Being a traditionally trained journalist (prior to entering the blogging world a few years ago) I have always had a healthy respect for the libel law in the UK, which is, in the main, anti-media, anti-journalism, and now out of date in the new online world. However, a recent conversation [...]
I would have to concur with Marshall Kirkpatrick. I also now use Twitter as a working tool, not just for 'status upates' (which I don't really do any more unless I can say something vaguely informative or funny). I use it to interrogate and interact with my work and [...]
Last year fellow blogger and social media expert Lloyd Davis came up with an idea for something called a "social media cafe" where people working in social media (bloggers, marketing people, technologists etc) could get together in the same space and work. Sort of 'vertical co-working'. He's been looking [...]
When I wrote for a US-owned magazine (The Industry Standard), the house style on almost any story, for example about a company closing, was like this: "John Smith looked at his watch. As the seconds slowly passed, he knew it was time to step up to the plate and [...]
If you are interested in current digital technology and creativity developments, or have something to contribute about the importance of good design principles in interactive media, then check out iDesign: design for life on September 18th, at London's Southbank Centre, Purcell Room as part of this year's London Design [...]
The Industry Standard, my former magazine, appears to be considering re-launching. Its six years since the death of the “newsmagazine of the Internet Economy”, but at least it left a good looking corpse. Many people still respect the kind of in-depth investigate coverage it brought to [...]
You may have picked this up elsewhere, but here's a brief announcement for mbites readers. I am the new Editor of TechCrunch UK & Ireland. Some may know that I helped launch the site for the first time late last year. I also resigned after what [...]
Last May, at the PSFK Conference London 2007 I gave a talk on how media owners are on a race for survival against technology companies that put the power to publish in the hands of the ‘audience.’ Here it is, including my embarrassing stall [...]
I’m in Edinburgh today for the TV Unfestival, an unconference about TV, as an adjunct to the Media Guardian TV Festival.
--> [...]I just need to blog this while it's still in my head. I'm sure others have come to the same conclusion in a more erudite manner, and posted longer pieces. But I'm starting to wonder if the "User Generated Content" revolution, which was supposed to be taking over the world [...]
Thanks to the "Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know" post I have taken the main points about its Terms and Conditions and summarised below. It makes for gritty reading.
1. The terms can change at any time of Facebook's choosing.
2. Facebook is legally for personal use [...]
John Dvorak is an old-fashioned tech jounralist in the US who thinks we're going to have another dotcom bust:
"Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the [...]
Live blog of Ben Hammersley talk at Frontline Club. - excuse typos/errors....
QUESTION (supplied by Graham Holliday and delivered by me)
You had 91 twitter folowers, but you 'follow' just 2
Yu posted 44 pictures on flickr, but got few comments
You had 110 subs on YouTube , 6,000 views, few comments, [...]
Brunch Bites 1.0, the first "salon" style event from Bites Media (the new mini-network of digital business blogs: tbites, mediabites, mobbites, musicbites) went very well today. In attendance were a wide variety of people drawn from [...]
Remember back in '07 when you put your whole life online? One day a man opened too many tabs in Firefox spent too long on Facebook and took the Internet down... Life was never the same again. People were forced to print out their blog and hand out pages on [...]
Come for brunch with blogger and journalist Mike Butcher, this Wednesday in Soho...
EVENT: Brunch Bites 1.0 (BETA)
Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Time: 10:30am - 12:00pm
Location:
The Breakfast Club, Soho
33 D'Arblay Street
London
Venue:
[www.thebreakfastclubsoho.com]
Contact: 07720291095
Email: editor@bitesmedia.com
Description:
Into digital media, marketing, music, mobile and [...]
I am reminded of the days when Web access was banned by employers because employees would spend too much time on it. Now Facebook is getting banned by City firms. I mean you might as well ban email and the phone. Dennis Howlett has a good quote [...]
Head of digital for the Guardian Media Group Simon Waldman hits back with both barrels today at John Duncan and his assertion in a previous issue of Press Gazette that online teams have ‘conned’ unsuspecting newspaper boards into making investments in online publishing.
Here are some key quotes from [...]
Julian Bond at Voidstar has a great post on routing all your and your friend's Status updates from Facebook to Twitter using Mario Menti's excellent TwitterFeed service. Now, here's my question. Is this not completely insane? Keeping up with Twitter feeds is hard enough. Adding Facebook status updates [...]
I have written about security and terrorism before (in The Guardian). One conference I went to a few years ago in Dublin involved sitting around working out how to hack into WiFi. 'Black Hat' security is about things like 'reverse engineering' software to work out how to break into it. [...]
Today I've been reading Rex Hammock's Weblog (thanks Voidstar for the link) who writes about how Facebook it's not really the Holy Grail for either social networking or being the ultimate tool for collaborative working and tracking. He calls it' "geek play", and I agree. He says:
Facebook is [...]
It seems to me that something like Wordcamp should be done in the UK. The techies have their BarCamp. Why not something around content? And it doesn't have to be just about WordPress skills.... (I use Drupal for instance).
Perhaps someone could provide a venue? People can showcase their skills/services. [...]
Here are a few camphone snaps I took at the recent New Statesman New Media Awards. It was hosted by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's technology correspondent. It was held in some rather lovely gardens next to Westminster Cathedral which I daresay not that many people get to see. The [...]
In July 2004 I wrote a piece called Confessions of a social software addict. In the current wave of interest about social networking (or social software as we called it then) I thought it might be instructive to see that the same issues - like having to register on [...]
I never thought I'd see the day, but the Police are getting into spamming videos from their mobiles.
West Yorkshire Police has launched 999tv.org showcasing video features and advice from a number of the region's police officers, as well as the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
The first video shows [...]
There are some fascinating lessons to be learned from the closure of BackFence.com in the US. I think the most salient come in the comments to this story, namely that:
• "Hyper-local is about utility and networks of people, not citizen journalism"
• "they approached the problem from the [...]
Am video blogging from the Chinwag Party in London tonight. If you want your startup to be on tbites.com, call me - 07720291095
--> [...]Piece this together from my Twitter feed. The storm clouds of weather and terrorism combined.... :
15:31
technokitten getting very bored of the rain. Maybe a cup of tea will help!
16:02
Suw @drewb: I'm in N7, but there was just the one rumble. Wondering if we'll have more.
16:02
[...]
You know you are reading someone (Daring Fireball) who really knows their stuff about Macs when they review the iPhone thus:
User Interface: The high resolution screen is gorgeous. Helvetica has never, ever looked so good on screen. Everything is very fast, very responsive. When you drag something – [...]
Just an hour or so before US stores opened their doors to the iPhone horde, readying themselves to buy a slow, 2G mobile phone, here in the UK we were slowly learning that the speedy 3G version is about to be announced and will arrive in Europe first. Smug? [...]
As described in Wired Magazine today: “TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz … and Cash”
“Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to “get the fuck out.” [...]
The BBC reports on research by Danah Boyd which found that Facebook users come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college while MySpace users tend not to have gone on to further education. While "class" in the US does not map directly to income it [...]
It's highly timely that today we learn that the BBC has sent journalist Ben Hammersley to cover Turkey's upcoming election using blogging, del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook as a means of distribution. Because I'm working with two entirely independent journalists, who don't have the [...]
How not to approach a blogger (this was sent to me on email). I have not disclosed the names involved so that - maybe - this person doesn't lose their job, as my guess is that this is just naivety on their part:
Hi Mike,
My name is XXXXXXX and [...]
This is thin stuff. "There is increasing buzz around buzz." Oh, come on. You guys need to realise that online identity in the form of a MySpace or Facebook profile is as much content as anything someone might 'upload'. Furthermore, microblogging a la Twitter is the tip of the [...]
(First published: New Media Age, 17.05.07)
I got three points on my driving license because of Twitter. What can I say? I was driving. There was a speed camera. My phone started buzzing with the latest frenzied Twitters from the launch of the Apple iPhone. What could be [...]
This is the text of a speech I gave at the PSFK London conference on Friday, June 1, 2007. It's about how media owners now face some very harsh realities against both technology companies that put the power to publish in the hands of the ‘audience’ and smaller, [...]
This is the text of a speech I gave at the PSFK London conference on Friday, June 1, 2007. It's about how media owners now face some very harsh realities against both technology companies that put the power to publish in the hands of the ‘audience’ and smaller, [...]
(First published: New Media Age, 17.05.07)
I got three points on my driving license because of Twitter. What can I say? I was driving. There was a speed camera. My phone started buzzing with the latest frenzied Twitters from the launch of the Apple iPhone. What could be [...]
Justin Kirby over at dmc.co.uk has created a new site around how the theory and methodology of "Connected Marketing" is evolving and also being put into practice. He's published a series of new podcast interviews for the site including ones on "Open Innovation, Trends and Engagement" marketing. [...]
I'm flattered to be one of the judges for this year's New Statesman New Media Awards which focus on the use of new media in nonprofits, government, engagement with MPs etc. Anyone interested needs to nominate projects that they admire here by May 31. You can see [...]
This month I'll be on the judging panel for the New Statesman New Media Awards. I'll also be chairing The Dark Side of Social Media panel at Chinwag Live in June. I'm currently providing blogging services for the New Statesman and a new conference, details to be [...]
I'll be at Internet World, London Wednesday, attempting to do some video interviews with a few leading lights of the scene.
--> [...]
Here's me (far left) moderating the Chinwag Live: PR UnSpun event on Tuesday. The panel and audience Q&A was the best I've witnessed yet. I look forward to the "Dark Side of Social Media" event I'll chair on 19 June (details to be [...]
As per using the wisdom of the crowds, if anyone knows of a great place to have a breakfast meeting in London which also has free WiFi, then email me on mike at mbites dot com, thanks! :-)
--> [...]
FYI: As I said here, from now on mbites.com will become my personal blog (stuff about me, what I'm doing what I'm thinking out loud etc) while tbites.com will be where I write in a more professional manner about tech startups, Web 2.0 and [...]
I'm currently writing an article about Twitter for New Media Age magazine. Given how much coverage they have had so far it feels a little daunting and I'm not sure I'll uncover much that's new (although I'll try, of course!). If you feel you are in a position [...]
I'm helping to create the content for the NMK Forum 07 conference on June 13th (Vecosys.com is a media partner, and you can book here). Now, I'm going to make a totally outlandish claim for this event now, which is this: this conference will be unlike any new [...]
I'm organising a panel discussion provisionally titled "The Dark Side Of Social Media". This is going to be about how Social Media (MySpace, YouTube etc etc) has a 'bad' side, and it is not quite the new media nirvana some make it out to be. The Kathy Sierra incident [...]
Today's FT article estimates Twitter is sending - conservatively - 70,000 text messages a day across its service. If, as Ed French commented on this blog, each text costs a minimum of 1p to send, Twitter is burning through 700 quid a day or $1,379.57, or $38,627.96 [...]
Twitter is a great service. Simple to set up. Easy to use. It's based on SMS messaging, which is dead simple. But it's a printing press for bores who tell you they are eating lunch. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's one of the [...]
Being a journo, for some reason people seem to think I know about content. This means that increasingly I get asked to help the odd organisation out with ideas, content and speakers for events. I don't do this ALL the time, but once in a while I am tempted to [...]
"The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams..." is a new series of films by Adam Curtis ("The Power of Nightmares", "Century of the Self") that tells the story of the rise of today's narrow idea of freedom. It shows how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost [...]
I'm currently doing some blogging for the New Statesman New Media Awards web site. Come on over if you are interested in entering the awards this year.
[...]The University of Westminster's New Media Knowledge (NMK) programme is taking applications from people who would like to speak or appear on a panel at its annual new media conference in June this year. I am a journalist helping to produce the content for this year's event, and am [...]
