[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. It’s great to see that Blogger has now added the facility to see which blogs are linking to your postings – something I’d previously relied on Technorati to do, but which wasn’t too effective as it only applies to Technorati members. This is likewise is limited to Blog Search-listed sites but that’s a much larger population to draw on.

Anyway, to turn the facility on, go to your Settings, and the Comments tab – you want to be turning ‘Back Links’ on (this link may take you straight there).

You can also subscribe to a regular search for sites that link to yours – information here.

PS: Apologies for the infrequent postings of late. Becoming a father can do that to you.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Amidst the incompetence and valuing of property over people, here’s a more positive story about Katrina:

“Before its offices were literally swamped with water, the Times-Picayune was inundated with frantic phone calls from city residents crying out for rescue. People trapped in their attics sent text messages to friends outside the state, who then used the NOLA.com blogs and message boards to post the addresses and locations of their trapped friends.

“”It turned into a vital link for people needing rescue,” Donley says of the Web site, which has received over 200 million page views over the past week and a half — several times its normal amount. “Aids to [Lt. Gen. Russel] Honore told us that his group was specifically monitoring our blogs for directions to trapped people, and they told us lives were saved because of [the Web site].”“

Meanwhile, Flickr represents an invaluable and uncensored repository of images related to the hurricane, despite FEMA’s request not to show images of those killed. There’s also some thought paid by Poynter to the use of maps in reporting the disaster.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. It’s a perennial problem of online journalism. You are reporting on an illegal or potentially illegal activity: do you link to the illegal website? The story is taken up:

“In the middle of January 2005 heise online had reported on a new version of the software “AnyDVD” by Slysoft. According to Slysoft AnyDVD was said not only to be capable of removing CSS protection, but also of cracking a further three copy protection mechanisms for DVDs. The report by heise online critically assessed the statements made by the software manufacturer. The music industry association IFPI claimed that parts of the text amounted to advertising or to a set of instructions on how to pirate copies of DVDs, especially given the fact that the original version of the article contained a hyperlink to the homepage of the software manufacturer.

“Through temporary injunctions eight companies of the music industry attempted to ban the publication of the article. The first-instance District Court in Munich ruled that though heise online was entitled to keep the text online in its original form, it had to remove the hyperlink to Slysoft. Both parties to the dispute appealed the decision. On July 28 the OLG Munich affirmed the decision of the lower court and rejected the motions of appeal.”

Now the site is to file a “constitutional complaint” against the decision by the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Munich.

“Christian Persson, editor-in-chief of heise online and of c’t Magazine, likewise published by Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, said … The freedom of the press would be considerably curtailed if now in each instance editors would have to check whether a hyperlink to any outside item of content infringed the rights of any third party … As a consequence, because fewer hyperlinks would be inserted, the quality of online reporting would suffer.”

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Surely this case can’t be won? “Traffic-Power.com sued Aaron Wall, who maintains a blog on search engine optimization … alleging defamation and publication of trade secrets. … Mr. Wall’s blog included several reader submissions that blasted tools sold by Traffic-Power.com.”

Does this mean you or Amazon can be sued for writing a bad review of a book? We wait to find out… although the fact that Wall could be seen as a commercial rival of Traffic-Power, as he is himself selling books on SEO, is a factor to be considered.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Surely this case can’t be won? “Traffic-Power.com sued Aaron Wall, who maintains a blog on search engine optimization … alleging defamation and publication of trade secrets. … Mr. Wall’s blog included several reader submissions that blasted tools sold by Traffic-Power.com.”

Does this mean you or Amazon can be sued for writing a bad review of a book? We wait to find out… although the fact that Wall could be seen as a commercial rival of Traffic-Power, as he is himself selling books on SEO, is a factor to be considered.

Here’s a posting which gives an informed perspective on the blogosphere’s reaction to Hurrican Katrina compared to how it reacted to the Tsunami. Some useful links in the comments, too.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism].

Tony Blair does it, George Bush does it, but according to a New Zealand firm, no one’s podcast election interviews before. The collection of casual fire side chats at The Voice Booth isn’t going to change any election result, and it’s not been used to release new policy or communicate other new content, let alone otherwise unheard voices. But I have to say I like the informal and non-confrontational approach. The site owners claim hits of up to 80,000, quite high for a small country.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Following up on an earlier post about why people engage with websites, here’s another collection of reports on why young people engage with printed newspapers.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Always good to have a comment commented on (and to comment back on the commented comment. Okay, I’ll stop now.) – Steve Outing has picked up on some of my thoughts on ‘mapping the news’ in response to his earlier article.

This prompted me to revisit a term I came across earlier this year – blogchalking. Blogchalking is a technique intended to help people find blogs (and presumably websites) in a particular area. Simply put, it involved placing a simple line of text on your site – for example: this is my blogchalk: United Kingdom, West Midlands, Birmingham. A search on Google for “blogchalk: United Kingdom, West Midlands, Birmingham” would throw up any other sites with a similar phrase (but only in the sense that a search for “online journalism” would throw up sites with that phrase).

However, further digging proved quite fruitless in finding out where this technique had come from, and whether it actually works. The site where it seems to have originated – www.blogchalking.tk – is obviously now owned by someone who just sells advertising. It takes a trip to the Internet Archive to find an older version of the site from the days when it actually mattered. Either way, it’s clear the technique seems to have died a death.

Much better is geotagging, a little bit of HTML that resides in your meta tags and helps identify your geographical location (or the location of a place that you’re writing about). Andrew Turner’s article at Linux Journal gives a great overview of what you can do with this, including some very useful comments. After a quick read the following metadata was added to this blog’s template HTML (I’ve omitted the triangular brackets as otherwise Blogger assumes I want to place meta tags here and makes them invisible):

meta name=”ICBM” content=”52.5382, -1.8347″
meta name=”geo.position” content=”52.5382;-1.8347″
meta name=”geo.region” content=”GB”
meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Birmingham”

If nothing else this will give you an excuse to use an “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile” tag (aren’t you glad the American military no longer owns the internet?).

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Suddenly he’s throwing money at the web. Not content with declaring the need for newspapers to wake up to the net, and spending a stupendous amount on internet company Intermix media, he’s now reported to be “expect[ing] to invest another $1bn or so in online properties”, including a search business. The Guardian goes on to say “He hopes to build an internet portal that would exploit the range of assets owned by the sprawling company.” Ah yes, portals. I remember them.