A while ago I wrote a blog post on the lifecycle of a news story, that our editorial training editor suggested I turn into slides, as a potential teaching tool.I messed around with the idea and then showed my attempt to an old mate, Glyn Mottershead, Professional Tutor in Newspaper Journalism at Cardiff University and... Continue Reading →
My Retaggr card
I have a new toy; it's my Retaggr card. It took me about 15 minutes to set up (10 if Blogger had decided to play ball) and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out: It's embeddable (click on the icons and they whizz you to whichever of my networks you've selected) and it's... Continue Reading →
Why protect your Twitter updates?
I've found my Twitter followers are growing quite rapidly recently, probably as connectors such as Mr Tweet and Twellow become more widely used.I follow quite of lot of them back (unless they only update via an automatic feed telling Twitter they've blogged) as I like having a widening conversation circle - but there are a... Continue Reading →
Why are users leaving Plurk?
I signed up to Plurk, the quirky microblog that allows threaded conversations, shared photos, links and videos, more or less at its launch and I've been a staunch supporter ever since, despite the fact that it's a rather odd looking beast.But lately Plurk has gone into a decline, and now it seems as though it's... Continue Reading →
Cartoon avatars: the concluson
Sometimes it's easier to let others to make the choice. When it came to deciding whether my little devil avatar was actually something I was hiding behind, rather than being my online representative, I turned to the people. The Ask500people specifically; the poll was a simple Yes/No question: Do you prefer it if someone uses... Continue Reading →
How important is your online avatar?
This little devil has been my online representative for a year now He and I formed an allience on the day I joined Twitter, courtesy of a Markmedia lesson in social media at Uclan, and decided I wanted a cute avatar instead of the default 
brown square Twitter gives you.Now he's my avatar on... Continue Reading →
New Year Revolutions
I don't go a bundle on end-of-year navel gazing, and I'm not one for New Year resolutions but there are a few resolutions I wouldn't mind others trying out for 2009...1. Industry commentators. Resolution: To sound a little less pompous and gleeful when writing about job cuts/profit falls/closures. To stop constantly harping on about why... Continue Reading →
Reader, I banned him…
Sam Shepherd recently wrote a thought-provoking blog post on how the issue of readers' robust (but accurate and valid) views on online article.After all, the age of engagement and interactivity means a reporter can get fairly instant feedback, good and bad, on an article once it appears online, either via comments or forums.But sometimes the... Continue Reading →
Flickr group widget
Can't think why I haven't done a widget of the Daily Post's Flickr group before but I had two minutes spare and so I made one up quickly. And it did, literally, take two minutes. It's one of the easiest ways of sharing content and it also brightens up my iGoogle. Good old Widgetbox...I think... Continue Reading →
Testing BubblePLY on video news stories
When I was a young reporter on a paper Down South a colleague once revealed, in hushed tones, that: "Our IT system puts the 'IT' in shit". Not necessarily fair, but very funny... and sometimes trying to work with new web apps on internal system set-ups designed to be suspicious can lead to exasperations. This... Continue Reading →
Alison Gow | Building the New 