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Sunday, April 11th, 2010

I enjoy reading newspapers and blogs far more than I enjoy reading books. Now I’m going to start sharing some of the articles I have enjoyed in a weekly blog post. It’s an idea I’ve nicked straight from James Cridland’s blog. Clicking on any link should open it up in a new window or tab, so get clicking.

The Digital Economy Bill was quickly passed through during the week with seemingly little thought put towards it. I often wonder if Peter Mandelson has ever used the internet?  If you’d like a quick run through of what this all means, Robert Andrews of paidContent:UK has given us this “Quick Guide To All 45 Measures“.

I don’t think any of us have escaped the news that this week the Queen dissolved parliament and Gordon announced a General Election.  This election will be the first proper social media election, and spreading like wildfire through Twitter this week were images from the website mydavidcameron.com, Photoshopping at it’s best.

In the week that Apple announced their latest update for the iPhone, Os4, Gizmodo report “How The iPhone Could End Up In Second Place“.  It’s a worthwhile article for any company that’s thinking about developing solely for the iPhone platform.

The Guardian is one of my most visited websites. It quite often holds the crown of being my web browsers homepage.

Their article “Spare a Flickr of sympathy for professional photographers” makes interesting reading.  In it it states that the popular photo sharing site now features billions of pictures by amateurs and squeezing income out of the photographic industry. I suppose I fall under the category of the photographer who owes everything to the easy shoot digital camera. But like every industry, times are a changing, and professional photographers need to get with the them.

It could be an interesting year for Bebo users. AOL want to either shutdown or sell the Social Networking site.  For me Bebo, in 2005, was the first site of it’s type which had proper mainstream appeal.  But it lost out to Facebook. Feature wise, privacy wise, and design wise, it was way out of the league of Facebook. I deleted my Bebo profile a long time ago. Most people I know now use Facebook.

What I’ve learned this week.  If you have the opportunity to name a ship, don’t name it Titanic. Surely that one was obvious? And if you are going to put your old redundant suitcases to a charity shop, check inside them before you let them go. And 2000 years after he rose from the dead, Jesus has decided to come back in a piece of chewing gum.  That story particularly got my goat.

If like me your a radio presenter who every now and again needs content for a quick link, the Daily Telegraph’s “How About That” section is an excellent resource.  And speaking of local radio presenters, back to the Guardian, “What I’m really thinking: The local radio presenter“. It’s all true.

The excellent Flight Level 390 blog continues to keep me longing to leave radio and become an airline pilot, while GERT on Blipfoto.com continues to keep me longing to leave radio, skip the idea of an airline pilot and get a job on the high seas instead.

So much reading, so little time. Thankfully Google Reader keeps it all in one place for me. Same time, same place, next week for more.


Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Memo to media outlets, journalists etc. Why do you feel the need to announce who’s been kicked out of reality tv shows? We live in a technologically advanced era. With the help of Sky+ and the BBC IPlayer millions of people are time shifting their viewing habits.

Take the Apprentice for example. One of the more classier reality tv programmes (I say this on the day that Big Brother 10 launches in the UK).

There are 3 types of people in this example:

  1. those who watch the Apprentice and saw it at the time it went out on TV. They’ll be interested in the outcome of the show but they already know the result.
  2. There are those who will watch the Apprentice time shifted, they’ll be interested in the result but will not want to know the outcome until they find the time to view it themselves.
  3. And there’s those who don’t watch the Apprentice and couldn’t care less who’s been fired.

So why do you need to tell us who’s been fired?  Person number 1 already knows. Person number 2 doesn’t want to know. And person number 3 doesn’t care.

Some news outlets report it without revealing it. The BBC News and Guardian website for example will title the story “Sir Alan fires another candidate” and then you have to click the link to find out.  But some newspapers, such as our local Evening Express website will happily tell you on the front page, “xxxxxx and xxxxxx will go head-to-head in this year’s Apprentice final after Sir Alan Sugar fired three contestants”.

The number of episodes in this series of the Apprentice that have been spoiled for me because the outcome has been revealed before I got a chance to see it.  I could just avoid the news, but being on the radio I do have to do my “research”.

Newspapers and media organisations, please take in the account the above example for next years Apprentice.

Thank you.