April 2010 Archives

As part of their election campaign, the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green parties have all launched official iPhone applications. I've reviewed and compared them.

One feature of the digital coverage of the leader's debates in this election campaign has been the contrasting approaches taken Labour and the Conservatives to following what has been happening on their websites. In this post I look at how the Conservatives 'brochure' and the Labour 'extranet' are trying to fulfill different functions.

In the final installment of my Q&A interview series with young journalists Helia Phoenix, Priyal Sanghavi and Ann Danylkiw, I'm asking them for their advice for those about to study or enter journalism.

The fourth part of my interview series with young journalists Helia Phoenix, Priyal Sanghavi and Ann Danylkiw asks them 'What has surprised you most about your work?'.

After a decade experimenting with different ways of categorising BBC content on the web, it looks as if BBC Online has finally come round to what user testing was telling them all along - that news, sport, weather, TV and radio are the five main categories users expect to find on the BBC's website.

Labour may have said they 'regret' stealing a blogger's photograph in Walthamstow, but that hasn't stopped them having it on prominent display in Stella Creasy's E17 campaign office.

I had my first real grapple with an iPad this week, checking out applications from the New York Times, BBC and USA Today. Whilst I found some things about the device impressive, I also had some concerns about the rush to 'replicate the print experience'.

Despite legislating against digital copyright theft recently in the Digital Economy Act, it seems that The Labour Party is not worried about pilfering their election leaflet images from a local Walthamstow blogger.

Yesterday, The Guardian published an intricate interactive tool which mimcs the UK's carbon economy. You get the chance to be PM, setting the policies that will enable the country to make the required cuts in our carbon output.

I've been tracking the timeline of the 'digital election', and, with the second leader's debate taking place tonight, here are ten things about the new media campaign that I think we've learned so far...

I'm looking for contributors to the Share section of FUMSI magazine - get in touch if you are interested in writing an article.

In the third part of my interview series with young journalists Helia Phoenix, Priyal Sanghavi and Ann Danylkiw, the question is 'What kind of technology did you get exposed to in your course? Was it the right sort and the right amount of emphasis?'.

In the second part of my interview series with young journalists Helia Phoenix, Priyal Sanghavi and Ann Danylkiw, I'm asking them about the job role they are performing now that they have moved into work.

This is the first part of a Q&A interview series with young journalists Helia Phoenix, Priyal Sanghavi and Ann Danylkiw. They've all recently moved from education into the profession, and I wanted to ask first of all about their educational background.

Whilst watching the first showdown between the party leaders, I was keeping a close eye on what was happening on the Internet. This video looks at how political parties, broadcasters and newspapers covered the historic TV election debate in the UK, live on the web.

On Tuesday night I was moderating the "Content Strategy, Manhattan Style" panel in Shoreditch. Here are my notes from the stage.

I haven't been keeping my daily linklog up recently, and so here are few interesting things that The Guardian published or launched over the last few weeks that I haven't previously mentioned...

Andy Budd finished off our recent London IA evening with an energetic and provocative talk entitled "The cult of innovation", where he argued that businesses who pursue a strategy of 'innovating' are deluding themselves that this will be the solution to their problems.

At the last London IA event, Claire Rowland gave a talk on the "Psychology Of Creativity", examining whether we value the right types of creativity, and including some tips on how you can help improve your own creative abilities.

The world probably doesn't need another blog post about the Digital Economy Bill that was rushed through Parliament this week, but here are the 6 bullet points that I thought were important...

Glenn Jones from Madgex gave a presentation at the last London IA evening looking at "Re-using data people have left around the web". In it he showed a demo of his Ident Engine project, which uses fragments of information about your digital identity to construct a whole profile.

At last week's London IA gathering, Richard Rutter gave an overview of the future of typography on the web, and introduced Fontdeck as a way of delivering that experience.

Whether it is Cybermen insisting on 'upgrading' everything in sight, or Daleks seeking to 'exterminate' competition in order to reign supreme, I recently got to thinking about how several monsters from Doctor Who remind me of the UK media scene...

I've been compiling a timeline of digital and social media campaigning by political parties, innovation from news organisations, and interesting election related web content and applications to see whether the 2010 UK General Election really will be a 'digital' or 'social media' election.