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Communications Enterprise 2.0

The Chiswick Gardener – gardening on an iPod

I’ve recently set up a blogging site for a friend of mine – The Chiswick Gardener. The site’s owner Andrew does what it says on the tin – garden maintenance, gardening and gardens in Chiswick and the surrounds of W4. The site uses a standard WordPress template and I’ve installed YAPB – Yet Another Photo Blog to manage the photographs. 

thechiswickgardenerThere are literally hundreds of photos available for the site and to get the site started I’ve just uploaded a handful to begin with. And this photographic aspect is where its potential is already demonstrated. Yesterday I visited High Road House with Andrew and he was able to showcase the site on his iPod using the House’s free private members’ WiFi. This was something to see, an epiphany for me. I’d seen the site as a portfolio of gardening work done for people in Chiswick but I hadn’t quite seen the mobile potential.

What I realised sitting in the subterranean rooms at the House was that this site provides a mobile digital portfolio of Andrew’s work. So long as there’s a WiFi connection, and most of Chiswick High Road has that, Andrew can connect up to the net and showcase his work. Thechiswickgardener.com looks great on an iPod – the colours of the gardens comes through brilliantly and one gets a real sense of the work done – even in a completely windowless underground room.

In one of the predictions for 2009 someone mentions mobile broadband overtaking wired. I cannot comment on the logistics here but I can now see the transformative nature of this. Everyday items such as an iPod become connected cultural artifacts, showcases of a life and works, as well as annoying music devices…