Content Labels are a great idea esp. considering how easy they are to roll out. It was a piece of pi** adding them to my sites once your guys had done the certification.

Cheers,

Tom

It was a pleasure to use the photos. You’ll notice that I’ve changed the original post to include a link to you.

It’s difficult to appeal to everyone all of the time and it’s even more difficult to explain everything in such a short space of time. I did get some positive feedback from the likes of BT who would like to progress with a discussion. Perhaps most of the audience was from the development community though, so I’ll keep that in mind for future reference

So, I agree with everything you say. I’d love nothing more than say, 40 minutes to talk about the entire ecosystem that I’m looking to encourage - next best thing is a post I’m going to write here. Please do keep an eye on the blog and comment with your thoughts - it’s great to get feedback!!

What’s worth pointing out is that Content Labels can be used to highlight whatever it is that developers already comply with. That is, I’m not looking to impose anything. I’d rather give developers a reason to comply with standards, or at least the opportunity to have a unique selling point.

In fact, if you take a look at our partner programme, it’s made up of established agencies and freelance developers who use the trustmark (Content Label) as a unique selling point. That is, they can help their clients demonstrate their commitment to accessibility standards. Content Labels aren’t putting additional pressure on them - quite the opposite. Take a look at what they have to say http://segala.com/partner-programme/partner-member-testimonials/

Yes, I was surprised at the quality myself given the circumstances in which I took them. But it does go to prove a point that cameraphone has got incredible potential to be a user’s “main camera”. With “proper” cams being reserved for “special occasion” use.

David: great to “see” you here after saying Hi after the event! Love to have an extended natter some other time too!

Well done again for Thursday night and thanks for commenting over on my blog. I agree with the point made by Jag, that Content Labels will work best in unambiguous situations and feel that they will be very unpopular when they are representing ambiguous positions that are subject to belief systems. I felt that your presentation would have benefited further from recognition of this early on.

I also feel that the audience was perhaps more critical of your presentation than expected because of the additional apparent need for compliance. I know from personal experience that many developers are already finding the pressures of complying with all the different requirements of varying browsers and standards, frustrating. A more user-oriented audience would appreciate the benefits of Content Labels more than developers who it might create more work for!!

Keep up the great work!

The Content Label isn’t visible to end users. It’s a file that resides on Segala’s server. Rather than add a link tag from o2.com pages, they made a small tweak to the server. So tools that recognise the tag will point our Segala for metadata information. The label contains the same information that the certificate has, but in metadata format.

It is possible for site owners to make self declarations using Content Labels. In this instance the label will reside on the content provider’s own server. I think nearly every code of conduct for which we would like to see a Content Label, should support self-declaration and independently verified labels. Creative Commons is one use case that doesn’t require verification.

As realised by self-labelling authorities such as ICRA, self regulation doesn’t work most of the time. Or at least, there is a requirement to provide verified labels also. If we permit self-declaration only, such conformance claims will become less quality driven as the number of incorrect claims increases. You know what it’s like within the world of testing – without testing, quality decreases for lots of legitimate reasons.

Self-labelling must be possible to ensure you get mass adoption for implementations such as mobileOK and .mobi It’s about giving end users a choice. I would never recommend imposing verification as it would be a barrier to mass adoption.

Regarding the branding thing, I hope recognition of the Segala brand will be increased over time. We’re now seeking external investment to help here. Most end users don’t know who VeriSign is, yet, they enable trust for security on Web sites that they spend money on. Since buying GeoTrust in 2006, VeriSign practically has an monopoly for SSL certificates. This is far from ideal, but it demonstrates that making money isn’t a barrier. I’ll be looking to provide much cheaper alternatives to VeriSign’s monopolistic certificates

Going back to profit, Segala will soon offer Content Labels for stuff such as Creative Commons. These will be free of charge naturally. Not everything will make Segala money but it does help to build the ecosystem and enable mass adoption.

So does one not typically label the content itself, in a self-describing way but rather create another page that makes assertion about the page you just left? Why not?

Finally, how accommodating did you find the ‘host’ organisation in having another company’s brand as the link to click? I remember (mostly in the old days) sites with links to W3C validators. Maybe it was geek coolness to show one could write well-formed code… but having a for-profit company’s logo on a commercial site in the 21st century is a slightly different proposition.

Thinks average user: “Segala Certified? Is that the parent company of Telefonica?”

(Although I’m sure Paul, you don’t have a problem with people thinking that!)

Re “HERE CAN BE NO AMBIGUITY” - I agree! In fact, we talk about Content Labels for making assertions about conformance to standards and codes of conduct. Let’s use other methods for making other types of assertions. BTW, we are active participants in another W3C working group responsible for creating a machine-readable method for recording test assertions. Then you’ll be able to see how Content Label’s claims are verified, by whom, when etc.

Re “what’s non-offensive for certain groups etc” - I can now see how my comment can be seen as a sweeping statement. What I meant was that someone may come up with a code of conduct which represents assertions that are verifiable. I don’t see Content Labels being used for anything else – this should become more obvious as contentlabel.org starts to really take off. We’re just building the wiki and writing the vocabulary for Creative Commons and PEGI.

Regarding your point about affinities - I agree totally. I hope over time, Segala will be considered as the labelling authority for accessibility, mobileOK and other codes in the future. Just as VeriSign is for security and more recently, identity.

I would also like to see Segala become the labelling authority of choice when it comes to using its technology to enable other labelling authorities and organisations who wish to implement content classification. For example, O2 could use Content Labels for imode content to improve discoverability through search.

Going back to the affinities, we can demonstrate through the extension how to enable end users to rate the trustworthiness of claims. We’ll deliver new functionality through the extension with monthly builds to help demonstrate how the main players should be doing it by themselves.

I’m going to write quite a detailed post about Content Labels so people have ‘a’ definitive reference point that’s user friendly. We helped to write the official W3C stuff but it’s more techie than I care to reference here.

BTW, the o2.com domain is labelled for accessibility compliance and many of the microsites on o2.co.uk are also. One of my presentations shows, O2, Voda, Virgin and T-Mobile in search results - O2 is the only one with a green tick. So, you may not trust the brand more, but you may trust the relevance of the search result based on your individual preferences.

Relevance is where I see this going, but where better to start than with trust. Where better to start trust than with trustmarks which are, as you put it, not ambiguous.

So, in summary, Content Labels enable site owners make assertions about conformance to standards and codes of conduct
Isn’t it funny how some posts require such detailed comments that turn into posts themselves?!

I’m really chuffed about that, because those pics were taken in a real hurry, with a cameraphone, in low level light, with no flash, with one hand (my other hand was holding my little notebook), and with no post-processing in Photoshop. In my view that’s a real testament to camerpahone photography. Just look at the colour and contrast! * Re wearing the tie - I was working in Slough that morning, and that day required it.

So when travelling down to BT Centre I had no opportunity to get changed. Plus no tie is so dot com. * Agree with you that the venue was superb! Sorry couldn’t hang around t chat afterwards. I think what you guys have done re Content Labels looks really promising, but I have to say that I really do think that it will work best for sites that make promises about something for which THERE CAN BE NO AMBIGUITY - Adrian’s wife’s point hits it right on the head: there can be no ambiguity about the food content of an item at the supermarket. (I’m assuming that the Food Standard’s Agency in UK periodically verifies maufacturers claims) - but making promises about things such as “what’s non-offensive for certain groups etc” is so open to interpretation that if you take things like that to it’s logical conclusion then you will end up with a world full of “independent” authorities where you the user have to decide which belief system you align to and which you don’t. And this is no different to the “brands” phenomenon that we see today. Newspaper brands are a great example, many people have an affinity to the views of certain newspapers.

An alignment in belief and philosophy etc. This affinity is something gained and established over time. The loyalty to a brand and its values are earned and built up over time. Take “The Sun” and “The Gaurdian” - I believe that as brands they have evolved to become their own “content labels”, we know what to expect when we read them.

We like them. We hate them. In a world where promises are made on *opinions*, the brands themselves become content labels. In a *web* world full of Content Labels reflecting *opinion*, then I cannot easily see how they will be differentiated from “domain name” (or “logo”, or “brand” etc) . However, I CAN easily see how promises made about UNAMBIGUOUS things can server very useful functions that don;t exist today - e.g. I want my search results to only give me CORGI registered Gas installers, or websites that are designed for Mobile Phones, or web sites that comply with DDA and so on. Gotta go. Great event! And great talks from all the speakers - even though Tony Fish’s speech made me laugh!.