July 2008 Archives

Your challenge for today: what points about community was I trying to illustrate with this?

Flipchat Fairytales

I've always assumed that, by nature of being from niche B2B titles, our blogs were significantly less popular than those from national newspapers. And then I saw a story on journalism.co.uk reporting on The Times' blogs and their traffic figures. Here's the graph:

Times Blogs StatsBased on those figures, and comparing month-for-month, our best blogs would sit comfortably amongst the middle of them.

I feel much better now. 

Another sign that blogging is in the mainstream now:



Budapest from the hills
One of the consequences of my Mum's death is that I'm having to sort through all my junk I had stored at her place. In one box, I found 3 old APS films that I shot in the late 90s. I sent them for scanning at Photo Express, and the results dropped on my desk this morning. Amongst the images were a small selection of shots from my first trip to Budapest, in late 1999. I was there to report on the emerging commercial property market for Europroperty.

I returned some years later, and you can see the results elsewhere on this blog, but, while the later pictures are objectively better, I kinda like the colourful simplicity of the earlier ones. It does catch the mood of the city at the time, as you can see in the next shot:
And finally:


[via Andy]
I read a blog post by The Telegraph's Shane Richmond a couple of days ago that has been bugging me ever since. Not because I disagree with it, because on the whole I think he's right. It's just that something seemed "off" about it. Shane suggest that mainstream media blogs might have a role to play in promoting middle-ranking bloggers:

The conclusion is this: perhaps MSM blogs, often seen as the cuckoo in the nest by those who are going it alone, have a role to play here. Perhaps our position gives us the opportunity, maybe even the responsibility, to help drive more "non-crazies" into the top tier of the blogosphere.

And this bothered me for a few days. Yes, I do think it's a key role of journalist bloggers to link to the best of the community around them, and to encourage the growth of individual bloggers. But there seems to be an underlying assumption in Shane's piece that MSM bloggers have an inherent power that they can use for bloggy good. And my experience is that they don't have that power. They have to earn it like everyone else in the blogging world. A well-known name of brand is good for getting a first look, but that's all. It's the quality of what you produce that gives you power, be you MSM or amateur. 

The sad truth: the Muppets understand web video better than most journalists:


Short (under two minutes) and well worth waiting until the end for... Just perfect.

Self-Portrait on Grass, originally uploaded by Adam Tinworth.


I've just finished uploading the best of an afternoon's photography in Bungay, Suffolk.

Feel free to browse and enjoy.

Wordle Cloud
A word cloud based on my recent blog posts, generated by Wordle. I'm going to start using this tool to see how closely what our bloggers are posting about tallies with what they think they're posting about.

[via Noodlepie]

The Owl Army

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3 3G Dongle again
Mr Rogers reminded me of the recent post by Mr OnionBagBlog decrying the performance of his 3 mobile broadband dongle, querying how this tallied with my own experience.

Well, in all honesty, in the best part of three weeks I've been in Suffolk, dealing with Mum's death, the 3 network has failed me utterly. I have not been able to find the slightest sniff of a signal anywhere. Indeed, this has been my experience of the dongle every time I step away from a major city. 

This is clearly not a general problem - 9 times out of 10, the dongle can see signals from the other networks. There's just no 3 signal to be found. My free time with this dongle must be coming to an end and, while I'm keen to get one for my own use, the coverage problems mean that I won't be using 3 in any circumstances. 

Storage

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Storage Warehouse
I've been storing some stuff in Mum's spare room prior to selling our flat in London. With Mum gone, and her house to be on the market shortly, I've had to resort to that warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark for some of my beloved book collection...
Mum & I at the ball
There are some phrases that your head just refuses to accept as applying to you. "My Mum is dead" is one of them. But my head is going to have to get used to the idea, as Mum passed away, surrounded by her family, last Wednesday.

Time out from family issues in Suffolk

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This page is an archive of entries from July 2008 listed from newest to oldest.

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