Not directly on the point but looking through the news items in the widget I was struck by how few of them really relate to Birmingham. I think that there is an interesting discussion to be had around why the Birmingham Post's coverage of Birmingham Politics is so poor. For example - is every significant committee meeting covered? Is there regular use of the FOIA? Paul Dale can't do everything.

I don't know how to answer that, to be honest. Is the Post's coverage of politics poor? What do you think?

If you have any thoughts, please feel free to post them to the discussion already in progress.

                   

Isaac Newton said he had "seen a little further" by standing on the shoulders of giants - the scientists who came before him.

Most of us using the Internet today are standing on the shoulders of giant geeks - the early adopters who were building communities ten years ago.

Although their audiences were different, as they were not running newspapers and dealt mostly with other early adopters, I think it makes sense to look at the lessons they learned rather than starting from scratch.

For example, these are some of the points Richard Bartle, co-author of the first MUD, makes in a chapter on promoting communities in his book Designing Virtual Worlds.

The more people communicate, the more they will develop relationships. The more relationships that develop, the stronger the community becomes.

Members of communities act and interact in community space. If they own some of that community space, it can help them feel like they're a permanent part of that community.

Some things are generally good for communities and some things are generally bad . . . the main [bad] ones to watch out for are xenophobia, prejudice and oppression.

Bartle is talking about MUDs but I think his points apply to any community space, such as newspaper presences on the internet if we want to create communities around them. This (and I know I am doing things backwards) is what inspired my earlier post about the importance of letting people create identities, to communicate with each other and to add content.

In general, I think we need to look beyond "what other newspapers/media organisations are doing" when considering what we ought to be doing.

                   

Sprout lets you make widgets. It's free and easy. I made a demonstration, which should be visible on the menu on the left.

Edit: However, their gadgets seem to crash this site when using Internet Explorer on some occasions. It may well be an issue with the scripts on this site rather than Sprout's fault - I just don't know. But for now, the widget is gone.

                   

Would YouTube be successful if users could only post videos anonymously, with nothing to identify the creator?

What if they were also unable to create their own userpage, listing their films and all the people who subscribed to them? If there was no way of knowing how many people had watched the videos, and no way of rating them or leaving comments?

YouTube is not a hit because it has videos. Of course, it wouldn't work without them, or something else to replace them. But it's successful because it provides an opportunity for people to create an identity, and use that identity to say something and to be creative in front of audience. To show off.

In my Seesmic talk about the future of newspapers, I said that our websites should allow people to post or bookmark videos and photos, create their own blogs, create personal profiles and all sorts of other stuff, all on, for example, the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail websites.

I then said that some people might not think reader-submitted videos and pictures were the way forward for newspapers, but, I added, this wasn't the point.

The point is to allow them to create an identity. To express themselves. To communicate with - and show off to - other people, however exactly they do it.

This is one of the reasons people take part in (rather than passively consume) internet media. It allows them to make their mark, and we should do everything we can to allow them to make their mark on our "newspaper", whatever form that newspaper takes.

After all, we are already established as a key part of our local communities. Our brands are still strong - and prestigious. Let's give readers the chance to be a part of them.

(By the way, I have added an example of a video bookmarking component to this website, to illustrate what it means. Hit the "videos" page from the top menu to try it).

                   

What he and has team have really done is to make it more accessible to people who want to nick it and re-present it in their own way (sometimes called a mash-up). So, for example, it should be possible to get hold of information about crime levels, poverty, unemployment, and educational achievement, create a handy widget for your website and invite people to find out what's going on in their neighbourhood, perhaps by entering a postcode or clicking on a map.

He's even gone as far as inviting people to tell him which information they want, and how they want it delivered.

This is an invitation for newspapers to work out what sort of things they want to present to their readers - and then ask the Government to give it to them, to package and pass on.

Too good to pass up, surely?

Sadly, my computer kung fu is not quite good enough to let me create my own version of everyblock.com but there are plenty of enterprising people who could, so let's hope the newspaper industry gets there first.