This is the website of Alex White, in Melbourne Australia, a campaigns and communications professional working in the trade union movement.

More about me | Contact me | My Posterous

Tag Archives: Google

Google News has destroyed a valuable asset

This won’t be a major issue for most people, but Google once had a very valuable asset: Google News. Google News once aggregated 1000s of news stories from across the web and allowed users to customise “sections” according to their preference – even using news keyword searches. You could even decide how many stories would [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }

Google Analytics tip for union webmasters

Something I just discovered (much to my annoyance) is that Google Analytics does not allow for easy (in fact, any) migration of account data from one account to another. Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for web masters to get information about their site, content and visitors. Every union website should use Google Analytics [...]

Read full storyComments { 3 }

Don't prosecute the messenger

I subscribe to the Google Public Policy Blog and get updates every few days. Today, I got sent a story about a case in Italy where three Google executives have been prosecuted for a video of an autistic student being bullied at school. In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }

Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

In Australia, most elections take place during the normal, general election period. The accepted wisdom is that local campaigns make up, at most, 3 percent of a candidate’s primary vote. The rest comes from the central campaign from party head office: television ads, the leader’s personal appeal, the party’s policies and so on. There are [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }

Collaborative online tools for political campaigning

You don’t need to be a big national campaign to use the myriad suite of free online tools. With the analysis of the Brown victory in Massachusetts continuing, it is emerging that this state-level campaign made extensive use of Google Apps: But something else has Google reps particularly chuffed: how much the Brown campaign, they [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }
Using Google Docs in your union campaign

Using Google Docs in your union campaign

Google Documents is a free online service that provides word processing and spreadsheets that are stored online (in the “cloud”). Google Docs basically allows you to mimic Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The main feature (in my view) is that it is online, so it can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet, [...]

Read full storyComments { 3 }

Migrating to Google Mail

Macquarie University has announced that it will migrate its staff email accounts over to Gmail: About 14 Australian universities have already outsourced their student email to Gmail or Microsoft’s Live@edu service, but this week Macquarie became the first to migrate staff to the so-called cloud in a deal with Gmail. … However, the university was [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }
Innovating from Opposition

Innovating from Opposition

The British Conservatives are widely viewed as being on the cutting edge of online campaigning and “digital democracy”. It’s one of the benefits of being in opposition – you don’t have the infrastructure, institutions and culture that Governments have. Oppositions can think big, experiment and (this far out from an election) can afford minor failures. [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }

Some useful Google tools

Via Crikey blog The Content Makers, and MEAA, comes some nifty search and news aggregation tips from Google. While intended for journalists (and called “Google School”), the site also has tools and tips for union officials that need to monitor the news. I especially recommend setting up a customised Google News page, and checking out [...]

Read full storyComments { 0 }