Inside Guardian.co.uk: guardian.co.uk goes geotagging and gets Google maps
Saturday, 11 October 2008, 12:57
Paul Carvill: "We have published our first article containing geolocation data! We introduced this feature in the US Elections blog pages to track our reporters as they travel with the presidential election campaigns. On those pages you can see a Google map with the points marked where our reporter wrote a blogpost. … . We are using the GeoRSS Simple location encoding standard."
medienlese.com: Neininger von news1.ch: “Was Google macht, ist illegal”
Sunday, 5 October 2008, 15:31
A Swiss regional newspapers publisher is still arguing that Google News is illegal because it requires you to opt out if you don't want your archive to be "plundered". But their solution makes sense: News1.ch hopes to compete with Google News by pooling regional newspapers' content at the national level.
LiverpoolEcho.co.uk: News in Merseyside
Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 17:33
The Liverpool Echo's new geocoded news stories.
MediaGuardian.co.uk: Trinity Mirror to launch map-based news service on regional websites
Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 17:31
"Trinity Mirror has launched a map-based news service on the Liverpool Echo website and plans to expand it across its other regional sites. The site will geo-tag news stories so users can search for news stories via postcode."
Publishing 2.0: How Newspapers Abdicated the Front Page’s Influence and How They Can Get it Back By Linking
Tuesday, 23 September 2008, 08:16
"The real question is: WHY is Drudge influential at all, when all he does is link to news? The answer is that Drudge, along with Google, figured out that in the web media era, when all news content is accessible by anyone, anywhere in the world, and no news brands no longer have a monopoly over news distribution, the power of influence lies in the ability to FILTER the vast sea of news."
Planning applications as hyperlocal news
Monday, 22 September 2008, 07:59
The mysterious Grey Cardigan this weekend blogged about his infuriation with his local weekly’s habit of using news of local planning applications to fill the space left over above the birth, death and marriage announcements in the classified section:
[T]aken as a measure of usefulness to readers living in rural idyll, whether or not a near neighbour is about to attach a carbuncle to their cottage is probably the most important news the paper can bring us; more so, even, than the inevitable uproar about bin collections on the front page.
But because the space available for planning applications is variable, some weeks they will be perfectly legible while on others they will be down to 6pt or worse, or even published incomplete or left out altogether. I know it’s a small thing, but it annoys me that such a valuable service is treated so poorly. It might be ineptitude, it might be laziness, but it’s little things like this that endanger sales.
I hope Grey will forgive the intervention of a mere newsroom “Web Monkey (Special Projects)” like myself, but he is absolutely right.
In addition to endangering their print sales, the approach to planning applications taken by Grey’s local rag is also endangering the relevance of its website — even though its parent company has, no doubt, recently professed a “hyperlocal” news strategy of some sort.
In online journalism circles, this would be discussed as an example of what Steven Johnson calls the “Pothole Paradox“: the fact that seemingly trivial developments happening near people’s homes interest them a great deal, while similar events occurring 100 metres further down the road are mind-numbingly boring.
The trick is to find a technological solution that will solve this paradox by targeting hyperlocal information, like planning application news, to only the handful of people who care a great deal about any given instance of it. Websites like Johnson’s Outside.in and Everyblock are attempting to do this through geotagging local public sector information and local bloggers’ posts to deliver this sort of “pothole news” to people wherever they live.
Its also the sort of thing that (most) local newspapers — and their websites — don’t do particularly well.
While the Grey Cardigan’s local paper is (like many others like it) still squeezing planning application details into 6pt type, two UK websites - PlanningAlerts.com and PlanningFinder.co.uk are busy coming up with a better way of providing this information to its former readers.
Both sites work the same way: Enter your postcode, and the site will automatically send you an e-mail alert if any neighbour within a given radius proposes said monstrous carbuncle extension.
Why aren’t local papers providing clever online services like this? It’s certainly a medium more appropriate to reporting planning applications than a weekly digest in 6pt type.
Services mapping local information to readers’ location like this are a tiny part of a bigger trend to develop the geographic web and its ancillary, local search — where the relevance of information is measured by its proximity to readers’ current location or to places significant to them. The mobile phone operators understand the commercial significance of this, as does Google. Why do you think they are investing so much money in cartography?
They’re coming after the local papers that no longer offer the most efficient way of getting local information to their readers.
Teaching Online Journalism: Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 2)
Monday, 22 September 2008, 07:53
"It’s not only [the 988 pixels wide] size that sets Las Vegas Sun video apart; it’s the options. Download a version for your iPod. Or download the HDTV/720p version and watch it really big in your living room. … Subscribe to videos (or photos) via RSS (lots of options there). And yeah, they’re in iTunes. And on YouTube."
FAZ.net: Google optimiert: Wie Verlage ihre Artikel in den Suchmaschinen ganz nach oben bringen
Sunday, 21 September 2008, 11:02
Impressive blog post summaring recent SEO efforts at German newspapers by Holger Schmidt of FAZ.
Edinburgh Evening News: We can watch you but you can’t watch us says Google
Sunday, 21 September 2008, 10:14
"When our photographer [Ian Georgeson] began to capture the [Google Streetview] teams setting up the roof-mounted cameras, he was threatened with legal action." (HT: Shaun Milne)
Search Engine Rap Battle
Tuesday, 16 September 2008, 21:51
Some very funny geeky stuff (via Paul Cheesbrough on Twitter).
Search Engine Rap Battle
Tuesday, 16 September 2008, 21:51
Some very funny geeky stuff (via Paul Cheesbrough on Twitter).
Colin’s Corner: 40 years of Computerworld on Google
Saturday, 13 September 2008, 11:08
"IDG's flagship title, Computerworld is part of the [Google Newspaper archive] program and all issues, stretching back over 40 years are available. Check out the first issue that was published on 21st June 1967."
SearchEngineWatch.com: Google Adds “My Location” Search Feature to Windows Mobile Devices
Saturday, 13 September 2008, 11:05
"Google has added the ability to search by a user's location to mobile search on select Windows Mobile devices. The feature, dubbed "My Location" uses the Google Gears Geolocation API, which employs Cell ID Technology aka cellular triangulation."
E-consultancy.com: Google Suggest - implications for SEO
Saturday, 13 September 2008, 11:02
"Google Suggest has not yet been introduced on Google.co.uk, but it's likely that it will be if the feature works in the US, and it could have a few implications for search marketers. …"
