The latest data from the regular Oxford Internet Survey has been released, and, as ever, shows some interesting trends and information about who uses the net across the UK, and how. 67% of the population currently use the internet, up from 59% in 2003. There are still gaps between the age groups, 31% of retired people using the net, compared with 81% of those who work and 97% of students. There… read more

I wrote a mega-blog late last night about the problems of project measurement and evaluation in e-democracy, but it's in need of some polishing before being put out for comment. Odd then, that Whitehall Webby yesterday links to this interesting piece about measuring the impact of social media, wondering if it can really be done. The premise of my blog was that there's too much… read more

Crumbs! We were still putting finishing touches to MyAbodo when suddenly the internet snatched it up and ran with it... it's caught the attention of loads of people and seems to be creating a real buzz: First of all, the numbers:

Main site

Embedded Abodos

Day Total visits Unique visitors Total visits Unique visitors 10th July 4 2 7 2 11th July 1055 936 3316 2149 12th July 759 684 2152 1276 13th July 1654 1567 398 266 14th July 984 880 407 253 15th July 849 776 425 243 16th July 1303 1189 555 301 That's some pretty healthy traffic, especially considering we've not really started telling people about it yet!… read more

We mothballed one of our first servers the other day, and through a crossed wire with the hosting company, not everything transferred smoothly like they said it would. This hasn't affected any client sites, but has meant that Demgames has come down temporarily. It's now back up on the web, and we're just waiting for the domain name settings to roll through, bringing

Seems like budget consultation's heading in interesting directions at the moment. First of all, the news came out recently that the government is to 'pilot' participatory budgeting in various areas across the UK. It's not necessarily a series of pilots, as some of these places have been using participatory budgeting for a while now, but good to see more of it done. I spoke at an event with… read more

There's not a lot that can be said alongside this story, as it just seems so weird. Apparently all forms of online campaigning in elections in Japan are against the law, so all candidates (and by inference presumably political parties generally) are now forbidden from creating new websites or updating existing ones until July 29th. Read the article for more on this, and wonder at the oddity of… read more

I just spent a v.pleasant evening on a Soho roof-top terrace at the latest (and perhaps first) BetaGov event. The idea behind BetaGov is to develop a conversation bewteen policy makers, technologists bloggers and leading lights in the London internet community about the impact of emerging web based social technologies on the conduct of politics, the functioning of democracy, the formulation of public policy and the delivery of publicly… read more

The new Department for Children, Schools and Families are running an e-consultation on the use of physical punishment. The e-consultation system doesn't seem too bad in the scheme of government e-consultation, there are things that could be improved with it as ever, but at least it's not just a downloadable pdf masquerading as e-consultation. More amusing though is the banner from the front page linking to… read more

We were disappointed when our tender for the government's third sector Innovation Exchange got to the final shortlist but didn't win; now the open process we used to put the bid together is a finalist for a New Statesman New Media award. Let's hope we get a different result this time! One of our many fellow bidders, David Wilcox, has more detail at http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2007/07/open-innovation.html. As he… read more