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Everyone likes good publicity: just look at the film posters quoting reviews of the movie. Of course, these can be misleading.

A recent blurb for the TV movie The Girl in the Café quoted The Oregonian newspaper:

“An endearing romantic comedy.”

What The Oregonian actually said was:

“This new offering from HBO Films is at its heart a bit of political propaganda wrapped into an endearing romantic comedy that starts losing its laughs when it gets to Reykjavik and decides its teachable moment has arrived.”

You can see more of these at Gelf Magazine.

You probably don’t have to be so economical with the actualité. But it’s not so easy to bathe in glory. One great content idea is a gallery of what people have said about your company or site. However, content usually comes with a price, and as we discovered recently with a CNBC video clip of our CEO, simply linking to a video or article is not enough. Within hours of linking to the clip on CNBC, they imposed a subscription-only tag. There’s nothing suspicious here: in a charged-content model, content is usually free for a set period before the curtain comes down.

News providers such as magazines, newspapers and broacast media have been arguing for years about charging for content (news agencies like Reuters and the Press Association survive by charging for content, but their main customers are the aforesaid magazines, newspapers and broacast media). Because the enduring ethos of the internet is “everything is free”, it’s been very difficult to get drive-by surfers to pay for anything. Some have tried. Most have failed. TIME magazine charged for content from their magazine for four years and made a profit (the only part of the operation that did!!), but when their sister site AOL decided to open up their content to everyone, TIME decided to drop the “curtain” — and still made a profit!

Incidentally, TIME used to charge for magazine content seven days after it hit the newsstands on the basis that people would pay for a magazine online which they couldn’t buy on the streets. The exception were religious stories — which they charged for immediately: religious feeling as it is in the U.S., people would pay for that content at any time. Religious stories were the big money earners!

The fact is that some copy is off limits to non-payers (or at least non-subscribers), and while a “What They Say About Us” page would be great, it will not be easy.

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Which brings us to the thorny question of accessibility. Let me say here that I’m NOT an expert: I keep learning new things about it every day, sometimes even twice in a day, but I am an enthusiast, albeit a reformed one. (To read an expert’s blog on the subject go to 456 Berea Street.)

What is accessibility? Simply put, it is the concept that the interweb should be available to ALL people, regardless of their capabilities. (Some might say there are a few web designers out there whose work proves that point, and not in a good way.)

Immediately you say the word accessibility to most people, they will think “A-ha! Web pages for blind people!”

And they’d be wrong. One of the biggest “minorities” trying to use the web — and often failing — are dyslexics (I’d been a journalist for a decade when it was pointed out to by someone I was researching a story with that I’m mildly dyslexic. And why is the word so hard to spell?). Add to that people with movement difficulties and many other conditions associated with advancing years and you’ve got not a minority, but a majority that most of us will join in the years ahead.

I’ll be returning to the subject of accessibility soon.

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I’m beginning to discover the world of streaming webcams. For about two years I ran a webcam which showed the front of Somerset House in London’s trendy West End. Every 30 seconds it took a picture — 320px x 170px — of the road outside, at a crazy angle. This was because the tiny camera was perched precariously on the window ledge between the double glazing of my office in Brettenham House, off Lancaster Place.

Exciting it wasn’t. It did give a good view of the roadworks outside to strengthen Waterloo Bridge and add an access hatch to the Strand Underpass (which even has its own Wikipedia page). The downside was that you only got a glimpse every 30 seconds or so: even British workmen can move faster than that!

Look around the web and you’ll find lots of webcam sites. My favourite is the Times Square HD webcam, and I once made my own .gif movie prancing around in front of this one at 4am in the morning.

The best webcams obviously have the best views, but it’s not as simple as sticking a camera on some lofty building overlooking a recognisable landmark. Take a look at the Hoe Webcam which sits on Plymouth’s old aquarium site and points out over Plymouth Sound. It’s a lovely view, but nothing (much) happens.

In formulating a policy for placing webcam feeds we quickly come to several conclusions.

• It must be a good view
• Something must happen
• It must be of sufficient size

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The key to motivating people to contribute to any project or activity is finding their personal angle: what’s in it for them?

I’ve not been a member of the Regus team for very long to meet enough people to know what flicks their switch but, in the wider world, behavioural scientists say that it comes down to food, habitation and mate competition. Now, I’m not sure we can introduce online dating, planning rules prohibit using offices for residential purposes and, trust me, I’ve tasted Regus’s sandwiches.

Contributing to the website MUST become a part of everyday life for selected Regus employees and to facilitate that it has to be made painless (or as painless as we can) as well as rewarding. I faced similar problems at my previous emplyer in recent years and only recently — with endorsement from higher management AND extra resource and incentives — did people begin to realise that online HELPS them, not hinders.

What will be make or break is a good Content Management System. The CMS displayed today by Ektron sets a high standard. Above all, it appears to be an easy sytem to use with and intuitive interface.

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