Dadblog

"Tim O’Reilly has called for the developers and entrepreneurs to “work on stuff that matters” and I say the stuff that matters lies beyond creating the next Facebook or Twitter – that ‘stuff’ includes mobile applications for making citizens safer in their cities, and boring – dreadfully boring things like creating apps that help our governments track their permits and procurements better."

"Using Twitter in a practical, although not profitable, sense are Channel 4 and the Telegraph. At Channel 4, use of Twitter has been on the up via both the official @channel4news feed and that of presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, @krishgm. Today, however, was a first - Channel 4 set up an interview with an eyewitness Twittering from the scene of a Turkish airline crash in Amsterdam. Guru-Murthy later dismissed descriptions of this method of using Twitter as "twitizen journalism", saying that it is "just a new medium"."

"We have just released four additional AWS public data sets, and have updated another one."

"It’s no good being prescriptive - the skills and boundaries overlap too much. On the other hand there are some meaningful, common sense distinctions between the different types of activities involved in social media work which could help us move beyond the ‘I’m not techie’ label. Partly, by defining these roles more clearly, we’ll be able to advertise roles and brief recruitment agencies more easily. But by understanding different skills and aptitudes, we might be able to establish happier teams and make a stronger case for scaling up digital engagement within organisations."

Very nice, this. Very nice indeed.

"Carter, however, said today that more private sector players than merely RTL have expressed an interest in Channel 4. "The government's position is very clear: at this stage of the process we are inviting other interested parties. We do not have a preferred solution. Do we believe the answer has to include another party? No, we do not believe that. Could it? Yes, it definitely could. Have we had approaches from other private sector parties that look on paper to have come up with ideas that could work? Yes we have," he added."

"Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. It’s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident (we’ve contacted Microsoft for a response). We’re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well."

"Scale matters — both for marketing to readers and advertisers," says Nick. "The dream of micropublishing is dead!"

"Here at the Yorkshire Evening Post we recognise that life is local. That's why we have launched a new series of community websites featuring all things local to your neighbourhood. Check out our new community websites all featuring local news, sport and entertainment on your doorstep."

"The top stories from the ultra-local sites will now appear on the Evening Gazette's homepage and the move is aimed at integrating the local sites with the newspaper brands to draw people into the main site, rather than simply finding it through search."

Nice work, Justin Williams.

"Arguably the biggest thing that has changed in countries like the UK since there was last a major recession is that most people are networked by the internet and have some experience of its potential for self-organisation (whether through a myriad of internet dating sites, or through group social interactions such as Facebook, Meetup, Bebo, MySpace, and others - all carry the potential to connect people, both in the virtual and in the physical space). There has never been a major surge in unemployment in a context where these ways of "organising without organisations" were available."

"But Last.fm came out fighting. After its New York-based CBS (NYSE: CBS) spokesperson told TechCrunch “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA”, Richard Jones (pictured), one of the three remaining co-founders in London, wrote in the site’s comments after midnight: “I’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a ‘tip’ from one person and decided to make a story out of it. TechCrunch is full of shit, film at 11.”" Someone close Techcrunch, please.

'Looking for health information online can be frustrating. And what you find often doesn’t apply to you or your situation. At Trusera, you can pose questions to people who’ve been there and get practical answers and insights from others just like you. "

"Hi there. We're Patch. No matter what's going on in your community, we've got it covered. Visit Patch to keep up with news, businesses, and events, check out photos and videos from around town, see what neighbors are up to, and get in on the conversation. If you think your community could use Patch, let us know. "

"Recruitment advertising revenues dropped 66% year on year in January at beleaguered Centaur Media, the publisher of dozens of titles including Marketing Week and The Lawyer."

One interesting point among a great many: "It still works as a tool to gets information out to people in the BBC bloody quickly. Getting out information to all the relevant correspondents and editors is still very useful."

What should the new Director of Digital Engagement be doing?

New from the NY Times. Nice but oddly pointless.

"Because it doesn't have to print newspapers, Voice of San Diego puts the majority of its $825,000 annual budget into salaries for its 11 journalists, who make from $35,000 to roughly $70,000 and focus on government, education, law enforcement, real estate and science."

"A few weeks later I was on a call with Dave Winer and the Switchabit team — one member of the team (Jay) all of a sudden said there was an explosion outside. He jumped off the conference call to figure out what had happened. Dave asked the rest of us where Jay lived — within seconds he had Tweeted out “Explosion in Falls Church, VA?” Over the nxt hour and a half the Tweets flowed in and around the issue (for details see & click on the picture above). What emerged was a minor earthquake had taken place in Falls Church, Virginia. All of this came out of a blend of Dave’s tweet and a real time search platform. The conversations took a while to zero in on the facts — it was messy and rough on the edges but it all happened hours before main stream news, the USGS or any “official” body picked it up the story. Something new was emerging — was it search, news — or a blend of the two. By the time Twitter acquired Summize in July of ‘08 it was clear that Now Web Search was an im

"The aim, certainly, should be to have an accountable corporation but also it should be to have a strong BBC. The solution is not difficult. Hand over the regulator role to Ofcom. And then appoint a proper chairman of the BBC (Lyons would be a leading candidate) together with a powerful board of independent directors."

"In this difficult environment, more self-help will be needed. The very least being expected, as Grade and John Cresswell, the chief operating officer, prepare to announce annual results on 4 March, is a fresh wave of cost cuts. The Boston Consulting Group has been advising ITV on how to make perhaps £35m of savings to add to the £75m identified last year. The cuts already announced take the workforce down to 4,500 - there were 8,500 at the time of the Carlton-Granada merger. A source close to the review said up to one third of the remaining staff could be cut, and those earning more than £100,000 targeted. ITV's international sales side is also in the frame. "They are crawling over everything," said one executive." Is Maggie Brown going to write something constructive about broadcasting any time soon?

"But how might industrial-knowledge models develop/survive which are neither pig-headedly state-protected nor built on the commodification of 'free' (consumer-tracking, advertising etc)? That to me is the highest priority. I have a curmudgeonly hunch that, for those of us committed to financially viable, culturally unpolluted artefacts and events in the future, we may have to side-step both the state and Google and simply pay a fair price for stuff. "

"According to Numis Securities, ITV is expected to report a net debt position of £750m for 2008 on 4 March. However, S&P's estimate, which includes the currently reported £221m pensions deficit, minus tax assets of £21m, but plus operating lease commitments of about £140m referred to as "debt-like obligations", is a net debt figure of £1.2bn."

The Midland News Association is experimenting with an alternative to CPM-based online advertising - and has begun selling web display ads by the hour.

The publisher - which owns Britain’s biggest regional daily, the Wolverhampton Express and Star - has teamed up with a Scandinavian company, Adicate for the project.

"Well, we've all watched the quality of old media spiralling downward. Almost anyone nowadays can get their opinion in print or their face on telly by claiming to be an expert or the leader of a movement*." Spot. On.

"Plaxo reported today that it has seen a staggering 92% of users who clicked on the "log-in with Gmail" button come back to Plaxo with permission to authenticate their identities via Gmail granted. Of those who returned, another 92% also granted permission for Plaxo to access their contacts list. Only 8% of the people who clicked to log in with a standards based 3rd party authentication ended up deciding to bail instead. That's the kind of ease-of-use that people presumed only Facebook Connect could provide."

"Since Twitter cut off their Jabber feed from TwitterLocal, we had to rely purely on the XML API, which meant that only about 20% of Tweets from the public timeline got into TwitterLocal. Now that Twitter has a location-based search API, we don't have to cache the posts anymore. So now, TwitterLocal is going to be purely an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to filter Tweets by location."