This video features the creative and unique ways the U.S. Air Force is using New/Social Media to communicate and collectively generating ideas, experiences and knowledge with each other, family and friends as well as the public. Its truly an inspiring example of how we could use new/social media when we start using these tools with our head and heart rather than using policies or rules and regulations as our starting point. For me, new/social media can only be successful when it creates and invigorates meaning in our lives or to the lives of people who use them.

What the Moldova Protest and #AmazonFail might have in common.

Today I made the wrong decision to stay away from Twitter to concentrate on some thesis writing. However thanks to @TimCooperUK, I’ve been alerted on a recent activity on twitter that has been creating quite a lot of buzz if you search the hashtag #amazonfail. So I’ve decided to update an article I wrote recently regarding “People Power on Twitter” for the Moldova protest. You can find the original post below.

Apparently, Amazon is deleting the rankings (de-rank) of LBGT and erotica books. Though this has possibly just caught on fire today, this has been going on since February. The response the authors affected got from Amazon was this…

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I’ve recently decided to try my hand at compiling a list like the one created by @barryearnshaw and Glenn Taggart with @uklocalcouncils for the USA and Canada . @b3rn from the Stap isi website (Local government, the internet & community engagement online) has also done the same for Australia, @OZGovLocal and also one for Australia Councillors twitter stream @OZGovLocalClrs (similar to @CllrTweeps here in the UK) around the same time I created @USALocalGov and @CanadaLocalGov. This is a little experiment to test my theory on whether or not lists like this can help the increase in local gov twitter accounts.

I managed to catch up with Stuart Harrision/Pezholio this morning from Lichfield District Council to ask him about his new exciting development/mashup called Twitterplan. You can listen to the telephone interview here.

Just in case you wondering who else is working on some exciting mashups, have a look at Warwickshire Councils R&D website. They’re working on some interesting projects with me in the near future. You could find their Web Services and API Dump here. Look out for a post featuring their projects here on LGEOResearch soon.

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Mayor Newsom hosts a conversation with Twitter CEO Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone about the future of technology in government.

I recently talked to Matt Johnson from SandwellMBC and he mentioned a really great idea to put all relevant feeds from notable local government blogs on a webpage. This is so other people can keep up with recent activities of fellow colleagues across government. So I’ve selected my top picks for local government online blogs and did a mashup of those blogs. I’m hoping Matt will find this useful and maybe others as well.

I’ve been speaking to several local councils recently and noticed that alot of local council websites are still not Web 2.0. Although many were already on their way to apply Web 2.0 to their websites, I fear to think of those who haven’t even considered it…

I’m not a mum but I subscribe to Netmums to observe what makes Netmums so special. Out of just pure curiosity and admiration for the creators, I guess… I love what they’ve done and wish to see more networks such as this. Maybe a NetDads?

I want to know what they’re doing right. So I get weekly updates sent to my mailbox and I usually have a glance to see what they’re up to. However this weeks email had a cool announcement that I thought was worth sharing. Have a look what’s going on on Netmums…

Coventry City Council has recently unveiled its City Centre’s Masterplan to the local people of Coventry. This billion pound project achieved its Final Masterplan following a massive consultation exercise with local people. The council used various ways to ensure local people were involved in the project by raising awareness through the normal media channels. But what’s interesting is they also used Facebook to run their consultation.

I have been speaking to online engagement champions in several local councils for the past 2 weeks or so. One of those councils is Cheltenham Borough Council who just launched their new and improved web 2.0 website provided by Jadu’s CMS. Upon closer inspection there were alot of features that are worth mentioning and then thought, why not share it with the rest of the local council community.