BT Business Experience 2009 29 June – 3 July
• @BTCare – BT’s face for residential customers
• @BTBusiness – BT’s face for business customers
• @BTCloudApps – integrating connectivity, bus apps, devices and service for the total cloud computing solution
• @BTFresca – behind many of the world’s fastest growing and most successful ecommerce websites
• @BTInsight – BT’s web site for small business
• @BTOpenZone – news and help for BTOZ customers
• @BTServiceUpdate – Service status update for BT Business Broadband or phone line (see http://ow.ly/ukd3)
• @BT Tradespace – online community for SMEs, individual sellers and customers
• @btviewpoint -
  BT Viewpoint – Latest developments and trends in business communications and cloud computing
• @insightsideas – Business insights and Ideas from BT Global Services
• @ribbit – open platform for voice/2.0 integration
• @9600- Andrew Back, Open Source Strategist at BT Osmosoft
• @busyhobs- Alan Hobson, BT Global Services
• @gadgetmanmike – Mike Hinton, Head of Service Management EMEA, BT Conferencing
• @gkc – Gary Casey
• @iain_mac – GM for BT Business Service
• @Jermolene – Jeremy Ruston, BT’s Open Source head lad
• @jpdenison – GM for BT Systems and Innovation
• @labete – James Marwood, Change consultant, self protection instructor, productivity geek
• @markmorrell – BT’s Intranet manager
• @martinfaux – working on BTB’s Proactive Digital Care initiative
• @mccartc3 – Clyne McCarthy
• @mcreedy – Michael Creedy – BT Wholesale Customer Services Network & Planning
• @osmosoft – Open source application developers
• @psd – Paul Downey, Internet Kitteh and author of The Web is Agreement and The URI Is The Thing
• @raymond_merrill – Raymond Merrill, HR Solutions specialist
• @sgt101 – Simon Thompson, chief research scientist for intelligent interactive systems
• @srowney – Simon Rowney, Head of Technology Improvement
• @stan1ey – Steve Stanley, BI Specialist within Retail Service Design
• @Stewniblock – Stew Niblock, works for BT Business, specializes in setting up lines, broadband and mobiles for business

I’ll add any other sites/folk who identify themselves as BT on request.

I work for BT and I’m @steveellwood, but highlight this blog post is not an official BT statement of policy, and was done to provide a quick link.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Two face

Having seen all the furore about Facebook names, I got mine.

Originally, it is http://facebook.com/steveellwood.

However, you can also find it – and me – at http://steveellwood.com/facebook.

Similarly, I’m http://twitter.com/steveellwood – but you can find me at http://steveellwood.com/twitter.

What’s interesting – to me in any case -  is how I ended up with my “branded” pages.

I’d seen Paul Downey, @psd, make a comment about facebook names. I’d a while ago added Anil Dash, @anildash to my friendfeed list – to my shame, I’ll admit I’m still learning what I might do with Friendfeed, so I spotted the Facebook names post I blogged about the other day.

In the comments about that, I saw the approach Ross Rader (@rossrader) took, using the link to his domain.

I twittered about this, and a friend and colleague Rob Collingridge, @robcollingridge, took this up, and implemented it on his domain. I’m like “Wow, was that easy to do?”

Rob sticks up some instructions on his Facebook wall. Drat, my domain is hosted on wordpress.com. Maybe I need to selfhost. I’ll ask.

Another twitter friend, @akaSteve, encourages me, and kindly offers assistance. I already have hosting though, so a day later, my domain is moved, my blog is moved and upgraded – and I can point to Twitter and Facebook from my domain.

All because I saw something on Twitter.
Image Credit: larry&flo

Bookmark It

Hide Sites