Links you may have missed...

 by Martin Belam, 15 April 2010

Whilst I was taking my blogging holiday, I wasn't keeping up my regular daily linklog either. Here are some of the things that I was involved with or impressed with at The Guardian that I would have linked to, but didn't...

Edinburgh blog

We launched the third of our experimental local blogs, this time in Edinburgh with Tom Allan as resident beat-blogger. He's been producing some intriguing rich media content, like a photography showcase of pictures of the full moon around Edinburgh accompanied by a poem, and an interesting audio piece in collaboration with local blogger Fay Young on the impact a new Tesco may have on Broughton Street.

I've also guest blogged on the site myself, talking about the 'broadside' collection in the National Library of Scotland, which formed part of my presentation at the Edinburgh International Science Festival this weekend.

Journalism in the digital age

Speaking of which, here is the write up of the full presentation which I published on the Inside Guardian blog yesterday - "Journalism in the digital age: trends, tools and technologies"

Guardian Eyewitness iPad app

Available in the iTunes App store for the US launch of the iPad, we've released the Guardian Eyewitness iPad app. Not bad considering we had to prototype it in Flash (which doesn't run on the device), and only had the SDK to work from, meaning that at the time it became available for download, nobody at The Guardian had actually seen it running.

We've got a couple of iPads to play with assess in the office now. Here is Alan Rusbridger's review of the device.

Whilst I was in Edinburgh, I recorded an interview for the EU:SCI podcast. They asked me if the iPad was the future of news. Well, I don't know about that, but I can tell you it is bloody distracting to have people playing touchscreen air hockey next to your desk...

iPad Air Hockey

Andrew Sparrow's election live blog

Andrew Sparrow is live blogging the entire election campaign in the General Election 2010 Live series. Thanks to the hours he is putting in, by the day of the vote, I expect he will have written the equivalent of a large book, and be utterly, utterly broken. I got to sit down with the politics desk the other week, and the speed with which the copy gets filed, subbed and put live astounded me. What I like about it is that the format definitely seems of the web, rather than being something that could work in print or radio or on TV being shoved onto the Internet.

The Random Guardian

"The idea came out of a joking remark by Chris Thorpe yesterday in a Guardian presentation by Clay Shirky that what we really need is a 'Chatroulette for news'."

Developer Dan Vydra put together this app, which does what it says on the tin - gives you a random page published that day on guardian.co.uk - The Random Guardian. An attempt to put some serendipity back into browsing through the news, it is a lovely example of our software team having the flexibility to turn out interesting hacks and prototypes, and the willingness of our journalists to then write about them if they are good.

Keep up to date on my new blog