Rob Cottingham's blog | Social Signal

Chris Messina, Google's new open web advocate, just wrapped Northern Voice's second keynote with a call for the defence of the open web from the gatekeeper mentality. (Which is why I just hit "publish" on my last blog post - it covers some of the same terrain, and I'd like to contribute to that conversation.)

I'm liking this no-PowerPoint thing a lot. Here are my notes from Chris's speech:

Buy an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, and you get to choose from thousands and thousands of "apps": software that ranges from full-blown business applications to games to novelty items. But before an app can make it to your iPhone, it has to make it onto the virtual shelves of the App Store... and that means convincing Apple that the app is worthy of inclusion.

Graphic recording has long held a certain fascination for me: the idea of capturing the ideas and emotions of a speech, workshop or meeting on paper, as the event progresses. (Nancy White's graphic record of my Northern Voice keynote last year remains one of my happiest public speaking experiences.)

David Ng's talk on Phylo - a trading-card game inspired by the study showing kids can identify more Pokémon characters than actual local species - rocked the house, not least because he had us do Chewbacca impersonations.

Is there such a thing as too much clarity?

Updated: Thanks to Mitch Cohen for this comment pointing to a one-click bookmarklet - even easier!

I just got an email from the fine folks at SlideShare, letting me know they'll be featuring our free e-book on getting value from blogging on the front page of their business and management section for the next day or so.

For anyone who's been told to cut the blog from their communications proposal...

...for anyone who knows their social media activities could pull more of their own weight on the bottom line...

...for anyone who wants to take their blog from the experimental stage to having real-world impact - and real-world value...

...we have something for you.

Today we're launching Social Signal's first ebook, called 10 Ways Your Blog Can Provide Real Value to You, Your Organization and Your Brand.

Social media culture is all about transparency: tell the world about your last meal, your current location, your relationships, your likes and dislikes, your hopes and dreams. (So far, to the best of my knowledge, there's no social network devoted to sharing recent digestive updates. No, I'm not going to go Googling for it.)

But at least you're conscious of what information you're choosing to share and with whom... right?