Feel free to comment on / improve upon the list below!

• Sharing on social media – quick buttons to share content on Twitter, Facebook, Google +1, LinkedIn. The emphasis here is to make sure the design is neat and consistent – the buttons to the left of a post at Mashable are the best I’ve seen. Question is how to make this happen – some combination of plugins and coding from the sites’ own widget systems is going to be the solution I think. E-mail to a friend will be added alongside these buttons.
• Social Media integration – tweets referencing a post will appear below comments on a post (probably using Topsy), and tweets will be referenced in posts using the excellent Twitter Blackbird Pie.
• Publishing to social media – not a blog feature as such, but new blog posts will be auto-tweeted using TwitterFeed, imported into Facebook as Notes, and posted to LinkedIn.
• Mobile and iPad friendly – easy to understand why, perhaps harder to make it work! The simple and free way is to use WPTouch (free version) to create a mobile site, and OnSwipe (free) for an iPad version. The problem is that neither of these plugins gives a very configurable design – worth forking out for WPTouch Pro? Or just stick to the regular site for the iPad?
• E-mail integration – all too easy to overlook in the social media world, but subscribe to post comments and a notification every time something new is posted will be added. This will be done with plugins Post Notification and Subscribe to Comments.
• Design – for the main site this is delicate. The main column of text needs to be 640px wide so as to accommodate Youtube videos, but wider images breaking out of the grid (Wu-Wei style) would also be desirable. Meanwhile a right sidebar design, with a total width of no more than 960px is a must.
• Topics – I have three main topics: EU politics, UK politics and tech Politics. I need to find a way – in a sidebar perhaps? – to draw attention to these issues more closely. Yet I want to keep a traditional blog style homepage, not completely change that in the way Mark Pack has. Some differentiation of sidebars (for blogrolls, links to Twitter lists, perhaps even a link to Google+ Circles?) is also necessary here.
• What I’m writing elsewhere, and what I’m reading – I’m writing more and more for other sites, so the blog needs a way to gather this content in one place. I also read masses of brilliant stuff everyday, and a simple way to present this would be excellent. WordPress 3.2′s Post Formats are probably the best way to accomplish this, although using Delicious would be another option.
• Other odds and ends – an import of where I am currently from Dopplr, latest pics from Flickr, current Klout and PeerIndex status, and clearer pages about what I do also need to be included.

Simple really!

Anyway here are – now – my rules for who I’ll add where.

Facebook – you can find my profile here, and my new page here.
Previously I would be happy to add anyone as a friend on Facebook I had actually met. This started to get ludicrous, with more than 1000 ‘friends’. So I now have a new criterion, and a reduced number of friends: Facebook friends are people I know well enough to conceivably meet for a coffee or a beer if I happen to be in the city where these folks live. If you don’t meet that criterion you’ll be kindly declined. If you want to follow what I do professionally – in EU politics, UK politics or tech and politics – then the page should do the job (although one of the networks below should be a better bet!) Plus you can contact me on Facebook anyway if you want to, you just don’t need to know what I am doing here and now.

Twitter - you can follow me here.
This remains more or less unchanged – I do not automatically follow anyone that follows me, but do go through to work out who to follow on the basis of the biographies of people following me. If you sound interesting from that then I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and if I build real engagement with you I’ll add you to a list. I do not have to know you to want to follow you. At the time of writing I’m following 2515 and have 3589 followers – expect both numbers to increase. Twitter is more of a professional tool for me than Facebook, and what I write goes across all the three of my main areas of interest – EU politics, UK politics and tech and politics. I’ll do my best to respond to any valid question posed to be on Twitter, but that’s not always possible. You can be sure I read all @replies though.

Google+ – my profile is here.
The new show in town, and – so far at least – the one with the best tools to manage all these different social groups. I’ll follow anyone who seems interesting (Twitter-style) but will add close friends to more restricted circles (Facebook-style, and even more narrow), and can work out what to share with whom on the very same network. Each professional area I work in has its own circle, with a little overlap between them. I’ve only just started out here, so don’t yet have even 100 people in my circles – you’re welcome to add me if you think a connection would make sense for some reason.

LinkedIn – my profile is here.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of LinkedIn – 446 connections (much less than Facebook or Twitter) is testimony to that. I take the approach that if people search for me they are welcome to connect as nothing on LinkedIn is not available elsewhere on the public web. Tags help me separate out the different professional interests from each other, and I am yet to determine the right strategy for LinkedIn groups. You’re welcome to add me as a connection.

I also have profiles on XING (70 contacts), Quora (approx 200 following / followers), Plaxo (30 contacts), Diaspora (5 contacts), Path (1 contact), but am not actively using any of these. I’m also on Foursquare and Dopplr, but my use of both of those is for informational rather than social networking purposes.

So I’m rather content that Google’s Brussels office has asked me to help out with a workshop they are running for MEPs, assistants and staff in the European Parliament on 9th December, looking at how web tools can be better used in everyday parliamentary work. I’m there to give some of the more political perspectives on the Brussels web politics environment, and explain a little bit about some of the projects I’ve worked on.

As I’ve said to the Google folks I am not always a Google user (I favour Netvibes and WordPress over Reader and Sites respectively, but do use Google for search, mail, maps and my browser) but essentially on the matters for the event next week our interests are in the same direction – pushing the EP into the 21st Century. I’m also not going to be answering questions on this week’s EU probe into Google – Daily Mash has done that better than I could!

Questions for the event can be posed beforehand here via Google Moderator, and all MEPs’ offices should have the event info already. You’re also welcome to contact me if you have questions or want to come along.

The UK is the largest per-capita eCommerce market in the world, and the second largest online advertising market. 19 million of the 26 million households in the UK have an internet connection. Good stuff.

The stats in the report are helpful for any of us active in business online – I’m not selling things online, but my web design and strategy for politicians and campaigns requires the the right mindset among my potential clients, and serious reports of this nature can only be helpful when making my case.

Inadvertently I’ve managed to stumble upon half an answer. On Tuesday this week I was hopping mad about an article on the Daily Mail’s website with a heading stating that the EU was responsible for a court case banning crucifixes in Italian schools. In my fit of anger I wrote that the journalist who penned the article – Nick Pisa – was a f**kwit and a thicko. As people have pointed out in the comments, and indeed as I too know, subeditors are responsible for the headlines, not the journalists themselves. But the article appeared in his name, in a newspaper that regularly twists facts about the EU to suit its ends, so I reckoned it was fair game.

By reacting in such a forceful manner I ended up doing to Nick Pisa what the Daily Mail always does about the European Union – I got the attack in first, and Google has handled the rest. Now, at the time of writing, my blog entry branding Pisa a f**kwit is ranked 3rd in Google when you search for his name. That’s not really especially pleasant if you’re Nick Pisa.

So the simple message is this: if you’re frustrated by the rubbish nature of UK newspaper reporting, on whatever issue, get yourself a blog, get yourself a Twitter account, design your blog to be Google friendly, and post quick responses using the correct keywords… and Google will handle the rest.

[UPDATE - 23h00 CET, 8.11.09]
Now it’s gone even further – I’m 2nd in Google when searching for ‘f**kwit’. Not sure I want my blog to have that accolade, but it’s quite amusing.