Checking in to vote

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Natasha

If you’ve seen the banner ads, the billboards and the commercials over the last month or so, then you may be aware that there’s a referendum here in the UK tomorrow. Voters are being asked to choose between two methods of electing members to the House of Commons: the current First Past The Post system or the Alternative Vote (AV).

Drawing on the popularity of LOL Cats and the word-of-mouth power of YouTube, an AV supporter has created this video which explains the difference between the two systems.

However being a bit of a democracy junkie in general, I’ve been more concerned by reports that the majority of people won’t be voting tomorrow at all, than by the tactics of the individual campaigns. This BBC News piece suggests as few as 15% of Londoners could turn out.

Vote Here signEarlier this week, there was a post by Todd Wasserman on Mashable entitled Why Location Based Services will be the Killer App of the 2012 Elections. Apparently, by then, political campaigners will be using location-based services such as FourSquare and Facebook Places to see if their local supporters have checked in at a voting booth. Of course, checking in at a particular location doesn’t guarantee that you’ve voted a certain way – or indeed voted at all – but at least it’d mean these checked-in voters wouldn’t need to be contacted via another method in an attempt to get them to the polls.

I just did a bit of an internet search and, right now, in May 2011, the location of my nearest voting booth isn’t listed on either Facebook or Foursquare. So, I won’t be checking in to vote on May 5. And I won’t be using this social media channel to tell you how to vote  either.

But I will say that, whatever your preference, voting systems matter – and I absolutely encourage everyone to get out to your local polling station between 7am and 10pm tomorrow and make your voice heard.

Vote Here photo by Kristen Price, downloaded from stock.xchng.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

When everyone’s twittering, how do you get yourself heard?

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Natasha

Sleeping birdsGrowing up on an orchard, I didn’t need an alarm clock. Instead, in the early hours, the local birds would start their morning chorus: singing to the sunrise at an unmissable volume.

While that was usually enough to wake me up and make me take notice, it was almost impossible to pick out the sound of an individual bird.

Over the weekend, as I was putting together a list of social media suggestions for a friend’s music group, it struck me that this is what Twitter is like today. Millions of people, sending out billions of messages, a timeline that renews itself in seconds. In that sort of noise, how do you make yourself stand out?

Two ways.

You can do something unusual.

There’s a Big Ben twitter account, for example, which broadcasts the appropriate number of BONGs every hour – and that’s all it does. But when I’m reading back over the tweets that have flooded my timeline overnight, I find those BONG tweets a useful way of separating the messages into hourly segments.

But perhaps a better strategy for most Twitter users is to be engaging.

Twitter works best as a conversation tool, not as a one way broadcast. I recommend tweeting regularly, of course, and tweeting at hours when your intended audience are most likely to see your message. However, it’s important to realise that your followers may be following hundreds, or even thousands, of other people, that they may only use Twitter for ten minutes a day, and as such your one message could easily be missed.

In an ideal world, of course, all of your followers would be looking back along their timelines to find your tweets, to retweet them, to click on your links. For most people, this isn’t a reality.

However, there are strategies you can use to increase your visibility.

The first is to create great content. Tweet things that your followers will be interested in, whether that’s useful links or your latest deals. This increases the chances that they’ll be looking out for your tweets.

The second is to create great relationships. Follow interesting people. Talk to them. Send @ replies and retweet their messages. Perhaps they’ll do the same for you. Perhaps they’ll add you to one of their filtered lists, which gives your messages a higher chance of being seen. This takes time, and it may seem a lot of effort, but in the end you should see the results.

There’s a whole lot of birdsong on Twitter, not just in the mornings but 24 hours a day. Are your followers awake and aware of your messages?

If you’ve got any other tips to increase your visibility on Twitter, feel free to leave a comment below.

Sleeping birds photo courtesy of www.freepixels.com.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Caramel Cupcakes

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Natasha

I seem to be doing far more baking than blogging at the moment. I blame the long weekends. No sooner have I settled into my ‘me and the baby’ routine of feeding, shopping, washing and comforting the teething pain, then along comes another bank holiday with sunny skies and reasons to celebrate.

Caramel cupcakesI baked these caramel cupcakes using the iPhone application version of the Hummingbird Bakery’s Cake Days, for consumption during yesterday’s royal wedding watching event.

They’re definitely not as royally-themed as this weekend’s Hummingbird specials, but they did have an almost a full tin of dulche de leche caramel in them!

The recipe suggested using the remaining caramel to pipe decorative hearts onto the frosting. I didn’t feel I had quite enough for that, so instead I ended up eating the remaining spoonfuls straight from the tin (as if the extra calories of Easter weren’t bad enough!).

Just when I thought I might be getting better at this cupcake thing though, I ended up with similar issues to the first batch I wrote about on this blog: sponge overflow and runny frosting. However, I felt that I made a much better salvage attempt this time round. The overflowed cake was cut off, and the chocolate shavings and buttons and a half an hour in the fridge disguised the poor icing consistency.

The caramel frosting also got a better feedback rating from my tasters than the caramel custard on last week’s Banoffee cupcakes – and by the time Kate and William shared their second smooch on the balcony of Buckingham Palace there weren’t many cupcakes left in the tin.

Enjoy the rest of the long weekend everyone!

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Tappi Bear All in 1 – Pack 2 for the iPhone

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Natasha

Tappi Bear screenshotHow fast are your fingers? Fast enough to conduct an orchestra? Keep a football in the air? Serve donuts to an increasingly demanding collection of teddies? Put your tapping skills to the test with Tappi Bear All in 1 – Pack 2.

This is the second compilation of games starring the adorably 2D Tappi Bear, a follow up from the original pack released last year.

Pack 2 includes five new mini games:

Tap Tap Spring: Tap left and right to help your bear-on-a-pogo-stick bounce from platform to platform. Earn combos and accumulate bonus donuts, but don’t fall off the edge.

Rainbow Band: Conduct an orchestra of multi-coloured birds by tapping the numbers above their heads in the right order. Counting upwards from one may seem easy, but it’s often a frantic struggle to find the next number before the timer runs out.

Tappi Bubble: Help Tappi Bear aim and shoot his bubbles at the ones descending from the top of the screen. Connecting three or more bubbles of the same colour causes them to disappear.

Donut Fever: Serve up different donut shapes, icing types and toppings to meet the needs of your impatient customers. If you disappoint three of these hungry bears, it’s game over.

Tap Tap Kick: In this game, Tappi Bear’s playing keepy-uppy. Keep tapping on the football to make sure it stays in the air and, once again, tap on the donuts for bonus points.

As you play the various games, you earn Game Center achievements, as well as virtual coins which can be spent on Tappi Bear wallpapers in the in-app gift store.

Tappi Bear All in 1 is a fantastic looking application, with its cute characters and animations. However, its games are definitely aimed at those wanting a quick distraction, rather than a strategic ongoing gaming experience. Admittedly, I’m not the most coordinated person in the world, but most of my games were over in less than a minute – and when it came to Tap Tap Kick, it was often less than 5 seconds! So, while the individual games are fun, the real appeal here is in the fact that you can dip in and out of the five different games within the one application.

Of course, you’ll soon have your favourite game (Tappi Bubble is mine). You’ll soon be trying to beat your high scores. Your fingers will be flying all over the iPhone screen, aiming for the bonus donuts and cursing the moving platforms. And you may even be wondering, like I am, if there will be a Tappi Bear Pack 3 released soon.

Download from iTunes
Developer: Hong Fai Wong Taplay.com
Released: 9 March 2011
Price: £0.59

First published on iPhoneAppCafe.com. Happy to answer comments there or here.

Posted in The App Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Social media and live events: Tips from the Royal Wedding

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Natasha

According to Wikipedia, back in 1981, approximately 750 million people watched Princess Diana’s wedding on television. This Friday, when Prince William and Kate Middleton marry, the television audience is anticipated to be closer to two billion. While I’m likely to be included in those 2011 statistics, I’m much more interested in how the wedding preparations are shaping up on social media – and how the use of these tools can be adapted by those running live events on a smaller scale.

Screenshot of the Royal Wedding Facebook event

Create a Facebook event

It’s really easy to create an event on Facebook – either using your personal profile or your Facebook page – and it’s a great way to bring together potential event attendees. The event wall can become a place for updates and photos of the venue, as well as a networking space for guests. If it’s an open event (such as watching the Royal Wedding on television), then information about the event can spread virally, as those ‘attending’ invite their own Facebook friends.

The official Facebook event for the Royal Wedding was created by the British Monarchy page. As of this morning, the page had 357, 843 likes. The number of event attendees wasn’t available.

Have a hashtag

Hashtags are a way of filtering information relating to a particular event on Twitter. Clarence House, the official Twitter feed of the Royal Wedding, is predominently using the tag #rw2011.

Of course, you have no control over how the internet population uses your hashtag, but by defining it yourself, choosing something that’s not immediately obvious and getting the word (hashtag) out to attendees, you can attempt to bring together discussion that is specific to your event.

This is not only useful during the event itself (as a way to get realtime feedback), but also during the planning stages. Could potential attendees could use the hashtag to tweet in questions to your conference speakers? Could they use it to identify other attendees and start networking before the event begins? Check out this blog post from Blue State Digital for more tips on using Twitter at a live event.

Consider video

As the television viewing figures suggest, people like to see things. This Friday’s nuptials will be live-streamed on YouTube. While you may not have the camera crew or the budget to do something similar, it’s worth thinking about how you can use video to promote your event or capture it for people who are unable to attend. Video can bring to life the need for your fundraiser, build the profile of your speakers, spread your message or share the experience.

When I was working at YouthNet, for example, we filmed popular YouTuber Charlie McDonnell speaking at a launch event about how he got started with vlogging. It’s not a great quality video. It was filmed on an inexpensive FlipCam and the editing is minimal, and yet, as of today, it has had almost 19,000 views.

In the interest of keeping this post to a suitable blog length I’ll stick to those three points: Facebook events, hashtags, video. However, if you’ve got other examples of what can be learned from this royal use of social media or how web 2.0 tools can be used to enhance live events in general, feel free to leave a comment below.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Easter Banoffee Cupcakes

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Natasha

Banoffee CupcakesHope everyone had a wonderful Good Friday, St George’s Day, Easter Sunday, ANZAC Day combo over the past four days.

For me, it was a wonderful long weekend of sunshine and picnics, time with family and friends, and a slightly-earlier-than-expected new arrival.

I made these Banoffee Cupcakes for my husband for Easter. They were supposed to be a surprise, but he was sick for the two days leading into the Bank Holiday and I haven’t yet mastered the art of sneaky baking. Especially since it still takes me half a day to make a batch of cupcakes. Especially since my kitchen still looks like a disaster area afterwards.

The banana bases came together well, without any side splatters on the cases, thanks to Jess‘ tip of using a bowl with a pourer (I used my measuring jug). However, the custard topping was a multi-step mission of making custard, cooling, whipping cream and folding it all together – and I wasn’t that sold on the final result.

Being Easter, I thought I’d decorate the cupcakes with Mini Eggs, but the caramel custard topping made the dye run and eventually, the hard shells dissolved altogether. The custard also made the cupcakes seem more like a dessert than an anytime treat, and meant that they needed to be kept in the fridge rather than a cake tin.

I baked these from the Cake Days recipe book as part of a book vs. app review that I’m writing for iPhoneAppCafe.com (any excuse to buy both versions!). There’s no indication of difficulty level in the book, but  when I checked the iPhone app later on, there was a extra piece of information on the menu: Skill: Intermediate.

I wouldn’t call myself an intermediate baker just yet, so I was kind of proud of how these turned out – the lumps in the custard weren’t even noticeable once the custard was piped onto the cakes!

The film isn’t usually better than the book, but is the app? I’ll be baking my next batch of cupcakes using the Cake Days application on my iPhone and it’ll be interesting to see the results.

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Five iPhone applications for the Royal Wedding

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Natasha

At the end of this month, two university sweethearts will wed. The bride used to be an accessories buyer for Jigsaw and she still makes the best-dressed lists. The groom is a helicopter pilot and also His Royal Highness, Prince William of Wales. The British prince, second in line to the throne, will marry his long-term girlfriend, Catherine (Kate) Middleton at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.

Whether you’ll be in central London waving a Union Jack on the nuptial date or spending your extra public holiday watching the proceedings on TV, here’s a list of the top iPhone applications to help you prepare for this royal wedding extravaganza.

1. Royal Wedding Invite

£0.59; released 13 March 2011; developer Ryan Stevens; download from iTunes.

Royal Wedding Invite application screenshot

According to Wikipedia, 1,900 people have been invited to the wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey. If you haven’t made the cut this time, you can still learn more about the bride and groom, the best man (Prince Harry), and the wedding venues via the free Royal Wedding Invite application – or alternatively, you could look on Wikipedia where most of the text and images come from.

If you’re especially eager not to miss any of the big event, the application also features a timer that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the ceremony begins.

2. The Royal Wedding from Hello!

Free; updated 23 March 2011; developer Hello Ltd; download from iTunes.

Hello! Royal Wedding application screenshot

Hello! magazine has recently released their own royal wedding application, featuring a range of glossy images and short captions from their editorial team. Take a look at Kate’s ring and those of other royal fiancées. See early pictures of the bride and groom. Follow the timeline of their romance, break-up and engagement.

It’s a fairly slick application, but its content is fairly limited and padded out with pictures of other royal couples. You’re also not going to see Kate’s actual dress in the dress section at this stage, but rather sketches from alternative designers, such as Valentino and Elizabeth Emmanuel, showing what they would’ve done if given the opportunity. However, the application developers promise that new pictures will continue to be added as the wedding approaches.

3. Monarchy: The Definitive Guide

£1.19; updated 24 January 2011; developer Daniel Dickenson, download from iTunes.

Monarchy application screenshot

Prince William is second in line to the British throne – a throne that has been occupied over the centuries by a number of well-known kings and queens. Henry the VIII with his six wives. William the Conqueror. George VI, played by Colin Firth in a recent film. The Monarchy application brings a timeline of monarchs to your phone, ranging from King Offa in 757 to Queen Elizabeth II in the present day.

Once again, the content is drawn heavily from Wikipedia, but the easy-to-use interface makes it a handy reference tool for offline browsing. Additional features include a list of Prime Ministers from 1721 onwards and the lyrics for the national anthems of the United Kingdom, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – useful if you want to brush up on the words to ‘God Save the Queen’ before your royal wedding street party.

4. London: Westminster Abbey Guide & Audio

£2.99; released 23 September 2009; developer GuidzAlive Limited; download from iTunes.

Westminster Abbey application screenshot

Westminster Abbey, the venue for William and Kate’s wedding ceremony, is one of London’s top tourist attractions. Whether you’re planning a visit or just wanting to find out more about this historic site, this Way2Go guide provides an excellent audio commentary on the highlights of Westminster Abbey, such as the Coronation Chair and Poets’ Corner. There’s even a five minute audio segment on the funeral of Princess Diana, Prince William’s mother, which also took place at the Abbey.

The application also includes a floor plan of Westminster Abbey, a map of the local area and information on how to get there (though if you’re a wedding guest you perhaps won’t be using public transport).

5. Weakest Link: Royal Wedding Edition

£0.59; released 22 March 2011; developer BBC Worldwide LTD; download from iTunes.

Weakest Link: Royal Wedding Edition screenshot

Once you’ve used the other applications on this list to study up on all things Kate and William, test your knowledge by playing Weakest Link: Royal Wedding Edition. Released by the BBC and based on their popular game show, the application matches you up with five computer-generated opponents who each seem to have an endless knowledge of wedding trivia as well as their own strategies for making it to the final round.

What does the Middleton family business sell? How old was Diana when William was born? In which room at St James’ Palace were William and Kate’s official engagement photos taken?

Answer the questions correctly while avoiding being voted off by your opponents and you’ll make it through to the sudden death play-off. There are no snarky comments from Anne Robinson here, but there are 1,000 wedding-related questions ranging from member-of-the-public to stalker-of-the-monarchy difficulty levels.

Alternatively, if you’re not interested in the royal wedding at all, and are just looking for something to do on April 26, the application also has a general knowledge setting, boasting 10,000 different questions – that should keep you busy through the ceremony, at least.

First published on iPhoneAppCafe.com. Happy to answer comments there or here.

Posted in The App Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

NFP Social Media League Table

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Natasha

Earlier this month, research consultancy NFP Synergy, published a social media league table for UK charities. This league table measures social media presence – the number of likes a charity has on Facebook, subscribers on YouTube, followers on Twitter and so on. You can download the report for free from the NFP Synergy website.

Of course, mere presence and even follower numbers, are far from being the only indicators of social media success. For some organisations, a small but loyal fanbase, keen to donate, volunteer or take other actions on behalf of the charity may be much more beneficial. As the researchers say, ‘It is not an easy thing to measure the social media engagement of an organisation, and even more difficult to compare it to that of another organisation.’

That said, there are some interesting findings here. Charities, it seems, may be quicker than businesses to adopt and use social media. According to the researchers:

When the top 25 fundraising charities are compared with the top 25 FTSE companies by market capitalisation, charities are far ahead in terms of use of social media, with three times as many YouTube subscribers, eight times as many Twitter followers and ten times as many Facebook ‘likes’ on average.

Out of the top fifty fundraising charities, the Royal British Legion tops the social media league table. On their website, they have a Legion Interactive page which details ‘ways you can participate in online activities associated with the Legion or show your support in this digital age’. There’s also a separate website which brings all their online community-building work together.  Interestingly, they’ve set up their Twitter account as a character named Poppy who acts as their official voice, rather than using the name of the charity or one of its staff members. It’s also interesting to see that while Poppy has almost 5,000 followers - people who think her updates are worth subscribing to – she’s only followed back less than a thousand.

There’s also a section in the report on those not-for-profits who don’t make the fundraising top 50 list, but who still have a high level of presence on social media: organisations such as the V&A Museum, Beatbullying Bullying UK and Greenpeace. The great thing about social media is that it does let charities with less fundraising income - and smaller businesses for that matter – punch above their weight. Indeed, it’s often those that manage to be nimble and responsive to their followers, rather than those with excessive set up and sign off processes which can make the most of these new media channels.

For anyone who wants to know how UK charities are using Facebook and Twitter, YouTube and blogs in 2011, the NFP Synergy report is definitely worth a look. I’d love to hear what others thought of the results. Were they as expected? Any suprises? Feel free to leave me a comment below.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Spotting comment spam

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Natasha

I got some lovely comments on my blog last night.

Regards for this post, wrote one Justine Lamaack, I am a big fan of this site and would like to go along updated.

Another commenter added: okay without appearing too sticky or groupie’ish you are amazing for posting this aha thanks man.

There’s not many posts on my blog yet, but I still get six or seven comments like this a day. You won’t see them on the site though, because they’re spam.

Spammers, it seems, are smarter these days. I get less comments that are obviously spam, comments that are stuffed with irrelevant keywords and links, here than I did on my earlier blogging efforts. Instead, the spammers are trying to flatter me into approving their messages.

Why? Because if I approve it, they’ll get their link on my blog where it will be seen by other readers. And because, once I’ve approved one comment from a particular user, my blog will usually automatically publish other comments from the same person – comments which can then contain as many keywords and irrelevant links as the spammer wishes to include.

Examples of comment spam

However, it’s still quite easy to be smarter than a spammer. The image above shows three things to watch out for.

1. The commenter’s name

It may be obvious that the spammer is posting on behalf of a website which has little to do with your post and they’ve used that website as their name (1b). Alternatively, they may have used a personal name (1a), but it doesn’t match up with their email address.

2. The website/email address

Does the website look genuine? Is it relevant to the comment? Is it one you’d want to visit? It may be worth trusting your gut instinct here, because checking it out may lead you to some unsavoury content.

It’s worth taking a look at the email address too. Does it match the website’s domain name or have they used a free email account such as gmail or hotmail? Of course, lots of genuine commenters use webmail accounts, but there is usually a clue when it’s being used by a spammer (such as the different name/email account name above).

3. The comment itself

It’s nice to have such appreciation for your writing, but it’s also worth thinking about whether the comment is specific to your blog. The comments above, for example, could’ve been posted on pretty much any piece of online content.

It can also be easy to spot spam comments because of their poor English. Extra words. Awkward phrasing. Misuse of capitals. Real commenters can of course make mistakes too, but if the language issue is combined with any of the other factors above, it’s probably comment spam.

Stopping comment spam

There are two main ways of preventing comment spam on your blog. You can install a ‘human-test’ which needs to completed before the comment is submitted. This could be a CAPTCHA code or a maths question that the user has to answer correctly.

You can also set up a system of moderating your comments – either all of them or the first one from each user – rather than letting them appear on your blog automatically. If you’re using WordPress, the Akismet plug-in can also filter out most spam comments and hold them in a separate queue for deletion or, in rare cases, approval.

If you’ve got any tips for spotting or stopping spam, feel free to leave me a (real) comment below.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Tribes and Triberr

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Natasha

Earlier this week, I finished reading Seth Godin’s Tribes. Earlier this week, a random Stumble also led me to the new website, Triberr.com. Such is the serendipity of the internet.

Tribes is Godin’s book on new forms of leadership. Aiming to inspire rather than instruct, it’s full of case studies and optimism about how the web 2.0 world facilitates connecting like-minded people and building movements.

Triberr.com, at it’s most basic, is a website which allows you to increase the reach of your blog posts by building a network of people who will retweet the links out to their own network of Twitter followers.

In this video, Triberr co-founder Dino Dogan, explains the site.

Many of the things that make Triberr interesting are also things which Godin mentions in his book about building tribes.

A shared interest

Triberr builds networks of people with similar interests, occupations or experiences. They might be entrepreneurs or beauty bloggers or mums. This makes sense. If you’re going to be retweeting blog posts, it’s surely better that they are about a topic that you’re interested in (and that, by association, your followers might be interested in too).

A way to communicate

I’m not a Triberr myself, but already I can see that the site provides a way to contact the leader a tribe and request membership. Three minutes into the video, it also shows how a tribal leader can invite new members and communicate with existing ones.

Of course, there’s also the pre-existing platform of Twitter, which isn’t just useful as a way to broadcast links but also as a way to meet and get to know members and potential members of your tribe.

Exclusivity

You can’t be a member of Triberr without an invite from the leader of an existing tribe. You can ask for one, but it’s up to the tribal leader to grant it – presumably based on whether he or she thinks you’re a good fit for the network that’s being built. Dogan has written an interesting blog post about what he’s learnt about creating tribes.

Once you’ve got that initial invite, you can then create a limited number of tribes of your own. That way, the site grows, but it still maintains a sense of exclusivity.

Taking the follow

You start on Triberr as a member of a group of Twitterers, automatically promoting content written by other group members. This allows you to learn the system before you take the lead and start a tribe yourself.

But taking the follow here is also taking a risk. Just like the tribal leader, an applicant also needs to be selective. You don’t have to know someone, of course, to retweet their blog posts. You don’t even need to read their blog posts to do that. However, it pays to do so. After all, your own reputation on Twitter will be affected by the quality of content that you retweet. It would seem worthwhile then, to check out the other members of the tribe that you want to join and see if their blog content is a good fit with your interests and views.

I’m not a member of Triberr, and I’m not currently sending off messages to leaders asking to join their networks (though if an invite came my way, I’d consider it). But already I’ve found that exploring the different categories a useful human-based filtering system to find ’experts’ in particular areas. After all, the people who make up a tribe are people that the leader thought were worthwhile contributors in that area. Without joining the tribe, I can still connect with them on Twitter. I can still subscribe to and comment on their blogs. I can find out more about the movement they’re creating, who their followers are, and where they want to go.

If you’re using Triberr at the moment – or, for that matter, if you’ve read Tribes – it’d be great to hear your thoughts.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments