About Me

Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
HR Apprentice. Ex Media Studies student at Swansea University. This blog is a collection of links, articles, academic reference and random thoughts.

Monday 21 December 2009

RATM "I won't do what you say"

So the official Xmas number one for 2009 is the popular Xmas ditty "Killing in the name of" by the well known band Rage Against the Machine, after a successful Facebook campaign to beat the usual X Factor dross which is churned out year after year. The irony is that the lyrics say "I won't do what you say" yet the public did exactly that and pandered to the whims of a certain John Mortimer. The 35-year-old hi-fi technician from Essex, launched a group on Facebook, along with his wife Tracy, 30, and we did exactly what they said. Word is that Cowell has now offered him a job.

Monday 30 November 2009

Don't blame me for creating stories on Twitter, says Stephen Fry

Don't blame me for creating stories on Twitter, says Stephen Fry

Posted by
Mercedes Bunz Tuesday 17 November 2009 11.23 GMT
guardian.co.uk

The millions of Twitter users make stories - I only point them in a direction, says Stephen Fry in speech to conference


Stephen Fry, speaking today at the 140 Characters Conference in London, said:

"There is a power of Twitter. We can't deny it any more, well for sure not as a celebrity Twitterer. A year ago, nearly no one heard about Twitter. But things move so fast today - and the bewilderment, content, disbelief with which Twitter was greeted ...

They called it the most banal and pointless waste of time. And do you know what they say now? Now they say: Our Twitter strategy is ...

It is a very odd thing when people think they are being smart when they speak not as humans but as business people. They say, I need a phone that does this, I need a social network that does that. You know what? I know a lot of executives that lead big companies, and they talk about what excites them and what convinces them. They are driven as human beings.

And you know what? Before humans are reasoning, they are emotional beings. With gadgets you communicate with other people, and therefore this is an emotional internet that you have. Not just plain function. It will come as no surprise that as the next big thing it wasn't designed as business for business. Twitter was created to babble to each other. Remember it was called Twitter and not serious debate or marketing tool.

It is important for all of us to understand its nature. It is human shaped, not business shaped. And the swell will move elsewhere if you try to make it all neat and attractive. The greatness and the magnitude of its energy will all move.

Think of Twitter or the internet like the invention of the printing press. 1450 - when there were no printed books and about 500 years later there were 20m. The press became available for a great number of people. There was a new freedom of the press. This caused upheavals. Huge numbers of magazines, broadsheets and pamphlets were published. And the most popular ones were not called "the Debate". They were called the Idler or the Spectator.

There was no class more contemptuous of Twitter than the commentating journalists. Why should we care about what Britney Spears had for breakfast, they said. So may I ask you, why do you write about it in the paper? The journalists said, who needs this Twitter thing and in the next moment you read: Follow the Daily Mail on Twitter at ...

But like with the printing press, Twitter changed the situation. People like me, Twillionaires [people with more than a million followers], we can cut out the press from our PR requirements. It used to be a pact with the devil. You wanted to inform the press about a new film and they said they will interview you, but only if they are allowed to ask you around other themes about your private life. Today, Britney Spears tells her PR manager, why should I care about that this journalist of this newspaper with big circulations, I will reach this circulation just by typing into my keyboard.

So well, whole newspapers are on the one side filled with resentment against Twitter, on the other side they are using it and searching Twitter messages. By the way, have you recognised, they are using it as a feed, the deadwood press doesn't say stream. Puzzling.

Then there are good moments. There was the case of Trafigura, which forbade the Guardian to write about it. It caused a storm on Twitter, which I joined in quite late as that morning I came from the gym - it is pathetic, I can't believe I said that but it is true, and the thing reached such a heat by 1pm or 2pm that the lawyers had to do something about it. This can be considered a victory.

Or a journalist from the Daily Mail wrote about something very awful which happened to affect a friend of mine, although I don't make a big deal about that fact. But I saw this brilliant answer from Charlie Brooker and so commented and pointed there. And then they said, 'Who the hell does Stephen Fry think he is forbidding this journalist to think freely?' Well I never did.

But because of the weight of my numbers I am now credited or blamed for inventing these stories. But this is not the way Twitter works. The Twitter millions create the story. You can only point them in a direction. It is like with your parents, when you come home and say you did this because a friend told you and they go like: well if he told you to stick your head in the fire, would you do that?

Twitter is about participating - by which I mean you tweet and read other people's tweets. Then you understand it, and get its rhythm. But remember: It is about being authentic. These things are human-shaped."

Fry is afraid that Twitter will be swamped by PR professionals. What do you think?

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Twitter user Penelope Trunk who Tweeted her miscarriage sparks media storm


By Tom Chivers
Published: 3:51PM GMT 03 Nov 2009


The miscarriage Tweet from Penelope Trunk Photo: TWITTER Penelope Trunk, who describes herself as an author, blogger and entrepreneur, wrote: “I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a f------up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.”

Within a few hours, via the 20,000 followers of her Twitter account @penelopetrunk, the news made it on to CNN, The New York Times, ABC news and even Oprah.

She told one magazine: “It’s no different to me saying what I had for lunch. I thought nothing of it until the horrified followers’ replies started flooding in.”

Miss Trunk, 42, is a mother of two, a five-year-old and a seven-year-old. She had previously had two miscarriages, and had booked an appointment at an abortion clinic after discovering in August that she was pregnant once more.

Commenters have accused her of heartlessness, and a CNN interviewer asked if she had “no shame”. However, Miss Trunk argues that the real issue is the three-week wait for an clinic appointment in Wisconsin which would have forced her to travel to Chicago, Illinois, for her abortion.

She told CNN: “It seems everyone in the whole world would prefer a miscarriage to an abortion, even the Pope.”

She rejected the idea that her reaction shows a lack of compassion. "The first time I had a miscarriage I was sad about it, and it was a very typical experience," she told ABC. "But I think it's limiting that it's only OK to talk about miscarriages if you're sad about it."

She adds: “I was just stating a fact. To those who call me callous for being so matter-of-fact about losing a baby, I ask, what do you want from me?

“Do you expect me to cry every time I talk about it? It’s a fact: I’m happy I lost that baby.”

Miss Trunk has had plenty of support from the blogosphere. Rachel Walden, in the Women's Health News blog, said: "The idea that miscarriage is something personal that should be kept secret whether a woman wants to keep it secret or not, when so so many women have them, is a problem.

"The idea that people's bodies should effectively be hidden from the work environment where we spend so much of our time is problematic in its own ways."

Amanda Marcotte on XX Factor, a women’s issues blog, agreed, saying: "If the public at large had to face up to the fact that not every miscarriage is met with a vale of tears, that could have a dramatic impact on how we regard pregnancy, abortion, and women's diverse experiences with our reproductive functions”.

I'm so addicted to email, Facebook and Twitter, I have to hide it from my wife

As a new book claims Britain is under the tyranny of email, James Delingpole owns up to a compulsion that is affecting his friendships, family and working life. Article is available at The Telegraph

Thursday 10 September 2009

Derren Brown: rumours swirl about lottery stunt - Times Online

Derren Brown: rumours swirl about lottery stunt - Times Online




Derren Brown’s apparent success in predicting last night’s national lottery numbers on live television has sparked a massive nation-wide sleuthing mission.

Viewers baffled by how the illusionist carried off the trick have been watching clips of the show online and clubbing together on social networking sites to suggest explanations.

Brown’s ten-minute Channel 4 show, The Event Live, in which he revealed a pre-selected set of lottery balls shortly after the real ones were drawn, is to be followed by an explanatory show tomorrow night.

But, unable to wait, viewers have set social networking sites alive with the idea that Brown, watched by 2.7 million people last night, used a split screen to fool viewers. The technique would have seen the picture divided into a live shot of Brown on the right-hand side and a pre-recorded shot of the lottery balls on the left-hand side. When the lottery numbers were drawn, an assistant would have put the correct balls in place before the entire shot was converted to a live feed.


But those brave enough to go public with their split screen detective work on Twitter and YouTube have been criticised by the technologically savvy who claim the shaky camera used for the show ruled out the explanation. The camera, they said would have needed to be stationary so the pictures could be spliced together.

But the truly suspicious disagree. One keen detective, going by the unusual moniker of Mutated Monty, posted a video demonstrating how Brown could have employed the split screen technique and added artificial shaking later.

Times Online reader John Smith adds weight to Mutated Monty’s explanation, arguing that the moment when the split screen reverts to a live feed can be seen.

"Between Derren saying "23" & "28", the left-hand ball moves upwards! (clearly the moment of mixing from split-screen to full-screen again, after correct-numbered balls have been placed).”

Magic balls are another popular explanation. Times Online reader Alfie LeBeauf is convinced Brown employed a special type of ink to fool viewers.

“This trick can be done by using 'e ink' which uses programmable molecules on an object surface, enabling the numbers to be whatever you might want.”

Less popular theories swirling around cyberspace include the use of a false wall and the unrealistic suggestion that Brown filmed multiple versions of the show in advance to cover every conceivable combination of lottery result.

One Twitter user who mused that it was the work of “psychic fairies” failed to find any traction.

While Brown has promised to put an end to the speculation tomorrow night, fellow illusionist Paul Daniels has warned fans not to give up the sleuthing.

He said Brown was unlikely to give away his secret and would instead be vague in his explanation, employing "gobbledegooky" and putting the trick down to something like "neuro-linguistic programming".

*Derren Brown: How to Win the Lottery will screen on Channel 4 at 9pm, Friday 11th September


Shared via AddThis

Sunday 30 August 2009

I Wish I Knew Who You Were, And Who You Worked For (Automatically)

Article on Twittercism

Lots of people have multiple accounts on Twitter, for various reasons. I can’t tell you the number of times I get a message from somebody out of the blue and I’ll think, “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”

But who is it?

Some detective work later, I figure out that the reason I know this person is because I’m following one of their other accounts. Perhaps their business account. Maybe their personal one. What bugs me about this is I might have a friendly relationship with this person on one of their accounts, but have no idea who they are on another. Or even that they have another.

What I’d like Twitter to offer (and this would be entirely opt-in) is a way for multiple accounts to be linked together. This would be great for businesses that have main accounts and lots of additional ones for their staff. Like Twitter themselves, for example. When you visit the Twitter profile, all their employees should be right there, too. With titles and responsibilities. And if I stumble across an individual employee, it shows that they’re linked to Twitter.

(Think Twitter + LinkedIn.)

Some people do this now in their bios, but it’s kinda awkward, and doesn’t translate well into manageable data.

It could even work a bit like a newsfeed, with one main account pulling the updates from everybody else. So, if I wanted to really follow Google, for example, an @GoogleTeam user could be setup so that everybody who worked for the company could be followed via that one account. The different users would feed in and I could reply to them accordingly.



(Think Twitter + RSS.)

And it wouldn’t have to stop at businesses. Participants in sports teams could link together, as well as social groups and other clubs. You could start your own tribe.

(It might even come with privacy. You could direct message everybody in your tribe with one click. Wouldn’t that be convenient?)

As it is, it’s awkward to find out all the people that work for any corporation on Twitter. I’ve been trying to do this for Twitter themselves, and Dave Winer is doing some great work with his 100twt project. (Check out what the people who work for the New York Times are saying.)

I’d like to see it automated. I think it benefits businesses and customers, which is rare enough to make it very worthwhile.

Read this and more at Twittercism

Tuesday 11 August 2009

Charlie Brooker on how to save newspapers

You know what'll save newspapers? Magic coins. Yes, magic coins. And I've just invented them

Hello reader. Where are you reading this? In the paper? On the website? On an iPhone?

Is the Guardian even available on the iPhone? Bet it is. There's probably even a little downloadable application that lets you turn the pages by tilting it to one side. After all, there's an "app" for everything. There's one that turns the iPhone into a motion-sensitive light sabre: it makes wooshy Star Wars noises as you swipe it around. Really passes the time during the unrelenting march to the grave, that.

I'm unmoved in the face of friends screaming at me to join the iPhone cult. It's horrible. Here are a few iPhone apps I'd like to see:

1. An app that makes the iPhone scream 'I'VE GOT AN IPHONE!' each time the user pulls it out of their pocket. Once activated, it would be impossible to switch off. The only way to stop the constant embarrassment would be to repeatedly crack the device against a wall, or preferably your own face, until it shattered.

2. An app billed as a "comical toilet paper simulator". You switch it on, pretend to "wipe" your backside, and hey presto: the screen appears smeared with virtual pixilated poo. But – ho ho – just like the screaming iPhone app above, it's a permanent booby trap. Once you've performed your first comical wipe, in a frankly desperate bid to impress your non-iPhone-owning friends, it's impossible for the screen to revert to its original state. Instead, you're left with no option but to go home and cry.

3. An app that makes your iPhone unexpectedly oscillate and explode halfway through a conversation to a loved one, sending thousands of miniscule shards of plastic and silicon hurtling into your ear canal like a swarm of angry pins. As a bonus, the detonation also blasts your hand apart like a spent casing. Why? Because you bought an iPhone, silly.

Still, there's a good chance you're reading this on an LCD display of some description, rather than on paper. There are advantages and drawbacks to both platforms. The paper version can be rolled up, scribbled on, and read on the tube. If I write something obnoxious – something about the hilarious inherent low-self-esteem of iPhone owners, perhaps – the page can be torn out, screwed into a ball and thrown across the room, thus providing a slender amount of catharsis. (Come to think of it, iPhone owners can probably download an app that makes a satisfying "thwock" sound as they bat the paper ball across the room with their ridiculous handheld toys). Paper is tactile, and that's a plus. Trouble is, you have to pay for it.

Not so online. In Webland, it's yours for free. Better still, the byline pictures are slightly smaller, so there's less chance you'll be sick. But it isn't tactile. Here, catharsis comes in the form of interactive feedback – so if (for example) you're a uniquely inadequate, unfulfilled and unattractive sort of man, and the article you're reading happens to have been written by a woman – any woman – you can vent your annoyance in a series of inadvertently revealing messages, then masturbate into a sock. (This describes 33% of all messages on all news websites. Check if you don't believe me.)

Still, at least the misogynists know what's making them angry. There's an astounding level of unfocused rage on the internet, which is weird considering it's full of people getting something for nothing. Films, TV shows, music, newspaper reports . . . none of it costing a penny.

But newspapers won't be free for ever. At least that's what Rupert Murdoch thinks, and he's probably evil enough to know. Last week he announced the Sun and the Times are to start charging for their online editions. But will it work?

Nope. Not until someone perfects a system of universal online micro-payments once and for all. Some simple means of easily "tossing a penny in a cup" for the internet is required. Everyone knows it; no one's managed to crack it. Sure, there are systems such as PayPal (familiar to anyone who's used eBay), but they're fiddly and boring. What's needed is something universal and user-friendly.

But more than that, it should be fun.

That's right. It should be intrinsically fun to spend money. How? Huh? Wuh? Listen. If you ask me, one potential answer to the newspaper industry's woes lies somewhere in videogame design. A simple payment system shouldn't just be easy to set up: it should be intrinsically satisfying to use. It should feel positively Nintendo. Look at the Wii. Look at the micro-games in Rhythm Paradise, or Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, both on the Nintendo DS. That's how online payments should work. They should have the illusion of being tactile.

On your desktop: a cartoon purse filled with fat gold coins. Pull out a penny. It shimmers on the screen. Drag it toward a "coin slot" situated right there on the web page you want to view, and drop it in. It disappears with a satisfying ker-chunk. And you're in. If you're feeling cavalier, you can throw your coin toward the slot; with practice it won't bounce off the rim. And hey, iPhone users: we'll even let you play. You can "fling" coins from your phone directly on to the screen.

One page costs one penny: not too off-putting for anyone – and crucially, the teeny spoonful of fun and satisfaction you derived from playing with that virtual coin each time is worth the penny anyway.

Has anyone else thought of this already? If not, consider it patented right now, by me. I'll settle for 0.001% of every penny spent for all eternity, thanks. And now, over to the Dragons.

Article by Charlie Brooker via The Guardian

Monday 10 August 2009

Murdoch to charge for news website access

Guardian News article about media mogul Rupert Murdoch's plans to charge for news website access

In what can only be seen as an 'interesting' move, Rupert Murdoch has announced that you will have to pay to access The Sun, The Times and News Of The World websites as of next year.

Currently all of these websites offer free access to stories that are in their newspaper equivalents that day, but this is all set to change according to Murdoch.

Murdoch's words seem to be spurred on by a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for News Corporation for the financial year to June. This is something that has been put down to restructuring, writedowns and a slump in commercial revenue.


It is unlikely that people would be prepared to pay for news which can readily be accessed on other news channel sites however could this lead the precedent for future pay per view news access bu other news organisations?

Full article can be read here

Tuesday 28 July 2009

UK Government Writes a Twitter Guide … in 20 Pages

Interesting article by Stan Schroeder on Mashable

A tweet can have a maximum of 140 characters. A guide on how to use Twitter, well, that’s another matter. The UK government has one, and it took its author, Neil Williams, 20 pages and 36,215 characters to create it.

The guide,is actually quite an interesting read. Besides giving a clear cut explanation of what Twitter is and how (and why) the UK government should go about using it, it enumerates a number of third party tools (for example, bit.ly is to be used for links because it offers traffic analysis), talks about risks of using Twitter (for example, publishing embargoed news too early), and discusses the value of retweeting. Unlike some other Twitter guides, like the one from Wall Street Journal, it’s not focused on forbidding things and telling employees what NOT to do, which is a good example of how these types of guides should be done.


The document can be found here

Saturday 27 June 2009

The King of Pop is Dead and nearly took Google with him


Love him or hate him, pretty much everyone on the planet knows who Michael Jackson is and will remember the moment when they heard the news that the controversial pop star had died on Thursday 27th June 2009. A news flash interrupted my weekly fix of Question Time to broadcast the news and I knew this was going to be a big news event. As many other people did I immediately turned to the internet to "Google" the news of his demise. BBC news report states

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page
.Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker confirmed this in a statement
"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page,"


It seems however that Google was not the only company who felt the strain of the public scramble to search for more information. The microblogging service Twitter is also reported to have crashed with the sheer volume of traffic by users. The BBC reports

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.



Many celebrities took to the internet in particular using Twitter to pay tribute to Michael Jackson.

Philip Schofield: Now sadly confirmed that we have lost such a gifted performer as MJ. What a terrible tragedy on so many levels.

Stephen Fry: Goodness. Michael Jackson. Poor old soul. Oh dear.

Demi Moore: I am greatly saddened for the loss of both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Especially for their children!

Ashton Kutcher: Now the ap confirms aswell. Rip Sending love and light to family and friend but especially his kids.

Miley Cyrus: michael jackson was my inspiration. love and blessings

Samantha Ronson: Say what you want about Michael Jackson's private life (just not near me) but NO ONE can deny his talent, his compassion and his legacy.

Peter Andre: "Michael Jackson dying is absolutely devastating. I am totally shocked. MJ, you're the best."

Lance Armstrong: Terrible news about Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett. My best to their friends, fans, and families.

As I said in the beginning of this article love him or hate him he was certainly one of the most famous popstars on the planet.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

ALLTOP - All the Top News

I have recently discovered a new way of collaborating a personal collection the most interesting news stories to me and the best thing about it, it is user friendly. Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. The stories are updated every hour. Pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and they will deliver it to you 24 x 7. All the topics, all the time.

Friday 12 June 2009

State of the Twittersphere June 2009

Hubspot have compiled an interesting factfile using data on 4.5 million users they have collected from Twitter Grader.

For instance:

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

• The average user tweets .97 times per day
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738

Some interesting Statistics on Tweets

users are frequently using Twitter to interact and communicate with other users rather than just answer the “What are you doing?” question.

• 1.44% of all tweets are retweets

• 37.95% of all tweets contain an “@” symbol (mentions)

• 33.44% of all tweets start with an “@” symbol (replies)

Many users are reaching the 140-character limit in an attempt to get as much content as possible into every update.

The report can be found at the hubspot website

Sunday 7 June 2009

Flawnt's Blog of fictious wonder

This Blog is highly recommended

one idle day i realised that there was this ocean of readers out there (that includes you!) ever hungry 4 what the french deconstructionists so elegantly and underwhelmingly call “texts”. so i got me a twitter account and had my picture painted by one of the creative hoodlums sitting at the bottom of Sacre Coeur. (it’s his fault if i closely resemble dr franklin.)

i had no idea what 2 write though at first. this evidently was not a book, it was a totally different metaphor not yet chartered territory, a terra incognita and quite possibly mine 4 the taking. i new how 2 write whole books but i didn’t know how to brave this new bosom. so i lightly promised that i would dedicate a piece of writing 2 my first follower. this seemed 2 B in line with the medium.

An Odd message for Television

Great article as usual by David Mitchell in The Guardian

One of my least favourite programmes of the 1980s was Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? I watched it anyway, of course. It was on.

It was presented by gangs of children with different regional accents, which I suppose was meant to make it feel more inclusive. It didn't work on me. I found the accents alienating. They made me worry that those were the sort of children who would despise me and call me a "posh twat", a jibe my parents worked hard to earn the bare minimum to qualify me for. They scrimped and saved to buy me just enough privilege to make me contemptible.

And the thing I did have in common with the presenters - that I, too, was a child - just made me think: "How'd they get that? Why can't I be on TV maddening them?" Sometimes, things work out in the end.

The content of the show was the familiar series of tedious tasks that required items of stationery that I never possessed or physical activities that I was too weedy for. But my main beef with it was its title. That was the metaphorical photo of a cancerous lung on the cigarette packet of my viewing pleasure.

I was already aware that my predilection for watching hours of television every day was a terrible failing. The concerted censure of every authority figure left me in no doubt of what a betrayal of the opportunities of childhood that was. I should have been reading books or getting fresh air, bicycling around in crime-solving gangs and fishing in streams. Our bit of suburban Oxford seemed a bit short on streams or caves full of forgers, but then I'd never really looked.

Adults' sentences beginning: "When I was your age ..." never ended with: "I'd have given my eye teeth to be left alone to watch Knight Rider, so you go for it, lad!" What I was doing was an insult to children of the past and of fiction: to Coral Island and evacuees and a ha'porth of gobstoppers. I should have been going to Cubs or training for swimming badges. But most worryingly, I was putting my imagination in jeopardy. Because, as surely as carrots help you see in the dark and that you'll regret giving up the piano when you're older, television rots the imagination.

You don't have to imagine Star Trek - the aliens and lasers and spaceships are all on the screen in front of you. There are no gaps for your mind to fill - the art department has already plugged them with chipboard and silver paint. So reading, running around the garden, riding a bicycle or, most terrifyingly, interacting with new people are important activities that strengthen the ideas-generating parts of the brain that otherwise atrophy under the influence of TV.

"Get used to these more gruelling and effort-requiring forms of fun and you'll build the mental equipment for a fuller life," was the argument. A bit like the principle by which we're weaned on to alcohol: "It may not taste as good as Coke now but, you wait - oh, you just wait." Sadly, the latter argument was the only one I had the imagination for.

But among the advantages of becoming an adult are that people stop admonishing you and you're allowed the illusion of vindication about your childish choices. "I spent most of the Eighties watching TV and it never did me any harm," I can safely say, knowing that it's an experiment with no control. There's no other David Mitchell walking around with an imagination whose growth wasn't stunted by assiduously following the plot of Dynasty - unless it's that pesky novelist.

So it came as a shock when Jeremy Paxman stormed into the living room during Doctor Who and started hoovering under my legs and telling me to go outside. I protested that I'd finished my work, but he said it was a lovely day and that he'd give me 2p for every mare's tail I dug up.

I'm speaking metaphorically (a medical miracle, my old English teacher would say, after what all those episodes of The A-Team did to my brain). In a talk at the Hay Festival, Paxman called the public a "bunch of barbarians" because watching TV is our favourite leisure activity. He thinks we should go to art galleries instead.

I don't mind that he's biting the hand that feeds him. A healthy disdain for that hand is an attractive quality, I've always thought - that's probably why I'm more of a cat than a dog person. But has he considered what it signifies that it's he, a television personality - a highly respected journalist, certainly, but hardly a potential Nobel Prize winner - who has the prominence to make this unreconstructed appeal on behalf of the highbrow?

It means that he's what counts as highbrow now, a high-rent newsreader who's done a few books as TV spin-offs, the most recent of which he got another writer to finish for him. The fact that the likes of him are the focus of literary festivals is an index of how completely the cause he's arguing for is lost.

I don't rejoice in that. But as someone who can't spend more than a few minutes in an art gallery without developing a desire for a cup of tea and a sit down as all-consuming as a sudden realisation of diarrhoea, and who often insists on watching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer to their neatly decorated conclusions, it would be hypocritical of me to echo his moans. And I'm a beneficiary of dumbing down, too. Regurgitate half-remembered facts from your A-level syllabus on a panel show, I've found, and you'll get lumped in with the learned.

It's unkind to kick TV at the moment. It may still be our favourite leisure activity, but new competitors are threatening its solvency. Eschewing television for reasons of arty respectability is no longer a choice that can be made with confidence that the medium will nevertheless prosper. Even the most bookish may soon wonder whether they'd be better off with the devil they know.

The barbarians are switching off, but a glance at YouTube confirms that they're not necessarily doing anything less boring instead

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Israelis get four times more water than Palestinians, says World Bank report | World news | guardian.co.uk

Report on guardian.co.uk : regarding the desperate plight of some Palestinians who are receiving inadequate water supplies from Israeli sources

"In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.
The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings"

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :
Good article on Cio website informing Twitter beginners of the basic rules of etiquette for the service,

like any social network, the Twitter community has its own set of unwritten guidelines — or etiquette — that dictates good (or bad) behavior on the service. Some people call it Twittequette. So before you stick a foot measuring 140-characters-or-less in your mouth, check out their advice on how to follow and un-follow, share politely, direct message appropriately, and more"
Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :

Wednesday 6 May 2009

US churches use Twitter to reach a wider audience - Telegraph

US churches use Twitter to reach a wider audience - Telegraph: "American churches are embracing Twitter, the micro-blogging website, in an attempt to reach congregations in acts of worship of 140 or fewer characters."

Pastors in Westwinds Community Church in Michigan have turned to Twitter, as a way of connecting with the congregation and adressing the problem of declining attendance figures. The social networking site allows users to send messages to each other which are no longer than 140 characters and the church encourages congregants to ask questions about a sermon that the pastor can answer later. Alternatively, they can "tweet" during the service in case another worshipper can provide enlightenment, Of the church's 900 adult members, 150 are now tweeting.

Monday 27 April 2009

Understanding Swine Flu Outbreak: Questions and Answers - Bloomberg.com

Interesting article about swine flu on Bloomberg

"Swine flu, a virus that normally infects pigs, has been detected in people in Mexico, the U.S., New Zealand, Canada, and the U.K. Health officials around the world are checking to see whether infections have occurred in their countries, and readying measures to prevent its spread."The article answers some frequently asked questions about swine flu using information drawn from the data released by the World Health Organization in Geneva and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Here is a revised list of the most important points

What is Swine Flu?
Swine flu, or swine influenza, is a form of influenza that normally infects pigs.

How do people catch swine flu?
Flu is generally transmitted through the respiratory tract. Droplets of infected body fluids can carry flu when people cough or sneeze. Studies indicate that masks called N95 respirators that, when properly used, filter germs from the breath and hamper the spread of flu

What are the symptoms of swine flu?
Influenza normally causes symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, headaches and body aches, fever, chills, and sometimes vomiting and diarrhea. Swine flu causes the same symptoms, and may be difficult to distinguish from other strains of flu and respiratory illnesses

What’s a flu pandemic?
Flu pandemics occur when new influenza viruses emerge that spread quickly and few people have immunity to them.


How else can I protect myself from swine flu?
Personal hygiene measures, such as avoiding people who are coughing or sneezing and frequent hand-washing, may prevent flu infection.

Clicks for tricks: Twitter's first brothel?

House of Divine in glamorous Milton Keynes tweeted to say that Lucia and Karol were working on Sunday while another message offered a "Twitter Discount". The operation has been exposed in The Sun newspaper, which trumpets: "A BROTHEL is touting its services via social networking site TWITTER
Article at The Guardian

Sunday 12 April 2009

Guy Clapperton on the big TV makers switching on to supplying an internet widget as standard | Technology | The Guardian

An article by Guy Clapperton in The Guardian reveals the big TV makers are about to allow people the opportunity to access online television through their set tops. Clapperton writes

For a few years now, the television industry has been talking about "convergence" between the internet and television. It's slowly becoming a reality: more and more people are connecting their computers to their TVs to view photos, listen to music and other activities that cross over between the two; now television manufacturers are starting to add functions to their TV sets that will allow people to share photos through social networks, play online games, watch YouTube and other material found on the internet. YouTube is a barometer of this shift, as people move on from watching short clips or videos to looking at longer works and whole programmes, and the BBC's iPlayer, plus the versions from ITV and Channel 4, also make full-length programming available on computers


This may yet pose a threat to traditional broadcast outlets as they struggle to keep up with the rapid developments of technology and increasing competition from up and coming online broadcasters but the signs are showing that they are swlowly taking up the gauntlet and fighting for survival in this new digital era.

Saturday 28 March 2009

The rise and rise of Twitter | Technology | guardian.co.uk

"In November 2008 a total of 40 articles appeared in British local and national newspapers that included the word 'Twitter'. Though a quarter of them were published by the Guardian, this paper's technology correspondent nonetheless found himself explaining to general readers that 'Twitter, a mobile social network, has generated lots of buzz'. The Daily Telegraph, quaintly, was still using the word to describe a way of talking.
The following month, 85 articles appeared on the subject. By January 2009, it was 206. But those were still the dark ages. Hot on the heels of the Twitter plane crash came the site's first live action celebrity lift catastrophe, when the actor Stephen Fry, a tweeter so prolific that one hopes he still eats, offered breathless updates from the stationary elevator in which he briefly found himself marooned. (His followers total is now 350,000)."

Article at guardian.co.uk

Sunday 15 March 2009

John Prescott to lead internet campaign

Report on the Guardian website

"John Prescott has been chosen as the unlikely leader of Labour's general election campaign on the internet, as the party prepares to launch a low-budget battle for a fourth term in government"

What on earth is going on? John Prescott does not strike me as the most computer literate member of the Labour party. On further reading the name Alistair Campbell appears

Last night Alastair Campbell, former director of communications under Tony Blair, who also has a large following online, said it was clear Prescott was succeeding in motivating Labour supporters online in a way nobody else could. "You cannot imagine a cabinet minister getting the huge support he did for a campaign on bankers' bonuses. What JP has shown is that he has an ability to cut through to voters that needs harnessing. Because he is no longer a cabinet minister, he can be a bit edgier. It is about making it fun. It is part of modern campaigning."


The knives are out for you Gordon Brown and it looks like Campbell and co are sharpening them to boot

Thursday 5 March 2009

One is twittering: Her Majesty the Queen's latest foray online - Telegraph

Article from The Telegraph

"She emails her grandchildren and her Christmas message appears on YouTube. Now the Queen has taken a further bold technological step by becoming the first member of the Royal family to have an official engagement tracked on Twitter."


Wonder what her user name is?

Thursday 26 February 2009

Eye of God pictured in space

European astronomers have taken a stunning photo of a Big Brother-style cosmic eye, nicknamed the Eye of God, staring down from space.photo was taken with a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball. read more Telegraph



Monday 23 February 2009

Further to an earlier article in which I commented on the relaxed attitude of the British public in the wake of the economic crisis, The Guardian report

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned
The article reveals that it is
middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations who may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.
At last the country is waking up to the reality of the situation and making their voice heard. The government may choose not to listen but the message needs to get through. United we stand, divided we fall

Six months in Afghanistan footage | World news | guardian.co.uk

Six months in Afghanistan footage | World news | guardian.co.uk

A series of films by John D McHugh about what life is really like for the US military in Afghanistan



Tuesday 17 February 2009

Charlie Brooker: Exciting new crisp flavours? More like a dirty protest in mass-produced packets

Amusing article by Charlie Brooker about the launch of Walkers flavours competition finalists on The Guardian website :

"Exciting new crisp flavours? More like a dirty protest in mass-produced packets. Walkers are keen to point out that no squirrels were harmed in the making of their crisps"

The competition is split into three stages

Stage one: the public were invited to suggest exotic new flavours.
Stage two: Six flavours were chosen for the public to vote for their favourite.
Stage three: The top flavour becomes a permanent member of the Walkers line-up.

The finalists are

Builders Breakfast
Crispy Duck and Hoison
Cajun Squirrel
Chilli and Chocolate
Fish and Chips
Onion Bhaji

I still remember the hedgehof flavour and traffic warden flavour which were introduced in the 1980's, they never caught on either

Monday 9 February 2009

The rise of the twittering classes

The rise of the twittering classes is something that has received a wide amount of publicity in the British press this week. Stephen Fry used Twitter to tell his followers (OVER 100000 of them) that he was stuck in a lift at Centrepoint in London. Reports appeared the next day in most of the daily newspapers more notably The Guardian The Telegraph and The Independent

Johnathan Ross delighted his Twitter followers at the BAFTA awards by working in the word salad as part of his performance. The Guardian's live Baftas blog,suggests the crossover between 'Bafta nominee/buddy/ligger' and 'Twitterer' is not particularly big, and possibly non-existent. Twitter fans at home, meanwhile, were simultaneously jumping up and down on the sofa yelling 'He said salad! He said salad!' to the bemusement of all around them"

Friday 6 February 2009

Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph

How long before the popularity of Facebook fades? An article in the Telegraph, comments on the future of Facebook: Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph: "For many internet users, especially youngsters, having a Facebook account is as important as having a mobile phone. Social events are organised through Facebook's pages, and it is used by millions to share photos and videos.
However, the next five years look a lot tougher for Facebook. The honeymoon period is well and truly over, and there is anecdotal evidence, at least, that 'Facebook fatigue' is setting in with some users. The greatest difficulty the website faces is 'user stickiness' – remaining sufficiently dynamic, interesting and relevant to retain its members"

Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? | Technology | The Guardian

An article in The Guardian: asks : Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? "This week, the government's Power of Information taskforce set out a list of 25 urgent actions for the public sector machine - from Downing Street to local councils and NHS organisations - to take to embrace social networking, blogging and other such phenomena."

Thursday 5 February 2009

MediaShift . Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media | PBS

Excellent post on journalists fascination with social media site Twitter


MediaShift . Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media | PBS: "Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what it could be."

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Digital Britain - Interim Report

A comprehensive analysis report of our digital economy titled Digital Britain , assesses the UK’s readiness fully to exploit the dramatic shift to digital technology as the basis of huge parts of our economy and private lives, drawing on expertise from across Government, regulators and industry.

The Interim Report has just been released

Sunday 1 February 2009

The State of Childhood

According to "The Good Childhood Inquiry,

The state of childhood is one of the recurring topics of our times. Today’s children and young people live in an era of rapid change, which poses particular challenges for their growth and development. In this climate, there is growing concern about the health and well-being of our children. Politicians, academia and the media alike ponder how best to bring up the nation’s children."
The Good Childhood Inquiry, the UK’s first independent national inquiry into the nature of chilhood will release findings this week.

It will consider the following key questions:
• What are the conditions for a good childhood?
• What obstacles exist to those conditions?
• What changes could be made that would be likely
to improve childhood?

Initial findings suggest
Our children and young people suffer from higher incidences of mental and physical ill-health than their European contemporaries. As a society we share a damaging ambivalence towards children: preoccupied with protecting our own children from harm, we often fail to reach out to those who need our attention most. And all the while our young people are continually subjected to pressure to achieve, behave and even consume like adults at an ever earlier age.

Thursday 29 January 2009

Alistair Darling pulls out of Davos

Times Online reports that Alistair Darling has pulled out of out of Davos -

"A spokeswoman for the Treasury confirmed that Mr Darling would not be going to the event, and had been due to fly to the WEF earlier this week. It also emerged today that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has also pulled out of Davos.

A spokesman for the Treasury said it was decided that since a number of people Mr Darling had been due to meet had pulled out of Davos, his time would be better spent doing other things."

What better things could Mr Darling be turning his attention to? Rescuing the failing economy would be the first thing that springs to mind.

The Telegraph report "that the UK will be at the bottom of the league table of major developed countries this year, in the weakest year for the global economy since the Second World War"

This means that the UK is set to face a worse recession than any other major country in the world. The future looks bleak however according to a report in The Australian Post"FOR a nation that has just been officially told by the International Monetary Fund that it is about to suffer the worst recession of any developed country since 1945, Britain is remarkably relaxed.

There are no threats of mass strikes by workers fearing for their jobs, no calls for a crisis election and certainly no hints of the street riots that have recently been seen in several other European countries."

Although I do not condone the actions of those in other countries at least they are making their feelings known to those in charge. A relaxed attitude is one that has served to place Britain at the bottom of the league table. . British politicians NEED to get a grip of the situation, instead of the constant bickering between the different political parties, the government needs to work as a team that mean TOGETHER. A viable solution can only be achieved if all parties are in agreement.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists - Times Online

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

read more | digg story

Tuesday 27 January 2009

GAZA DEC Appeal

Monday 26 January 2009

Exclusive: YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads

Exclusive report from Tech crunch, You Tube are currently making plans to allow the big media giants to profit from advertising revenue. This is a big step for the future of broadcasting and points the way forward in terms of the industry.

"Big media companies have always had a love-hate relationship with YouTube. They don’t know whether to sue YouTube for abetting copyright infringement or get in bed with it because it is the biggest Web video game in town. YouTube is trying to convince them that love is better than war by giving them a cut of advertising revenues from their videos that appear on YouTube, regardless of who put them there."
read more on Techcrunch:

Friday 23 January 2009

UNSEEN GAZA

A report in The Independent  argues that There have been two versions of the assault on Gaza played out over the past three weeks. One is the moderated account aired in the West; the other is the unexpurgated account of civilian deaths filmed in vivid close-up inside Gaza.

The Channel 4 documentary Unseen Gaza explored the the war on Gaza from  the media perspective as foreign news organisations were refused access into the Gaza Strip. John Snow offers an insight into the frustation expressed by UK journalists as the IDF created a closed military zone along the borders of Israel and moved reporters on to a specially designated hill overlooking the territory, but away from the fighting.

An article on which I read on Media Channel indicates that the ban on journalists is a form of censorship and questions the motives behind the Israeli decision.  The ban did not however did not  apply to journalists already living and working in Gaza although it seems that they were targeted during the conflict.

What gives Israel the right to ban foreign media? Surely that only happens in countries such as Zimbawe and China whose leaders run oppressive regimes and inflict fear or terror on its citizens without intereference from the outside world.

Monday 19 January 2009

Rescuing economy tops Obama's 100-day agenda | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A calm manner, rhetorical gifts and the promise of new ideas all contributed to Barack Obama's rise to the U.S. presidency as Americans put their trust in him to rescue the economy from its worst crisis in decades.

Now the public and the financial markets want to see if he can deliver.

When he takes the oath of office on Tuesday, Obama will inherit a deepening recession, a shattered financial system, a housing-market meltdown and trillion-dollar budget deficits well into the future.

Well aware that stemming the economic decline is the No. 1 priority for his first 100 days in office, Obama is diving in.

Rescuing economy tops Obama's 100-day agenda | Reuters

Thursday 15 January 2009

Facebook Users Go to War over Gaza - TIME

Facebook Users Go to War over Gaza - TIME: "Social-networking websites may have started out as online cliques where friends could swap opinions on music, pop culture and other bits of innocuous personal trivia. But as the conflict in Gaza has unfolded, it's becoming evident that sites like Facebook are increasingly being used to express political views, adding an acrimonious, even menacing undertone to what were once lighthearted online forums."

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Who are Hamas?

The largest Palestinian militant Islamist organisation is Hamas, formed in 1987 at the beginning of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.Hamas takes its name from the Arabic initials for the Islamic Resistance Movement.Branded a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, Hamas are seen by its supporters as a legitimate freedom fighting force defending Palestinians from a brutal military occupation

BBC NEWS article

George Bush Does Not Care About......

"I think President Bush might very well be the worst president in U.S. history," -Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joseph Ellis (2008)


As the Bush administration draws to its logical conclusion I have been reflecting on what aspect of his Presidency he will be best remembered.

The comments made by Kayne West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?




Maybe for his war on terror or should that be his war of terror which he inflicted on the innocent Iraqi people who have died as a result of his search for invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction?

His game of hide and seek then hide again with Osama Bin Laden?

Or maybe his vision of a world in which "freedom will prevail" sorry I mean his vision that America will prevail especially in offering support to the genocide of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

By authorising his signature on a memorandum which stated that the Third Genenva Convention regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime, did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban sealing the fate for those abused at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay?

Those will be some of the things that I will most remember, well done you did your father proud Mr Bush, and you get the credit for his legacy.

Life is like a box of chocolates!!!

Monday 12 January 2009

China blocks 41 websites for distributing porn-China-World-The Times of India

BEIJING: China has blocked 41 websites after getting Google and other search engines to apologise for carrying porn and lewd content. This is among the measures taken by the government to 'purify' the Internet during a month-long campaign launched last week." Read more:

How the press has been reporting Gaza - Guardian Article

Newspapers are supposed to be better than TV at putting over context. But they rarely are. This has always been a problem in the Israeli-Arab conflict where, as Jonathan Freedland observed in the Guardian, there is a 'Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity'. Lack of context normally works against Palestinians who are portrayed as 'terrorists' and wild 'bomb-throwing militants' bent on undermining a well-ordered, western-style state. By banning foreign journalists from entering Gaza, Israel helped turn the context problem against itself. Nearly all the stories and pictures came from local Palestinian reporters and photographers.

read more on how the press has been reporting Gaza | Media | The Guardian

Friday 2 January 2009

Q&A - What's next in the Gaza conflict?

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Israel pressed on with its seven-day-old air attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on Friday and the death toll reached 424 Palestinians, with 2,000 more wounded in the blockaded coastal strip. This article from Reuters answers key questions about the conflict

read more | digg story

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