Using services like Foursquare and Gowalla I cannot do anything without my social network hearing about it through updates to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’d like to see the same integration with Kiva. It goes someway towards doing this but not enough.

Foursquare and Gowalla award badges and mayorships for completing certain tasks as a reward for both learning the system and using it.

It would be great to be rewarded the ‘First Loan’ badge or the ‘Peruvian Loan’ medal, the ‘Repeat Loan’ award, the ‘$100 Milestone Mark’ or the ‘Entrepreneur x 10′ medallion.

Adding a game element is a proven way to keep users returning to a service. The rise of social gaming also makes this a more acceptable process too. It is no longer just in the realm of World of Warcraft where you have experience points but also Farmville. If we could have as many people ‘playing’ Kiva as there are ploughing on Farmville, then the game would be on.

Updated - 13 Jul 2010
There’s a great article on exactly this topic on Inc.com, How To Incorporate Badges Into Your Website. Using terms like virtual merit badges and trophies it describes how services are encouraging contributions to the site. Foursquare has awarded one million badges to 500,000 users.

Red Kites are massive. I’d imagined something the size of a kestrel. But they’re really massive. No, bigger than that. We first saw them flying over the market square in Thame, Oxfordshire. I’d have expected to have to trek for 4 days in the Scottish Highlands to see such a sight. It was much more of a surprise to see them swirling over the housing estates on the outskirts of Aylesbury.

They were culled between the 16th and 19th centuries and have gradually been reintroduced since. You’re not a #uktourist until you’ve seen one.

We were given a room from the 70′s. Then got the room we had paid for as seen on the web site. The shower overflowed. The food in the restaurant was great. The service in the restaurant was great. Our shower was overflowing into the kitchen. Getting back to our overheated room was not so great. It’s summer in England and it’s hot – don’t complain. The music from the pub up the road is deafening. Close the window. Sweat. Sleep. Wake. Sleep. Sweat. Wake. Sleep.

Explain our situation to today’s receptionist. Trek to a room at the opposite end of the hotel to use the shower. Great breakfast. Great service. Great discussion about how we can’t stay there for another night and decide to cut the weekend short. Discussion with receptionist results in early checkout without charge.

The web site makes no reference to refurbishment. We lucked out on the room we had. Check the Trip Advisor reports for the Spread Eagle at Thame and you’ll see similar unhappy customers. Hopefully you’ll see them before you become one.

• 62% of travellers do not recommend

• “The sink is the size of a lunch box and far too small to be practical in any way.”

• “The website is very misleading, our room was not refurbished like some and felt more like a 3 star hotel which would have been fine but for £100 we were expecting something a lot better.”

• “Stayed at this hotel a year ago when they must have recently started the refurb, and a year on, they don’t seem to have made much progress. I gather about a third of the rooms are complete and there is a new reception desk, but otherwise the public areas/corridors are in a poor state of decor.”

Read more bad reviews of the Spread Eagle, Thame, then book to go somewhere else.

I’ve not really had any problems with O2 so was fine to carry on with them. Need to remember to monitor my data allowance use now that its capped/charged at 500MB/month. Preferably need to find an app for that. Difficult to predict how much I’ll use as adverts all state in terms of emails sent and websites viewed but not hours streamed on Spotify.

The charge not lasting any longer but as I’m doing more with it I suppose its holding up a bit better.

It is beautiful to look at and hold but I’m sure its going to get broken. That nice glass surface makes it much more likely to just slip and crash!

And nope. Not tried FaceTime yet.

Not even a rubbish performance from our football team could dampen the heated spirits of 180,000 revellers in a field. And my god was it hot!

With Glastonbury, but not other festivals, the best bits are not the bands, but the sights and sounds you see on your travels. And travel you do with it taking about 45 minutes to cross the site. The Healing Fields and Green Fields have the true spirit of Glastonbury and are a must see visit. The Park is a recently added area which give great views over the whole site and this year apparently saw Radiohead playing! Arcadia, Shangri-La and assorted other ‘weird’ areas must be seen to be believed.

Relive the experience with videos and photos. Listen to the bands on Spotify.

iPhone
The ability to run Spotify as a background task on the iPhone has finally made it usable on the device. Until then, it restricted doing any other task until music had finished playing. Now with background operation and integration with the iPod controls it finally offers a great experience. Also, with a 16gb phone I can download a ton of tracks for offline listening.

ShareMyPlaylists
ShareMyPlaylists.com is a great service that provides user generated content of playlists for Spotify. It provides a massive ecosystem for discovering and listening to music. Their iPhone app also works with the Spotify app.

Spotify has still not broken through into the mainstream yet. It still seems to be a tech audience which gets it. Perhaps the success of the iPhone 4 willl lead to success for Spotify too.

• Live Music at Jam Cafe on Good Friday
• Short films at Nottingham Contemporary on Good Friday and Saturday nights. Music from Ed Lamps on Saturday. Rest of the weekend look around Star City before it finishes. Local real ale on sale in cafe.
• Afternoon Tea at The Walk
• Another ride on the Wheel of Nottingham
• Go on the Ghost Walk on Saturday night
• Watch A Single Man at The Screen Room
• See the new Robin Hood Exhibition at Nottingham Castle
• Peter Andre at the Royal Centre on Sunday
• Get some comedy at the Just The Tonic – Easter Sunday Bank Holiday Special
• Watch Notts Forest play Cardiff City on Monday at the ground or in The Approach

This post is experimental paid content. Please pay $1 via Twitpay if useful.

So, how do we fix this? I would suggest that we start doing it more until it becomes commonplace, second nature, part of the culture. Part of how we use the web. All we need is a mechanism

Twitpay is a such a mechanism. All you need is an Twitter account and a PayPal account. There is then a simple format for making payment on Twitter:

@mawawa twitpay $2 for proposing feasible micropayment structure for indie content producers

And that’s it! At the top of your blog post, ask for payment. At the start of your podcast, ask for payment. At the start of your video, ask for payment. If you don’t ask you won’t receive. If you do ask you will receive.

On this blog, if I publish content that I think is worth charging a fee for I will ask for that fee.

This is all inspired by Mediacamp Nottingham and the problem of monetising content. Does this help? See you in the comments.

List of the active Twitterer’s although pretty much everyone at the event had a Twitter account. This would not have been the case at last year event. Also read the timeline for #mcn2.

Interesting discussion on last 10 years and next 10 years in media by Glenn Le Santo. News is the least unique of all media. The Times is about to put its content behind a paywall. Reinventing social active. All content is now about interaction. There was a large focus on monetization which I tend to make me switch off. There is rarely talk of how to increase quality of content, targetting content, syndication, editing or a hundred other topics around why content is king. It always comes back to monetization, which I agree is important for content producers but we’re always talking around the subject and not doing anything about it. When was the last time you visited a blog/site/platform that was experimenting with paid content?

Time lapse photography of Nick Walker’s journey to Nottingham. http://post.ly/Vpeb (via @walkerama)

Talk about building community by the Creative Nottingham team was really interesting. Lack of funding for creative industries in the area has meant that people just get on with it. Its a great site that is expanding rapidly and importantly has lots of support from its community. Interesting comment that “Website is least important part of what we do”  as they also use Posterous, Facebook, RSS and Twitter. You need to use their resources more!

@iainsimons gave a very passionate talk about Gamecity. I’ve never made it to any of their events and his talk made me realise what I’ve missed out on. This year I will attend! He also introduced their idea of a Festival API. Great idea. Slightly off the wall but it makes so much sense. I think its that API is such a common term now that it makes sense in uses outside of technology. Can an API refer to a paper process, why not? The examples given where to inform the jacket potato vendor of the process he needs to follow to run his stand. I assume this would include application, payment, compliance with regulations, timetable for the event etc. This same API could then be used be used by any other festival who is also planning to sell jacket potatoes. A bizarre but excellent way to reduce bureaucracy. Is the videogames industry really going to change the way we handle paperwork?

Missed @philcampbell‘s talk about Posterous and didn’t even get chance to see the new streaming studio.

Lovely sandwiches and cake from @hungrypumpkin in the Lace Market

Very intersting talk about social media and the Olympics by Jennifer Jones. The Olympics is finally opening up to social media. Has authorised press and unathourised press centers. The Olympics is the biggest media event in the world bar none. Impact on host cities is massive. London in year 5 of 14 years of Olympic pain. How are the communities affected.

Purposely controversial session “The web site is dead” chaired by Glenn proved that it is and it isn’t. Static web pages are dead by their very nature. Social interaction on pages makes them very much alive. Someone commented that everything in their house is what other people have liked in reviews. Nothing is bought without recommendation. Is this is last gasp of consumerism. Need to communicate with others has returned? We don’t need brands. Better to have all that invested in communications. The logo does not help customer service.

Alexia gave a great intro on personal branding. What are your strengths? Decide what you don’t want and then start going in the opposite direction. People do business with people – do this apply to a website? Attract the things that align to you. Lots to think about.

The event rounded off with a great session from Ben Walker. A very intimate session with a true internet superstar. Listen in then buy online.

Posts from people who wrote stuff quicker than I did:

• Design & I

Al Carlton of Coolest Gadgets legend gave a great presentation on Outsourcing and Automation. He mentioned auto switching affiliate links to be relevant to the country being viewed in. This Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin for WordPress looks to do the job nicely for multiple regions. Although its not working on this link: The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich.

Live blogging on the day was done by David Towers.

This link building poster was mentioned by Paddy Moogan.

Now to put some of this into practice.