Dealing with the impending cookie monster

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

[Disclaimer: This blog post isn't in any way based on expert knowledge of website law but aims to clarify my own understanding. Errors will be rectified.]

I’ve just taken part in a Lasa webinar on the new cookie law, hosted by data protection guru Paul Ticher.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 came in to effect last year but because of the complexity organisations were given a year to implement the changes.

So this year, on 26 May, website owners will be expected to have made reasonable steps towards complying with that law.

The main focus of the law says that you must not store information on someone else’s computer (cookie) unless they understand the purpose of it and have given their consent.

According to the law you don’t need to get consent for cookies that are ‘strictly necessary’ for the functioning of a website. One example of this could be if you run a commerce site, you could argue that it’s ‘strictly necessary’ to use cookies to keep track of what items people have put into their virtual shopping basket.

So what should organisations be doing now? Well hopefully you’ve been working up to this for the last year and have already made changes but if you’ve only found out about it or were hoping it would go away then there are still things you can do in the next six weeks or so to ensure you don’t get chased by the IC:

  1. Review all of the cookies that you have set up on your website.
  2. Evaluate each one to see how intrusive they are and if they are absolutely necessary. (Cookies that indicate choice are felt to be less intrusive, such as ‘remember me on this computer’. You should still let people know you’re using them)
  3. Update your privacy statement to state where cookies are used on your site and what they’re for, even if you’ve classed them as  ’strictly necessary’.

That’s not the end of it, to be fully compliant you need to give people the opportunity to agree to cookies when they’re using your site. A sign in page can be good for this if you have one.

The Information Commissioner (IC) has said that cookies used in analytics packages are covered by the law but not a priority. (Reference for this statement to follow).

Even though the IC has said that tracking cookies aren’t a priority for them they’re still covered by the law and need to be considered. One issue for users was felt to be that even though the terms of using Google Analytics say you can’t use it to track personal info (section 7), the same terms (section 6) say that Google themselves can use any info captured. There’s no clarity in there about what they might do with this information.

Some examples of cookies statements:

One thing that came up during the webinar and didn’t get answered is if/ how this law impacts on sites like Facebook that many organisations are using for their business and which track users across sites. Does anyone have thoughts on this issue?

Paul has written up a handy guide to the new cookie law at http://ictknowledgebase.org.uk/cookielaw.

There’s also an interesting blog post from E Consultancy http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9202-eu-cookie-law-three-approaches-to-compliance.

The Citizenship Foundation are running an event on 4th May in Birmingham http://citizensheep.com/blog/2012/04/17/charities-and-the-cookie-law-birmingham-event/.

Posted in Websites | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

How would you tell someone to get started with social media?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by

Last Sunday I was involved in a Twitter conversation with watfordgap, kanter, magicroundabout and others about how much time voluntary organisations have to devote to using social media.

Twitter screengrab

Paul Webster (watfordgap) made a comment that perhaps we should be encouraging organisations to start out in social media by introducing them to things like Google+ or Pinterest. I find myself disagreeing with Paul on that point and I wanted a few more than 140 characters to say why.

Before writing anything I want to make it clear that I’m not saying I wouldn’t advise organisations to use Google+, Pinterest or anything else. I hope that after working through what an organisation wants to achieve, who they’re trying to reach and what resources they have available then I’d help them to pick the best tools for the job, whatever they may be.

I’m also talking specifically about working with staff at organisations at the start of their social media journey and not individuals interested in social media for personal reasons.

The thing that I always focus on is the tools that will give them a thorough understanding of how social media works and what will give them the biggest return for the amount of time they’re able to give to it.

In my experience of working with organisations, when you get hold of someone to show them what social media’s all about you don’t have very long to grab their attention. If they don’t get some kind of benefit from it – either connecting with someone, sharing a piece of information or finding something out – very quickly then you’ve lost them. Sustained benefit from social media comes out of the personal connections and conversations with people you meet through the sharing and talking.

The other thing to consider is that they need to use a tool that will give them a return on the precious time they have to give to social media, whatever their indicator of success might be.

In my mind the answer to this is almost always Facebook and Twitter. Facebook works because of its ready made networks and with a well set up page, regular updates and clear promotion it can bring big returns for organisations. Twitter similarly is very quick to get benefits if you jump in and start talking to people.

My issue with sites like Pinterest and Google + is that although there are undoubtably benefits to some people, there just isn’t the established audience yet to make it a good use of time for organisations with limited resources. Pinterest particularly misses out on that key element of just chatting.

Anyway, that’s what I think. I’m sure you’ll tell me what you think.

Beth Kanter has also written up her thoughts on whether charities should jump onto new tool bandwagons http://www.bethkanter.org/early-wait-google/.

Posted in Social media | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Sifting the online wheat from the chaff

Posted on April 6, 2012 by

If this is a blog post of the bleeding obvious then I really do apologise in advance.

I was just taking half an hour to do some much needed sifting of my RSS feeds and it occurred to me that maybe some people – even one person – might find it useful to know how I manage my information. Would it?

In case it is, here’s how I do it:

Focussing first on blogs and websites, it all comes from RSS feeds.

About five years ago I started collecting interesting looking websites and blogs and to keep up to date with them I added their RSS feeds to my feed reader. At the time I was using Bloglines to do this but now I use Google Reader. I’ve already written about RSS feeds on this blog.

Although I can access updated RSS feeds from my laptop I mainly use the app on my Android phone. When I have a spare few minutes either on a bus or in a queue, I scan the new updated feeds.

I’ve already got them categorised into my different areas of interests so I can pick out the ones that are most important or relevant to me at the time.

When I’m looking through the feeds I don’t read everything. There’s absolutely no way I’d have time to do that, well, not as well as having a job.

What I do is look at all of the feeds in a category in one place – with just the headlines showing – and scan to see what catches my eye.

I’m not overly bothered about missing something as I know if it’s really worth reading it’ll find its way back to me at some point.

When I’m scanning the headlines I mark ones that I want to look at in more detail with a star.

When I get to the bottom of the list I mark them all as read and they disappear from my Google Reader.

I find the process of scanning all of the headlines a good way of getting a sense of what’s happening, particularly in the tech world. If there are a lot of mentions of a tool or service then I tend to pick up on it that way.

Scanning RSS feeds

The next stage for me is actually dealing with all of the items I’ve starred. It doesn’t necessarily happen straight after I’ve scanned all of the feeds but at some point I need to decide what I want to do with this information.

Starred RSS feeds

Probably about half of the entries I just read quickly, remove the star and move on. The ones that I think are actually useful to me and other people, I set up as scheduled tweets using Hootsuite.

The act of scheduling is another way of helping me to absorb the information but also selfishly as a freelancer it’s a way of showing people see I’m interested and keeping up with the latest developments.

I’ve linked my Twitter account to a service called Packrati.us. This allows me to post links and hashtags to Twitter and save the links to my Delicious (social bookmarking) at the same time.

Even at this stage I might not have read a post from beginning to end, but once it’s tagged in Delicious I know that I can call it back up if I need to research a tool or topic.

So, to quickly summarise,

  1. I use Google Reader to capture updates from my favourite blogs and websites
  2. I use the Google Reader Android app to scan through the headline updates
  3. I star any updates I want to read
  4. I look at all of the starred updates together and decide what I want to do with them
  5. If I think a link is worth sharing I set up a scheduled tweet using Hootsuite
  6. I make sure the tweet has a link to the information and any relevant hashtags
  7. The link gets saved automatically to my Delicious account for me to access later if I need it.

I have pretty much the same process for information on Twitter. I let the stream of updates pass by me, favouriting anything I want to look at later. When I have few minutes spare I go through my favourites, sharing anything that I think would be of use and replying if I have something to say.

And that’s it. Did you already know that? Is that how you do it? Am I crazy? Am I spending too much time on all of this? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Tools | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Me and my Twitter

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

Whilst biking around London yesterday for a game of Brompton Monopoly I found myself reflecting on how many people I’ve met and how many opportunities I’ve had because of Twitter.

Brompton Monopoly

Since I moved to London I think pretty much everyone I know – outside of work colleagues – I’ve met through Twitter.

It seems easy for people that don’t use Twitter to dismiss it as a pointless tool and I find it quite difficult to articulate what it means to me but at the same time I just know that my life would be very different without it.

Some of the things that have been possible because of Twitter: I met all my great Stoke Knittington friends, I volunteered at Stoke Newington Literary Festival, I found out about Brompton Monopoly, I sponsored Ross Fisher to grow a moustache, I went to the opening of Paul Clarke‘s photography exhibition, I took (take) part in Arthur‘s awesome Friday afternoon Twitter quizzes, I went to Robert Brook‘s birthday party, I got lots of freelance work, I went to Rich Watts‘ leaving London party, I met Roxanne Persaud, which led me to the Sidehustle Gang, I got some free Otley beer when Melissa Cole launched a new collaboration with the brewery, I had a short conversation with Jeremy Dyson about what one of his books meant to me, I rode the London Classic, I’ve had lots of beers and coffees with people I’d never met in real life before (and I survived), I kept in touch with Paul Webster after we stopped working on the same project together, I’ve helped two little girls to find out about bees and I’ve tweeted along to many episodes of Question Time, Match of the Day and The Archers.

There is so much more that I’ve been able to do because of Twitter but this was all I could think of for now.

Posted in Tools | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Looking to the stars (and the planets)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

I feel this post is a bit of a cop-out this week but I really don’t want to miss another Weekly Blog Club yet I just don’t have any time to write anything substantial.

It’s one month exactly until I get married and one thing my other half and I did this week was visit the pub where we’re having our wedding day lunch.

On the way out we were dazzled by the clearness of the sky and brightness of the moon, Venus and Jupiter.

To make this a vaguely techie post I want to marvel at what you can do with smart phones these days. Just to confirm what we were looking at we used the Google Sky Map app and then I used my in-built camera to take this photo:

image

Posted in Mobile | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Understanding the new Facebook Page timelines for charities

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

Not wanting to miss this week’s WeeklyBlogClub deadline I thought I’d share this nice image I found on the Third Sector PR and Communications network’s Facebook group about the new Facebook Page timelines and what it means for charities. The image comes from Inbound Zombie.

Facebook Pages for charities

Posted in Tools | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Creating your own data visualisations

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

At the NCVO Annual Conference on Monday I went to the workshop on visualising data. Now, I love data and I love visualisations so I was pretty much like a pig in the stinky stuff. The workshop was run by Ed and Matt from Reason Digital.

Visualisations are essentially a way to show (often complex) information using graphics.

Whether you have to write reports full of facts and figures or you need to demonstrate the impact of your work to the public then creating a graphical representation of the information might be an effective way of doing it.

I have to say that I don’t agree with visualisations for visualisation’s sake. You as an organisation need to have something to say that you think will be more effective using graphics.

In general there are two types of data visulations. Firstly ones that illustrate a number of different variables in a way that makes complex data easier to understand at a glance. One example of this is the Minard visualisation of Napoleon’s march into Moscow. This visualisation incorporates information about time, distance, soldier numbers and temperature.

Losses of the French Army in the Russian Campaign 1812-1813

The second type are visualisations that use graphics to illustrate a figure, such as on this poster about Mashable users:

Mashable vs Hashable

In the workshop it was also suggested that an infographic (such as the first example) is telling a specific story and leading you to a conclusion. A data visualisation (the second example) puts the facts in front of you and leaves you to make up your own mind.

People enjoy debating these two types and the terms that are used to describe them, you can read more about it in the article “Infoposters are not Infographics: A comparison”.

Whichever type you end up creating there are 12 steps that Reason Digital think you need to work through. Even if you plan to work with a company, volunteer or staff member to create your visualisation then these steps will help to define exactly what it is you want to achieve.

  1. Have a point and a purpose – What’s the issue you want to get across? What’s the question you’re asking?
  2. Make it relevant and interesting to a large the right audience – This might involve stepping away from what you as an organisation are doing and looking more at the issue or cause in general terms.
  3. Decide if you’re making an infographic (with narrative and pointing to a conclusion) or a data visualisation (something you can explore and people can make their own minds up).
  4. Deconstruct your point into a series of facts or statements that you can back up with data.
  5. Gather data and statistics: You might have the data you need within your organisation but you can also get supporting data from the ONS site, NHS data store, data.gov.uk, What do they know?, COINS, Guardian data blog and local council websites. [ETA - Once you've gathered your data then make sure you reference it in your visualisation. It will give more credibility to what you're saying.]
  6. Choose and order your facts. This stage needs a certain level of statistical literacy to be able to interprate data and the inconsistencies it can throw up.
  7. Work your data into a narrative. Make sure the story you’re telling comes out in your visualisation. The key to a great visualisation is in finding the story.
  8. Edit, refine and make it flow.
  9. Apply visual methods: This could be maps, scale, timeline, bar charts, icons, pictures of objects, word cloud or illustrations.
  10. Apply an interesting visual style.
  11. Choose the right medium: What will work best for your audience? Static image? Interactive graphic?
  12. Jump start the sharing process: Make sure it’s easy to share by putting it on YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, visual.ly etc.

Some of the tools we looked at for creating visualisations included Google fusion tables, Google refine, Gapminder and visual.ly.

There are of course barriers to creating visualisations:

  • Having the right data – Once an organisation has decided on the story it wants to tell the next step is finding the right data. Even if you don’t have it straight away, once you’ve identified what it is you can build in mechanisms for collecting it in the future.
  • Knowing how to interpret data – As I mentioned above, you need a certain level of statistical literacy to make accurate visualisations. This kind of skill could come from a staff member or volunteer.
  • Confusing personal data with that needed to create visualisations – There is a difference between using personal information (such as religious beliefs, income, sexual orientation etc. about specific people) and generic figures about how many of instances there are of things or events. The latter is what you need to be able to create a visualisation, how many service users are male, how many service users also access other services etc.
  • Graphical skills – Not everyone has the skill to create an infographic. It may be that at the last stage you have to go to an external agency but if you’ve completed these stages then you’ll find the process a lot easier.

Have you tried creating visualisations? Do you think they are an effective way of communicating data? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Open data | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments