Archive for March, 2008

What is a publisher’s “duty of care” to bloggers?

Amidst the recent furore over Max Gogarty’s unblog-like/allegedly nepotistic travel blog entry on the Guardian website, a phrase caught my eye: Director of Digital Content Emily Bell’s reference to their “duty of care” to blogger Max. It particularly interested me because I had a similar experience recently with a student blogger, who was on the receiving end of ferocious (and
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Conference for internet freelancers: Going Solo (Switzerland, Lausanne May 16)

Another Twitter lead led me to this one: “Going Solo is a chance to learn how to do things like set your rates, make yourself known, close deals, find clients or let them find you, explain what you do to the world, find a life-work balance, or deal with administrivia in the networked world we web people work in. “Who’s
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JEEcamp – three videos by the European Journalism Centre

The EJC filmed three videos during the day at JEEcamp – here they are:

Downing Street Twitter given the Twitter Quotient treatment

Thanks to Shawn Smith for leading me to Twitter Quotient.

Something for the Weekend #4: scraping the web with iMacro

This week’s Something for the Weekend is a little different, as it’s a tool for newsgathering rather than publishing. But what a tool. iMacro is a plugin for Firefox, with paid versions for Internet Explorer or standalone use. There’s a lot of corporate/technical jargon on the website (“create solutions for web automation”), because, like some of the best web tools
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UK Government signs up to Twitter

I’m not the only one to have noticed an unusual surge of people signing up to Twitter recently. But today, Downing Street started using it. And when the UK government signs up to Twitter, you know it’s hit the mainstream. Oh, and where did I hear this? On Twitter. Anyway, turns out it’s just Twitter shovelware using Twitterfeed, though that’s
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First Belgian mobile webcamp at the 26th of April in Hasselt

All the information you need to know can be found on the webcamp wiki. With the login ‘mobiel’ and the password ‘devcamp’ you can add your name, and a presentation you want to give. More details on Dorien Aerts’ blog. I’ve asked Dorien to report on what happens…

Q: “What is the point of Twitter?” A: …

Someone recently posted on my Facebook wall: “Paul, I don’t understand, and fear I may be too old for all this already… but… what exactly is the point of twitter?” I can come up with at least nine answers. I’m sure you can come up with more: It’s a great way to publish to mobile devices; it’s a social networking
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A web presence without a website?

Charlotte Dunckley is a final year journalism degree students who has already launched a fanzine and is in the process of turning it into a commercially viable magazine – Things. She recently popped in for an ad hoc tutorial and I asked her about her web strategy. “I don’t have a website,” she replied. “But you have a blog?” “Yes.”
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Mapping news just got a kick up the arse

Once again news organisations will be looking over their shoulder at the launch of MetaCarta’s news mapping service. The more I play with this, the better I like it. The red page icons on the opening page are something of a red herring – those are just the main headlines. A search for “Birmingham” brings up a whole lot more
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