This blog suffers when I’m busy on new projects, but two efforts have recently come to fruition, leaving me enough time to write this entry at least.

First of all I’m delighted to have overseen the launch of the full BusinessGreen web site, in action since the middle of this month.

The templates used for this site are basically reskins of designs developed last summer for the IT Week refresh that went live in November 2006. IT Week’s site was shortlisted for an AOP Design and Usability award (a category ultimately won by the super soaraway site of The Sun), so we knew we were building BusinessGreen on reasonably solid foundations.

Kevin Williams did a wonderful job on the BusinessGreen logo, as I’ve mentioned before, while Skids Bradshaw developed the fully functioning pages from my wireframes and static mock-ups. Mike Hladik led the behind-the-scenes work ensuring that all the HTML hangs together, including resolving the redirection problem we’d created for ourselves by using the www.businessgreen.com address for the blog. Given that we knew we’d eventually launch a full site, we should have used blog.businessgreen.com from the start. Or at least the start after we’d decided to move on from green.itweek.co.uk and www.greenbusinessnews.co.uk. Lesson duly learned - I won't make that mistake again.

There are still some niggles with the new site, but I love the look and feel and am pleased with the traffic growth now that BusinessGreen is listed as a news source in its own right by Google News.

The second project is a sponsored microsite, developed on behalf of chipmaker Intel and PC maker Lenovo. Called Competitive Edge Computing, it’s aimed at small and medium businesses (SMBs) who may not be persuaded that it’s a good idea to replace IT gear that still works. Given the way that hardware prices have fallen and capabilities risen, patching up an old PC can be a false economy. Alas buying a new PC or laptop every three years makes for a business that isn’t very green, of course. All I can say is that we officially support the charity Computer Aid International, which refurbishes old hardware and donates it to schools and surgeries in the Third World, where it tends to lead a full and rewarding second life.

Over the coming weeks the Competitive Edge site will provide a seven-part video case study, featuring contributions from Lenovo customer and Formula 1 team AT&T Williams. This series of five-minute videos is by far the most complex filming task I’ve ever been involved with - hours of setup and filming at Williams’ headquarters in Oxfordshire followed by days and days of editing. I finally understand why it can take three years to make a feature film even if principal photography wraps after only three months.

All that effort and I’m not even in the videos. Unsurprisingly, they make more sense with me edited out.

Evidently Beattie Communications, which does public relations work for the UK distributor of Powerizers, has very good blog monitoring software. I briefly mentioned the stilt/pogo-stick things in this blog yesterday (spelling them with an “s” rather than a “z”) and today Beattie has been on the case offering me a demo pair to try out.

When I was a child I had both a pogo-stick and a pair of stilts, so I figure I will be a natural. How hard can it be?

Hmm. I’ll let you know how I get on...

My review of the Nice Mega City electric car that I blogged about early in September is finally online. It was delayed while we were busy launching the new bigger and better BusinessGreen.com web site - go and have a look at the site if you haven't yet spotted it. It's ace. I'm biased, obviously, but it is ace nonetheless.

Last week I was due to test a rival electric runabout - the Elettrica from Future Vehicles - but alas the demo car was apparently pranged by an over-eager customer during a prior test drive.

While I'm waiting for the Elettrica to be repaired, perhaps I should follow the advice of a friend of a friend, who last night insisted that I really ought to be testing Powerisers as a practical alternative to the car for green commuting. For the uninitiated, Powerisers are a kind of cross between stilts and pogo sticks. I'm not so sure that I'm really cut out for Poweriser commuting...

Regular readers will know that for the last 18 months I’ve been tracking the amount of money Google owes its AdSense affiliates. The relevant term on the firm’s financial statements is “accrued revenue share”. This sum equates to the float that Google has amassed due to its policy of not paying AdSense earnings on a regular schedule, but instead waiting until an individual affiliate is owed at least $100 before transferring funds. Accrued revenue is, in effect, other people’s money that Google chooses to keep in its own, interest-generating accounts. Nice funds if you can get them.

In Google’s most recent quarter, as expected, the figure broke the half-billion-dollar barrier. It now stands at $507.7m. Suitably invested, it’s safe to assume that this float alone should generate in excess of $50m pure profit for the company this year.

I’ve been wondering when the tally might hit a billion dollars. Assuming that Google has not yet exhausted the world’s supply of optimistic bloggers and small publishers, my back-of-a-spreadsheet calculations suggest that Google might be rolling around in more than a billion dollars of its partner’s money by the first quarter of 2009.

I wonder if my projections will be on the money, so to speak?

To recap, many bloggers with lacklustre traffic sign-up with Google’s AdSense in the hope of making a fast buck, but will soon realise that they’re making a very slow buck indeed. With Google ads starting as low as one cent per click, it can take years to amass the $100 balance that will trigger a payment. Meanwhile, Google has no trouble pooling lots of these small sites into an audience that allows it to charge its AdWords customers with clockwork regularity. It’s just another example of how the famed long-tail effect works, and how Google has turned the effect to its advantage.

Previous posts on this topic are here, here, here, here and here.

Today I heard for the first time about OpenStreetMap.org, a project that aims to do for maps what Wikipedia has done for encyclopaedias. The aim is lofty - to create a complete map of every highway, railway, road, river, canal, path, cycle-lane and track on the planet. This is, of course, a task well suited to the crowdsourcing approach, even if collecting the data is not without its hazards.

Parts of the map are currently quite sparse, but others - no doubt in the vicinity of the project’s 14,500 current contributors - already boast a level of detail and precision beyond that offered by commercial rivals such as Google Maps.

Although the mapping effort is well under way, alas the software is not really ready for prime time. Searching - even for roads evidently on the map - is a little hit and miss, and editing can be an exercise in bafflement. In the tradition of Wikipedia anyone can edit anything, but casual users are invited to do so using a particularly unintuitive Flash application called Potlatch. And dangerously, the editing process seems to lack a rollback function. As the army of Wikipedia change junkies have proven, being able to reinstate a known good state is essential to quickly annul the work of vandals or the clumsy. Updates are also only committed to the master map once a week, thereby failing to offer Wikipedia’s addictive instant-gratification hit.

The small mews in which I live was missing from the map, and it took me a little head-scratching to work out how to add it. Rendered overconfident by this effort, I attempted to add a nearby footpath, but in trying to correct a mistake I inadvertently erased a nearby road. With no rollback option I had to manually fix my blunder - hopefully successfully. This was enough to dissuade me from trying to add anything further until the software has been made a little more idiot proof. I’m not what you’d call a natural cartographer, it seems.

I spent yesterday in Paris at the annual sales kick-off event of software firm Ilog. Rather than reporting on the event, I was invited there to host a pair of panel debates with Ilog customers, for the benefit of the assembled Ilogites.

I can’t go into detail about what was said, as the customers spoke on condition that I wouldn't write it all down in this blog.

Chairing two hour-long debates, one immediately after the other, and putting questions to nine different panellists from eight different customers - from Airbus to the US postal service - proved to be slightly more confusing than I had bargained for. This caused me to mix up the name of one of the customers (called Philippe) with one of Ilog's executives (called Pierre). I realised about two minutes too late to correct my blunder on stage.

Unfortunately for me the Pierre I called Philippe in front of 250 Ilog staff happened to be Pierre Haren, the company cofounder and CEO.

Oh well, if you’re going to screw up in public, aim high, that’s what I say. Apologies to all concerned, especially to Pierre and/or Philippe.

Late last month I was invited to attend a one-day workshop on the future of satellite navigation and mapping, organised by IT trade body Intellect, the Location & Timing Knowledge Transfer Network, ITS UK and the Royal Institute of Navigation. The event is due to be held at the Intellect Conference Suite in London on Wednesday 17 October 2007.

The workshop will examine some pressing issues, ranging from public over-reliance on the current generation of satnav devices and their crude route optimisations, through to the problems caused by the Ordnance Survey's management of the UK’s mapping data. At similar events in the past I've heard industry insiders mutter that the OS has more in common with a 19th Century book publisher than a modern distributor of digital data. “This workshop will look at how to cut the 18 months it can take to incorporate changes in the road network,” the organisers note, pointedly.

Invited parties include the Department for Transport, local authorities, mapping companies, device manufacturers, retailers and communications providers, so attendees will be assured of a lively debate

Having invited me, Intellect then evidently realised I was a journalist and said I couldn’t come, saying, “As this is a workshop I'm afraid it is not appropriate nor relevant for the press to attend.” I pointed out that these days anyone can blog, and after a couple of days the organisers relented, albeit with the condition that the meeting will be held under “more than Chatham House rules”.

The Chatham House rule means I can use information from the meeting but can’t attribute it to anyone in particular, or to the organisations they represent. I’m not sure what “more than” that rule means, but no doubt the chairperson of the meeting will explain - assuming the rules apply to everyone, not just to me...

Why the paranoia? Probably because there’s a big mess where a government policy on mapping should be. Local authorities, the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NPLG), the OS and Royal Mail each have a stake in mapping and tend to pull in different directions. For example, while OS handles publicly owned data it is supposed to be self-funding, so it charges for its services, while local authorities are required to give information to the OS free of charge. As another insider told me, there is huge resentment from the councils who are forced to provide information about roads and properties free of charge, but then have to pay when they want to use the same data to help fire engines and ambulances find their way. “If you want to see adults act like children put NLPG, Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail in a room together,” my informant tells me.

I’ll keep you posted. Or not, as the case may be.

Almost two years ago I signed up as a member of PipelineCard.org - an interesting experiment in online collaboration.

The goal was simple: to see if a large and loosely organised body of people, garnered mostly through online word of mouth (or should that be word of mouse?) could use their collective buying power to gain a discount from a major fuel retailer.

To date, half a million people have signed up. And the message from the scheme’s founders is, erm, not positive. A loosely organised body of 500,000 people can’t manage to secure a discount from a major fuel retailer, it seems.

“I won't bore you with the long list of broken promises, false hopes, and corporate inactivity,” wrote founder Ben Scammell. “The short version is that our original ‘partner’ let us down, we have spoken to several others and the industry has clearly closed ranks against us. What a surprise!”

It is indeed not much of a surprise. After all, what Scammell was proposing was a loyalty card scheme where the retailer suffered most of the losses associated with such things - having to give a discount - while failing to garner the big gain: ownership over members’ details and therefore opportunities to data mine or to upsell associated products such as motor insurance or loans. This leaves the main benefit being simple customer loyalty - a card member is more likely to buy repeatedly at forecourts that give a discount to members. But again, the retailer will see a dubious benefit as they will not own the scheme and could see that loyalty shift to a rival at a future date.

“We have learnt a lot along the way and one of the things we have learnt - the hard way - is that 500,000 members aren’t enough,” Scammell wrote. “We are now about to launch a new publicity campaign and we aim to double that figure within six weeks. We are very confident that one of the petrol retailers will break ranks - but only if we can get a lot more members.”

Will a million members be enough for the single benefit of loyalty to start outweighing the drawbacks from a retailer perspective? Maybe.

More likely is that Scammell and Co’s efforts have simply poked the sleeping giants - and the fuel retailers will put more effort into marketing their own loyalty schemes. For example, in May this year Shell replaced its existing PlusPoints scheme with a new Drivers’ Club offering discounts, Airmiles, and donations to charity or to CO2 reduction schemes.

I certainly admire the founders of Pipeline Card, but I fear their mission is a bit too Quixotic to succeed.