September 2007

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A matter of style

28 September 2007 in Design and style

There’s a discipline amongst publishers, adherence to which – in the eyes of traditional publishers at least – is one of the attributes that separates the professional from the amateur publisher. “Style” in publishing terms is a set of rules that a publisher adheres to in order to achieve accuracy and consistency in usage. It has two purposes:

  • Readability. Content that is accurate and consistent is easier to read. Inaccuracies and inconsistencies are – consciously or subconsciously – noticed by readers, who may in consequence misunderstand or misinterpret, or feel it necessary to re-read passages, or simply wince.
  • Efficiency. Following a set of style rules, authors and editors can more quickly prepare and edit text as decisions do not have to be made along the way – time and time again – as to correct or preferred usage.

In the digital age, to these we should now add usability, as accuracy and consistency also significantly affect the navigability and searchability of digital resources.

Some style rules are universal; that is they are accepted as best practice globally (for a particular lingusitic domain). Rules may be hard and fast or permissive of explicit variation.

Style rules that are local, representing a particular publisher’s preferences, are known as “house style”. Although matters of format and design are sometimes accommodated within a publisher’s house style, strictly the term refers to textual usage.

The UK bible for publishing style is “Hart’s Rules”. Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press was first printed in 1893. This classic reference work for writers, editors, and publishers was in print through 39 editions. New Hart’s Rules (September 2005) now “brings the principles of the old text into the 21st century, providing answers to questions of editorial style for a new generation of professionals”. (Confusingly, the 2002 edition of the wider-ranging Oxford Guide to Style, incorporated an updated Hart’s Rules and was published as “the Hart’s Rules for the 21st Century”.)

Although New Hart’s Rules is still directed at book publishers and may seem fuddy-duddy to the new breed of web publishers, I would commend it as an essential reference for web publishers.

It ain’t what you do, it’s where you do it

28 September 2007 in Social networking

Chris Andersen – he of The Long Tail fame – echoes my feelings in Social Networking is a feature, not a destination.

As I think about the current Facebook craze and the notion of it as an all-encompassing platform, sucking in functionality from other sites across the board, I find myself skeptical. With my Long Tail hat on, I think that one-size-fits-all will fail in social networking, just as it has everywhere else (which is why I like Ning, which suppresses its own brand for the sake of those of the microsites it hosts).

Instead, I think focused sites that serve niche communities will extract the best lessons from Facebook and MySpace and offer better social networking tools to the communities they already have. I’m sure huge and generic social networking destinations will continue to do well, but I’m placing my bet on the biggest impact coming when social networking becomes a standard feature on all good sites, bringing community to the granular level where it always works best.

Adnonsense (3)

27 September 2007 in Mammon, Search

Google is in a bit of a bind. On the plus side it can be credited with:

  • opening up access to the web with Google search,
  • providing advertisers an effective channel for their web marketing through its AdWords scheme, and
  • giving legitimate publishers, large and small, the opportunity to generate income from serving up those ads through its AdSense scheme.

Ranged against this positive record is the fact that its AdSense scheme is responsible for phenomenal pollution of the web.

First, AdSense ads are everywhere.

Up to the plate has stepped AdBlock Plus which effectively kills ads on web pages so you can experience the web as clean as it was 10 years ago. But are we also in a bit of a bind here? Will AdBlock Plus also kill the internet economy? Nick Carr thinks:

There’s no evidence that Adblock Plus or similar products are about to go viral. In fact, there’s no evidence that the masses view online ads as a nuisance.

but if he’s wrong about that, he points out that:

Since nearly the entire internet economy relies on advertising of one form or another, the widespread use of ad blockers could well devastate many businesses, from giants like Google and Yahoo! to scores of tiny startups.

He rehearses the reasons for and against using AdBlock Plus more fully in a later post, asking what would Jesus do? and pointing to Mark Evans who speaks for many web publishers when he calls Adblock Plus an evil predator.

If you believe in Web 2.0 and/or if you believe in the concept of free, Adblock is pure evil.

So the jury’s still out on that one.

However, the AdSense scheme is also responsible for a huge explosion of “made for Adsense” (MFA) sites – sites with no value of their own that post content optimised purely to drive ad traffic.

Initially most such sites were splogs (spam blogs) and the like – gibberish generated by machines usually from content scraped from others’ sites. But a new industry has grown of businesses that employ inexpensive “authors” to write original (to Google’s algorithmic eyes) but inevitably inane articles based on others’ content. This phenomenon is explored fully by Danny Bradbury in the Guardian article Word Farms of the Web.

Not only are these sites devoid of value; they also provide a poor return for the advertisers. From Ben Edelman, an expert investigator of spyware affiliate networks:

If I were Google, I wouldn’t have a difficult time deciding what to do here. This content is not useful. The world would be better off if these pages didn’t exist … The issue is where the money comes from – how it is that reasonably well-respected advertisers end up paying for this stuff?

Google can surely fix this – but will it?

Bobbies on the beta

27 September 2007 in Government, Wikis

I’ve suggested before that one day we might be able to roll our own government on wiki.gov.uk.

The New Zealand Police are experimenting with just that concept with a Police Act Review Wiki.

This joins other wikis launched to encourage New Zealanders to engage with public sector agencies. A good example is the Participation Wiki, hosted by the State Services Commission.

According to an article in Stuff.co.nz, Police Superintendent Hamish McCardle, the officer in charge of the project, expresses the hope that contributions will come not just from the NZ community but from all around the world.

Hat tip: Slaw.

Be social – blog smart

25 September 2007 in Blogging, Social networking | 4 comments

Steve Matthews of Stem is one of the leading thinkers when it comes to web marketing for lawyers. He has this to say about how to “be social” with blogs:

For me, the social side of blogging involves a number of tactics, things like:

  • blogroll links to your peers;
  • not just writing your own thoughts, but engaging in blog-to-blog discussions;
  • commenting on other blogs;
  • email discussions beyond the blog;
  • giving your fellow blogger a ‘hat tip’ when you cite their work; and every once in a while,
  • just saying thank-you.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But too many bloggers do just write their own thoughts. Many do also comment on others’ blogs, but few give much thought to the other points. And we now have the competition of Facebook, to which many have diverted their time. I don’t see much useful business networking or exchanges of views going on there – it’s just gathering around the water cooler.

PSI4U

24 September 2007 in Public Sector Information

The Power of Information review (see previous post) looked at how non-personal public sector information can be re-used and reinvigorated outside of government to generate public and economic value. Responding to one of its recommendations, OPSI have set up a discussion forum to to gather and assess PSI re-use requests.

At issue is not what information should be published by government, but how it should be published and licensed. From the review:

87. It is relatively easy to suggest changes that would give citizens and organisations better access to information held by government. These include:

  • republishing information in open standards or as web services;
  • changing when information is published to suit the needs of those requesting it;
  • rewriting licences in situations where they currently prevent innovative re-use; and
  • presenting databases in ways that suit the needs of re-users.

123. Consequently, this review recommends that government should publish regulatory information on the internet in a format that consumers find easy to understand and that citizens and organisations can easily re-use and re-combine with other information.

The OPSI discussion forum is a place for you to suggest how the publishing of PSI should change to meet your requirements. What do you want to do with it and what changes in presentation etc would make this easier for you?

CPD without tears

20 September 2007 in CPD, Legal web

Delia Venables and I have just produced and published another two online Legal Web e-books with 5 CPD each.

Topics for Barristers covers Chambers Management and the Web; Virtual Chambers; Websites, Resources and Blogs; Electronic Resources in the Inns of Court Libraries; and Legal IT as a Commodity.

Legal Information and Web 2.0 covers Free Law – in the UK, Europe and Beyond; Web 2.0 for Lawyers- what is Web 2.0 and what relevance does it have for lawyers?; and Public Sector Information.

SEO for dummies

20 September 2007 in Miscellany, SEO | 3 comments

Nearly Legal has a thing for Sally Field naked: she boosts his Google juice.

His recent rise in the rankings for the said search term was helped by the fact that on Tuesday Sally won the Best Lead Actress Emmy for her role in Brothers and Sisters where all those leading TV actors you’ve seen over the last ten years or more pretend now to be related. Not only this, but her acceptance speech was censored by Fox who removed the concluding observation that “if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddam wars in the first place”.

In the UK legal domain, you’re unlikely to generate any serious traffic if you stick to your subject. But stray into the popular realm by design or accident and you can see why there are so many sploggers and AdSense farmers out there. My own rather modest success in this domain was when I posted about new gambling and sports law blogs from Cecile Park Publishing. Almost instantly my Technorati rankings rocketed as some splogger referenced the post in more than 20 blogs.But, like crack, or any drug, the high is temporary, and you’re in for a downer when those links drop off the radar and you are restored to normality. And if you’re not after the AdSense bucks you’ve achieved nothing other than an entertaining diversion from your daily grind. But that’s enough reward sometimes.

What does Law 2.0 mean to you?

19 September 2007 in Law 2.0

Credit is due to the Wired GC for first coining the phrase “Law 2.0″ back in December 2005, having posted the week before on Web 2.0, Law Style in which he foresaw that:

Web 2.0 will be disruptive for the [law status quo], because some measure of control will be lost. And its simple technical browser-based attributes will necessarily lower user costs. That is something that always grabs a client’s attention.

He followed this up a week later with Web 2.0, Heading West to Law 2.0 wherein:

a few of the attributes of Web 2.0 are things like open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and a more organized and categorized content. Sounds like legal-research nirvana to me. … Yes, someday maybe the Death Star hovers over [Thomson/West and LexisNexis]

Then in a later post he points to Dion Hinchcliffe’s helpful summary of various “offshoots” of the Web 2.0 “revolution”, and there Law 2.0 is, centre stage:

Dion describes the Law 2.0 and similar movements in rather expansive terms:

The interrelated, mutually reinforcing concepts in Web 2.0 like true disintermediation, customer self-service, and harnessing collective intelligence, are resonating with many other industries. As it turns out, these industries are in the process of being transformed by technology including the relentless collapse of formal central controls, pervasive Web usage, rapid technological change, and more. These communities seem to be craving a new model for collaboration, relevance, and usefulness. And Web 2.0 seems to give them both a beacon to rally around and a useful set of practices that can then be used for constructive reinvention.

As I posted recently, other thought leaders have developed the discussion, including Between Lawyers (in particular, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell).

I’m hitching my bandwagon to these commentators, rather than the SCL who also adopted the term in promoting its recent two-day “blue skies” intensive legal investigation into the world of Web 2.0 entitled Law 2.0: New Speech, New Property, New Identity. As the title suggests, the focus there was the law and regulation of Web 2.0 rather than the use of Web 2.0 by and for lawyers.

And, convinced of its importance, Delia Venables and I have tagged the title of our bi-monthly newsletter Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0.

So, what does Law 2.0 mean to you?

TheirTube

19 September 2007 in Contracts

Christopher Knight is hacked off:

Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes [and posted on YouTube] and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip.

He has elicited a long stream of well-meaning but largely misguided comment. But it’s all in the OurTubeNotYourTube Terms of Service, Chris:

6.C. For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

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