OpenAustralia

By Kat Szuminska | Published: September 17, 2009

OpenAustralia – or, “how two people who don’t know anything about building websites or the Australian Government came to build a website giving the community Hansard and Australian Government data”. Read More »

Posted in Government 2.0, Issue 1, Open Data | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

The State of JavaScript

By Dmitry Baranovskiy | Published: September 17, 2009

The web is a rapidly changing thing. JavaScript is an important part of it, and has gone through many different stages: from a promising, but useless initiative from Netscape (we still remember how annoying jumping text and popups were), to the bread and butter of Web 2.0 (whatever that is!) Now is the time for the JavaScript renaissance. Read More »

Posted in Issue 1, Web Design, Web Development | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t forget the RSS

By James Dellow | Published: September 17, 2009

Amongst all the other concerns and constraints of running a Local Government Website, it’s easy for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ (RSS) feeds to be consigned to the too hard basket. But the big secret of RSS is that it can be very useful while requiring relatively little effort. Read More »

Posted in Issue 1, Open Data | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Intranets and usability

By Matthew Hodgson | Published: September 17, 2009

It’s now been a little over a decade since I designed and built my first Intranet. I had been building websites for a university for some years, but my first Intranet was my first public service job, and my first experience of how government handles internal communications and knowledge sharing. Read More »

Posted in Issue 1, Usability | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Tweeting the live local challenge

By John MacFarlane | Published: September 17, 2009

Twitter, the latest social networking tool to reach global proportions, offers a great deal of potential, and also a great deal of hype.

Media outlets around the world took notice of Twitter this year, and its use as an organising and information tool in Iran after elections in June put to rest suggestions that the microblogging platform was a web novelty.

Even before Iran, various marketing “gurus” were emerging to offer expertise in the fledgling service, and web strategy sites had begun to publish top 10 lists of tips for marketing your products with Twitter – a sure sign that a meme is in vogue.

OK, great. But if you’re doubtful of the gurus’ expertise and you don’t have a huge political uprising thirsting for information, what good is Twitter? Read More »

Posted in Community Engagement, Issue 1, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment