May 2009 Archives
May 31, 2009
BBC Radiophonic Workshop Q&A at the Camden Roundhouse
On May 17th I went to see an evening with 'The Radiophonic Workshop' at Camden's Roundhouse, which was part of their Short Circuit festival of electronica. Yesterday I posted my review of the gig. Photo by Stickpeople Before the show started there was an hour long Q&A session with 5 members of the Radiophonic Workshop, which I was lucky enough to attend. Here are some of my notes from the event. The conference circuit Thanks to their involvement with Doctor...
May 30, 2009
BBC Radiophonic Workshop live at the Camden Roundhouse
"BBC Radiophonic Workshop live"
Read my review of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop gig at Camden's Roundhouse, along with my notes from the Q&A session which preceded it.
May 29, 2009
"Actor in Muswell Hill UFO Sighting Mystery!"
Having written a few posts recently about the potential impact of local council publications on the local press in London, I have to confess that sometimes, when I see what is making the billboards belonging to the Muswell Hill Journal, I can understand why Haringey Council think they need their own magazine as well...!...
Newspapers on the go - Metro and The Sun
Yesterday I was casting a (very) quick eye over the mobile offerings of The Telegraph and The Times. Today I'm looking at the sites that The Sun and Metro offer to users on-the-go. The Sun Of the sites I looked at, The Sun's was by far the most nakedly commercial. Sometimes literally so. Their homepage had a strong focus not just on the news, but on calls to actions to download ringtones, wallpapers and games, which are provided by a...
May 28, 2009
Newspapers on the go - The Times and The Telegraph
Back in March The Guardian launched a specifically formatted mobile version of the site at m.guardian.co.uk. At the time I thought it might be worth having a quick poke around to see what other newspapers in the UK were doing with their sites in the mobile space. Since then it seems that I've been at so many different digital media and journalism events or gigs that I never got round to blogging about what I saw. Here are some of...
May 27, 2009
'Local newspaper week' - The local council publicity machine
During 'Local newspaper week', I wrote about the impact of local council newspapers on the commercial press. This led to some really interesting comments, and as a result I surveyed the publications produced by London's Boroughs. A quarter of them are at least fortnightly, and over 70% of them take commercial advertising, including giving away free classified listings in one instance, and yet the LGA insists that they do not compete. Another reason that I struggle to buy the necessity...
May 26, 2009
'Local newspaper week' - Council newspapers in London
"H&F News is Hammersmith & Fulham's leading newspaper, with more readers, more news and more influence than any other paper. If you are looking for a way to reach homes across Fulham, Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush which is cost effective and reliable, then look no further. 87,000 copies of H&F News are delivered monthly to homes across the borough - more than any other local media." That must sound pretty attractive to an advertiser trying to target the local area....
May 25, 2009
Kings Cross wayfinding #fail
It is probably longer ago than I think, but it doesn't seem that long in the grand scheme of things since the whole Kings Cross St Pancras Underground ticket office complex was revamped as part of the redevelopment of St Pancras into a Eurostar terminal. That also meant a whole new set of signage for the station. Judging by this handwritten annotation, it seems that at least one member of staff thinks the wayfinding to the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City...
May 24, 2009
Idlewild go iPodwild in Camden
On Thursday I went to Dingwalls in Camden to see Idlewild play two of their albums in full, as part of a three night residency they were doing there. We were standing behind the sound desk, and it was interesting to see a real contrast in the technology on display. The mixing desk incorporated a touch-screen control panel, and looked worth a fortune. However, the poem by Edwin Morgan that closes one of my favourite tracks, 'The Remote Part /...
May 23, 2009
A quick online guide to the minor party and independent London European Election Candidates
"London European Election Guide"
A brief outline of the independent candidates and smaller parties standing for European Election in London
May 22, 2009
'Do online newspapers have a future in a Digital Britain' - MTM London round-table session
I mentioned yesterday that I went to a round table panel session this week hosted by MTM London. Entitled 'Do online newspapers have a future in a Digital Britain', it was held under the Chatham House Rule, which rather precludes me writing it up as fully as I normally would. Instead I've picked out some unattributed quotes from the evening... [1] "People are cynical about single brands, and don't want to be spoon-fed" The point was made that people are...
May 21, 2009
The (sometimes) free London Evening Standard
Last night I went to a fascinating round table panel session put on by MTM London at One Alfred Place with the title 'Do online newspapers have a future in a Digital Britain'. The evening was under Chatham House Rules, which means I need to work a little bit harder on how I'm going to blog about the event itself. Whilst I'm wrestling with that conundrum, I was struck by something on the way home that seemed to sum up...
May 20, 2009
Thinking about future London IA Mini event formats
If you tried to get a ticket, you'll have noticed that the second event in our 'London IA Mini' series, like the first, sold out in a matter of minutes. There were only twenty-five places available, and they were snapped up. That left a lot of unhappy people without tickets. There will be plenty of live tweeting and blog reportage of the event I'm sure, but that isn't the same as being there. Credit to the community though, there was...
May 19, 2009
The Apprentice and the unintended consequences of social media
*** WARNING: Contains mild spoilers for last week's 'The Apprentice: Season 5 Episode 8' *** On Wednesday night I was pointed to Scoopler, a real-time search engine, by Phil Bradley's blog. Since The Apprentice had just finished on BBC One, I thought that would make a good test case. Sure enough, a search for The Apprentice turned up lots of tweets. It was an episode where the task was to re-brand the seaside resort of Margate, and one of the...
May 18, 2009
International Social Media Summit in London
Last week I was at the International Social Media Summit hosted by WebCertain at the British Library. Here are some of my highlights from the day Panel debate - Facebok vs Google vs Twitter This was a great format to kick start the afternoon after lunch. Andy Atkins-Krüger, Kristjan Mar Hauksson and Dixon Jones each defended one of the web giants against the others, to argue that they represented the future of marketing. They'd jumbled up their slides into a...
May 17, 2009
Leeds United play-off #fail. Again.
I'm still smarting from Leeds United's failure to reach the League One Play-Off Final, after losing to Millwall on aggregate this week. On Friday thelondonpaper published a selection of online messages from fans including this one: "Billy Bremner, Nora Batty, Arthur Scargill, Kaiser Chiefs, Karen Matthews, Peter Sutcliffe, Jermaine Beckford...YOUR BOYS TOOK ONE HELL OF A BEATING!" As a parody of this famous moment of football commentary I'm sure it worked great on the independentmillwall.com forums. Reproduced in print though?...
May 16, 2009
The ethics of ad-blocking
Shane Richmond blogged this week about newspapers and paywalls - a topic to which we all seem wedded at the moment, whether proposing them or naysaying them. Something caught my eye in the comments, which I initially filed under "unintentionally funny". Truth's Revenge said: "'How will the Telegraph make money?' is a more pertinent question for you - display advertising? - I already have a firefox add-on that blocks it all. Once more people realise this software is out there...
May 15, 2009
'Local Newspaper Week' - Being local...
This week has been, according to the Newspaper Society, 'Local Newspaper Week'. It seemed like an opportune moment to blog about some of the things I've noticed about my local newspapers since I moved to Muswell Hill. I've been collecting clippings and pictures of the Muswell Hill Journal and Ham & High Broadway since October, and so far this week I've blogged about advertising, some of the issues around local democracy and the potential impact of the local council's own...
May 14, 2009
'Local Newspaper Week' - Council newspapers
Between the 11th and 17th May, the Newspaper Society has been promoting 'Local Newspaper Week'. To coincide with this, I've been blogging about some of the things I've noticed about my local newspapers since moving into Muswell Hill last October. So far I've looked at advertising, and at some of the issues around local democracy. Local council newspapers The business model of the regional press is under severe strain. Not only is the economic situation affecting display advertising, but the...
May 13, 2009
'Local Newspaper Week' - Democracy
For 'Local Newspaper Week' I've been looking at some of the things I've noticed about my local press in Muswell Hill since I moved there back in October. Yesterday I was looking at some issues around advertising. Today I wanted to look at local democracy. One of the principle reasons for ensuring that our regional media survives the current economic climate is because of the diligent role they play in attending council meetings, court proceedings, and holding local organisations like...
May 12, 2009
'Local Newspaper Week' - Advertising
This week it is the Newspaper Society's 'Local Newspaper Week'. I'm writing a series of blog posts looking at some of the things I've noticed about my local newspapers over the last few months, in print and online. Today I wanted to look a little at the advertising in my local press. Births, deaths and adverts One of the traditional areas of revenue generation for the local newspaper was the 'announcements' page, where people paid to publicly announce births, deaths...
Upcoming Martin Belam presentation and blog training day
I wanted to briefly mention a couple of speaking and training events that I've got coming up. International Social Media Summit On Thursday I will be at the British Library, and for once I won't be skulking around trying to use it as an office, or be filming people for 'ambush' user testing. Instead I'll be speaking at WebCertain's International Social Media Summit. My presentation is called "'Teenager finds bat asleep in bra' or How major publishers are using social...
May 11, 2009
'Local Newspaper Week' - Welcome to your new local...
This week the Newspaper Society is promoting 'Local Newspaper Week'. The aim is to highlight the valuable links that our UK regional press provide with their communities. I've been collecting some clippings and screen-shots from several regional papers in print and online over the last few months, and so it seemed an appropriate week to start blogging about them. Welcome to your new local... I came back to London in October last year, and, being a newspaper kind of guy,...
May 10, 2009
JEEcamp 2009 round-up
I had a great time at JEEcamp in Birmingham on Friday, at what was a really interesting 'unconference' around the theme of Journalism Enterprise and Experimentation. "JEEcamp is an opportunity for a range of people to get together to talk about how on earth journalists and publishers can make a living from journalism in the era of free information, what the challenges are, and what we've learned so far." The day started in a surreally bemusing fashion for me as...
May 9, 2009
"The look and the sound of The Voice" - Ultravox at The Roundhouse
It may seem to the casual observer, that, having recently seen The Cure and ABC, I'm trapped in a desperate mid-life crisis retro cycle of watching 80s bands live. I did nothing to dispel that illusion the other week by going to see Ultravox at Camden's Roundhouse. They were the first 'modern' band that I went to see live. In 1984 I wasn't old enough to go to a gig on my own, so one of my friends got tickets,...
May 8, 2009
Happy birthday to The Manchester Guardian
It was The Guardian's birthday this week. The first edition of The Manchester Guardian was published on May 5th 1821. In those days the business model was to have the front page covered in small text ads - something that no newspaper continues to do today. We have a reproduction of that front page hanging on the wall by the ultra-modern news room in Kings Place, and there is also a digital copy in this gallery of past Guardian front...
May 7, 2009
The Guardian Open Platform at Endeca's e-Business Forum
I've been posting this week about my visit to Endeca's office in Richmond for the "Endeca e-Business Forum". I went because Endeca were one of the launch partners of The Guardian's Open Platform API, and they power our internal site search engine. The Head of The Guardian's Developer Network, Matt McAlister, was giving the final presentation of the day - a case study about the Open Platform. The Open Platform API The Open Platform API Explorer uses the Endeca engine...
May 6, 2009
Carzone.ie and Euroffice at the Endeca e-Business Forum
Yesterday I posted some of my notes from a trip to Endeca's Richmond office to attend the "Endeca e-Business Forum". They covered Ashley Freidlein's keynote talk about "Beautiful Basics". Today I wanted to look at some of my other notes from the event. Most of the presentations had a dual format, with a presenter from Endeca demonstrating some of the features of the platform, followed by a customer case study of how they had implemented them. It is always intriguing...
May 5, 2009
"Beautiful Basics" - Ashley Friedlein at the Endeca e-Business Forum
Last week I was at Endeca's offices in Richmond for their "Endeca e-Business Forum". The keynote was being given by Ashley Friedlein of econsultancy.com, and was about "Beautiful Basics - The things you need to be doing really well online to succeed". What I liked about it was that Ashley used lots and lots of real world examples and live demos. Instead of just presenting bullet point lists of 'must do' website features, he showed excellent user experiences in action....
May 4, 2009
On the I-Spy look-out for "Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends"
If you were puzzled by a couple of my tweets over the weekend, then let me reassure you that I haven't chucked in the web lark and become a professional ghost hunter. However, I am currently on the look-out for spooky stuff. Last week @bigchiefIspy recruited me into his I-Spy Tribe, by sending me an unsolicited copy of the 1995 Michelin "I-Spy Book of Ghosts, Mysteries & Legends". It is actually a little trickier than some of the more straightforward...
May 2, 2009
May 1, 2009
The computer print-out Evangelists of the future
It is twenty years since The Shamen released their second album, "In Gorbachev We Trust". This was the album that saw them move from being a psychedelic indie four-piece band, to being a duo experimenting with acid house. [1] The main single from "In Gorbachev We Trust" was "Jesus Loves Amerika", a stinging rebuke to right-wing evangelists in the USA. It features vocal samples from several American televangelists, including an opening quote from James Robison stating: "I'm sick and tired...