The Guardian Gets Serious about Crowdsourcing MP’s Expenses

The Guardian has just launched a Crowdsourced platform to facilitate MP expense reviews by its readers.


We all heard about the first experiment to crowdsource a review of MP’s expenses. Now 458,832 pages of documents are getting reviewed by Guardian readers in an unprecedented effort to bust bad usage of taxpayers’ money. 25,000 people got involved with staggering results. ‘Only’ 240,581 pages to go!

The Guardian recently kickstarted the 2nd version of the project with a further 40,000 pages. For your inner geek enjoy this great post by Simon Willison which explains how they developed the platform for this complex project.

Note the part about asking the right question:

“The biggest mistake we made the first time round was that we asked the wrong question. We tried to get our audience to categorise documents as either “claims” or “receipts” and to rank them as “not interesting”, “a bit interesting”, “interesting but already known” and “someone should investigate this”. We also asked users to optionally enter any numbers they saw on the page as categorised “line items”, with the intention of adding these up later.”

Read the rest of the post.

Leading Crowdsourced Design Agency Expands

blur Designs, the leading, international Crowdsourced design agency is expanding now that it has nearly 1,000 top designers worldwide.

Check them at the all new blur-Designs.com. ‘Need a Designer?’

b-uncut Store Rips, Supporting Emerging Artists

The b-uncut Store is doing for the art world what Loudclothing.com does for the music industry (which is why EMI bought them yesterday!).

And art lovers are buying in, snapping up the latest contemporary art accessories - t-shirts, posters, coasters, mousepads and more.

Here’s a few we like. Go to the b-uncut Store today and support emerging artists – its FAIRTRADE for artists.

#uksnow – Crowdsourcing in Action

It’s snowing in London – but the real news is that you can see Crowdsourced live snow updates on a map.

Last year, when London got snow the hashtag #uksnow started.

Also, @benmarsh had the nifty idea to use the hashtag to crowdsource live updates about snow in the UK. Well it’s back and looks terrific.

If you tweet #uksnow followed by the first half of your postcode (UPDATE: and the level of snow on a 1/10 – 10/10 scale | Thanks Steve) , you can become a real-time snow for your area.

Our tweet is: “#uksnow W10“

blur Marketing Changes How Brands buy Marketing Services

blur Marketing has just launched the all new, dancing and singing blur-Marketing.com.

Check in. ‘Need a (marketing) campaign?’

Your World in 2020

The year end brings a string of pundit perspectives and tips for 2010. We thought we would look out a bit further and try and describe what your world will look like 10 years from now.

Here goes. Its 14th December 2019.

We will have found cures for most forms of cancer – oh, and the common cold. But, pandemics will be on the increase. AIDS drugs will work 99 times out of 100. Global warming will not be a debate but a fact. The Western world will no longer be in denial. Every major economy will have stringent carbon reduction policies and flood prevention infrastructure and measures in place.

The world will have 5 superpowers: China, India, Europe, Russia and America. Nikolas Sarkozy will be President of Europe and Sarah Palin President of the US. America’s power and influence will continue to be on the decrease. Iraq will be a tentative democracy with tens of thousands of US troops stationed there. Afghanistan will be back in full scale civil war. All American troops will have withdrawn.

Osama Bin Laden will be alive and dangerous. Iran and North Korea will still be defying the superpowers and continuing their nuclear development.

South American and South East Asian countries will continue to unite under regional unions similar to the European Union. They will be on a clear path to economic and political union, beyond trading blocks. European Union leaders will be democratically elected and the EU will look and behave more like the USA.

The second decade of the 21st Century will have seen no new major wars but the usual handful of terrorist attacks including on US and EU soil.

The media landscape will look profoundly different. Newspaper presses will be largely defunct and magazine stands a thing of the past. The new media conglomerates will be Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook. Top blogs will be as powerful as the remaining, leading newspapers. All magazines will be online – some also appearing in paper.

TV, movies and video in general will be distributed over the Web. Subscription and free ad models will both exist. Micro payments will thrive. Music and eReader devices will be things of the past overtaken by full media smartphones, tablets and Netbooks. Apple will still have less than 20% of the US market for such devices except for the smartphone.

The mobile phone market will be the smartphone particularly in the Western world. Apple, Blackberry and Google will dominate. Microsoft or Nokia will own Blackberry.

Web 3.0 will be nearing its conclusion. Websites will be clusters of Web apps. Every Website will ask ‘what do you want to do today?’ – no longer what we need to tell you. Social media and the ‘Social’ Web will be givens. Facebook will be the way we communicate and stay in touch. It will be the worlds telephone directory. Facebook will own Twitter. Microsoft will own Linkedin.

The semantic Web will be reality. Everything will exist in the Cloud, including large corporate systems. SME’s will use Google Apps and large corporations will hang onto Microsoft. Software will be services and Freemium the globally established consumer and SME model.

Everyone will advertise on the 3D Web. Video will be as common as the written word and Crowdsourcing will be mainstream. Desktop PC’s and TV’s will have converged. All hardware providers will manufacture single devices. Working from home and freelancing will be the new norm – and the only ‘cool’. Websites that manage and monetize freelancers and independents in giant product/services marketplaces will be industry leaders.

‘Designers’ will make up 50% of the worlds workforce. Top geeks will hold as much celebrity power as any film star, sport pro or band. Every business will be on the Web first and in other places second. There will be no debate about offline versus online. Everything will be digital. Physical events and gigs will be more popular then ever and drive increasing ticket sales.

Cameras will be embedded everywhere. They will produce still and video – automatically uploading images and video to the Web where they will then be edited and released on the move and on the fly. 3D will be mainstream across every hardware device including the smartphone. Computer graphics will drive all movie making. Avatars will be indistinguishable from real world humans.

Robots will be powerful and cost effective alternative service providers in the home and car. They will replace cleaners, shop store workers, manufacturing staff and fast food service staff. A third of all cars sold in the West will be electric and solar panels will power a fast growing minority of homes and commercial buildings. Wind and wave power will be niche and nuclear power will have returned.

Google will be the new Microsoft, Microsoft the new IBM and IBM the new GE. They will all be challenged by the next ‘Google’. Steve Jobs will be running Apple and still running circles round his competition. Companies less than 5 years old with fewer than 50 employees will account for all net hiring in developed countries. Their core assets will be their IP and people. Digital their only reality – the Web their primary means of doing business. Innovation their sole mantra. Small truly cool.

Entrepreneurs and ‘artists’ will be king. Big company CEO’s and big banks will be heard less. Big business will be utility. Small businesses will unite over the Web and compete effectively with the Goliaths. Agencies will be things of the past – they will get overtaken by managed marketplaces of creative independents whether they be designers, musicians, writers or even software developers. Almost all forms of innovation will start in the digital domain.

Trips to the moon will be taken up by thousands of wealthy tourists. We will still have no published evidence of life outside earth.

Our planets scarce resources will be ever scarcer. Including oil, water, food and minerals. Hunger will be more widespread. Inflation keener. Organic foods will be replaced by ‘manufactured’ food. Religion will be little changed and just as much a dividing force. Social awareness will be the new ‘Green’.

Hedge funds and boutique investment banks will be the new Wall Street. Derivatives will be just as dangerous and retail banks will be utilities challenged by digital banking and payment systems such as PayPal. Ebay will be broken up to allow the traditional business to merge with Amazon and PayPal to IPO. Mobile phones will replace all landlines and broadband will be everywhere. Everywhere.

Politicians and celebrities will care more about their Web presence than anything else.

The ’smart’ consumer will have more power and freedom than ever before. The world will be more divided than ever between the have’s and have nots. Digital knowledge will divide. Education will be everything and healthcare more cost effective as technology takes over.

Trends will last minutes not years. Multi-tasking essential. Speed everything. Wisdom ‘it’. All will be digitally connected and our relationships outside school will start on the Web. The Web will be our universe and your world. Enjoy it.

Google Goggles Brings Visual Search to Phones

Google Goggles brings visual search to a (Android) smartphone near you. Use the camera, take a picture and it will automatically bring you relevant search items.

Shoot that bottle of wine for details on the winery and vintages. Your favorite artwork for info on the artist. A billboard for the latest promo’s and product details.

And think of all the Crowdsourced photos and associated links?

Facebook Fan Page Makeover

We redisigned blur Marketing’s Facebook fan page. Here’s how you can improve yours.

Use this great article on creating the perfect Facebook Fan page. We followed the step by step guide so check how it looks on our beloved blur Marketing fan page.

Using ‘image real estate optimization’ we developed a custom badge for the page.

We also found the Static FBML application handy. The article focuses on how to use it to create an html powered, custom tab for your page.

We chose to make this our default welcome message for the fan page. Take a look.

Give it a go and share your experience.

The Museum Shop for the Masses

Museum shops at Moma and the Tate do a roaring trade – even in the current climate. People just love having a nifty product with cool art on it. After all who can afford that original Van Gogh these days. The problem is that Museums are hard to get to and only promote dead or celebrity artists. What about tomorrows artists?

b-uncut has the answer. The worlds leading emerging artist network has recently launched an online Museum store for emerging and developing artists.

A place where anyone can go online to buy every day products at every day prices with the coolest next gen art on it. Want that graffiti poster or t-shirt. An abstract mug or mousepad. A photographers clock and coaster. A conceptual artists fridge magnet.

And the real kicker is that whenever you buy a product at the b-uncut Store you know that you’re helping an emerging artist buy their next paint, paintbrush, canvas or spray can. I know where I’ll be shopping these holidays. You?