links for 2010-03-10

"Many crucial issues facing the developing world are often overlooked or underrepresented by the media. The Guardian International Development Journalism competition 2010 aims to highlight some of them. We are searching for enthusiastic writers who want to demonstrate their journalistic abilities by examining these issues. The challenge is to write a feature of 650 to 1,000 words by 30 April on an aspect of global poverty that deserves greater media exposure. The 16 best writers (eight amateur, eight professional) will be selected from a longlist of around 40 entrants, all of whom will have their articles published online at guardian.co.uk."

"How do you construct the architecture of a site or web application you are designing to give an optimised experience? When talking about architecture it is not specifically about the technical implementation but more the concept of a site being able to exist in multiple areas, accessible from multiple paths and able to accommodate different user interactions."

"Letting others see your copy-in-progress in advance of publication is no longer the issue it was, because we're already showing the thought-processes behind articles via blogs, tweets, liveblogging, crowdsourcing, livestreaming and more. The big 'Ta-daa' moment of revealing an exclusive is a lovely thing if you're the reporter writing it but if others are blogging or tweeting or commenting on forums about various angles before you're anywhere near a print deadline what are you gaining?"

Hannah Waldram has gone live in Cardiff with the latest addition to our local journalism and community coverage experiment Guardian Local.

By me at FUMSI, an overview of using presentation tools other than PowerPoint, looking at Google Presentations, OpenOffice, Apple Keynote and Prezi.

Following this review from Charlie, I ended up watching an episode of Sky One's "Pineapple Dance Studios". O. M. G.

"The NPA, which represents the UK national newspaper industry, has written to the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, and the BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, arguing that the corporation should not be allowed to launch the applications without an assessment of the impact of such a move on commercial rivals."

"I am not politically naive. I understand the pressures politicians are under and what could happen if they 'say too much' especially from their political opponents. But surely something has gone seriously wrong when the result of our adversarial political system is that politicians just cannot or will not go into details about crucial things like where they will focus on for public spending cuts before an election?"

"What we are proposing is a revolution in local media that would get rid of the cross media ownership rules at a local level and that would mean that if you are [Trinity Mirror chief executive] Sly Bailey you can say that I own the Liverpool Echo, I have got Liverpool.com, I've got Liverpool FM and I've got Liverpool TV, so if you want to reach people in Liverpool there's no better way. I think that would be a very compelling offer for advertisers". Of course, the hospitals and council services in Liverpool have to keep going out to tender because competition is the only thing that drives efficiency and keeps prices down in the public sector....