The Birmingham REP has a new website. I haven’t had a good dig yet but a cursory glance reveals it to be rather progressive with comments, feeds (RSS and iCal), blog-style news and a snappy design, as you’d expect from a Made Media production given their work on the THSH site last year. In fact comparing the two this appears to raise the bar a bit, which is always good to see. Two thumbs up from me.

It’s nice when you ask for something and then it turns up, even if it takes a while. Four years ago I (Pete, btw) put in a request to the interwebs for a “searchable small gigs database feed site thingy” which I could throw a bunch of criteria into and be given regular updates of stuff happening in my area that might be of interest – a middle ground between my usual sources and the useless torrent of information that most what’s on sites provide. There have been a few attempts since then but Live Brum is the first that’s gotten me slightly excited.

Partly this is the pedigree. It’s run by Josh Hart who recently left Made Media to concentrate on this project. Made, as you may know, built the fantastic Town Hall Symphony Hall website and Live Brum looks to be applying the ideas there to the rest of the city’s venues.

The other part is that its incredibly flexible. You can filter the information in numerous ways and subscribe to those results with ease. Stuff like subscribing to Rock and Pop at the Hare and Hounds is nice enough but being able to subscribe to a search for a band or any keyword is quite lovely.

Lots of other neat things too, such as embedding the event in your blog or website in the same way as YouTube videos, the magic being if the details change on Live Brum those changes will be reflected on your site too. Think of them as dynamic flyers. Here’s one:

And, with my tech-head on, the way Josh has built the site lets him add all sorts of new and innovative features and integration with other social networking sites with ease. This is still early days for the site.

The trick, of course, is making sure the site has all the correct information. From chatting to Josh the other week he’s pretty sure he’s got this sorted out in a sustainable way, partly by ensuring promoters and venues can take their information back out in a variety of ways making it worth their while putting it in. I think there might be a bit of a steep learning curve for some of them here but, frankly, it’s about time the live music industry caught up with the 21st century. And, of course, if this site works then it will put Birmingham miles ahead of most other cities.

So, in short, cautious big grins all round. Nice one.

7inch Cinema have a new website! And it’s very bloggy by the looks of things with RSS and everything. Worth checking out the other sections too as they’ve crammed it full of some really good writings.

Twitter is a service that’s getting a fair bit of traction in Brum right now. Like most of these things it’s as useful as you find it to be so don’t feel you’re “doing it wrong” if you don’t get it, but I’m finding it rather invaluable so you might too.

It’s a combination of things really. The format is limited to 140 characters so it meshes well with SMS texting meaning you can use it from your phone but it also works on the website and via instant messaging along with a bunch of 3rd party applications (I like Twhirl myself). At it’s core it works along the same lines as Facebook status updates and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s not much difference, but the magic comes from the way it manages conversations and the fine tuning you can do.

Above all it’s an example of what I’m calling an “ambient stream”. Nothing on Twitter is actually that important, unless it is. You can just check in every so often and get a feel of what your community/ies are up to. If there’s anything of relevance that’s great but if not then it’s no great loss. You can spend hours communicating with people or just ignore the service for a day – it doesn’t matter.

I find it useful for random meetups. If someone “tweets” (as it’s known) that they’re in a certain cafe or pub then I might pop in if I’m in the area. Or I might not. Or if I’m looking for help or advice with something I can send out a quick message and see if anyone’s free with no obligation.

(Oh, here’s a handy video which might help. Or not.)

Anyway, if you think it might be useful have a play and see what you think. But be aware it took me a good year to get my head around what I might use it for so it might not hit you at first.

So here’s a list of some of the Birmingham-types who are on Twitter that Created in Birmingham readers might want to follow. You might also want to scan through the list of people I’m following if it takes your fancy. I’ve tried to keep this list more arts/design than tech but there are, of course, overlaps.

In no particular order
Antonio Gould
Jon Bounds
Julia Gilbert
Paul Bradshaw
Stef Lewandowski
Andrew Dubber
Nick Lockey
Ruth Ward
Russ L
Nick Booth
Chris Unitt
John @ 383
Mark Badger
Joanna Geary has two accounts
Danny Smith
Craig of Friends of the Stars
Antonio Roberts
Keri Davis
Ana Milgram
Dunc Autumnstore
Kerry Fused
Anthony Herron
and Pete Ashton.

I should probably stop there. The a good strategy would be to find some people you already know or are connected to and look at who they’re following. And if you fancy some really unfocused ambient Twitter-noise you could subscribe to this feed of Birmingham Twitterers.

Yes, it’s all kinda pointless. That’s kinda the point.

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Okay, here’s a good case study. Immediately after writing this I’m thinking what I might do before going home today. A tweet from Kerry pops up on my computer that she’s “going to ikon to private view for ruth claxton exhibition”. Hmm. That sounds interesting. Didn’t know about that. I may well pop up there.

Result!

Given that this represents one of the major cultural celebrations in the city, one which has been claimed to be one of the largest outside of New York (if I remember rightly) I’d be interested to hear what you all think.

Sonia Poli – BA Visual Communication

Helen Freeman – BA Fashion and Textiles

Francesca Prowse – BA Visual Communication

Hat tip to D’log

Andy at Substrakt wonders, what’s up with Eastiside? Considering he works there and has friends who live there he’s surprised to realise he doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen with the redevelopment. So he digs around online and finds… not much really.

On the one hand this isn’t too surprising. The Eastside development is a pretty massive project with loads of companies and government departments involved so tying it all together at a granular level would be a nightmare. But if you’re just interested in the broader strokes it would be handy to have some kind of website that brings together all the developer sketches and so on into one place.

Something like, say, Manchester’s New Islington site, as suggested by Andy. Only a little less c-r-a-z-y please.

I can’t think of anything for Eastside. Does it exist? Should the council (or whatever body is overseeing the whole project) do one? Is that an unreasonable request? If it is, does anyone want to start a blog on it? I suspect the AdSense revenue would be pretty good on something like that… Let me know if you need a hand setting it up.

Photo by Dr King Bertt. Click on it for details.

A press release through from Marketing Birmingham tells us that TAK! have gotten the tender for the new Visit Birmingham website. I wouldn’t normally blog about such things but this is, I feel, pretty interesting.

1) TAK! is a relatively small web design company, not the sort of operation you’d expect a major City project to go to (unless I’m mistaken).

2) TAK!, in my opinion, really understand the internet and should be able to provide all the “Web 2.0″ stuff required without bolloxing it up. That MB were able to see this in their application is a credit to them.

3) TAK! come, if you’ll excuse the expression, “from the street” as evidenced by their Stickernation project so understand there’s more to Birmingham than the usual tourist stuff (as important as that is). Whether they can get this through to the content of the site is debatable, but their branding of the site should be interesting.

From the press release (Word doc):

“They are clearly experts in their field and had thought about the long term development of the site, not just a quick fix. They incorporated Web 2.0 technologies in their proposals as it is an important way of facilitating user generated content but did not overload on gimmicks just for the sake of it. They also proposed future extensions of their ideas to really add value and ensure that the website will be flexible enough to keep evolving.”

The Visit Birmingham website was created to encourage people to come to the city, make it easy for them to do so and ensure they make the most of what Birmingham has to offer while they’re here. The new design will aim to place Birmingham at the forefront of digital technology. It will be stylish yet simple and will incorporate a fresh look with an innovative content strategy to engage with, retain and guide users.

Best of luck to them!

Animation Forum has a new website with a members area for people to upload their work to and connect with others in the area. Interestingly they’re also using a Facebook group for discussions which is a sensible move – using a service that already exists and most people are already on.

(That and I’m stuck in Osaka airport with free wifi for the next five hours…)

The Visit Birmingham website, which should be the first port of call for anyone planning to come here, is having a massive overhaul in the new year and local web companies are invited to bid for the tender. Or something.

Agencies are asked to register their interest and complete a pre-qualification questionnaire by 5pm Monday 17 December by post to Lisa Smith, On-line Campaign Manager. Invitation information is obtainable from lisa.smith@marketingbirmingham.com or telephone 0121 202 5115.

I’ve had a look through the material and there’s a reasonable emphasis on Web 2.0 stuff which boils down the following:

In the proposal please consider how Marketing Birmingham should apply Web 2.0 technologies, platforms and applications to their brand visitbirmingham.com on-line?
• Blogs
• Vlogs
• Social networks / communities
• User Generated Content (UGC)
• Wikis
• Podcasts
• Online video
• RSS
• Tagging
• Mash-ups and Open API’s
• AJAX (Asynchronous Java and XML)

While this is very welcome to see, how it’s implemented is going to be crucial. Do you “apply” blogs by having them or by providing adequate information for bloggers to use? Or both? By Social Networks do you mean developing on in house (NO!) or integrating effectively with Facebook, etc? With UGC (a horrible term but pretty defacto now) why should people submit their own work to your site? What kind of ownership are you giving them? Is RSS just going to be a token offering or will it be taylored? Open APIs are a fantastic thing to see but what exactly does Mashup mean?

Whatever, I’m just the messenger here but this could be something really excellent if only the right company gets the job. So if you’re the right company get in touch with them right away.

But please, let it be someone who understands the social aspects of such a site and not just the techincal bits. And, above all, not some Web 2.Oaf.