• Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?
  I have a feeling that this person used a bot to automatically follow me in an effort to take advantage of the fact that a lot of people will simply return the follow – in turn giving this person a new platform to pump their marketing message.
  (tags: twitter,)
• Journalism explained : Journalism.co.uk editors blog
  A video of how newspapers used to be. Well worth a watch.
  (tags: journalism,)
• Citizen Journalism – What Is It ? Youtube
  Fantastic outline of the rise of blogs and the effect on journalism.
  (tags: journalism,)

• Did We Just Witness a Twitter Marriage Proposal?
  Forget statistics and pageviews; marriage proposals, folks, are what really cements a web service as a part of our everyday life.
  (tags: twitter,)

…and I’m off for a few days to spend time with my nearest and dearest.

I will be leaving the tech where it is (except my new mobile!), so there will be no blogging for a few days.

Happy holidays to everyone.

k

k

k

j
Easter morning in the garden

Originally uploaded by Aeioux

• Ijustine – SXSW Music Interviews – Viddler
  The difference between SXSW Interactive and Music: ijustine: “How would you deal with upscaling of the infrastructure?” man: “Errr. I wouldn’t. I’d just chill.”
  (tags: SXSW)
• colorwar 2008 ze’s page :: zefrank.com:
  “…players don’t really know what they joined or why, but for me…it is a perfect implicit structure that can be used to start setting up the colorwar events…it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future.”
  (tags: innovation twitter,)

• Adobe To Develop Flash for the iPhone
  Adobe will develop Flash for the iPhone. Yup, they’re not going to use the existing Flash Lite; they’re going to develop a new version (or tweak the existing one) especially for the iPhone.
  (tags: innovation)
• Twitter Etiquette | Global Geek News Blog
  Oops! “For the sake of the sanity of those not at the event such as SXSW, we don’t need to be made jealous by your twittering of every person you run into or panel you listen to.” (via http://www.jonbounds.co.uk)
  (tags: twitter,)
• FLYING SAUCER: charity case
  Ode to Brum: “I’m lucky enough to live just off quite a trampy high street which is jam packed with charity shops! Not to mention super chavs, prams and crazy people. When everyone has their own prerogative and style, it’s so much easier to be yourself!”
  (tags: birmingham)
• Brum web feed starter kit | Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
  I ‘put together’ (ahem, really just exported from Google Reader) an OMPL file of all the Brum blogs and search feeds I subscribe to.
  (tags: birmingham_blogs birmingham)
• Lords of the Blog
  Lords of the Blog is a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement. (via http://www.ewanspence.com/blog)
  (tags: innovation blogging)
• We Tell Stories
  Penguin embraces new platforms for storytelling: six authers, six weeks – this week a story told using Google Maps. I like this… alot.
  (tags: innovation mapping)
• Revenge of the Experts | Print Article | Newsweek.com
  “The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals.”
  Not sure I agree…
  (tags: blogging journalism,)
• How do you solve a problem like the Library? – Birmingham Post – Business Blog
  Commerical Property Lawyer, Stuart Pemble, is turning out to be a real gem in the new Birmingham Post blogosphere: “Speaking personally, I’m not a fan and am all for bulldozing the entirety of Paradise Circus and starting again.”
  (tags: birmingham_blogs birmingham)
• Poynter Online – E-Media Tidbits
  “The Guardian has brought its typical idiosyncratic approach to social bookmarking with the launch of its social bookmarking service, Clippings.”
  I don’t understand… why not use del.icio.us
  (tags: journalism, innovation)

On September 23 2007 I started this lil’ol blog claiming that I would “tentatively” look to the future of local and regional newspapers.

How things can change in six months!

Now, and I hope this doesn’t sound too cocky, I feel like I’m pretty much immersed in looking at the future of regional newspapers in the UK.

It has been a rapid education. For example, things that I did for the first time at SXSW include:

• Access Twitter over mobile internet.
• Interview people on a camcorder.
• Live stream video over a mobile phone.
• Blog via live streaming.
• Upload a video to Youtube.
• Speak on a podcast.

I know, I know, these are things I should have been doing already. Well… you’re right. In my defence, it’s taken me a while to build up the right kit in order to do much of the above.

Anyway, now I’m getting to grips with new platforms, I thought it was about time to get a host for this blog. I’ve been doing on the cheap by having it hosted free by WordPress, but I would like to have more freedom to play with the blog and I’ve been told the best way to do that is get me a host and download the lastest version of WordPress. Plus, I kinda need to learn how to manage my own website.

If this is right, then I could really do with some advice on hosts. I’m looking for something that is relatively cheap and reliable. Any ideas?

I’m wondering if this is the first time a UK newspaper – or indeed any UK business – has decided and debated a policy entirely online and on a public platform? Please let me know!

It started with a tweet. This one:

And then the whole thing snowballed, with my editor, Marc Reeves, publicly stating that he wanted The Birmingham Post to be the first UK newsroom fully signed up to Twitter:

Of course, such a statement wasn’t going to be ignored by those with an interest in online journalism: namely Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham City University and author of the Online Journalism Blog and Martin Stabe from the Press Gazette. There were two other tweets that I couldn’t find. One was Paul Bradshaw saying: “@marcreeves, can I quote you on that?” and another was a response from Marc: “@paulbradshaw gulp. go on then”:

So… from one tweet from me, The Birmingham Post has developed a policy to be the first UK newspaper to have all its journalists sign up to Twitter and decided to embark on a training programme for its journalists.

Then… after a little while… the policy was signed off by Editorial Director of Trinity Mirror’s regionals, Neil Benson (who, it appears, was also having a spot of bother with his iPhone):

From tweet to twittevolution. All in a day’s work off sick!!

• SXSW Plague Takes Down Twitterers
  …many attendees returned home to the effects of the “SXSW plague”, a flu-like virus passed on through congratulatory handshakes, packed launch parties, incestuous Twittering, real-world “friending”, poking and more than a little late-night Flick
  (tags: SXSW)
• Networking admin: Phew. — Antonio Gould
  It toook me an hour to add 5 contacts on Saturday.
• Down for everyone or just me
  Useful tool to check whether an app is having problems. (via Pete Ashton)

• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Blogging plants
  BIAD graduate Andy Broomfield (I supervised his dissertation) has just released source code for a Blog Bot Platform project….
  (tags: blogging innovation)

• Chaps, just for the avoidance of doubt …
  Figures are the 2006 mid-year estimates from the Office of National Statistics.
• UK Indymedia – Protest Against the ‘Church’ of Scientology in Birmingham – pix
  About 100 people today gathered in Birmingham city centre to protest against the “illegal and unethical activities” of the so-called Church of Scientology (CoS)…
• We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar
  I LOVE this site: “An exploration of human emotion, in six movements” (via http://www.d’log.info)
  (tags: innnovation)
• Wired News – AP News
  “It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere…”
  (tags: journalism, websites)
• It doesn’t matter if blogs are just entertainment
  If blogs crush the mainstream journalism in the next few years, it’s by accident, not on purpose. [via http://www.ewanspence.com/blog/]
  (tags: blogging journalism,)
• Iraqi Refugees: Life in the Shadows | Journalism, Photography | Our Man Inside
  The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War is upon us, and there is speculation that the engagement may continue yet another five years, if not more. To date, approximately 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in combat.
• SpinVox – Home page
  SpinVox captures spoken messages and cleverly converts them into text. It then delivers your message to a destination of your choice – inbox, blog, wall or space.
  (tags: multimedia, innovation)

Too rough to appear on Qik today, so I brought in my understudy:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR5p6z9hnVY&hl=en]

Executive summary: Thoughts on the Project for Excellence in Journalism report on the state of the news media. News organisations recycle world stories because of the way that sites are funded. Because they want to generate clicks, they will throw up articles on popular stories just to attract people to their site.

The video on Qik is here (Qik now sends videos direct to Youtube – but I’m surprised that there is no Qik branding on the video…)