e-petitions and an email from Number 10 Downing Street!

e-petitioning is becoming popular. So much so that the UK government is actively encouranging it. See http://petitions.pm.gov.uk. I quite like the idea of petitioning Tony Blair, I wonder if Number 10 will take this petition seriously. There is a new petition posted against the rip off prices we have to pay for Microsoft’s new Windows Vista. Go sign the petition and lets see what happens!

“There is a huge difference in the price that people in the US and the UK are paying for Windows Vista the new Microsoft Operating System. As an example of this, in the UK a full copy of Vista Ultimate would cost you £350, in the US it would cost you £195. The US version of Vista is exactly the same as the UK version. There is no difference. Therefore I can see no reason for there to be such a huge difference in prices between the UK and the US other than Microsofts belief that the UK customers will pay more than their US counterparts. I ask people to sign this petition in the hope that the Prime Minister will bring pressure to bear on Microsoft over their pricing as it is my belief they are simply overcharging the people of the UK and therefore are ripping us off”.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/VistaOvercharge

YouTube 2.0 ? Joost is coming soon!

YouTube pioneered the way for home made, short video clips to be uploaded to the web and shared with the Internet masses – a form of WebTV. Well, its great until someone decides to record your outlandish drunken behaviour on a camera phone and then posts it to YouTube, BE WARNED! Anyway, I digress…

Joost is currently in beta testing and will be a new way to watch TV, free of the schedules and restrictions that come with traditional television. Combining the best of TV with the best of the internet, Joost allows more control and freedom than ever before – control over what you watch, and freedom to watch it whenever you like.

Interestingly, Joost was formely known as “The Venice Project”, and is brought to us from the people behind Kazaa and Skype. This is seriously one to watch, its going to be huge. Signup for the beta today http://www.joost.com/apply.html. Currently Apple Mac support only, Windows support coming soon.

As long as the Joost guys don’t get sued, commercials between shows would be the obvious revenue earner. So in theory, I could create a short promo video clip advertising my product or service to be viewed by millions!

A wonderful Web Pitch by Steve Jobs

Its been covered to death by the tech press over the last few weeks. However, Steve Jobs blogged for the first time on his “Thoughts on Music” pitch on Apple.com

Apple has been facing continued criticism from various European countries over the “locked” architecture of the iPod. If you buy music from the iTunes store, you can only play it back on iTunes or on your iPod. The technology is known as “Fairplay” and is Apple’s DRM – Digital Rights Management software.

Apple’s PR and Jobs have done wonders in conveying how Apple is “against” the restrictions of using DRM technologies but are forced to use them by the big four record companies. Jobs making the point that Apple are the “good karma guys” who resist DRM but the “bad guys” are the big music four, who insist on the restrictions.

A nice example of “spin”, good PR and how a blog pitch can force record companies to rethink their strategies on securing digital music.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic

The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles

Interesting pearls of wisdom from the BBC’s 2.0 project. There are lots of really good pointers for businesses wishing to promote their websites.

http://www.tomski.com/archive/new_archive/000063.html

The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people’s content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they’re on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won’t ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it’s your users’ data. Best respect it.

The birth of an idea…

The Web Pitch (or blog speech) is a brief overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The pitch is so called because it can be delivered in the space it takes to fill a web page or blog (say, 100-150 words).

The term is typically used in the context of a blog, pitching an idea to a future consumer or customer. Customers often judge the quality of the pitch by the number of individuals ranked responses from other web users. The basis of the quality of its web pitch, is to quickly weed out bad ideas.

This blog examines how individuals or businesses can use the web pitch, Web 2.0 technologies and social networking to better position their goods and services to customers on earth.

(c) 2007 Jasdev Dhaliwal